Not wanting to raise her son around an alcoholic athlete, a young mother takes her son away and remarries, determined to bring him up right. He grows up into a fine young man with great respect for his stepfather who adopted him but when he goes to college, meets a professor who knew his natural father and still thinks of him as a hero. The smart young man (Richard Greene) decides he wants to meet his real father (Richard Dix) and finds thatin spite of still having a drinking problem, he wants to have a relationship with him. His mother (Gladys George) advises him against it, wanting to keep past hurts from affecting her son, but ultimately it's up to Greene to discover the truth. With some of the people in his mother social circle being rather snooty, learning some life lessons from his down-to-earth natural father entices Greene to spend more time with him.
This obscure 20th Century Fox drama is actually worth rediscovering because of the amazing resemblance between young Greene and veteran actor Dix. I had to keep looking at the cast to determine who is who because of the large number of characters introduced quickly into the film. Roland Young gives his typical eccentric performance as the Bohemian English Professor who befriends Greene, with Brenda Joyce playing his feisty daughter who taunts Greene in early scenes but it's obviously a better match than the uppercrust girls his mother introduces him to.
It becomes an opportunity for mother to let son go and for Greene to find a relationship with his natural father as well as the man who raised him (George Zucco). The film encompasses family drama, young romance, a bit of screwball comedy and even a bit of sports. That's a lot of territory to cover in a film that doesn't reach 90 minutes but it is interesting from the perspective that you rarely see films about fathers and sons, and especially one that is sympathetic to someone with an alcohol problem but seems to be functioning. It is that uniqueness of this film that makes me ranked at as a good, if not great film, and another surprise to come out of 1939.
This obscure 20th Century Fox drama is actually worth rediscovering because of the amazing resemblance between young Greene and veteran actor Dix. I had to keep looking at the cast to determine who is who because of the large number of characters introduced quickly into the film. Roland Young gives his typical eccentric performance as the Bohemian English Professor who befriends Greene, with Brenda Joyce playing his feisty daughter who taunts Greene in early scenes but it's obviously a better match than the uppercrust girls his mother introduces him to.
It becomes an opportunity for mother to let son go and for Greene to find a relationship with his natural father as well as the man who raised him (George Zucco). The film encompasses family drama, young romance, a bit of screwball comedy and even a bit of sports. That's a lot of territory to cover in a film that doesn't reach 90 minutes but it is interesting from the perspective that you rarely see films about fathers and sons, and especially one that is sympathetic to someone with an alcohol problem but seems to be functioning. It is that uniqueness of this film that makes me ranked at as a good, if not great film, and another surprise to come out of 1939.
