Word: suitors
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...cause him to suspect that his father did not die by accident. He further suspects that the man (Warren William) who is about to marry his mother (Sally Eilers) was the murderer. Helped by his sweetheart (Mary McLeod) and an older friend (Regis Toomey), and dangerously hindered by the suitor and his crooked psychoanalyst henchman (Charles Arnt), the youth turns his dreams into capital evidence. The picture is not strong on suspense, but as straight drama much of it is alive, simple and likable, because everyone concerned is engaged not only in telling the story but also in the relationships...
...hero is always a prince in disguise, playing the part of a fiddler, a bootblack, a hired boy, but with at tractive, cheerful and resolute features under the dirt. His mother, always a widow, is tormented by the village squire, who plays the joint role of Penelope's suitors. The hero meets a stranger and rescues his child from drowning (or from a mad dog or a runaway horse). The stranger turns out to be a rich merchant, who gives the boy new clothes, then sends him on a mission, a sort of knightly quest. On his triumphant return...
...formula of the two couples who swap mates, Brook is ably assisted by Beatrice Lillie, one of Britain's top comediennes. Heading a list of superlative supporting characters, Miss Lillie is at her best repulsing the amorous attempts of her weak-kneed suitor...
Then, suddenly, she falls very much in love with a new suitor-and One-Man Show drops from its sleeve the card whose edge had, for some time back, been just discernible to the lynx-eyed. It was the father who, deliberately or not, had fostered the girl's fixation; it is the father who tries now to preserve...
...granted, some of the fun and richness of the book are lost. It would be a pleasure to see more of full-blown, man-hungry Aunt Sissy (bountifully played by Joan Blondell); the character of the Nolan mother (Dorothy McGuire) is oversimplified; and such people as the shy policeman suitor of her widowhood (Lloyd Nolan) and her squareheaded little boy (Ted Donaldson) are skimpily noticed...