- A schoolteacher in a rural community campaigns to stop the practice of older men marrying underage girls.
- 12-year-old Jennie lives with her parents in extremely rural mountain country. Her schoolteacher Miss Carol, a mountain girl herself, went off to get educated and has returned hoping to stop the tradition of child marriage which permeates the culture. Jennie's father Ira is a good man who tries to protect Miss Carol from the men who warn her to call off her crusade. One of those threatening men, Jake Bolby, has his eye on young Jennie and plots to make her his bride.—Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
- Miss Carol is an idealistic teacher in a remote one-room school house. A native of the Ozarks herself, she is determined to stop the practice of child marriage, in which older men wed teen or preteen girls.
Her campaign raises the ire of some local men, led by Jake Bolby, who drag her into the woods one night with the intention of tarring and feathering her. Before they can do this however, Angelo the dwarf and Mr. Colton arrive with a shotgun to save the day.
Following this, Jake Bolby spots young Jennie Colton swimming. When her father dies, he decides to take advantage of the opportunity to blackmail her mother into letting him marry the girl, threatening that he will see Jennie's mother hanged for murder otherwise.
After he "courts" Jennie Colton by giving her a doll, the two are married. It later turns out that this marriage was unlawful, as child marriage had been banned several days prior, but this point quickly becomes moot.
Before Bolby can consummate the union, he is gunned down by Angelo. Jennie leaves his house with Freddie, and the movie ends.
This was one of director Harry Revier's final films. He had previously made a series of low-budget, independent movies including The Lost City series and Lash of the Penitentes.
Child Bride became a public domain movie, and continues to be widely screened more than 70 years after it was first made.
Even though it was not made by a major Hollywood studio, the movie is very skillfully produced and presented. Photography and actor work is done well, and the trailer (also in the public domain, and widely seen in recent times) is very skillfully done, and does a good job of selling the movie, and emphasizing it's interest and good qualities, acting, etc. The actor work of Shirley Mills is especially emphasized, and it is obvious she "carried" the movie importantly, was a real "child movie star" in Child Bride (1938).
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