The New Pictures, Mar. 10, 1941

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For Playwright Kirkland's case study in degeneracy, Hollywood has substituted a slow, sentimental account of Jeeter's aged life & times. Jeeter has one decrepit jalopy that explodes as often as the trick clowns' car in the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus. And when his son Dude (William Tracy) goes hog-wild with a brand-new Ford, the effect is of violent slapstick rather than of a moron's disregard for mechanical decency. As Jeeter's daughter Ellie May, Actress Gene Tierney had herself systematically dirtied every day. But, typically enough of Hollywood, the events leading up to the grime did not include giving Ellie May the hare lip she has in the stage play. Typically also, old Jeeter finally gets the rent money he has been seeking throughout the picture. In giving the disheveled story a moral scrubbing, a bath of pathos and a sort of happy ending, Hollywood has rubbed off its sharp edges of character and depraved psychology. The film will give its audiences a good idea of what the stage play is not about.

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