Too Many Parents

Parents with children they can't or won't take care of. Back then, if they had money, they sent them to military school. That's what happens to several of the children who wind up at Colman Military Academy. The movie concentrates on George Ernest. His mother died in childbirth, and his father is an engineer who works around the world, and never even so much as writes him a letter.

If you wanted someone who could direct children, you couldn't do better than Robert F. McGowan, who ran the Our Gang unit for Hal Roach for the first eight or so years of its existence. He gets good performances out of the children here, including Billy Lee and Sherwood Bailey -- he gets a fine comic opening scene wrangling with a board of directors and Porter Hall -- and he's blessed with some fine adult performers in this Paramount programmer: Sylvia Breamer in her last movie, Frances Farmer in her first, Henry Travers, Howard Hickman, and a loving turn by Doris Lloyd, who takes home all the children stuck at school for Christmas.

Not every parent who sends children to boarding school is negligent. But you'd have to be a hard-hearted Hannah not to weep for the children here.