Little Pioneer (1937) User Reviews

It's hard to praise anything but the early Warner Technicolor...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 24 July 2010]

An insufferably "cute" mixture of western (although the story is set in 1850s South Africa) and musical, featuring child star SYBIL JASON in her usual Shirley Temple type of role wherein she emerges the heroine who saves the day.

The only decent aspect of the whole featurette is the rich looking Technicolor and the gorgeous scenery.

Otherwise, forget it. The only other point of interest is seeing JANE WYMAN in a costume film (rather than a modern story or musical), with little to do but look concerned about her thwarted romance with a British soldier (CARLYLE MOORE, JR.), who looks an awful lot like a young Shepherd Strudwick.

There are a couple of songs, none of them memorable, and the whole thing winds up predictably with little Sybil saving the day. There are too many "icky" moments for comfort as the slight story unwinds.

Worthwhile for the astonishingly lovely Technicolor alone.

Decent Short

[Michael_Elliott · 23 July 2010]

Little Pioneer (1937)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Technicolor short from Warner about rival families who must put their differences behind them when one of their daughters is kidnapped by blood-thirsty tribe. I think a lot of people are going to watch this thing today and question the two white families being "forced" to stick together and fight off the evil black tribe but I don't think this was the original intent so the racial stuff is probably a non-issue. The film takes place in South Africa during 1880 and for the most part I think they got the look right but that's about it. There's very little going on here, story wise, to get overly excited about as we've seen this type of thing before. Naturally, in the two families we have a man who loves a woman on the other side and this just adds drama that we've seen in countless other films. A young Jane Wyman plays the love interest who ends up kidnapped but she gets very little to do. Sybil Jason, Carlyle Moore, Jr. and Frederick Vogeding round out the supporting cast. The Technicolor is certainly another major plus but the two musical numbers add zero as does the majority of the story.

Stupid...but colorful.

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 13 September 2013]

It's a shame that so few Hollywood films have been done about South Africa--and almost none about the early years of this country. In light of this, it's even sadder that one of the few is this limp little film. Aside from being filmed in glorious Technicolor or a chance to see Jane Wyman in a very early appearance, there really isn't much to make this worth watching.

The story is set in the Natal (now part of South Africa) and the characters are mostly Boers--that is, Dutch settlers. It appears to be set during the first Boer War (1880-1881) due to their costumes. Regardless, some of the characters are fighting the British and it's a rare Hollywood film to not take the side of the Brits. I could try to explain the plot but won't--suffice to say it's a lot like an American western but with black people instead of Indians as the baddies. In addition, there's LOTS of singing and limp acting--none of which manage to make this interesting period of history the least bit interesting. To make it worse, EVERYTHING works out perfectly in the end--every single tiny plot thread!! Rather dumb and probably only of interest if you want to laugh at the acting.

Voortrekking

[boblipton · 4/10 · 1 January 2024]

Carlyle Moore Jr. And sister Sybil Jason are traveling by Conestoga in the Transvaal in the 1880s. Miss Jason is left with Boer Frederik Vogeding while he goes on ahead. Vogeding is preparing with neighbors to fight the British. Is Miss Jason cute enough to bring peace?

It's one of the Warner Brothers short subjects intended to show off Technicolor as much as interest its audience with story or the musical numbers. This was 1937, and Shirley Temple was one of the biggest film stars around. There were hopes that Miss Jason might be as profitable as Miss Temple. Alas, she was cute enough, but lacked the talent.

One-reel musical shoot em up set in Africa with young Jane Wyman.

[TxMike · 2 January 2005]

The TCM network showed this "one reel wonder" as a time filler. From 1937, it features a young Jane Wyman, younger than I have seen her before. It plays as if it were one or two scenes lifted from a feature length movie, but it tells a small story, that "women and children are the ones who suffer during war." It starts with a song, it ends with a song, so in one respect it is a musical also. Quite a bit is jammed into one reel.

It is set in 1880 Africa, during the period when the British were colonizing that territory. White non-British settlers, as well as the natives, objected. Here young British officer Arthur (Carlyle Moore Jr.) is traveling by wagon with his little sister Betsy (Sybil Jason, about 8) and stops at midnight at the Snee home and asks that they keep Betsy while he travels ahead. As Mr. Snee (Frederick Vogeding) goes outside to feed the horses, we see Arthur embrace Snee's daughter Katie (Jane Wyman), but they can't admit it because Mr. Snee disapproves of anyone British, especially a British officer.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW. Cute little Betsy does a song about her dad always coming home to her, not to cry, then someone comes in with news that Capt. Manning, her dad, was killed. Next day, as they travel, little Betsy slips out of the covered wagon and goes into the brush. Katie goes to look for her, and is taken hostage by a band of African natives. Betsy sees this, tells the Army men, little Betsy volunteers to act as a decoy on the bank of the river so they could get Katie back when the natives come on shore. It works, all the natives are shot and killed, old Mr. Snee accepts the British, Katie, Betsy, and Arthur presumably will live happily ever after.

For such an old film it comes across very well, but it is interesting how calmly everyone, even the little girl, accepted the killing of 8 or 10 men, as if those natives were nothing more than wild animals. Not a very good film, but interesting for the period of movie making it represents.

The child actress Sybil Jason was remarkably good here, as good as any child actor or actress I have seen.

Empire pic crossed with western

[12-string · 17 January 2003]

SPOILER INCLUDED!

This Vitaphone short, in (really!) glorious Technicolor, allows pint-size Sybil Jason to bring peace to South Africa. Sybil's brother, an English officer, is in love with Boer girl Jane Wyman, naturally disapproved by her family. The Boers and English are primed for conflict with one another, and the Zulus are on the warpath. But when Cetshwayo's warriors capture Jane, the Boers and Brits have to join forces to rescue her. The moral: We really can work together and share this land after we take it away from the people to whom it belongs! So let's all trek off into the sunset while singing a choral anthem. Talk about a happy ending.

Performances are adequate, and Sybil is not as aggressively perky as in her earlier short "The Captain's Kid" (a 2-reel version of "Wee Willie Winkie" in which she tries to out-Temple Shirley, and which I just watched a couple of hours earlier on Turner Movies, where this featurette also appeared this evening). The wagons look pretty authentic but the canoes used by the Zulus appear to be left over from the 1935 "Last of the Mohicans." The overall ambience is basically that of a musical western, and the black performers are used as if they were Indians in lowbudget sagebrusher -- they're here to menace and then to be gunned down. In its defense, there was still an Empire at the time and who knew it wasn't going to last forever? Odds are the Iraqi War movies will look just as foolish 65 years down the line.