Fighting Father Dunne

PAT O'BRIEN has all the Irish charm and blarney to play a priest who can fast talk his way out of any situation with consummate ease--and it's the sort of role he could have played in his sleep by the time he made FIGHTING FATHER DUNNE.

The storyline sounds like a recap of BOY'S TOWN--without the extra punch supplied by an above ordinary script--so the film plugs along without much steam, folksy but predictable and full of stereotyped child actors playing newspaper boys. DARRYL HICKMAN is the most prominent among them but can't do too much with his role as the most troublesome one who can't be reformed by the good intentions of Father Dunne.

It's a strictly minor entry in O'Brien's career which was starting to go on the skids in the late '40s and played the lower half of a double bill when released in 1948 without much notice from critics or the public.