Freckles Comes Home (1942)

User Rating:

4.6/10   

Director:

Jean Yarbrough

Writers:

Gene Stratton-Porter (novel)
Edmond Kelso (screenplay)

Release Date:

2 January 1942 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Comedy | Crime | Romance

Tagline:

There's No Place Like Home (?)...especially when gangsters put you on the spot, the sheriff accuses you of murder, and the girl friend falls in love with a confidence man. Everything happens to Freckles when he comes home from college! (original poster)

Plot:

Freckles (Johnny Downs) comes home from college...and the sheriff accuses him of murder, gangsters put him on the spot, and his girl friend, Jane (Gale Storm), falls in love with a confidence man.

Plot Keywords:

Home | Hotel | Indiana | Burlesque | Student

Cast

Johnny Downs	...	'Freckles' Winslow
Gale Storm	...	Jane Potter
Mantan Moreland	...	Jeff - the Hotel Porter
Irving Bacon	...	Constable Caleb Weaver
Bradley Page	...	Nate Quigley
Marvin Stephens	...	Danny Doyle
Betty Blythe	...	Mrs. Minerva Potter
Walter Sande	...	'Muggsy' Dolan, AKA Jack Leach
Max Hoffman Jr.	...	Hymie
John Ince	...	Hiram Potter
Laurence Criner	...	Roxbury B. Brown, III
Irving Mitchell	...	Mr. Winslow
Gene O'Donnell	...	Monk
Si Jenks	...	Lem Perkins

Runtime:

63 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | USA:Approved (PCA #7921)

Company:

Monogram Pictures Corporation

Quotes:

Jeff: That was my Grandpappy, he worked in a circus.
Roxbury B. Brown, III: You don't say. What'd he do?
Jeff: Oh he dove off a 200 foot platform into a damp rag.
Roxbury B. Brown, III: That's pretty good. How often did he do that?
Jeff: Oh just once. The rag wasn't damp enough.

Soundtrack:

Where We Dream Tonight

A Nostalgic Mess

To simply summarize this film is almost impossible, but I'll give it a shot.

A gangster on the lam takes a bus out of town. On the bus he meets Freckles, a young man, returning home to help out a friend. Freckles tells him his home town is a nice quiet place to get away so the man decides to stop there. In the town Freckles friend is in trouble with a machine that finds gold. He used the mortgage payment for the bank to buy a a plot of land because he thought he'd be rich, but machine that doesn't work. How to get enough money to save the hotel?

That's the first five minutes of the movie, which gets more complicated in an often needless way. More gangsters show up, there are murders, music, romance and family feuds, and a good chunk of it never fully gets sorted out, due to this being a one hour long adaptation of a novel.

The film smells of nostalgia. I think the film was probably nostalgic even in 1942, since the world was then at war and this is set in a simpler time.

The film is okay. Its certainly watchable for Mantan Moreland who plays the porter at the hotel, but who is really a just one of the guys. I love Moreland in anything simply because he rarely was anything other than an equal to the leads. Moreland's roles could always be played by someone other than a black man with out any change, or rarely a minimal change.

The trouble with the movie is that it has too much of everything for its brief running time. Too many characters, many of which are cartoons. There is too many plots, gangsters, feud, romance, gold machine, save the hotel, murder...so nothing is fully explored. Its a jumble, pleasant enough, but still a jumble.

If its on, see it, but you don't have to go out of your way for it.