My whole teen years were spent reading the Five Little Peppers series. Thats why I was so excited to find out one day, that TCM was showing all the Pepper movies that had been made in 1939 & 1940. :)
The casting was quite good. Ronald Sinclair played Jasper King and he was just how I imagined him. And Dorothy Ann Seese, who played Phronsie Pepper was simply adorable! Well, the cast was just wonderful!
The storyline in the movies are off from the original story in the books, but they kept the spirit. They also changed the era from the 1880s to the 1930s. It looks like the movies never came out on VHS, or DVD - in the little research I've done. Hopefully someday they will. As they are great movies!
Oh, how I love the pairing of Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland! ;-) But whats even better is that Ronald Sinclair (Five Little Peppers, The Christmas Carol, Desperate Journey) is in this movie too! The role Sinclair played was originally written for Freddie Bartholomew, and I can see that. And guess what? The actor who played the Grandfather in Little Lord Fauntleroy, C. Aubrey Smith, plays the Grandfather in this movie too. =)
Timmie Donovan, Mickey Rooney, playes a tough Jockey who can really win those races. (If you've seen Boys Town his character will remind you of Whitey Marsh.) That is until his father pretends to be sicks and tricks Mickey into throwing a race. His father will make you angry throughout the entire film. It also has the wonderful Judy Garland who plays Cricket West, a girl who lives at the jockey boarding house. And then Ronald Sinclair, the English boy who travels with his Grandfather over to America to race their horse in the races.
This has to be one of my favorite Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney films that I have seen. As it is simply marvelous!!! :)
Trivia -
MGM's top juvenile actor of 1937, Freddie Bartholomew, had been announced to play Roger Calverton, but Freddie's Aunt Cissy (who also was his adopted mother) withdrew him before production started because of a contract dispute. In later years, Judy Garland would quip that Freddie really opted out because his voice was changing.
The very first Errol Flynn movie I watched was Desperate Journey {1942}. Starring: Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Sinclair, Raymond Massey, Alan Hale, and Arthur Kennedy. I must say, I loved this movie! It began my love of Errol Flynn's movies.
I found it interesting that Errol Flynn played an Australian and Ronald Reagan an American in the story. As Flynn was from Australia, and of course Reagan was from America.
The chemistry between the actors was right on. It felt real. The jokes between Flynn and Reagan were marvelous. They gave me plenty of laughs.
When Flight Lt. Forbes (Flynn) and his crew are shot down after bombing their target, they are captured by the Nazis and discover valuable information about a hidden German aircraft factory, that they must make it back to England. They escape cleverly from the Nazis and are on a race to get across Germany without getting recaptured and causing as much damage as possible. They eventually become the "Three Man invasion" as one man after the other gives up his life. Then when the Nazis are about to recapture them they find a brilliant way to escape.
One of our favorite lines to quote in our house is:
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond (Reagan): The iron fist has a glass jaw!
