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Reviews
Dave and Charley (1952)
Dave & Charley TV show
I, too, remember the "Dave & Charley" show of 1950. It was a daily 15 minute program on NBC-TV which I was able to watch during my summer break from high school that year. If memory serves, Dave Willock played a streetcar conductor, and the setting was sometime during the early 1900s.
The show's theme music was a catchy ragtime tune which I have been trying -- unsuccessfully -- to find for the greater part of the last 50 years. Recently I inquired of ragtime expert Max Morath if he knew of the program and, if so, the title of its theme music. However, he had no recollection of it and therefore was unable to help. Over the years I've purchased many ragtime LPs by various artists in hopes of finding one that contained my mystery tune, but to no avail. So, I'm still looking!
On the Sunny Side (1942)
An English boy is sent to live with an American family during World War II.
In his first starring role, Roddy McDowall portrays an English boy named Hugh, who is sent to stay with an American family on the "sunny side" of the pond in order to escape the Nazi blitz.
The initial excitement of the host family's young son (Freddie Mercer, nephew Leroy in the "Great Gildersleeve" film series) at having a "brother" to pal around with gradually gives way to resentment when the visitor's impeccable manners and efforts to adopt American slang charms his parents to the extent that they begin neglecting him. To make matters worse, the members of his kids' club vote to replace him with Hugh as their president after the latter routs a bully who has commandeered their clubhouse (Stanley Clements, GOING MY WAY) from the premises with a homemade, chemical stink bomb.
When Hugh is decked by a flying rock from the hands of the bully, the two boys team up to settle the hash of both the bully and his goon, sending them packing. Then, once Hugh points out to his surrogate parents that they've been favoring him at the expense of their own son, all is happily resolved.
Produced for the lower half of 1940s double bills, this movie was most definitely designed to please the kiddie trade. Since it wasn't filmed in color, however, getting today's youth to give it a look will likely constitute a problem. I rate it two out of a possible five stars.
Identity Unknown (1945)
Above average, sometimes moving wartime drama holds theinterest.
An interesting World War II psychological drama casting Richard Arlen, star of the silent epic, WINGS, as a soldier who survived a bombing in which three others, who were burned beyond recognition but who possessed similar physical descriptions, perished. Hospitalized, and suffering from amnesia as a result, he adopts the name of "Johnny March," goes AWOL, and sets out to visit the locales where service records indicated the four victims lived in hopes of establishing his identity. Especially poignant are his scenes with Bobby Driscoll, the talented child star, in one of his early roles. When "March" shows up at his doorstep, the boy believes him to be his father, who is missing in action. I give this film a rating of three out of a possible five stars.