I Remember Mama - Katrin sells a story
Katrin shrieks with delight when a letter arrives from Florence Dana Morehead's publisher with a check for $500. She has sold her first story. That was a very large chunk of change back in 1910. But a moment of awkwardness intervenes when she asks Mama to put it into their bank account. "Is no bank account", she finally confesses, "Never in my life have I been inside a bank". She had lied all those years so that the children would feel secure.
They gather around to hear Katrin read them her story. Mama is taken aback as she realizes it's about her, not Papa as she had suggested.
She is deeply touched, captured by this lingering closeup viewed through the home's front bay window.
As she listens to Katrin describe the family members the camera backs up then slowly swings to the right, tracing a panorama of the street outside, bathed in the city's wafting mist.
This was filmed on the RKO Studios street set described in a previous post. In this shot on the set seen earlier in the movie Mama's house with the bay window is on the left; the houses on either side at the top of the hill are the same as those seen above. To film that panorama the elevated camera was set up just behind the car.
And so the movie ends as Katrin recites the best-known line from the novel, the Broadway play, and the movie... "But first and foremost, I Remember Mama".