The Beloved Brat

A parental neglect social statement that comes dangerously close to the unintentional hilarity of "Reefer Madness". Fortunately it is saved by an extremely strong performance by Bonita Granville in the lead role (Roberta Morgan). While a bit of a reprise of her "These Three" nastiness, Granville's "The Beloved Brat" (1938) title role has considerably more dimensionality and the young actress displays unexpected range.

Granville was generally more cute than sexy, but this film has a pre-code feel to it and emphasizes her sensual side in several scenes. Donald Briggs of the pencil thin mustache plays her father's male secretary and they have a couple curious scenes together. These are certainly more interesting than his mildly romantic scenes with Dolores Costello who plays school principal Helen Morgan.

While the film might be of some interest to those focused on "Blacks in Hollywood", this is an extremely minor element within the film, artificially inserted just to lamely expand the "becoming a better person" theme.

Despite mostly weak supporting performances, Granville manages to sell her character and keeps a very unoriginal story quite involving. Fortunately she is in almost every scene. A must see for her fans.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only an inner child.

Beloved Brat, The (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely bizarre and at times dark tale of rich girl Roberta (Bonita Granville) who hates the fact that her parents (Donald Crisp, Natalie Moorhead) think they can just give her money and nothing else when in fact she wants their attention and love. Roberta begins acting out and this leads to some tragic events, which finds her in a girl's school ran by a woman (Dolores Costello) who thinks she can reach her. THE BELOVED BRAT is one of the craziest movies I've seen from any of the major studios during this era. I can't say I completely understood what they were going for but I will admit that I've become a major fan of Granville over the past several years. Most people are going to remember her from the four Nancy Drew pictures made by Warner but she appeared in quite a few good films but for some reason her star never fully raised into a major career, which was a real shame. She has no problem playing the "brat" here. She's rather perfect in the role as she has no problems being mean when she has to and God knows she certainly knows how to throw a fit here. Just check out the scene where she pretty much beats up her butler after he throws her friend out of the house. She also manages to be quite believable when it comes time to show the more tender side of the character. Both Crisp and Moorhead are wasted in their thankless roles and even Costello doesn't show up until forty-minutes into the movie. Costello at least manages to be very charming in her part as is Matthew 'Stymie' Beard who plays the black friend who teaches Roberta how to shoot a gun. Leo Gorcey also appears in one scene. This is an incredibly dark movie at times with the subject matter going way past what most would consider a brat. There's several scenes where Roberta is quite abusive but even more disturbing are a few scenes where she's abused by the butler (Emmett Vogan). These scenes are extremely brutal when viewed today and there's even a scene where he repeatedly tells this 13-year-old girl to kill herself. I'm guessing this type of behavior was more acceptable back in the day but viewing it today makes one feel rather uneasy. There's even a scene where Gorcey pushes Granville into a river and she falls back and the scene shows her legs spread and her panties exposed. Considering the era I'm a little shocked that this here got past the censors or even that the studio didn't do a different take. With that said, the film has such a surreal feel to it that you can't help but be entertained and the 62-minute running time passes quite quickly. However, it's certainly Granville's show and she's the main reason to watch.

Poor little rich girl Bonita Granville is lonely. It's her birthday but her parents are too busy even to have lunch with her. "I'm sorry, I can't make it," her father tells her casually. "Now, anything else you want for your birthday, just name it and it's yours."

Granville wanders off and makes a friend - a kid named Pinky who has a pop gun and likes to go fishing. But when Granville invites Pinky over to her house, the butler calls him a ragamuffin and throws him out. Now Bonita is mad and you can hardly blame her. One thing leads to another and soon she has set her bedroom on fire, helped to cause a car accident, and been sent to a girls' school to reform.

It's sappy and predictable but this family drama is still hard to resist. Bonita Granville pours on the wild mood swings pretty heavily, but in spite of the overblown emotions she remains charismatic and even charming. She makes us cringe a couple of times but we are certainly happy to root for her.

Donald Crisp and Natalie Moorhead give competent but thankless performances as the clueless parents. Dolores Costello is fine as the lead teacher at the school who urges patience with Granville; she strikes up a friendship with Donald Briggs, the one adult whom Granville seems to trust. A young Leo Gorcey appears in one scene and pushes Bonita into a river.

Overall, Bonita Granville is pretty much the whole show. It's a ridiculously corny plot but, surprisingly, it works.

BONITA GRANVILLE specialized in playing brattish kid sister roles throughout most of the '30s (when she wasn't playing Nancy Drew), and this is one of her more insufferable roles as a rich brat given to tossing dinner trays out the window when in a huff.

She plays the neglected daughter of DONALD CRISP, only instead of pouting the way Shirley Temple would do under these "dire" circumstances, Bonita takes a feistier approach, talking back to the house servants and refusing to eat her spinach with much more vehemence than Shirley ever showed.

She befriends a black boy, only because he promises to teach her how to use his rifle. LEO GORCEY turns up as another unlikely companion for the poor little rich girl and from then on the film becomes pretty unwatchable as Bonita is taught a thing or two about changing her snobbish ways.

By the time the plot gets any thicker, Bonita has totally lost the patience of her parents as well as the viewer. Too bad Warner Bros. couldn't come up with better scripts for their child star instead of casting her in these insipid programmers that are enough to wear anyone's patience.

Any resemblance to the real world is purely coincidental.

Trivia note: The script was written by Jean Negulesco, who later made a much better director than screenwriter.

It was fun, at first, to see the lead character acting like a complete brat. Refreshing to see black kids treated like normal kids, instead of racist stereotypes. Though I have to point out their mom doesn't get off so lightly. Nevertheless, Stymie Beard steals those early scenes. That kid had amazing comedic chops.

I didn't lose my mind when the Brat was responsible for vehicular manslaughter because, well, this is make-believe.

But she is such a relentless brat that it got tiresome. The only thing that kept me watching in the second half was Dolores Costello.

Wouldn't watch again.