Lost in Yonkers

The summer of 1942. Their father is in debt and has to travel for work, so two boys, Jay and Arty, are left for a year with their grandmother in Yonkers. Grandma Kurnitz came from Germany, is hard, and never smiles; she lives above the sweet shop. Also in the house is their aunt Bella: in her thirties, childlike, full of affection, and terrified of her mother. Bella wants to marry a man and leave. Her saying so out loud opens up the thing nobody in that house has been able to talk about for years. Martha Coolidge directs, adapting Neil Simon's Pulitzer-winning play, which Simon also scripted. Irene Worth plays the grandmother, Mercedes Ruehl plays Bella and Richard Dreyfuss the gangster uncle. A hundred and fourteen minutes.