THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE (Chesterfield Motion Pictures, 1936), directed by Charles Lamont, is not so much a movie about teachers, classes or the schoolhouse itself, but a story about a 17-year-old teenager attending the school where he feels more like an outcast. Starring the little known former child actor of the 1920s, Junior Coghlan, billed here as Frank Coghlan Jr., who never had the popularity following of child to adult actors as Jackie Cooper or Mickey Rooney, this poverty-row 66 minute production ranks one of the very rare opportunities in which Coghlan becomes the center of attention.
Scripted by Paul Perez with story divided into two parts, the plot development begins in quaint rural town of Hilldale, Ohio, where Frankie Burke (Frank Coughlan) reciting the poem to Lord Alfred Tennyson poem of "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Frankie, who rather be called Frank, lives with his older sister, Mary (Ann Doran), and kid brother Dickie (Dickie Moore). Mary is teacher of the Hilldale Public School where her brothers also attend. She's engaged to fellow teacher, Owen Rogers (Lloyd Hughes), who plans to marry her once he gets his promotion. Frankie would rather quit school and go to work by is advised otherwise. Following a fight with Schuyler Tree (Kenneth Howell), and getting disciplinary action from Owen, Frankie, fed up with everything, packs up his belongings, hops on the next train bound for New York City, accompanied by his dog, Corky. Hiding inside a freight car, Frankie is soon accompanied by three hobos headed by Bill (Matthew Betz). After getting evicted from the train, Frankie finds himself sharing camp in the woods with the hobos, becoming messenger boy for them going house to house panhandling for food. Frankie's meeting with Professor Gordon McKenna (Richard Carle), another hobo, leads him to New York City. He soon gets to work for Pete Scardoni (Ralf Harolde) who uses the naive teen as lookout during nightly robberies. With a guard shot and Frankie caught holding the gun responsible, he's placed under arrest. Though the professor is his only alibi to vouch for his innocence, he soon dies from a gunshot wound. Frankie, going under the alias of "John Smith," is found guilty and sentenced to serve time in reform school. As Frankie goes through this ordeal, the letter written to his sister earlier advises Mary that he's doing well with his new life and job, and attending night school to complete his education. Co-starring Frank Sheridan (Warden Gail); Sidney Miller (Sidney Levy); and William H. Strauss (Mr. Levy).
Although no masterpiece of cinema history, containing stock music underscoring lifted from the early portions of THE SCARLET LETTER (Majestic, 1934), THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE gets by on its own merits. There's early entertainment value involving performing children from little Emmy Lou Carter tap dancing to Dickie Moore singing Stephen Foster's composition of "Old Black Joe." The second half of the story centers more on Coghlan's Frankie getting deeper and deeper in trouble, and learning his lesson the hard way.
A public domain title distributed onto home in the 1980s, and decades later on DVD, THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE has had limited cable television broadcasts, including the now defunct Channel America broadcast in 1992, the home of long forgotten movies from poverty-row studios such as this one. (** blackboards)
