The Young in Heart
Directed by Richard Wallace
Written by Charles Bennett and Paul Osborn based on a serial by I.A.R. Wylie
1938/USA
Selznick International Pictures
First viewing
Leslie Saunders: Well, what can you do besides look rather too good-looking?
Richard Carleton: Well, I… I’m, a championship swimmer, play a rattling good game of tennis, fair golf, and I rumba like the Angel Gabriel.
Another sterling 30’s cast in an enjoyable comedy.
The “Carletons” are a family of grifters. When they are given free tickets home from the Riviera for assorted peccadilloes, they meet a lonely old lady on the train. After a train accident, daughter George-Anne (Janet Gaynor) cares for her and she invites the family to stay in her mansion. George-Anne convinces her shiftless father (Roland Young), mother (Billie Burke) and brother (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) to refrain from their evil ways so as to be made heirs in the lady’s will. Can clean living and true love reform the Carletons? With Paulette Goddard as the brother’s boss and lady love.
I was entertained if not bowled over by this pleasant movie. I loved the look of the thing as well as the acting. The Young in Heart was nominated for Academy Awards for its cinematography and Franz Waxman score.
Excerpts – the “Flying Wombat” (1938 Phantom Corsair)
