Tom Brown Of Culver is a story about a young man and his experience at Culver Military Academy. In the title role of Tom Brown is an actor who is named Tom Brown. During his career Brown suffered the same problem as Mickey Rooney, his short stature and youthful appearance kept getting him cast as kids well into his thirties. He also didn't have quite the talent of a Mickey Rooney.
Brown as Brown is a role that Mickey Rooney would have feasted on at the other end of the decade. Brown's a knock-around kid literally during the Great Depression, earning a living boxing. When at Slim Summerville's hash house he brings out his father's Congressional Medal of Honor, in one of those movie coincidences, it turns out Slim was a sergeant in his father's outfit. The father was a doctor who was later killed in action when an artillery shell hit the field hospital in World War I.
Through the efforts of Summerville and some officers from the Academy, the American Legion sponsors young Tom at the Academy. After this the film becomes a Boystown like odyssey for young Mr. Brown.
Among the cadets are Alan Ladd who is an extra and if you look hard you might spot him. Another with a couple of speaking lines is Tyrone Power, IV. Ty is billed that way because in fact he was the fourth actor with that name. It was his sound screen debut and he was three years away from Darryl Zanuck signing him as the number one box office attraction for the new studio of 20th Century Fox.
There is one other actor who has a key role in the film, H.B.Warner. But the plot is such that if I talk about his role it spoils the whole film. His performance as a shell-shocked veteran though is a good one.
Like Boystown where Mickey Rooney has a visit from a family member that puts him in crisis, so does Tom Brown Of Culver. The ending though is resolved a little too neatly. The army does not work with that kind of speed.
Still a chance to view a pair of movie legends at the beginning of their careers might prove an irresistible temptation to view Tom Brown Of Culver.
