When Tomorrow Comes (film)
1939 romantic drama film by John M. Stahl
When Tomorrow Comes is a 1939 American romantic melodrama film directed by John M. Stahl, and starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. The screenplay concerns a waitress who falls in love with a man who later turns out to be a married concert pianist. Bernard B. Brown won the Academy Award for Best Sound.
A scene in the film where the two protagonists take refuge from a storm in a church was the subject of Cain v. Universal Pictures, a case in which the writer James M. Cain sued Universal Pictures, the scriptwriter and the director for copyright infringement. Judge Leon Rene Yankwich ruled that there was no resemblance between the scenes in the book and the film other than incidental "scènes à faire", or natural similarities due to the situation, establishing an important legal precedent.
Plot
Philip Andre Chagal is a famous concert pianist who visits a restaurant where struggling waitress Helen works. Philip is immediately attracted to her and joins her at a union rally, and discovers Helen's left-wing political opinions when she suggests every union member goes on strike. After the meeting, Philip praises her speech and leadership skills, despite being anti-union himself, and they fall in love.
On a date in Long Island, the couple relax on Philip's boat when the weather turns violent.
The public source identifies “When Tomorrow Comes (film)” as 1939 romantic drama film by John M. Stahl. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around When, Tomorrow and Comes.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q666077. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “When Tomorrow Comes (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.