A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Featuring:
Freddie Bartholomew, Jackie Cooper, Mickey Rooney
Written by:
John Lee Mahin
Richard Schayer
Rowland Brown
Directed by:
W.S. Van Dyke, Rowland Brown
Release Date:
September 18, 1936
Original Title:
The Devil is a Sissy
Genres:
Comedy | Drama
Production Companies:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Production Countries:
United States of America
Ratings / Certifications:
US: G
Runtime: 92
A well-bred young English lad living in lower Manhattan tries to gain acceptance from his not-so-well-bred peers at school.
Claude Pierce is delighted to move in with his father, Jay Pierce, a struggling architect living in lower Manhattan, for the six months the divorce agreement of his parents specified. He's come at a particularly bad time for his classmate, Gig Stevens, whose father is to be executed that night for murder, so he's treated badly by Gig as well as Gig's pal, Buck Murphy, and their gang. But he takes boxing lessons and holds his own in a fight with the older and heavier Buck, so he is grudgingly accepted into the gang. Their chief interest is to get a proper tombstone for Gig's father, costing $80. When stealing and selling tires proves too slow, Claude suggests burglarizing some rich kid's home for his toys, and pawning them. Claude leads them to a house at night, where rich looking toys are found, stolen and pawned. However, a suspicious policeman has them brought before a judge where Claude eventually confesses they were his toys; he knew his mother was away and the house was unoccupied. Claude goes free since he knew it wasn't stealing, but Buck and Gig get probation, further alienating them from Claude. On the day they were supposed to report to the probation officer, Buck and Gig decide to run away. Despite a bad cold, Claude tries to convince them that running away will only hurt them in the long run. But they are adamant and the three hitch a ride with two men and an old lady who turn out to be gangsters on the run. Further, Buck lets on that Claude's mother is a millionaire, hatching the gangsters' plan to hold them for ransom. At a cafe owned by a Frenchman, Claude ostensibly orders a special sauce in French, but actually tells the owner to call the police. When they come, the bullets start flying.
Art Direction:
Cedric Gibbons
Director:
W.S. Van Dyke
Rowland Brown
Director of Photography:
Harold Rosson
George Schneiderman
Editor:
Tom Held
Music:
Herbert Stothart
Producer:
Frank Davis
Screenplay:
John Lee Mahin
Richard Schayer
Story:
Rowland Brown
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.