Are These Our Children

OK, you'll think this story is stupid, contrived and manically preachy. You'll think the acting is over the top, unrealistic and trying too hard to make a point......you're right but even so, when this craziness ends, you'll find yourself quite moved with your bottom lip starting to tremble.

It is a self indulgent, overacted sermon of a picture but it's so 'in your face' it's hard to ignore. This isn't the sort of film you'd watch simply for entertainment. Its storytelling style is firmly stuck in the past and unlike many old movies, is watchable more as a documented reflection of life in 1931 than as an alternative to what's on the tv tonight.

A year after making this, Eric Linden stared in YOUNG BRIDE doing a third rate Cagney and surprisingly he was excellent. (Yes, I know!) In this, his first starring role he's even more Cagney than Cagney ever was and most of the time he comes across as an aspiring young actor trying far, far, far too hard to pretend to be the big I Am, the toughest bad-ass on the block, the meanest, rootinest , tootinest most arrogant big shot in town. Watching this gangly gauche wannabe gangster swaggering around becomes almost comical.....but that's point! His character Eddie, is pretending to be someone he isn't. He's meant to be false and trying too hard to be a Cagney but not getting it quite right.

Contemporary reviews of this picture suggested that his character and those of his mates were actually quite representative of kids at the time so what seems like unrealistic acting might be weirdly genuine. Despite YOUNG BRIDE revealing that he could actually be a really good actor, he's still however Eric Linden. His character has also got to be one of the biggest idiots ever committed to celluloid which doesn't help endear him to you.

This is a pretty big budget RKO big picture. Wesley Ruggles pulls out all the stops with this: there's some very interesting and innovative camerawork, some not very subtle imagery and we've even got a full score from Max Steiner! It's a lot flashier than what Warner Brothers were doing but even so it lacks the integrity, the emotional punch and the authenticity which the likes of Wellman, Hawks, LeRoy etc at Burbank were achieving.

One thing this has got however is that explosive firecracker bursting with charisma, Arline Judge. She's certainly no Joan Blondell nor even Clara Bow but she definitely has screen presence. Being a loud, wild nineteen year old Brooklyn girl makes her perfect for playing a loud, wild nineteen year old Brooklyn girl. Like Linden however she seems to be trying too hard to be the bad girl but like Linden, she's pretty representative of the kids of the time trying to be something they aren't. Also like Linden, this isn't her best film either ....to be fair, most of her films were pretty awful with one notable exception: 1932's AGE OF CONSENT.

As you're watching this, you'll be wishing you weren't but by the end you'll find that you've enjoyed it a lot more than you think you would have and indeed should have done.

This film is very similar to the exploitation films made by small studios during the 1930s, though this one has a bit more polish and a glossier look since it's from RKO. But like these super-cheap productions, the acting is suspect, the writing very suspect and the overall film rather stupid. I know that the other reviews (so far) have enjoyed the movie but I can't see what they saw in this dopey film.

When the film begins, Eddie is living in a nice home and life is grand. He's practicing for a speech contest about the Constitution but when it doesn't go well, he literally becomes a drunken jerk almost immediately! His new friends bring out the worst in him and his transformation is so rapid and so ridiculous that you can't help but laugh. It's more like "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde" than a realistic film about youth gone wild! Where does all this end? Well, you are told at the onset that Eddie would face the death penalty...so it isn't like there's any suspense about the movie.

The film is anything but subtle. While it's not as ridiculous as trash films like "Sex Madness" and "Reefer Madness", it's not a whole lot better and comes off like one of these movies combined with "The Public Enemy"! In fact, it's often unintentionally very funny such as when Eddie (Eric Linden) is supposed to be drunk! Likewise, the final emotional scene is supposed to elicit tears...and I just felt a strong need to laugh! An awfully stupid film that apparently is a lesson warning us of the dangers of public speaking contests!

This film is stolen by bad girl ARLINE JUDGE as "Flo Carnes" (see pun in name: FLOWER MEAT) -- and when she calls Eric Linden "big boy" in her inimitable growling voice, she means business! My favorite scene is when she is putting on lipstick, covers half her face with her purse and all you see are her HUGE BULGING eyes on a really angry Eric while she mutters, "NO? YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED AT CONEY ISLAND!" to a very naive Mary Kornman who just told her, "Awwwwwww, you can't have him!" This film evokes, presumably, Depression era teen angst. Miss Judge also sings a few saucy lines of "MAKES YOU FORGET YOUR TROUBLES" accompanied by a black jazz band, leaving no doubt as to her meaning. She even "marks" Eric (like a cat) by squirting perfume on him after she sings. Lots of PRE-CODE wardrobe and suggestive dialogue. A MUST SEE.

