Dinky

I thought the acting was pretty good. Especially since it was mostly kids who were acting. I found them both believable and enthralling to watch. The football game between the orphanage and the academy was the highlight of the movie. The junk dealer was especially entertaining. I found this movie humorous and heartwarming. I hadn't seen any Jackie Cooper films, (other than Superman) before this one and I was impressed by his talent. He couldn't have been more than about 12-14 but his presence on the 'silver screen' was dominate nonetheless. He was a very likable character as Dinky Daniels and I look forward to watching some of his other earlier films in the future.

Jackie Cooper's pout is the cutest pout in the world, next to Shirley Temple's. If they'd ever made a movie together, the audience would be crying so hard they wouldn't be able to pay attention to the film. In Dinky, Jackie plays a young boy in military school whose mother, Mary Astor, gets sent to jail for a crime she didn't commit. While Mary tries to hide her location from her son, her son tries to hide his location from her. To help her expenses, Jackie leaves military school and enrolls in an orphanage school.

Sounds like the perfect makings for a tearjerker, and if you're a mother, you probably will reach for your handkerchief a time or two. It's not really as sad as it sounds, though, and most of the movie is enjoyable, since Jackie is such a doll and Mary is the stereotypical suffering mother. If you're a fan of his, or you've never seen one of his movies when he was a child star, you've got to watch it.

Mrs. Martha Daniels (Mary Astor) gets framed by her boss for fraud and sent to prison for two years. She keeps it a secret from her son Dinky (Jackie Cooper) who is attending military school. When his secret comes out at school, he decides to run away. Then, it's his turn to hide the truth from his mother.

I appreciate what the premise is trying to do, but there is no way that Marsden would agree to this. It's more likely that Marsden takes the kid into his home. For sure, he would never hide it from his mother. Better still for the story, he could stay on the road as a runaway. I'm trying to stay with this story, but it keeps bugging me. I can't drop it.