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.

This film is unexpectedly relevant to what is happening today, 70 years later, as the Western world is being flooded with spoilt 'Frankenkinder' and China is being flooded with even more spoilt 'little emperors'. This is a very gritty tale written by the Romanian refugee Jean Negulesco, before he had begun to direct films. Negulesco did not write the script, and I suspect that was softened, and the ending made more sentimental than in his original story, in order to be more 'audience friendly'. Bonita Granville, a highly talented young actress of the time (best known for her four Nancy Drew mystery films, in which she excelled when she was somewhat older), plays the neglected daughter of a truly appalling spoilt rich couple. The mother is the worst sort, many of whom I have had the misfortune to know and who are more common than ever today; her interest is herself, and a child is at best an accessory and at worst a nuisance to be disposed of to servants and then to a boarding school. In her case, however, she did not even have the excuse of being a 'killer career woman', but was merely an idle and vain social snob. The father is only interested in making money, and is always out doing so. This leaves the normally charming Bonita, who has a great deal of fire to her character, to rebel and become in protest a hideously spoilt brat, and eventually even a delinquent entangled in a crime. This process is clearly shown, to a degree not at all normal in Hollywood films, where false sentimentality was the usual way to view children. Bonita Granville rises to the challenge extremely well, not hesitating to make herself as odious as necessary. There is a very wicked butler who torments the girl secretly, there is a very nice male secretary who tries to help her, and eventually an angelic school headmistress who wishes to save her. The film is really a very savage attack on the idle rich and their family victims. Negulesco, who had been a 'companion to rich older women' at Nice before coming to Hollywood, was clearly describing a woman of precisely the type he had known personally, with a rich absent husband and a victimized daughter such as he must have observed at first hand. It is a bitter tale, and honestly done except for the ending.

Warner Bros. was known for gritty gangster pictures. Here, of all things, they've fashioned a gritty adolescent girl film, with a lot more boldness than I ever expected. More than a brat, Roberta's a little hellion, flinging food trays and emotional tizzies at the slightest provocation. We understand her problems come from an unloving wealthy household where she and the butler (Vogan) go ten-rounds without a referee.

But consider the darker side. She is, after all, partially responsible for the death of an innocent motorist, when she grabs the car wheel from butler Jenkins. The probation school reckoning for that strikes me as pretty mild. Nor, rather surprisingly, does the screenplay supply a moral reckoning. Also unexpected is the casualness with which Roberta crosses the colorline with Pinkie (Beard) and his Negro family. But then, she probably identifies more with them than with her distant mother and father. And I agree with another reviewer that there seems some innuendo from the handsome Williams toward the budding young woman.

All of this strikes me as unusual for a Production Code programmer. But then writer Negulesco directed some of the better studio products of the 40's and 50's, including the soulful Deep Valley (1947) and the surprisingly sensitive Take Care of My Little Girl (1952). Then too, Granville turns in an absolutely bravura performance that rivets attention throughout. Quite a risk for a young actress to make herself so unlikable for so much of the movie. Anyhow, the last third lapses into something much more conventional, as might be expected for what remains a commercial product. Nonetheless, there's enough of the unconventional in both filming and writing to make this little obscurity worth catching up with.

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.

Beloved Brat, The (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely bizarre and at times dark tale of rich girl Roberta (Bonita Granville) who hates the fact that her parents (Donald Crisp, Natalie Moorhead) think they can just give her money and nothing else when in fact she wants their attention and love. Roberta begins acting out and this leads to some tragic events, which finds her in a girl's school ran by a woman (Dolores Costello) who thinks she can reach her. THE BELOVED BRAT is one of the craziest movies I've seen from any of the major studios during this era. I can't say I completely understood what they were going for but I will admit that I've become a major fan of Granville over the past several years. Most people are going to remember her from the four Nancy Drew pictures made by Warner but she appeared in quite a few good films but for some reason her star never fully raised into a major career, which was a real shame. She has no problem playing the "brat" here. She's rather perfect in the role as she has no problems being mean when she has to and God knows she certainly knows how to throw a fit here. Just check out the scene where she pretty much beats up her butler after he throws her friend out of the house. She also manages to be quite believable when it comes time to show the more tender side of the character. Both Crisp and Moorhead are wasted in their thankless roles and even Costello doesn't show up until forty-minutes into the movie. Costello at least manages to be very charming in her part as is Matthew 'Stymie' Beard who plays the black friend who teaches Roberta how to shoot a gun. Leo Gorcey also appears in one scene. This is an incredibly dark movie at times with the subject matter going way past what most would consider a brat. There's several scenes where Roberta is quite abusive but even more disturbing are a few scenes where she's abused by the butler (Emmett Vogan). These scenes are extremely brutal when viewed today and there's even a scene where he repeatedly tells this 13-year-old girl to kill herself. I'm guessing this type of behavior was more acceptable back in the day but viewing it today makes one feel rather uneasy. There's even a scene where Gorcey pushes Granville into a river and she falls back and the scene shows her legs spread and her panties exposed. Considering the era I'm a little shocked that this here got past the censors or even that the studio didn't do a different take. With that said, the film has such a surreal feel to it that you can't help but be entertained and the 62-minute running time passes quite quickly. However, it's certainly Granville's show and she's the main reason to watch.