Reviews

As with many musicals of the era, the little girl of the film sparks a sort of magic, something Carolyn Lee was quite good at. She first appears as six-year-old "Aunt Phoebe" sliding down a spiral banister and landing on Bing Crosby's lap, after which she smashes his lucky hat. Bing, nice guy that he is, takes her on his lap and smiles tremendously. So Phoebe becomes a sort of mascot/hanger-on of the early New Orleans blues band that struggles to survive against strong prejudices against "darkie" music. Every time she opens her little mouth to say a few lines I found myself giggling at her. Some of her pranks are quite memorable. I especially liked the scene where she paints herself in white-face and puts a girdle on for a dress. Her little broom dance with Rochester is also adorable. Carolyn was a very funny little girl. Towards the end of the movie Bing picks her up and lullabies her to sleep with the #1 hit song of 1941, "Melancholy Baby". I never imagined this song was written to sing to six-year-old Carolyn Lee. The Melancholy Baby scene alone is worth the price of admission.

The movie is well filmed, the jazz is great, the acting good and the story interesting. Bing is at his best, Mary Martin is gorgeous and Brian Donlevy with his rakish mustache is quite the rogue. One thing I liked about the film was the close, friendly relationships between the African-American and White jazz musicians. Seems like the jazz folks were ahead of their time and we can only wish that the rest of the country will eventually catch up.

... will not want to miss her short, but perfectly done role as Carmencita as a child, especially a treat as it is in technicolor and very beautifully filmed. The balcony scene in which 17-year-old Juanillo, played by Rex Downing, declares his eternal love for her, and 10-year-old Carmencita accepts his proposal to wait for marriage, is as touching a scene as ever filmed! Carmencita's eyes practically melt the screen. Her blowing kisses from the balcony captures the essence of a childhood sweetheart's innocent love. Then, as is typical of movies with "as child" tacked onto the credits, Ann E. Todd disappears, never to be seen in the movie again. Drat! I couldn't get through the rest of the movie: bullfighting has never been one of my favorite sports, and Juanillo turns into, at least in the part before I hit the power-off switch, a rather unsympathetic character, a real jerk actually.

This is no comedy. From the depth of the depression, its a revolutionary movie about the relationship between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless. Virginia Weidler, as Edie, is the little girl of the Ozarks, a poor hill child whose mother is on her deathbed, whose grandmother supports the family shooting rabbits and quail. Mrs. Wilder, the school teacher treats her with the grossest abuse of power as she is made to stand in the corner on one foot the entire day, while the rest of the class laughs at her. The council, led by the rich merchant in the village, decides Edie is going to the county home, and no matter what Edie does, she is always blamed, always threatened and abused by a set of truly evil adults. In one scene, I don't blame 8-year-old Edie for pointing a loaded shotgun in their face. One can't come away from this movie without a deep feeling for the injustice done to poor, trampled upon children in America.... African-Americans, Hispanics and the rural poor will relate to this one.

Virginia is a very special child actress, a master in this movie. Unlike many of her era, she was am 8-year-old who could squeeze the last bit of emotion from the audience, eyes gleaming in one scene, dripping tears in the next... mischievous, adorable. Along with her big brown eyes, she could act. Viewers will also want to catch her singing "Old Dan Tucker". She sings it like a poor child really would and what happens during the song will break your heart.

Five-year-old Sybil Jason, or "The Countess', with her wonderful clear English diction, is orphaned, and teams up with two cheap four-flushers, the con men Steve (Robert Armstrong) and Mortimer (Edward Everett Horton) on Broadway in depression New York.

What a masterful performance Sybil gave! A true work of acting genius. We first see her in the "Ritz" with her father, Steve and Mortimer eating a palatial dinner neither her gambling indebted father, nor the broke four flushers can afford. Abandoned by her father, Sybil ends up at the con men's cheap hotel. Later, lost on the street in Broadway with three black children, she performs masterful song, dance and imitation routines that can only be compared to the VERY BEST of Shirley Temple and Mitzi Green. In one of the most heartbreaking scenes in cinema history, Steve abandons her at an orphanage where, sobbing, she carries a suitcase nearly as big as herself down the walkway and collapses on the stairs to the front door. Beyond that, you'll have to see the rest of the movie.

Sybil runs the gamut of emotions in her acting, always with her special girlish English accent. Her voice rings like a perfectly tuned bell. With her big brown eyes, she alternates masterfully between a little girl's joy, pain, laughter, longing, affection and fear.

The movie itself is extremely well done. Not your usual depression era child mush-fest, the movie works on many levels -- beyond the little lost orphan story, it is a masterful, tough gangster film, a love story, and a glittering, multi-faceted cinematographic gem of depression era Broadway street scenes.

Favorite line --

The Countess: "I'll be good. I won't say a word. I'll just sit in the corner and eat a lollipop"

Let's hope that the classic movie cable channels dig up some more of Sybil's lost films.

Jane Withers, at age four, started as one of the deep South's most popular radio stars on Aunt Sally's Kiddy Club. She was so small she had to be lifted up to reach the microphone. She was the mischief-maker of the Kiddy Club program, called "The Little Pest". Like Mitzi Green, she had an uncanny ability to imitate the voices and facial expressions of actors, actresses and other people, something she learned playing with the mirror. On stage by age five, she became a famous actress throughout the South, finally moving to Hollywood at five-and-a-half. In Hollywood, Jane began by playing in a weekly radio-revue and gave numerous stage performances for beneficial organizations.

