Skippy Homier had been a child actor on radio ("Portia Faces Life") and Broadway when he was brought to Hollywood to re-create his role as a child, indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth movement, in the film version of "Tomorrow the World". Although he dazzled the film critics as much as he had Broadway audiences (the play ran for 500 performances) he was forever typecast in delinquent type roles and his career was not as stellar as it should have been. Leslie Fenton had stopped acting and directed his first feature, the excellent "Tell No Tales" in 1939 - his films were often interesting and offbeat.
Frederic March and Agnes Moorehead took over the roles created on the stage by Ralph Bellamy and Shirley Booth. They are the Frames, a typical American family from a typical American town (Hollywood style) who are bringing their nephew, Emil, home from Germany where they hope to bring him up on good old American values. Mike (March) is a single father trying to cope with a bubbly young daughter, Pat (Joan Carroll) and a sister, Jessie (Moorehead), a spinster who is set in her ways and not at all keen about bringing Emil, with his "German ways", into their home.
When Emil arrives everyone is shocked at his dictatorial ways, his attitude towards females and especially when he comes down stairs wearing his "Hitler Youth" uniform complete with swastika armband. Skippy Homier is quite a revelation as Emil and endows him with all the fanaticism and hate of a boy brought up with the poisonous Nazi ideology. Having seen a documentary on "Hitler Youth" I can honestly say Homier's performance is no exaggeration as the program stated that the younger the recruit the more fanatical the devotion to the party.
Mike is about to marry Leona Richards (Betty Field), a teacher at the local school who just happens to be Jewish but even though she has modern ideas about how troubled kids ought to be handled, Emil's hate fuelled rants make her question her views. Rhoda Penmark, Patty McCormack's child murderess from "The Bad Seed", has almost met her match. Emil intimidates the other children, threatening to murder a Jewish classmate unless she backs up his lies and he almost kills Pat with a blow to the head when she threatens to tell her father that Emile has been trying to steal his important documents.
Which makes the ending a bit too pat. He runs away when he thinks Pat is dead, is beaten and brought home by a group of school boys - but because he cries and shows emotion and feeling, Leona thinks there is hope that the boy can be saved. Never mind that just minutes before his inflammatory comments had driven the peaceful Mike to the brink of murder. It is still a very interesting film that strives for a downbeat and non-inflammatory way to view "the enemy" and shows Skippy Homier in the performance of his life.
Frederic March and Agnes Moorehead took over the roles created on the stage by Ralph Bellamy and Shirley Booth. They are the Frames, a typical American family from a typical American town (Hollywood style) who are bringing their nephew, Emil, home from Germany where they hope to bring him up on good old American values. Mike (March) is a single father trying to cope with a bubbly young daughter, Pat (Joan Carroll) and a sister, Jessie (Moorehead), a spinster who is set in her ways and not at all keen about bringing Emil, with his "German ways", into their home.
When Emil arrives everyone is shocked at his dictatorial ways, his attitude towards females and especially when he comes down stairs wearing his "Hitler Youth" uniform complete with swastika armband. Skippy Homier is quite a revelation as Emil and endows him with all the fanaticism and hate of a boy brought up with the poisonous Nazi ideology. Having seen a documentary on "Hitler Youth" I can honestly say Homier's performance is no exaggeration as the program stated that the younger the recruit the more fanatical the devotion to the party.
Mike is about to marry Leona Richards (Betty Field), a teacher at the local school who just happens to be Jewish but even though she has modern ideas about how troubled kids ought to be handled, Emil's hate fuelled rants make her question her views. Rhoda Penmark, Patty McCormack's child murderess from "The Bad Seed", has almost met her match. Emil intimidates the other children, threatening to murder a Jewish classmate unless she backs up his lies and he almost kills Pat with a blow to the head when she threatens to tell her father that Emile has been trying to steal his important documents.
Which makes the ending a bit too pat. He runs away when he thinks Pat is dead, is beaten and brought home by a group of school boys - but because he cries and shows emotion and feeling, Leona thinks there is hope that the boy can be saved. Never mind that just minutes before his inflammatory comments had driven the peaceful Mike to the brink of murder. It is still a very interesting film that strives for a downbeat and non-inflammatory way to view "the enemy" and shows Skippy Homier in the performance of his life.