The Beloved Brat

Roberta Morgan (Bonita Granville) has wealthy parents who don't care much about her. She is forced to give up a puppy for embarrassing her mother. She acts out against the household help. She befriends black siblings, Pinkie White and his sister Arabella. She is impressed with their loving family. She acts out more when Jenkins the butler kicks out her guest Pinkie.

I don't know the old time definition of brat. She's not really bratty in the modern sense for the first half hour. She's more a poor little rich girl. Of course, the fire is very bratty and the perjury is unforgiveable. In the end, Roberta is a conflicted character. The turns are abrupt. I would have preferred a simply runaway story and Pinkie can help her return home. The story leaves me a little unsatisfied. Leo Gorcey does have a good scene looking like his Dead End Kid. Granville is a fine young sassy actress. So I like the first half but the second half is not as compelling.

A parental neglect social statement that comes dangerously close to the unintentional hilarity of "Reefer Madness". Fortunately it is saved by an extremely strong performance by Bonita Granville in the lead role (Roberta Morgan). While a bit of a reprise of her "These Three" nastiness, Granville's "The Beloved Brat" (1938) title role has considerably more dimensionality and the young actress displays unexpected range.

Granville was generally more cute than sexy, but this film has a pre-code feel to it and emphasizes her sensual side in several scenes. Donald Briggs of the pencil thin mustache plays her father's male secretary and they have a couple curious scenes together. These are certainly more interesting than his mildly romantic scenes with Dolores Costello who plays school principal Helen Morgan.

While the film might be of some interest to those focused on "Blacks in Hollywood", this is an extremely minor element within the film, artificially inserted just to lamely expand the "becoming a better person" theme.

Despite mostly weak supporting performances, Granville manages to sell her character and keeps a very unoriginal story quite involving. Fortunately she is in almost every scene. A must see for her fans.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only an inner child.

Poor little rich girl Bonita Granville is lonely. It's her birthday but her parents are too busy even to have lunch with her. "I'm sorry, I can't make it," her father tells her casually. "Now, anything else you want for your birthday, just name it and it's yours."

Granville wanders off and makes a friend - a kid named Pinky who has a pop gun and likes to go fishing. But when Granville invites Pinky over to her house, the butler calls him a ragamuffin and throws him out. Now Bonita is mad and you can hardly blame her. One thing leads to another and soon she has set her bedroom on fire, helped to cause a car accident, and been sent to a girls' school to reform.

It's sappy and predictable but this family drama is still hard to resist. Bonita Granville pours on the wild mood swings pretty heavily, but in spite of the overblown emotions she remains charismatic and even charming. She makes us cringe a couple of times but we are certainly happy to root for her.

Donald Crisp and Natalie Moorhead give competent but thankless performances as the clueless parents. Dolores Costello is fine as the lead teacher at the school who urges patience with Granville; she strikes up a friendship with Donald Briggs, the one adult whom Granville seems to trust. A young Leo Gorcey appears in one scene and pushes Bonita into a river.

Overall, Bonita Granville is pretty much the whole show. It's a ridiculously corny plot but, surprisingly, it works.

In the title role, Bonita Granville appears about as lovable as she'd been two years earlier in "These Three." A brat: Yes. Beloved? Not really. Not by the audience and not by her family.

She gets into mischief of an increasingly serious nature. Her self-involved wealthy parents are given the option of sending her to a school that seems to be a step above reform school.

The luminous Dolores Costello is employed there. Oh, who can forget her heartbreaking performance a few years later in "The Magnificent Ambersons"? She's very good here too.

All the acting is at least decent and often more than that.

From the beginning we see that Granville's character is the monster she is because no one -- not even her parents' servants -- likes or pays real attention to her. It's far from a great movie but it's also better than one would expect.

It was fun, at first, to see the lead character acting like a complete brat. Refreshing to see black kids treated like normal kids, instead of racist stereotypes. Though I have to point out their mom doesn't get off so lightly. Nevertheless, Stymie Beard steals those early scenes. That kid had amazing comedic chops.

I didn't lose my mind when the Brat was responsible for vehicular manslaughter because, well, this is make-believe.

But she is such a relentless brat that it got tiresome. The only thing that kept me watching in the second half was Dolores Costello.

Wouldn't watch again.