"Bright Eyes" was Jane's first credited movie role and led to a long-term contract with Twentieth Century-Fox. She stared in numerous movies of the thirties, and was Shirley Temple's main competition. Jane was one of the great child actresses of all times, very popular with the children of her era, and after watching Shirley's goodie two-shoes act in Bright Eyes playing against Jane's power-house comedy performance, I can see why. Shirley Temple was her usual cute, sugar-coated, man-worshiping self with everyone giggling politely at her jokes except the audience. In contrast, Jane Withers had my daughter and I laughing our heads off until we had stomach-aches. Jane in Bright Eyes was bratty, adorable and hilarously funny. Her brat act has seldom, if ever, been equaled in the annals of film.

It is really a shame, and I hope the studios who own Jane Withers' many films as a child take note, that Bright Eyes is the only Jane Withers performance to survive to contemporary video. What ever happened to her movies "Ginger", Paddy O'Day", "Gentle Julia", "Little Miss Nobody", "Can This be Dixie?" and "Pepper"? In a published chat-room article Jane, who is still very much alive, says that she will eventually finish her book on her child star days. Like the kids of Our Gang, she remembers a fun, privileged childhood and has nothing in the way of sob stories. Let's hope that the studios will stop suppressing her films and release them on video soon, perhaps coinciding with her book.

Mr. Oliver summed up "Girl Crazy" very well. I found a collecter's copy of this, mostly to catch Mitzi Green's performance. Mitzi, born in 1920, worked in fifteen films before she was thirteen. Mitzi, at least in this film, was completely different than anything before or after her. Not the sweet, loving little girl... not Mitzi. Here she's a 12 year old flapper, with just the right amount of brattyness to be sweet, smarter than anyone else, and with a talent for "imitations" of the popular singers of the epoch. She had only one short tap dance number that didn't really show her talent. And I'll bet her colleagues loved working with her... for once a child actress who isn't a scene stealer!

Much to my surprise, I found this practically forgotten film has a score and lyrics by the Gershwin brothers, and one of the funniest casts ever, none of whom I'd ever heard of. I generally avoid comedies like the plague, mostly because the modern ones don't seem to be very funny, but this comedy is fast, non-stop, and really funny, right down to the uncredited walk-ons. The scenes & jokes are clever, instead of stupid.... multi-faceted jokes and intelligent slapstick that never lags. The speed and cleverness of it reminds me of the first few minutes of "Romancing the Stone".

Only a few of Mitzi's films are available on video in the classics collectors' market. Her screen time is limited to about 15-20 minutes but, as always, she's worth watching and remembering. The combination of Wheeler & Woolsey, the Gershwin bros. and Mitzi Green make this a film well worth seeing.

I was thrilled to find this movie, along with two other of Baby Peggy's films: "Family Secret" and "Helen's Babies", available from silent film video dealers. Baby Peggy is one of the most adorable child actresses of all times. She is on a heavenly cloud inhabited only by Margaret O'Brien and Virginia Lee Corbin. For utter adorability, only Margaret O'Brien in "Meet Me in St. Louis" is comparable. The stills of Baby Peggy that one finds on auction sites do no justice to this little girl's ability to make one laugh and cry at the same moment. Her smile is stellar. Her pain palatable. When she cuddles with Judkins, you can almost feel her in your lap! It a strange experience, a very rare ability for any actress. No wonder Baby Peggy was a box office sensation and the world's first five-year-old self-made millionaire.

Hobart Bosworth's performance as Jerimiah Judkins, the lighthouse keeper who finds Baby Peggy washed up on shore during a storm, is also infectious, indescribable and delicious. I'm with him on this one! Anyone takes Baby Peggy away from Judkins will have to deal with me and the rest of you viewers as well. Down with busybodies and despicable social workers!

Captain January is from a script written for Baby Peggy. Later, when her fortune had been robbed by her father's business manager, and the studios no longer wanted her and the Montegomery's were broke, her father sold her half-ownership of the script for $500 to Shirley Temple's studio. In my opinion this was an ignominious rip-off, and Shirley's remake wasn't nearly as good.

I love this movie.

My daughter put "Monkey Trouble" in the VCR and after I heard her laughing her head off I decided to sit down and see what was so funny. What a surprise! It was funny & fun with just the right touch of adventure and pathos to make an excellent family experience.

Thora Birch plays Eva, the little girl who finds a monkey named Dodgers (played by Finster) trained by a drunken gypsy (Harvey Keitel) to steal watches, wallets, earrings, cash and anything else he could get his little fingers on. Eva's step-dad, allergic to animal hair, won't let Eva have a pet. So, when Eva sneaks Dodger into her room she becomes a very responsible little girl indeed, even cleaning up her bedroom and doing her homework. Quite a feat for a ten year old! But Fingers, continues his pick pocketing and theft, hiding the loot in Eva's art box. Finster himself hides under Eva's bed whenever anyone enters her room. So much for the basic plot, within which a child's humor, innocence, emotion, problems of growing up, and adventurous spirit is played.

Thora Birch has a much wider range of expression and sentiment in her acting than the Olsen twins (who we love to watch as a family too). Thora has an all-American look with just a few freckles and reminds me of the "kid next door". The camera catches her perfectly. Especially attractive was the lighting which made her somewhat golden hair into a sort of halo of light. She is very human and a very good actress. Dodger the monkey played a role that perfectly complimented the performance of Eva. My bet is they really loved one another and had a great time on the set together. Is it my imagination or are monkeys and children smarter, more expressive and better actors than most humans?

My daughter laughed and cried throughout the movie and declared it "Great"! It even tickled a demanding old grump like myself who generally would rather do anything but watch a PG rated movie. It made me nostalgic for my own childhood. As a parent I give it a "ten" and highly recommend it for its humor and warmth.