Johnny Doughboy

This was Jane Withers' first grown-up role after her child-star days had ended at her former studio, 20th Century Fox. She transitions nicely. William Demarest plays her conniving Hollywood agent, and a batch of other real-life ex-child stars help Jane put on a revue to benefit the war effort. The dialogue is very interesting– especially the way the grown-up performers discuss their earlier days in show biz. One of these poor souls is Baby Sandy, heading into retirement and kindergarten at the tender age of five! Henry Wilcoxon, who previously appeared in other Withers vehicles at Fox, also stars. He is said to have donated his entire salary to charity.

This movie really got to me. seeing those kid stars almost begging for a job and singing about their career ending did not help me enjoy the rest of the film. They were given a small part and then they were seen no more..even at the end when the show is done for the troops the kids are not even in it...very bad ending indeed..this movie does not put a smile on your face at all.Bobby Breen gave his last appearance in this film. Spanky too faded away after this..Alfalfa did last for other movies but we all know how he ended in 1959..most of these child stars are not even talked about today..This has been the Hollywood curse for many years. and was worst back then.

The star of "Johnny Doughboy" is Jane Withers though she is assisted with several has-been child actors...kids who, in the film, are essentially called has-beens and lament that the studios don't want them any more! Talk about sad and depressing!!

The story begins with Jane Winters (Withers) tiring of her life as a celebrity and she wants some time off from making films. So, this headstrong (and somewhat unlikable) lady disappears. Her agent (William Demarest) handles this by having an EXACT double pretend to be Winters. But when a group of has-been child actors approach her (assuming she is Jane) and want her to help out with the show, this double doesn't know what to do. In the meantime, the real Jane gets involved with a VERY creepy situation....she goes to live with a 40-something year old man! Talk about weird!!

Apart from seeing a few children having a last hurrah, there isn't a lot to love about this film. And, some of the kids were a bit sad to watch as well...with Bobby Breen talking in such a high pitched teenage voice he sounded like he'd just inhaled helium and Alfalfa singing like he used to...which is sad when you're no longer young and cute. Overall, it's not terrible...but it's also not very good and has too many song and dance numbers and perhaps I would have enjoyed NOT seeing these awkward out of work children once more.

I think Zanuck fired Shirley Temple and Jane Withers almost simultaneously ... or maybe he just decided not to pick up their options. Miss Temple went to work for David Selznick. Miss Withers went to Republic. She plays a child star who wants to play adult roles.... fourteen at least. No dice. So she drives into the mountain and falls in love with reclusive writer Henry Wilcoxon. Meanwhile, in walks her exact double from Kansas, who is promptly recruited to impersonate her. A troupe of washed-up child stars want to do camp shows for the USO, but the Army wants Miss Withers, so.....

Miss Withers is good as always. She sings a couple of numbers and gets to dance in a big production number at the end with Jack Boyle Jr. If they are not Donald O'Conner & Peggy Ryan, they certainly do well, and the picture garnered a reasonable Academy Award nomination for Best Scoring by Walter Scharf.

What is unnerving about this movie is its exploitation angle: ex-child-stars, washed up by the time they hit puberty: Bobby Green, Carl Switzer (still singing -- yikes!), Spanky MacFarland, even Baby Sandy, a has-been at 4. It's positively ghoulish. It turns a pleasant B picture with a sock-o finish into a bit of an ordeal.

For the past 30 years, I had been curious about this movie because of a pic from it in Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann's book, "The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang": that of Alfalfa and Spanky with a couple of other former child stars or "has-beens" as they were called in this movie. Both Alf and Spank had left Our Gang by the time they made this and this was their only appearance together outside of that series as well as Spanky's last credited film appearance-since the following two years had him in bit parts without billing-for the next 30 years. While Spank appeared in several scenes, Alf only appeared in a musical number (his voice as amusingly screechy as ever) with him as well as Bobby Breen and Robert Coogan. They don't even talk to each other much though they do exchange looks and use hand signals on each other. That's pretty much the highlight of this pic which otherwise concerns former child star Jane Withers as a teen who's tired of her typecast roles and decides to take a break and go off to whereabouts unknown while a lookalike fan (also Withers) arrives at her home. Supporting player William Demarest provides some funny stuff as her agent and there's other enjoyable musical numbers but the imply that the public figure Withers may be having an affair with a middle-aged playwright whose cabin home she's staying at would bring the creep factor if this were made today (and it probably did then)! So on that note, Johnny Doughboy is worth a look for anyone curious about that final team-up with Alfalfa and Spanky I mentioned earlier in the review.