Own the rights?
SKIPPY (Paramount, 1931), directed by Norman Taurog, which has nothing to do with a development of the peanut butter product bearing that name, but a story based on the then popular comic strip character as portrayed by Jackie Cooper in a performance that earned this 10-year-old child actor an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Losing to an actor a little more than twice his age, Lionel Barrymore, for A FREE SOUL (MGM, 1931), SKIPPY did earn other nominations: Best Picture, Best Screenplay (Norman Taurog and Joseph L. Mankiewicz) and Best Director (Taurog, who won the honor that year). The story opens in a small wholesome town where the camera sets focus on the Skinner household. There is Herbert Skinner (Willard Robertson), a town physician, his wife, Ellen (Enid Bennett), and their little boy they call "Skippy" (Jackie Cooper). It is morning and the Skinners are getting ready for breakfast. Mr. Skinner calls for his son to get out of bed and dressed. As he is calling, the camera then pans upstairs into Skippy's bedroom where the boy is still in bed, pretending to be dressing up for breakfast by lazily asking his parents downstairs which shirt to put on. After heading down for breakfast, Skippy is visited by the neighborhood kids, Sidney (Jackie Searle), an obnoxious tattletaler, and his sister, Eloise (Mitzi Greene) who takes the time to recite a poem, "In Memory of a Dead Dog." Later, Skippy, who spends his free time hanging about a "swell" district known as Shantytown, located on the opposite side of the tracks where poor people reside, meets and befriends another boy called Sooky (Robert Coogan). At first Skippy wants to fight him, but when Sooky stands his ground, they become immediate pals. Their day consists of innocent fun that lands them into trouble, such as accidentally breaking the windshield of a car belonging to the mean Mr. Nubbins (Jack Clifford), whose profession is dog catcher. Later, Mr. Nubbins takes away Sooky's dog, Penny, for not having a license and places the animal in the pound. Sooky is able to retrieve the dog, however, by coming to the pound and paying a $3 fine for the license. With Skippy's help, they do, but Nubbins takes the money to replace his broken windshield, and tells them they can have the dog if they come up with an additional $3 before 3 p.m., or else the animal will "be destroyed." The boys earn that extra cash by trying to break open piggy bank by placing it on the street with a passing car or truck going over it, collecting empty bottles, doing errands, selling lemonade and putting on a show for the neighborhood kids. While the boys successfully raise the money, tragedy occurs, which has been forewarned earlier in the story when Eloise's recited, causing Skippy to resent his father, who not only warned his son for staying away from Shantytown, but has looked down towards those people whom Skippy finds to be just plain ordinary folks as he and his parents are, with the exception of having more money than they do. As with most family movies, and late TV sit-coms, there is a moral lesson to be learned. In this instance, instead of the children, it's learned by the parents, particulary Skippy's.Featured in the supporting cast are Guy Oliver as "Dad" Burkey; Donald Haines as Harley Nubbins and Helen Jerome-Eddy as Sooky's widowed mother, among others. Eddy, a familiar face with sad expressions in many movies of the 1930s, is quite believable and natural as Sooky's struggling poor mother. SKIPPY is a cute, simple, funny and heartwarming story focusing solely on children, something quite rare for that time, with the exception of comedy shorts featuring Hal Roach's Our Gang (or The Little Rascals), and to enjoy this sort of tale about the true loyalty and friendship between two boys is to really love and understand children. Movies such as this could also be related by those who had grown up in such an bygone era. Director Norman Taurog presents the children, not just its stars, as normal every day innocent kids, which makes it quite sad the loss of innocense of little children to be missing in today's society, which doesn't mean that growing up in 1931 is any better or worse than growing up in 2004, nor that all children are not as good as they seem, just that the times and morality have taken a different turn. But SKIPPY could very well have been set in any time frame, any location, whether during the Tom Sawyer era of the 1800s, or pre or post World War I. In other words, kids will always be kids. Aside from Jackie Cooper's fine performance, ranging from conniving, gentle and extremely tearful in that one climatic scene between him and his Dad, there is Robert ("Bobby") Coogan, the younger brother of Jackie Coogan, whose days as a top child star, which began in the early 1920s, were just about ending. Cute as he is natural, little Bobby Coogan comes very close in upstaging Cooper. So successful was SKIPPY upon its initial release, Paramount acquired an immediate sequel, SOOKY, released later in 1931, with the majority of the cast, minus Mitzi Green, reprising their roles.Long unseen in many years, both SKIPPY and SOOKY were resurrected during the early years of cable television, especially on the U.S.A. cable network way past the midnight hours around 1987. Distributed at 85 minutes, several scenes for SKIPPY were cut during its TV presentation in order to place commercial breaks into its 90 minute time slot. In spite of its age, SKIPPY is still worthy entertainment helped by an above average script. For comedy, it delivers, For serious moments, it doesn't hold back. And be prepared whenever this rarely seen gem shows up on television again (hopefully some day to a commercial free classic movie channel) to be equipped with some tissues. The crying scenes cannot actually be viewed without sheading at least one tear. As young as both Cooper and Coogan are, or were, they have presented themselves on screen as real professional actors, or in better terms, common every day kids pretending to be somebody else, that as Skippy and Sooky. Enjoy.
You may report errors and omissions on this page to the IMDb database managers. They will be examined and if approved will be included in a future update. Clicking the 'Update' button will take you through a step-by-step process.
