Forty Little Mothers

Forty Little Mothers Has Eddie Cantor first saving Rita Johnson from committing suicide and then taking her baby when he mistakenly thinks someone abandoned it. It was a boy baby and that was a new experience for the man who founded Girls Town, USA.

This is a more dramatic Eddie than was previously seen on screen. He's a meek and gentle history professor, not the schnook he was normally cast as. He's replaced a heartthrob history professor at the college which insists on its faculty boarding at the school and they don't allow kids there. So says President Judith Anderson.

Cantor was cast with a whole bunch of young MGM starlets as the students and was reunited with Busby Berkeley who directs this film. He had done the musical numbers on several Cantor films for Sam Goldwyn earlier in the decade. Cantor only sings one song in the film, Little Curly Hair in a High Chair which had good success.

The woman have some Berkeley like moments serving as the baby's forty little mothers once the ice is broken with Cantor. But no real dance numbers as Berkeley was so well known for.

Look for Nydia Westman who plays Judith Anderson's assistant. She's quite funny, maybe the best thing in this film.

The story is nice though it does get a bit maudlin at times. Probably Eddie Cantor had he gotten something like Ed Wynn got later on in The Great Man or The Diary of Anne Frank, Cantor might have made his bones as a dramatic actor.

Funny that nobody mentions that "Fourty Little Mothers" is a remake of Hugo Haas' and Jan Alfréd Holmans's 1937 Czech film "Devcata, nedejte se!", which is, in its turn, a remake of (or it's highly inspired by) 1936 French film "Le Mioche", directed by Léonid Moguy. I am familiar just with "Devcata", and, in my opinion, this is a far more brilliant and deeply moving movie. Maybe it can be found on commercial circuits, I don't know: in a very famous online platform, "Devcata, nedejte se!" can be found and watched, for free. But only in Czech, and without captions. This is not a particular handicap: as in most good works of cinematic art you will be able to catch (almost) all of its meaning even if you don't know the language.

Slightly reminiscent of Metro's later Red Skelton musical, "Bathing Beauty" in that most of the action centers around a lone male in a girls' school, "Forty Little Mothers" is much less funny. Indeed most of the comic opportunities in the script seem to have been deliberately bypassed. This accent on the dramatic rather than the comic is unfortunate, as the drama becomes corny and sentimental. True, Cantor is allowed to make a few quips and sing a song, entitled "Little Curly Hair in a High Chair" by Harry Tobias (or his brother, Charles Tobias, depending on which reference book you consult) and Nat Simon. On the other hand, although the movie's direction is credited to Busby Berkeley, anyone expecting lavish Berkeley production numbers here is going to be mightily disappointed. There are none!

Unemployed professor Gilbert Jordan Thompson saves a woman from committing suicide. Later, he finds an abandoned baby in a train station. He decides to take care of the baby. The baby's mother is still searching for him and she happens to be the woman who tried to commit suicide. Professor Thompson gets a job teaching an all-girls school. The girls are not that pleased with him and schemes to get rid him until they discover his baby.

The kid is cute and there is some fun with him. The premise has a few too many elements. I would cut out the suicide. It's a little odd for a comedy to start with that turn. The girls are somewhat interchangeable with Doris as the leader. I don't mind Eddie Cantor but his quietness and sadness does leave him as a bit of a stepover. This has some fun with an unusual premise and it has a very cute baby.

This movie is one of the most tenderhearted that I have seen in a long time. I was surprised by how touching some of the scenes were. If you can convince your kids to watch a b&w movie, it is an excellent family movie. There were even a few places in the movie that made me almost cry. Briefly, it is the story of an out-of-work teacher who finds an abandoned baby after saving a young woman from suicide. How he deals with his growing attachment to the baby, and his new job, makes for a wonderfully warm movie. Eddie Cantor was an excellent choice for the lead part, although he only sings one song in the movie. Also, the baby in this movie really steals the show.