Cinema: The New Pictures: Feb. 28, 1938

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

(Selznick International) is a slick-dandy, too-well-tailored dressing up of Mark Twain’s homespun yarn. Its Hollywood pretty-prettiness needs more than anything else to have its face & hands rubbed in good Mississippi mud. But neither time, Technicolor nor cinema trickery can dimthe essential vigor of Tom Sawyer. Tom’s system for getting the fence whitewashed is still a U. S. classic of super-salesmanship. His mind is still happily mercurial, weighted one minute with the agonizing secret that Injun oe, and not good old Muff Potter, killed young Doc Robinson in the graveyard; exalted the next by the unholy delight of feeding Pain-killer to Peter, the cat. The painful croppers of his acrobatic courtship of Becky Thatcher, the sharp thimble thumps of exasperated Aunt Polly, the ecstasy and heartache of runaway buccaneering and the bursting satisfaction of eavesdropping on his own funeral, the adventure of being lost in the great cave with Becky—these are still the high ups & low downs of Tom’s story.

With the exhaustively accurate settings, the high-horsed performances of the grownups (particularly that of May Robson as Aunt Polly), Author Mark Twain might have been well pleased. But more than once he would have harrumphed at the self-consciousness of the child actors. Hollywood usually looks to professional youngsters for parts like Tom Sawyer. But Producer David O. Selznick has no child stars on his own roster, and had no wish to borrow and boost one under contract to someone else. When he put Tom Sawyer on his schedule two years ago, he started a nationwide hunt that viewed 25,000 children before it ran to earth in St. Raymond’s Parochial School in New York’s Bronx. There a year ago Scout Oscar Serlin spotted curly-headed, freckled Tommy Kelly, an Irish lad of twelve, with an angelic face and mischievous eyes.

Tommy’s screen debut cost Producer Selznick $1,250,000. Of this, Tommy’s share was $100 weekly. To his father, Michael Aloysius Kelly, Tommy’s good fortune meant relief at last from the difficulties of supporting a family on a WPA salary; to Tommy it meant at first more excitement than he had ever dreamed of. His supporting cast was a group of typical Hollywood child players—Ann Gillis (Becky Thatcher), Jackie Moran (Huck), David Holt (Sid Sawyer), Marcia Mae Jones (Mary Sawyer), Mickey Rentschler (Joe Harper). Least professional of the lot Tommy’s performance has also the charm of being the least camera-conscious. So far as Tommy was concerned, he never acted at all: “All I did was what I was told.”

Last week, accompanied by 11-year-old Ann Gillis, a green-eyed, red-haired veteran of eleven pictures, Tommy was back in Manhattan. Together the pair had curtsied to the press, spoken over the radio, journeyed to Elmira, N. Y. to lay a wreath on Mark Twain’s grave. Back home, Tommy sighed, “Give me The Bronx any time.” But The Bronx was not the same: the fan mail was already starting to come in. Wrote one: “I heard you on the radio last night and I am looking forward to seeing your picture very much. It was very nice of you to go all the way to Elmira to visit Mr. Selznick’s grave.”

A Yank at Oxford (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). M-G-M made Robert Taylor what he is today, but is far from satisfied. His saccharine cinema roles and cream-puff publicity have all too closely linked the word “beauty” with the name “Taylor.” Something had to be done to make him an unhissable heman. To kill two birds with one $800,000 budget, M-G-M decided the the job should be done in England, where Hollywood is none too popular because it takes big money out, puts little back. Last week cinemaddicts viewed the result: a sophomoric schooldays picture that may enlist a few juniors under the Taylor banner, will certainly not please U. S. adults. For, with typical prodigality, M-G-M tries to save Robert Taylor’s face at the expense of the U. S.’s.

The Yank calculated to pull Actor Taylor out of his slough of sweetness is a thoroughly unlikable, great I Am, an unpleasantly athletic representative of a U. S. university called Lakedale. When the chance to finish his schooling at Oxford comes up. Actor Taylor is visibly pleased. His work at Lakedale is done. Muses he:

“I sure put Lakedale on the map.” Dryly comments his sponsor: “You won’t be faced with the same problem at Oxford.”

At cinemythical Cardinal College at Oxford, his first outrageous act is to boot the dean in the seat of his academicals, his next is to unseat the same ancient (Edmund Gwenn) from his bike. In its turn, Oxford manhandles him considerably, de-bagging* him, staging mock parades in his honor to the tune of Ovah Theah. But when Actor Taylor wins a 440 in cap & gown, strokes Cardinal’s eight to the head of the river in the bumping races, proves a true rowing Blue by putting it up to 44 to beat Cambridge, Oxford cries quits.

A Yank at Oxford is peopled with an extraordinarily fine cast of British players, but its humor is situational, its dialogue early Rover Boy. Sample witticism—Tutor: “What are you reading?” Actor Taylor: “I’m still reading Gone With the Wind.” Of the film’s two kissable actresses. Vivien Leigh & Maureen O’Sullivan. Taylor kisses one (Actress O’Sullivan, onetime mate of Tarzan) once. Reaction “All teeth & whiskers.”

* ForcibIy removing the trousers (“bags”), a humiliation regarded by sensitive Oxford undergraduates as the extreme.