Surprisingly interesting for a morality tale with that blaring, sensationalistic title, and for the relatively poor quality print that was a little fuzzy. It's definitely a B picture too, with no big names, acting that's often stilted, and a direction to its plot that's too predictable. The young kids these days! What with their listening to jazz music, dancing late at night, and their carousing about! We know what that leads to ... drinking, crime, and murder right? It tickles me to see references to the depravity of the younger generation in each and every age, whether it be in film or literature, and this one takes it to an extreme.

One of the entertaining aspects was the dialogue of the young kids, and no one delivers it any better than Arline Judge. I love her voice and how she flirts with the main character, played by Eric Linden. Nothing is ever shown, but it's clear she sleeps around from the beginning, as she tells her friends "you don't know what happened at Coney Island," with her piercing eyes over the purse she has in front of her face. She calls him "big boy" in a way far more alluring that Mae West ever was, and then after an amusing scene with the flappers and sheiks out on the dance floor, we see her pulling at the top of her blouse rapidly to fan herself. This exchange follows:

Flo (Arline Judge): "Phew, am I hot." Eddie (Eric Linden): "I'll say you're hot." Flo: "Feel?" She grabs his hand and uses it to pat down her chest, giving him the subtlest of winks and a smile in the process. Eddie: "Uh oh, a hundred and eight." She then pulls her blouse forward and then looking downward, blows down her chest, practically inviting him to see. Eddie: (laughing) "Say, did the doctor tell you to watch your stomach?"

This is shortly before examining his chest and observing that he doesn't wear undershirts, and letting him know how attracted she is to him. "You got the stuff that gets 'em, boy," she says. She's also magnetic while on the witness stand later, giving wide eyed answers to the prosecutor before telling him off.

Eric Linden (age 22 playing 18) is not bad himself, with a baby-faced earnestness and look that's reminiscent of James Cagney (and it's notable that he would star with Cagney the following year as his little brother in 'The Crowd Roars'). His interactions with the media before the trial reminded me of Martin Sheen in Terrence Malick's film 'Badlands,' and he's strong in the courtroom when his character elects to cross-examine witnesses himself.

The film is pretty creaky early on, with a slow start that feels quaint, including Eddie calling his virtuous girlfriend (Rochelle Hudson) on the phone out in the hallway after walking home. It picks up as it goes along though, with surprisingly decent cinematography as well as dialogue with expressions that evoke the era. The transitions between scenes are interesting, with newspapers and spirals that ominously signal the downward path the young man is on. The film's low-budget feel sometimes works in its favor; the scene where the six hooligans are horsing around and sliding down a bannister while drunk has one of them really slipping but landing on his feet, giving it an air of danger and authenticity. Unfortunately the ending is more than a little heavy handed, with an overwrought prayer accompanied by the dramatic singing of a choir in the background, which was a bit much. I'm rounding up a bit out of my own interest for pre-Code films, the snappy dialogue, Eric Linden, and Arline Judge.

Couple of other quotes, while Judge's character tries to convince Linden's to have a drink: Flo (Arline Judge): "Come on, make yourself interesting, won't you? Have a drink." Eddie (Eric Linden): "I'm getting along all right, I don't need any hooch." Flo: "Well, you be that way and everbody'll hate ya." Eddie: "Oh, I'm all right." Flo: "I'll say you're all right, honey."

Later she'll sing into his ear, "it makes you forget your troubles, it makes you forget you're sad, it makes you feel good and confident..."

ARE THESE OUR CHILDREN (RKO Radio, 1931), written and directed by Wesley Ruggles, is an early sound depiction of troubled youths that would be commonly themed later in the decade and beyond. Not a Warner Brothers programmer nor a realistic story directed by William A. Wellman, who specialized in this sort of material, this edition credits Wesley Ruggles for something in similar fashion and style. Though cast by younger actors playing high school students, the story shows a dramatic turn of a nice young man who becomes a different sort of individual after getting himself involved with the wrong type of crowd.

