Smilin' Through is a play by Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin. Ms. Cowl also starred in the play and co-directed it. It was first filmed in 1922, and was remade twice by MGM, in 1932 and in 1941. In 1932, it was also made into an unsuccessful Broadway operetta, Through the Years, with music by Vincent Youmans. The title song of the operetta, however, became a hit.

The 1922 version of Smilin' Through starred Norma Talmadge, Wyndham Standing and Harrison Ford (no relation to the star of the Indiana Jones films).

The 1932 film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was adapted from Cowl and Murfin's play by James Bernard Fagan, Donald Ogden Stewart, Ernest Vajda and Claudine West. The movie was directed by Sidney Franklin. It starred Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Leslie Howard and Ralph Forbes.

The 1941 film starred Jeanette MacDonald, Brian Aherne and Ian Hunter. Because Ms. MacDonald was in it, a few musical numbers were written for the movie. The 1941 version is the only one of the three films to be made in Technicolor. The plot is essentially the same in all three film versions.

The title theme from the 1941 picture was given an impressionistic reading by Wayne Shorter and his quartet on his recording "Beyond the Sound Barrier."

Gene Lockhart's first film.

John Carteret has long been depressed and lonely, because, at his wedding years ago, his bride, Moonyean, was murdered. He accepts into his house Kathleen, the 5 year old orphaned niece of Moonyean, and she quickly grows up to look just like her aunt. Kathleen meets and falls in love with a mysterious stranger from America, Kenneth Wayne. When John hears of this he is furious, and we learn that it was Kenneth's father, Jeremy, who had killed Moonyean years before. John carries his grudge against Jeremy to the new generation, and threatens to ruin his niece's happiness, but he softens in the end. Written by John Oswalt

John has lead a solitary life for thirty years since the death of Moonyeen Clare. But now Owens, a close friend, insists that he care for his niece, Kathleen, orphaned when her parents were lost at sea. Kathleen is five, but the years pass and now she is a young woman who is the image of Moonyeen. Willy wants Kathleen for his wife, but Sparks fly when she meets Kenneth Wayne one dark and stormy night. John is horrified for it was Wayne's father who shot Moonyeen dead on her wedding day and John has never found him or forgiven the family. When Ken goes off to war, John forbids any marriage and Ken agrees, while Kathleen does not. When Ken returns four years later when the war is over, he is crippled. He conceals his condition and makes plans to leave for America. Written by Tony Fontana