Skippy

"Skippy" is a very unusual film because young Jackie Cooper was only 8 years-old when he made the movie...and was nominated for Best Actor! In addition, the film was nominated for Best Picture and the director, Norman Taurog, received the Oscar for Best Direction*.

The story is similar to a full-length Little Rascals episode...minus the humor. Apparently folks in the early 30s ate up schmaltzy stories featuring kids....and the public ate this one up!

Skippy (Cooper) is a child who lives in a lovely home and his father is the head of the board of health. However, his dad is also rather snobby and doesn't want Skippy playing with the poor kids who live on the other side of the tracks (literally). However, Skippy likes the kids in Shantytown....and who can blame him since the kids living near him are annoying...with Jackie Searl playing the usual sort of annoying brat he played in most every film! However, Skippy's new friend, Sooky (Robert Coogan--Jackie Coogan's brother) is in a lot of trouble, as the nasty dog catcher got his dog and he can't afford to pay for the return of the mutt. So, Skippy tries to help out the best he can.

This is a modestly enjoyable film. My only complaint about it is the ending...it gives the audience everything they probably wanted but it wasn't logical at all. It's a shame, as the film was quite good until this 'out of nowhere' ending. Still, overall it's well worth seeing....particularly if you have a high tolerance for schmaltz.







*In his autobiography, Jackie Cooper recounted a story about the director (who was also his uncle). Apparently, the script called for Cooper to cry and the boy was having difficulty doing it. So, Taurog apparently told a crew member to 'take the dog out and shoot it'...and the crew member apparently shot a gun into the air to make it sound like they really DID do it! The boy cried...and never forgave his uncle for this! And, frankly, I can't blame the boy and think Taurog was a bit of a monster.

SKIPPY (1931) has nothing to do with the Childhood of a certain obnoxious and whining 'Sports Commentator' on ESPN, whose arm waving and mugging for the camera is reminiscent of Benito Mussolini. Nor is it directly related to a similarly named (but excellent) peanut butter. It is a heart warming film about Children and their simple but important life forming adventures.

The film centers around two (2) characters SKIPPY (Jackie Cooper) and his new found friend SOOKY (Robert Coogan). SKIPPY is from the right side of the tracks, SOOKY the wrong, Shanty Town, which SKIPPY finds far more interesting then his native haunts. Excellently directed by Norman Taurog, slighting neither the Child actors nor the Adult supporting cast, there is a fine morality lesson here showing the importance of friendship and loyalty, both in joyful times and in tragedy. It also shows the importance of parental understanding for Children's problems.

Norman Taurog won the Best Directing Oscar for his sensitive handling of what could have become maudlin. Sad to say this film is seldom seen today nor its sequel SOOKY (1931). The film is appropriate today for Parents to watch with their young Children ages four (4) to eight (8) for it still has lessons of value to teach. After those ages in the 21st Century they will be to bored or cynical to care and that's a shame.

Note for the Historical challenged, Mussolini (1883>1945) was a minor league Fascist dictator in the first half of the 20th Century. History has not been kind too his legacy. Nor will it be to his imitators, take note IL BAYLESS.

P.S. Rewatched today on TCM (02/22/2011) to see if our review holds up, IT DOES! So our only conclusion from the negative votes is that these must be from 'kiss-asses' to SKIPPY 'Peanut Butter For Brains' BAYLESS or sycophants of the ESPN (Eastern SeaBoard Propaganda Network)! Neither attributes flattering to those voters! As for the Peanut Butter SKIPPY. It is our favorite, low fat, extra crunchy.

SKIPPY (Paramount, 1931), directed by Norman Taurog, which has nothing to do with a development of the peanut butter product, is a cute story based on the then popular comic strip character as portrayed by Jackie Cooper in a performance that earned this 10-year-old child actor an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Losing to one more than twice his age, Lionel Barrymore, for A FREE SOUL (MGM, 1931), SKIPPY did earn other nominations: Best Picture, Best Screenplay (Norman Taurog and Joseph L. Mankiewicz) and Best Director (Taurog, who won the honor that year).

