The Prodigal

"The Prodigal" appears to be assembled from leftover script ideas from other films. It opens with some pretty good scenes of the lives of tramps in the early Depression years. Soon it focusses on Jeff Farraday, one of the tramps who actually comes from a wealthy Southern plantation family. Jeff has been exiled from the family, served time in jail, and is detested by his brother Rodman and sister Christine. The Farraday family seems to be withstanding the Depression quite well. Jeff returns to the plantation with a couple of other bums, is welcomed by his adoring mother, scorned by his siblings, and falls in love with the charming and perky Antonia, the wife of his brother Rodman. Rodman, of course, is a cruel, bullying stuffed shirt who hates Antonia but won't give her a divorce.

The film veers from melodramatic family conflict to awkward love scenes to thoroughly unfunny comedy to incongruous musical numbers. Jeff is played by opera-singer Lawrence Tibbett who frequently breaks into song. Tibbett can really sing but he can't act, nor can any of the other characters in this mishmash. But then with lines like these, it would be impossible for any actor to seem anything other than ridiculous.

Not to be overlooked are the really horrible portrayals of the blacks on the plantation. Even for the time (when Aunt Jemima type characters are standard), these racist portrayals are extreme. One farmhand is a whining, sniveling wimp; other scenes involving the darkies' BBQ make a viewer want to crawl under the table.

The Prodigal isn't necessarily a bad film, and it is interesting in that it portrays adultery in a non-judgemental light, but it isn't good either. The production values are quite nice, the music is absolutely wonderful, Roland Young is nicely droll and Lawrence Tibbett with his charisma and big voice is a likable lead. However, Esther Ralston shows no chemistry with Tibbett and for me this is the only Lawrence Tibbett film where neither the comedy or romantic elements quite work, the comedy being unfunny excepting Young's drollness and the romance underdeveloped and syrupy. The story is also very creaky, the characters are stock and uninteresting and the film is too short and unevenly paced. I didn't like the representation of the plantation workers either, it was stereotyped and verged on racially offensive. Overall, interesting curiosity but not a treasure. Worth seeing for the music, the subject and Tibbett if not much else. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Falling in love with your brother's wife is a good starter. There's plenty of tension between the brothers. Their mother is in between but obviously sees the failings of the successful, stay at home, brother. His wife is bored as her husband fails to think of her...Lawrence Tibbitt gets to sing, and he's as good an actor as most opera stars(not very).

This reviewer was glad to her his voice. The justly criticized scenes with stereotyped darkies are as bad as you'll ever see, but Steppin Fetchet answered critics of his portrayals with the remark that he "laughed all the way to the bank."

I am pretty far to the left, but I judge art as a product of its time. The singing and dancing of African-Americans in this film was joyful and artful, though admittedly stereo-typed. It was not embarrassing.

Some wonderful singing by Lawrence Tibbett saves The Prodigal from total oblivion. As it is it's a film not likely to be remade in this day and age or the future because of some really bad portrayals of southern blacks as happy contented darkies. In this film Tibbett plays the title role, a prodigal son returned home to his southern gentry family where it looks like they haven't heard the bad news from Appomattox.

Anyway Tibbett who's been on the road with pals Roland Young and Cliff Edwards returns home to the old plantation presided over by Emma Dunn and her two children Hedda Hopper and Purnell Pratt. Pratt's a dull witted lummox of a man who doesn't know that his wife Esther Ralston is running away with his friend Theodore Von Eltz.

Anyway Tibbett arrives and unsettles a whole lot. He also gets to sing Life Is A Dream and Without A Song and snatches of other numbers and a song with the field hands who are referred to as 'pickaninnies'. That's the reason The Prodigal didn't get many viewings after the 60s.

Besides Tibbett's singing I have to give some kudos to Roland Young playing a droll cashiered former English army surgeon who has some interesting observations to make.

Still The Prodigal will not find favor with many.

I'm a big fan of Metropolitan Opera baritone Lawrence Tibbett, so I sat through this movie. It wasn't easy, though. Tibbett only gets a few numbers, and he doesn't do anything noteworthy with any of them, even Vincent Youmans' very beautiful "Without a song." He is often very stiff, and while it is true that the script is very bad, he doesn't deliver most of his lines very well. So, in short, it really isn't worth sitting through 76 minutes of bad melodrama to see him.

The rest of the movie is just bad. The melodrama is bad, as I said, and none of the other actors do anything interesting with it.

And then there is the depiction of the black characters, starting with Stepin Fetchit. Even for a 1930s movie, it's bad.

So, my recommendation: if you want to hear Tibbett sing, go to YouTube or your record collection - if you're old enough to have one. Don't regret not seeing him act. He really doesn't here.