When I Grow Up

I have been looking for this movie for 47 years. At times I thought I had the wrong title. I only saw the movie once but it influenced my thinking then and still today. I saw myself as Josh/Danny Reed. It was like looking into a mirror. I changed my attitude toward my relationship with peers, younger and older persons. I learned to treat people with respect and expect respect when deserved.

For a modest little B picture When I Grow Up packs a lot of heart string tugging punch. Sam Spiegel produced this when he was operating under S.P. Eagle and screenwriter Michael Kanin got his only directorial credit for the screen.

This is the story of two generations of Reeds, present day 1951 with Harry Morgan and Elizabeth Fraser trying to raise Bobby Driscoll whom they see as willfully disobedient. Living with them is Morgan's father and Driscoll's grandfather Charley Grapewin. After a hand wringing session with Morgan and Fraser about how are we going to deal with this rebellious kid, Grapewin goes up to the attic and finds a diary he kept as a kid.

As he reads his thoughts back then we're transported to 1892 and now Grapewin's role is also played by Driscoll. He's being brought up by a very stern father in Robert Preston and a deferring wife in Martha Scott. He also as a little sister in Sherry Jackson who delights in tormenting him and the parents always take her side. She's daddy's little girl and everyone knows it. Watching Preston he's far from the charming conman Harold Hill who was operating in Iowa in this era.

The influence of Mark Twain is unmistakable here as Driscoll slips neatly into a Tom Sawyer like childhood. The Huckleberry Finn of the story is Johnny McGovern whom Driscoll's parents warn about associating with such disreputable people. McGovern's mom is reputed to be a lady of easy virtue.

A decision by the boys to run away and join the circus has an impact that's felt two generations away. That's all I can say about how the lives of Charley Grapewin and his grandson are affected, but affected they are.

The closest film I could compare this with is A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. Nostalgia to be sure, but tempered with a very hard realism about what life was like in semi-rural setting for Driscoll and an urban setting for the Nolan family in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.

When I Grow Up hasn't got the production values a major studio could have given it. But the ensemble cast is just about perfect in their roles and it will get the tear glands working.

I first saw the movie when I was around 12 or 13 years old. It has stuck with me all these years as one of the most moving father/son relationship moments I've seen. I tried to incorporate the best of the movie's redeeming values as we raised our son -- now a 34-year old Navy Chaplain. The trials and tribulations of the family and, particularly the father and son, are themes that each of us need to either experience or learn about in life. If we did, I think we would all have a better grasp on the humanity of us all. I've looked for the movie over the years; if it were on or available, I'd watch it over and over. Here's hoping other fathers and sons get to experience this wonderful movie. Roy

Like the other reviewers, I saw this film in the early 50's at a Saturday matinée. I was 8 or so, and have never forgotten that day. I wonder if all of you who have seen it remember the haunting harmonica tune played throughout, and especially during the last scene. I understand that TCM owns the rights to the film, but have never moved forward with it. I worked for Disney Studios for years, and even presented my case to them as a feature for the Disney Channel, especially since Bobby Driscoll was one of their classic performers. To no avail, I'm afraid.

The world is missing such a gem.

I saw this film by accident. It was a second, unbilled, feature at a Saturday matinee I attended when I was 9. I have no idea, now, what that first feature was, but this movie took me in and moved me in a way that had never happened before. Laughed before, yes. Been scared of course! Hid my eyes and left the theater peering ahead at dark corners and the spaces between streetlights.

With this film, however, for the first time (and not the last), I found myself crying in a theater. I am certain, now, I wasn't in tears for the people in the film, but for my own life and at the way I had always responded to my grandfather. The movie -- dare I say this -- held a mirror to the reality I knew as a well cared-for middle-class kid in a small eastern town at mid-century and let me know that I, too, would some day grow up, grow old, come to know sorrow and, one day, die.

Soon, very soon after this, I encountered Citizen Cane on late night television and all things changed again. But this little film opened me up to the power and potential that movies can have toward making people see, understand and feel.