Tom Sawyer *** (1930, Jackie Coogan, Junior Durkin, Mitzi Green, Jackie Searle) – Classic Movie Review 10,010

Director John Cromwell’s 1930 early sound black and white comedy-drama film Tom Sawyer is the first sound version of the 1876 Mark Twain classic novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It is pleasing though very dated and faded, and, cinematically, it is heavy-footed thanks to the primitive sound cameras, giving it that uncinematic fixed-camera early talkie look.

However, it is largely faithful to the book and the actors inhabit the characters nicely, bringing it alive. Jackie Coogan and Junior Durkin give very satisfactory performances as Tom and Huck, while Mitzi Green and Jackie Searle are entirely adequate as Becky Thatcher and Sid Sawyer, and they all returned for the following year’s sequel, Huckleberry Finn  (1931).

It was made on location at the Paramount Ranch in Agoura, California.

Also in the cast are Lucien Littlefield as Schoolteacher, Tully Marshall as Muff Potter, Clara Blandick as Aunt Polly, Mary Jane Irving as Mary, Ethel Wales as Mrs Harper, Dick Winslow as Joe Harper, Jane Darwell as Widow Douglas, Charles Stevens as Injun Joe, Charles Sellon as Minister, and Lon Poff as Judge Thatcher.

It follows a 1907 version and then Tom Sawyer (1917), directed by William Desmond Taylor, starring Jack Pickford as Tom. It is remade by the Selznick Studio in 1938 as the Technicolor film The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, starring Tommy Kelly as Tom and directed by Norman Taurog.

Tom Sawyer is directed by John Cromwell, runs 86 minutes, is made and released by Paramount Pictures, is written by Sam Mintz, Grover Jones and William Slavens McNutt, based on the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, shot in black and white by Charles Lang, produced by Louis D Lighton, is scored by Ralph Rainger and designed by Bernard Herzbrun and Robert O’Dell.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,010

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