Word: penrods
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...friends of Penrod who take their way to the University Theatre this week are not likely to applaud the talking film as heartily as they would if they had never met the boy before. The engaging qualities of Booth Tarkington's book do not lie so much in the plot, as in the subjective treatment of a small boy's world and the wistfully humorous sketching of puppy-love. One recalls pleasantly over the years the beautiful Marjorie Jones of the golden curls, the twelve-year-old coquette who was so heart-breakingly cool and distant as she strolled inside...
...this is not to be found in the film. Though on occasion the talkies have proven themselves quite equal to subtle and subjective treatments, a true transcription of Penrod would not have been profitable to make. The director, William Beaudine had his due from that greatest of all prompters, the box-office, to film a mere series of boy's pranks taking place in this present year of 1931. The results is comparable to a good "Our Gang" comedy, which though marred by as low beginning and a lame ending, reaches considerable heights in the middle...
...Penrod and Sam (First National). A minor cycle of juvenile comedies (Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Skippy, Forbidden Adventure) has immeasurably improved this branch of entertainment in the cinema. Where such pictures a few years ago attempted nothing more ambitious than antic farce, as exemplified in the Our Gang comedies, there is now a fashion for being lifelike as well as funny. The fashion is eminently becoming to Penrod...
Following, but not to the letter, the stories concocted by Author Booth Tarkington, Penrod (Leon Janney) steals a letter which his sister is writing to an admirer, reads it aloud in lieu of an English composition. He and his friends belong to the In-or-In Club of which Penrod is president. When obliged to initiate a sniveling little teacher's pet, they paddle him till he needs a doctor, slick down his hair so thoroughly with tar that he makes his next appearance with a shaved skull. Penrod and his friend Sam have a fight at a birthday...
Leon Janney is a little too pretty and a shade too self-conscious for Penrod but his laugh, so incongruous with his speech that it sounds like a ventriloquist's giggle, is the most infectious sound in the picture. Sam (Junior Coghlan) has a flat Irish face, eyes that narrow pleasantly in anger; the short right with which he starts his fight with Penrod is better timed than Carnera's (see p. 22). Good shots: nice little Georgie Bassett doing a minuet at the birthday party while Penrod and Sam are fighting upstairs; the In-or-In Club...