Freddie has three friends, scrappy shoeshine boy Mickey Rooney, aging grocer Guy Kibbee, and destitute apple peddler Jessie Ralph. Kibbee convinces Freddie that Englishmen with titles such as Earls are pompous asses, so to speak, just before Freddie learns that he is, in fact, the heir to a wealthy English Earl, a forbidding gout-plagued grouch played by C. Audrey Smith.
The ever-polite Henry Stephenson arrives in America to whisk Freddie and Costello to England. Freddie lives in Smith's enormous castle, where he charms his benefactor Smith into an agreeable personality makeover. Costello is relegated to a nearby house, where she retains loyal maid Una O'Connor.
Everybody loves Freddie and the new and improved Smith, whose gout is in remission. After he charms the extended family, especially radiant Virginia Field, he receives bad news. Dislikable low class Helen Flint claims her feckless son Jackie Searl is the true heir to the Earldom, and unethical lawyer Walter Kingsford has the papers to prove it. Not to worry, a happy ending is in the works.
The well-made production is courtesy of filmmaker David O. Selznick, best known for a certain subsequent project called Gone With the Wind (1939). The director is the highly respected John Cromwell, father of veteran actor James Cromwell, who played the farmer in the pig caper Babe (1995).
How others will see it. Little Lord Fauntleroy lapsed into public domain long ago, which, unfortunately, makes it unlikely that anyone will ever spend the money to restore this antiquated film. The soundtrack has a loud hiss, and the stock (at least for the Turner Classic Movies version) has deteriorated to the point where the dialogue is difficult to make out at times.
Yet I was pleased to see that nobody at imdb.com seems to hold the indifferent preservation of this nearly 75-year-old film against it. There are a few sniggery comments on the imdb.com user reviews about the extreme sweetness of the story. I guess that is inevitable. The user reviews are nonetheless high overall, especially among older viewers.
Many people appear captivated by its charm, perhaps even to a greater degree than when the film first came out. It must have seemed old fashioned and nostalgic, given that senior citizens of 1936 could readily remember the 1880s era depicted in the film. The movie appears to have been commercially unsuccessful, given the paucity of surviving memorabilia.
How I felt about it. Well spoken Freddie Bartholomew was the top child star at MGM between 1935 and 1937. His other top films during this period were David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, and Captains Courageous. Unluckily for Freddie, his birth mother waged court battles to seize his earnings, which depleted his trust fund. By 1938, his movie projects were of diminished quality. He was seriously injured during World War II military training, and although he eventually recovered, his film career was over.
But during his glory years, Shirley Temple was the only bigger child star. Much credit goes to his MGM caretakers, who steered him into such plum roles. Freddie proved his worth, and we admire his spirit so much that we actually cheer for him to remain Lord Fauntleroy, instead of relinquishing his title to indolent Jackie Searl. The irony of the movie is that Freddie is unchanged by his great good fortune. It is C. Aubrey Smith who is transformed. He learns that position should be accompanied by generosity, a lesson that carries over into our more cynical century.