Ah, Wilderness!
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett from the play by Eugene O’Neill
1935/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime renta
Richard ‘Dick’ Miller: How are you going to punish me, Pa?
Nat: Oh, well, I… thought of telling you you couldn’t go to Yale.
Richard ‘Dick’ Miller: But, gee, that’s great! Well, then I can get a job and marry Muriel. That’s no punishment, Pa!
Nat: Well, then you’ll go to Yale and stay there until you graduate.
I was charmed by this coming-of-age comedy and the cast really cannot be beat.
It’s an adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s comedy about coming of age circa 1906. Eric Linden plays O’Neill’s alter ego Richard Miller who is just about to graduate high school and head off to Yale. He’s the kind of know-it-all show-off idealist and romantic that intelligent boys often are. He is also madly in love with Muriel MacComber (Cecilia Parker) who he has not even convinced to kiss him. He tries to court her with love poems by Swinburne and Omar Kayam and scandalizes her parents.
When Muriel sends Richard a dear John letter, he morosely agrees to a double date with a couple of shady ladies during which he gets quite drunk. But his large loving family have givend him a grounding that will not let him get too out of hand.
There are some memorable comic scenes – the graduation ceremony, the return of prodigal uncle Sid and his antics at the 4th of July dinner; and a bunch of little boys with big firecrackers.
The rest of the fabulous cast includes: Lionel Barrymore as the newspaper editior father; Spring Byington as the mother; Wallace Beery as Lionel’s ne’er-do-well drunken brother (hilarious), Aline MacMahon as Spring’s sister and Wallace’s long-suffering sweetheart and and Mickey Rooney as the mischievous youngest son.
I thought this was a delight. Recommended.
