This one is oddly titled, since it is O'Shaughnessy (Wallace Beery) rather than O'Shaughnessy's boy (Jackie Cooper) who is the central figure in this film. For the first part, O'Shaughnessy's boy - son- is even played by Spanky McFarland.
Windy (Beery) is an animal trainer and performer with a circus. His wife is an acrobat. But her sister Martha (Sarah Hayden) is putting ideas in her head and slowly driving her mad by saying bad things about being in the circus, living with the circus, being married to Windy. Martha is so uptight the Pilgrims would have asked her to leave. Martha convinces her sister to leave Windy and take their son Stubby and come live with her some place where Windy can never find them. Distraught over losing his wife and son, Windy gets careless with a new act he is trying and loses an arm to a tiger. Having lost his son, his arm, and his nerve, he wanders about for years looking for the boy and his ordeal gets worse before it gets better.
I won't say how, but Windy does find his son who is now played by Cooper. So needless to say about half of this film has no Jackie Cooper in it at all. By this time, 1935, Cooper is aging out of those cute little kid roles that MGM hired him for, so less is not more. This is not to say that Cooper was not a good actor. He's still a good actor in Superman, even very recognizable at age 55.
So the accent is on Beery as Windy, who is quite good in this one. It is much better than most of the production code roles he got at MGM because there is so much emotional range involved. The cinematography is excellent too, with camera great James Wong Howe getting very creative with the circus shots. With Willard Robertson as the owner and manager of the circus and the best boss you could ever ask for, who incidentally played Jackie Cooper's dad in 1931's Skippy.
