Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

Pauline Lord plays Mrs. Wiggs, a poor, single mother whose husband is supposedly up looking for gold in the Klondike. She has five children, one of whom is very sickly. They have almost no money and their landlord is about to give them the boot, but luckily a benevolent rich couple takes an interest in them. Sometimes the relationship between the Wiggs and these two works out well. The couple's deeds seem sincere most of the time. But at odd times their behavior seems, well, not reprehensible, exactly, but questionable. It's almost as if they're treating the Wiggs as pets. How should we feel when the woman, Lucy, brings them a couple of baskets containing Thanksgiving dinner. Nice, yes, but does Lucy really have to be wearing a $5000 outfit made almost exclusively of fox fur? I suppose this element didn't mean anything to those who were suffering through the Depression: Lucy was nice and that's that. From this vantage point, though, I don't know; my knee jerked a little. The melodrama kind of fades near the end as good ol' W.C. Fields wanders into the picture. He plays a sort of a mail-order husband to Mrs. Wiggs' neighbor, Ms. Hazy (well played by Greed star Zasu Pitts). Fields is as humorous as ever, and there's a very amusing scene where the Wiggs family helps Ms. Hazy trick him into thinking she's a great cook. Donald Meek (best known as the whiskey salesman from Stagecoach a few years later) shows up in a quick role that doesn't work out too well. 7/10.