With Mother’s Day approaching, now is the perfect time to reflect on films centered around mothers and maybe plan on watching one or two of them in honor of the holiday.

Mothers have, of course, been a movie staple from the very beginning. Good mothers, bad mothers, and everything in-between have been seen on screen. Here then are eighteen of the most unforgettable screen mothers in film history.

Henrietta Crosman in 1933’s Pilgrimage was the antithesis of the saintly mothers in every other John Ford film. As the possessive mother in this pre-Code gem, she arranges for her son to be drafted into service in World War I to prevent his marriage to his pregnant girlfriend. She remains cold to the young woman and her son even after his death in the war until she goes on a pilgrimage to the World War I graves in France as one of the first Gold Star mothers. Her epiphany both predates and predicts John Wayne’s iconic redemption in Ford’s The Searchers 23 years later.

Louise Beavers in 1934’s Imitation of Life and Juanita Moore in the 1959 remake of Fannie Hurst’s novel both turn in heartbreaking performances as the Black mother with undying love for a daughter who disowns her as she tries to live her own life passing for white. Both actresses and the women playing their daughter, Fredi Washington and Susan Kohner, outshine their film’s headlined stars, Claudette Colbert and Lana Turner, respectively.

Beulah Bondi in 1937’s Make Way for Tomorrow represents the old lady no one wants, an impoverished 70-year-old woman forced to spend her later years separated from her husband by circumstance, living with her son and daughter-in-law in a constant state of unease. The excellent screenplay treats all its characters including the daughter-in-law, excellently played by Fay Bainter, with understanding and dignity.

Barbara Stanwyck in 1937’s Stella Dallas gives an unvarnished performance as the slovenly, loud-mouthed, working-class mother who sacrifices everything for her daughter including giving her up to her ex-husband and his new wife in this oft-filmed tearjerker never better than in Stanwyck’s extremely capable hands. The last scene is perhaps the most memorable one in this great actress’ long career.

Jane Darwell in 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath is the backbone of the Oklahoma family driven from their home during the Great Depression. Her Ma Joad holds the family together through its many travails. She is steadfast and optimistic in her determination to make a better life for everyone. Her last scene with Henry Fonda as her son is one of the most moving in film history and undoubtedly the one that secured her the Oscar.

Sara Allgood in 1941’s How Green Was My Valley is the matriarch of the Welsh coalmining family, every bit as important as its patriarch, played by Donald Crisp. That he won an Oscar, and she didn’t, remains one of Oscar’s greatest injustices. She’s at her best in the scene in which 12-year-old Roddy McDowall tries to show her where her other children have gone on a map. “I know where my children are” she says, “they’re in the house.”

Irene Dunne in 1941’s Penny Serenade represents the adoptive mother. Filled with sadness and joy, she outshines Cary Grant as her husband although it was Grant, not she, who was Oscar nominated. This was the first of four iconic mother roles Dunne would shine in during the decade. She was equally fine in The White Cliffs of Dover, Anna and the King of Siam, and I Remember Mama.

Una O’Connor in 1943’s This Land Is Mine represents the overbearing mother whose interference in her son’s life leads to his demise in this uncompromising World War II thriller from Jean Renoir. O’Connor, always a scene stealer, outshines even Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara, George Sanders, and Walter Slezak, all at their best, in this one.

Olivia de Havilland in 1946’s To Each His Own delivers the best performance of the many actresses playing mothers of illegitimate children. She rightly won an Oscar aging from a naive 18-year-old to a worldly-wise middle-aged businesswoman entertaining the serviceman son who doesn’t know she is his mother. John Lund plays the son and his late father.

Thelma Ritter in 1951’s The Mating Season represents the self-sacrificing mother who would do anything for her son even to the extent of posing as a maid in her newlywed son’s home. John Lund is once again the clueless son with Gene Tierney as his sophisticated wife and Miriam Hopkins as his snooty mother-in-law in this comic gem.

Deborah Kerr in 1956’s Tea and Sympathy represents the surrogate mother, a den housemother, in this coming-of-age classic about a sensitive boy at a prestigious boy’s prep school with a still shocking ending. John Kerr (no relation) is the boy, Leif Ericson is Kerr’s insensitive husband, the school’s coach, and Edward Andrews is the boy’s obnoxious father.

Mary Tyler Moore in 1980’s Ordinary People represents the cold mother, a woman so bitter about the death of one son that she can’t feel anything for her other son, struggling with his own demons after surviving a suicide attempt. Timothy Hutton is superb in his Oscar-winning role of the surviving son, but Oscar-nominated Moore is every bit as good.

Meryl Streep in 1982’s Sophie’s Choice gives a devastating performance as a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp with a deep, horrifying secret. Taking place in 1947 Brooklyn with flashbacks to her internment, Streep has never been better than as the young mother forced to choose between saving either her son or her daughter from execution.

Shirley MacLaine in 1983’s Terms of Endearment reached the apex of her career, finally winning an Oscar on her fifth and last nomination as the hard-to-please mother whose later life revolves around that of her daughter, played by an equally superb Debra Winger. Jack Nicolson won his second Oscar for playing MacLaine’s lover, a retired astronaut.

Sally Field in 1984’s Places in the Heart represents the widowed mother struggling to raise her children in the Great Depression. The actress’ best subsequent roles have all been as mothers, including those of Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias, Daniel Day-Lewis’ children in Lincoln, and TV’s Brothers & Sisters.

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in 2010’s The Kids Are All Right play a modern lesbian couple with children fathered by the same man through artificial insemination in this marvelously structured comedy-drama. Mark Ruffalo plays the sperm donor tracked down by Bening and Moore’s teenage son and daughter.

Happy viewing, everyone.