Saturday's Children

This version of Saturday's Children is the third film version of a popular Maxwell Anderson play that ran for 326 performances on Broadway during the 1927-28 season. It's a story of young love with sad to say a most miscast John Garfield.

Of course Garfield might not have thought so since back on stage the role he plays as the young calf-eyed Rube Goldberg inventor was originated by none other than fellow Warner Brothers tough guy Humphrey Bogart. Hard to believe, but Bogey on stage played those kind of roles until The Petrified Forest changed his image. He and Ruth Gordon starred in the stage version.

But image is everything and Garfield's similar image of a tough guy was set in the mind of the movie-going public then. Garfield insisted on doing this film and Jack Warner gave in. But when it flopped at the box office and it did, Warner was ready with the 'I told you so'.

A silent version was done with Grant Withers and Corinne Griffith in 1928 and Warner Brothers later did the story again in 1935 with a more suitable Ross Alexander in the lead opposite Gloria Stuart.

I suppose it was the thing back then for young marrieds to live with their parents. This film has Garfield and Anne Shirley living with her parents, Claude Rains and Elizabeth Risdon, along with other married sister Lee Patrick and her husband Roscoe Karns. No wonder these two want a little privacy.

Rains brings Shirley to work in the office where he is a clerk and there she meets Garfield whom she falls for. Garfield is like George Bailey, a guy with an itch to do great things and sees an opportunity in the Phillipines for adventurous type work. But now he's got a wife who doesn't quite share that disposition.

The best performance in the film belongs to Claude Rains. He almost makes quite the sacrifice to keep our young folk together.

Even with a John Garfield that you can't quite get over, Saturday's Children is a nice film about people in love. That's a formula that always sells.