Circus performers Wallace Beery and Leona Maricle have raised a young son (Spanky McFarland) under the big top. Maricle is really good on the trapeze, but has come to resent the lifestyle she has been forced to lead. It isn't made any easier for her that her nasty sister (Sara Haden) keeps constantly harping at her to leave Beery and take the baby away. When that finally happens, Beery is so distraught he is unable to perform as well in the tiger cage and looses an arm. Years later, he is granted temporary custody of his son (now played by Jackie Cooper) and finds that his son believes he was no good, forgetting everything thanks to the manipulation of his mother by Aunt Haden. Beery does all he can to win back his son's trust, but Haden's sudden reappearance threatens to destroy him once again in his son's eyes, as he prepares to do the amazing trick of having a lion stand on an elephants back while the packaderm jumps through a hoop.
Beery, as usual, is all aw, shucks, as he suffers in this father love drama that would embarrass "Mother Love" mommies Kay Francis, Irene Dunne, and Gladys George. In another teaming with Jackie Cooper, only Beery's chosen profession has changed. From prize fighter to pirate, and now to circus performer, Beery is still the same character. The change from MacFarland to Cooper is jarring, even with the break of time between the character's reappearance. There is no way that the lovable tot played by MacFarland would grow up to look like Cooper; They have two very distinguishable faces, especially Cooper.
And then there's Sara Haden, Andy Hardy's Aunt Millie, the strict but understanding spinster, who here is absolutely dislikable. She was slightly annoying in "Anne of Green Gables", an absolute pest in the disastrous "Spitfire" (1934 version), and sometimes treated Andy Hardy with stricter guidelines than other pupils in her class, but here, she is totally hateful! As Beery's sister-in-law, she continuously manipulates her sister into becoming bitter, and as the antagonist, is really responsible for all the horrible things which happen to Beery and Cooper. While Leona Maricle as the wife could have stood up to her, how could anyone standing being pecked at for as long as she is without being affected? Maricle's problem is that she was weak and unable to make her own decisions for her son's best interests, but it is because of Haden's constant hatred that the wife ends up destroyed. Viewers will want to see her get more come-uppance than she gets, much like Eily Malyon's character in the equally melodramatic but better "On Borrowed Time". This is one of nastiest film characters I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty.
The real problem is the realism of life in the circus. The fact that a performer of Beery's professionalism would wake up a lion and try to tame him inside his cage or confront them on a moving train during a thunderstorm is absolutely absurd. Drunk or not, this just isn't at all believable. Another issue is having heard Cooper's stories (as well as Margaret O'Brien's) of working with Beery, it's hard to like someone that treated the kids off-screen the way they did. One good technical aspect of the film comes out in the photography which is filmed in several moments in a macabre manner comparable to the 1932 cult classic "Freaks", although the one actual little person in the circus we briefly meet isn't actually all that little. This is a tough film to get through, made worse by the fact that there is a total lack of reality.
Beery, as usual, is all aw, shucks, as he suffers in this father love drama that would embarrass "Mother Love" mommies Kay Francis, Irene Dunne, and Gladys George. In another teaming with Jackie Cooper, only Beery's chosen profession has changed. From prize fighter to pirate, and now to circus performer, Beery is still the same character. The change from MacFarland to Cooper is jarring, even with the break of time between the character's reappearance. There is no way that the lovable tot played by MacFarland would grow up to look like Cooper; They have two very distinguishable faces, especially Cooper.
And then there's Sara Haden, Andy Hardy's Aunt Millie, the strict but understanding spinster, who here is absolutely dislikable. She was slightly annoying in "Anne of Green Gables", an absolute pest in the disastrous "Spitfire" (1934 version), and sometimes treated Andy Hardy with stricter guidelines than other pupils in her class, but here, she is totally hateful! As Beery's sister-in-law, she continuously manipulates her sister into becoming bitter, and as the antagonist, is really responsible for all the horrible things which happen to Beery and Cooper. While Leona Maricle as the wife could have stood up to her, how could anyone standing being pecked at for as long as she is without being affected? Maricle's problem is that she was weak and unable to make her own decisions for her son's best interests, but it is because of Haden's constant hatred that the wife ends up destroyed. Viewers will want to see her get more come-uppance than she gets, much like Eily Malyon's character in the equally melodramatic but better "On Borrowed Time". This is one of nastiest film characters I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty.
The real problem is the realism of life in the circus. The fact that a performer of Beery's professionalism would wake up a lion and try to tame him inside his cage or confront them on a moving train during a thunderstorm is absolutely absurd. Drunk or not, this just isn't at all believable. Another issue is having heard Cooper's stories (as well as Margaret O'Brien's) of working with Beery, it's hard to like someone that treated the kids off-screen the way they did. One good technical aspect of the film comes out in the photography which is filmed in several moments in a macabre manner comparable to the 1932 cult classic "Freaks", although the one actual little person in the circus we briefly meet isn't actually all that little. This is a tough film to get through, made worse by the fact that there is a total lack of reality.