FORWARD: "Youth - love- and happiness - these make the world go round ... to all each day comes choice -- even how we must decide in one way leads to shadows - the other into peace and light." Set somewhere in New York City, the story introduces Eddie Brand (Eric Linden), a young 18-year-old high school student, sitting together on the stoop with Mary (Rochelle Hudson) at her apartment building. Eddie lives across town in a tenement apartment with his grandmother, Mrs. Martin (Beryl Mercer), and his kid brother, Bobby (Billy Butts), who always asks him for dimes. After losing out in a contest at his school. Eddie becomes bitter with ideas of quitting school and going to work. Instead, he meets up with Flo Carnes (Arline Judge), a wild party girl, who takes an interest in him. Accompanied by her friends, Maybelle (Roberta Gale) and Ernestine (Mary Kornmann), Eddie joins them with his friends, Nick Crosby (Ben Alexander) and Bennie Gray (Robert Quirk) at jazz clubs and dancing parties with other juveniles where they end up boozing up liquor and smoking cigarettes. With this becoming habit forming, Eddie neglects nice girl Mary for the flirtatious Flo, and angering his grandmother by returning home way past midnight in a drunken state in a "don't tell me what to do!" attitude. Feeling he's now a man, he can do anything he wants, quitting jobs, obtaining extra money through robberies, and becoming more dependent on liquor. After becoming involved in a Jamaica (Queens) murder, he and his friends are later arrested and put to trial, which becomes more of a big joke for Eddie.

ARE THESE OUR CHILDREN might have been about the juvenile delinquents set in February 1931, but centers more on the IS HE MY SON? title instead. Eddie Brand, performed by Eric Linden, in his movie debut. Though noted for playing weaklings or kid brothers, Linden never became a top-rank star attraction, though he did give some fine performances in latter movie roles as in Warner Brothers 1932 releases of LIFE BEGINS, BIG CITY BLUES and THE CROWD ROARS. He was exceptional in AH! WILDERNESS (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1935) starring Lionel Barrymore, as the son who experiences life after high school. By the end of the decade, Linden drifted to poverty row studio films and bit parts before his retirement by 1941.

As much as Linden somehow didn't seem quite right as the good boy gone bad role, possibly due to his baby face, he did the best he could to make his character believable. Beryl Mercer, best known as James Cagney's mother in THE PUBLIC ENEMY (Warners, 1931), performs similar chores here as the caring grandmother who refuses to accept the fact that her grandson has gone down the wayward path. Also in the cast are William Orlamond (Heinie Kranz, a deli owner and friend of the family); Ralf Harolde (District Attorney); Wallis Clark (Prosecuting Attorney); and Reginald Barlow (The Judge).

Wesley Ruggles keeps the pace moving during its 84 minutes with Josef Von Sternberg-type directorial techniques with superimpose scene changes, along with style of his own ranging from character introduction of Eddie and Mary entered above movable hearts, along with circular twirls indicating moving forward to another time-frame. Max Steiner's conducted underscoring helps through the proceedings as well.

My introduction to ARE THESE OUR CHILDREN happened to be not by watching this on public or cable television, but at New York City's Museum of Modern Art movie department in New York City during its tribute to RKO Radio's 50th anniversary in 1979. Regardless of its age, it did have a good attendance for a nearly crowded theater viewing this long forgotten drama that probably has never been televised. There were some laughs at corny opening sequence along with gasp at a shooting of one of the characters in the story being my recollection by reaction of others in attendance.

The movie may be a depiction of troubled youths of the time, but one wonders if this to be a forerunner to similar films that proved favorable in later years, particular in the 1930s and especially the 1950s with the likes of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) and BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (1955) as prime examples. Had ARE THESE OUR CHILDREN been remade in the 1940s, maybe "Dead End Kid" star, Billy Halop, might have been a logical choice for the lead, or the 1950s with upgraded material and stronger modern acting style by James Dean. Or maybe it be best to leave well-enough alone.

Formerly presented on American Movie Classics prior to 2000, and occasionally broadcast on Turner Classic Movies, ARE THESE OUR CHILDREN, somewhat dramatic and little depressing, remains a curiosity drama from the time capsule, or a rediscovery of Eric Linden in one of his few top-billed roles. (**1/2)