The story opens in a small wholesome town where the camera sets focus on the Skinner household. There's Herbert Skinner (Willard Robertson), a town physician, his wife, Ellen (Enid Bennett), and their little boy they call "Skippy" (Jackie Cooper). Getting ready for breakfast. Mr. Skinner calls for his son to get out of bed and dressed. As he is calling, the camera then pans upstairs into Skippy's bedroom where the boy is still in bed, pretending to be putting on his clothes lazily asking his parents downstairs which shirt to put on. After heading down for breakfast, Skippy is visited by the neighborhood kids, Sidney (Jackie Searle), an obnoxious tattle-taler, and his sister, Eloise (Mitzi Greene) who takes the time to recite a poem, "In Memory of a Dead Dog." Later, Skippy, who spends his free time in a "swell" district known as Shantytown, located on the opposite side of the tracks where poor people live, meets and befriends another boy called Sooky (Robert Coogan). At first Skippy wants to fight him, but when Sooky stands his ground, they become instant friends. Their day consists of innocent fun that lands them into trouble when they accidentally break the windshield of the mean Mr. Nubbins (Jack Clifford) car, whose profession is dog catcher. Later, Mr. Nubbins takes away Sooky's dog, Penny, for not having a license, placing the animal in the pound. Sooky is able to retrieve the dog, only if he comes up with a $3 fine for the license. With Skippy's help, they do, but Nubbins takes the money to replace his broken windshield, forcing the boys to come up with an additional $3 by 3 p.m. in order to get Penny, or else she'll have to "be destroyed." The boys attempt to get that extra cash first by getting some money from Skippy's piggy bank, collecting empty bottles, doing errands, selling lemonade and putting on a show for the neighborhood kids. While the boys successfully raise the money, the unexpected occurs. Skippy soon finds himself resenting his father, who not only warned him to stay away from Shantytown, but has looked down towards those the people whom Skippy finds to be just plain ordinary folks as he and his parents are, with the exception of having more money than they do. As with most family movies, and later TV sit-coms, there's a moral lesson here to be learned. In this instance, rather than the children, it's learned by the parents, particularly Skippy's.

Featured in the supporting cast are Guy Oliver as "Dad" Burkey; Donald Haines as Harley Nubbins and Helen Jerome-Eddy as Sooky's widowed mother, among others. Eddy, a familiar face with sad expressions in many movies of the 1930s, is quite believable and natural as Sooky's struggling poor mother.

SKIPPY is a cute, simple, funny and heartwarming story focusing solely on children, something quite rare for that time, with the exception of comedy shorts featuring Hal Roach's Our Gang (or The Little Rascals). To enjoy this sort of tale about the true loyalty and friendship between two boys is to really love and understand children. Movies such as SKIPPY could also be related by those who had grown up in such an bygone era. Director Norman Taurog presents the children, not just its stars, as normal every day innocent kids. SKIPPY could very well been set in any time frame, any location, whether during the Tom Sawyer era of the 1800s, or pre or post World War I. In other words, kids will always be kids.

Aside from Jackie Cooper's fine performance, ranging from conniving, gentle and extremely tearful in that one climatic scene between him and his Dad, there is Robert ("Bobby") Coogan, the younger brother of Jackie Coogan, whose days as a top child star, which began in the early 1920s, were just about ending. Cute as he is natural, little Bobby Coogan comes very close in upstaging Cooper. So successful was SKIPPY, Paramount turned out an immediate sequel, SOOKY (1931) with the majority of the cast, minus Mitzi Green, reprising their roles.

Unseen for many years, both SKIPPY and SOOKY were resurrected during the early years of cable television's U.S.A. cable network way past the midnight hours around 1987 before turning up again on Retroplex in August 2010, and Turner Classic Movies where it premiered February 22, 2011.

Regardless of its age, SKIPPY is still timely, thanks to a literate script. For comedy, it delivers, For serious moments, it doesn't hold back. The crying scenes cannot actually be viewed without shedding at least one tear of emotion. As young as both Cooper and Coogan are, or were, they have presented themselves as real professional actors, or in better terms, common every day kids pretending to be somebody else, that as Skippy and Sooky. (****)

Skippy (Jackie Cooper) is the spunky son of stern Dr. Herbert Skinner who hates the poor and forbids him from returning to the poor side of town. Nevertheless, he goes back to the shantytown with his friend Sidney. He saves new kid Sooky from bully Harley Nubbins.

I really like the kids. In fact, I like most of the kids and their amateurish acting. This is Our Gang or Peanuts. Jackie Cooper would get an Oscar nomination. I'm not sure if this film deserves Best Director. It's all about the kids and Jackie in particular. The movie is best when it's just the kids. I would like more of Sidney and Eloise. I even like the bully. Robert Coogan does try but he's mostly half step behind his older brother except for the last act. The story takes over at that point and hits the audience with a brutal turn. It takes the movie to another level.

I didn't expect much from "Skippy." How substantial could a Depression-era movie based on a comic strip be? But I found myself really into this film. I watched it with my kids and we all really enjoyed it.

It's dated for sure, and the precocious antics of the child actors will likely grate on some. But I liked some of the cultural subtleties in this movie that I found parallels for in our current world. Like the hypocrisy found in Skippy's parents, affluent, casually prejudiced people who think poor, underprivileged folk are deserving of medical care (he's a doctor) but not of basic kindness and empathy (when Skippy wants to go to the "other side of the tracks" his mom asks him if he wants to grow up to be like "those" people). Or the tendency of Skippy's parents to underestimate the complexity of a child's world and who dismiss a child's problems because they're deemed less important than those of adults (not to a child, they're not).

Jackie Cooper is the rare child actor, especially from that time period, who's able to be truly winning instead of aggravating. He received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance, I believe the youngest actor to ever achieve that feat. The film was also nominated for Outstanding Production and Best Writing (Adaptation), while Norman Taurog won that year's Oscar for Best Director. I've read that he got Jackie Cooper to cry at key moments in the film by threatening to shoot his dog. What a guy.

Grade: A-