Ah Wilderness! ***** (1935, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Aline MacMahon, Eric Linden, Cecilia Parker, Spring Byington, Mickey Rooney, Bonita Granville) = Classic Movie Review 7357

‘Clarence Brown’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s great American drama’. Perhaps it is surprising that MGM should want to turn posh dramatist Eugene O’Neill’s one-off nostalgic comic play about a provincial small-town American family around 1900 into a film at all.

But it is happy that they did, and fortunately they cast their 1935 comedy drama Ah Wilderness! wisely and well, with lovely character star players guaranteed to warm hearts – Wallace Beery, Aline MacMahon, Lionel Barrymore (as patriarch Nat Miller), Spring Byington (as Essie), and Mickey Rooney as the little brother Richard – and provide a craftsman director (Clarence Brown), who polishes it beautifully.

A boyish but overage Eric Linden (at 25) rather delicately plays the lad Richard ‘Dick’ Miller, who comes of age with concerned help from his mom (Spring Byington), lofty indifference from his dad (Barrymore), and naughty obstruction from his annoying younger siblings Tommy (Rooney) and Mildred (Bonita Granville).

Beery effortlessly steals scenes as the drunken Uncle Sid, as does MacMahon as the strict Aunt Lily, while Cecilia Parker charmingly handles the hero’s love interest, Muriel McComber.

Hunt Stromberg’s loving care is on steering the project as producer. MGM also advertised it as ‘The play that startled the nation!’ I’m not sure how that would have worked – it would probably have taken more than Ah Wilderness! to startle America, but it must have helped the box office, and the film’s success prompted MGM to use many of the cast in A Family Affair (1937), the first in its Andy Hardy series (1937-1946).

Ah, special!

It is remade – again by MGM – as Summer Holiday in 1948, this time as a musical and with Rooney starring as the older brother Richard.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7357

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com