What Becomes of the Children? (1936) User Reviews

The title says it all

[ergot29 · 5/10 · 31 January 2005]

If the title didn't tip you off as to what to expect, the prologue leaves little doubt. A somewhat lengthy Calvinistic dirge berating the audience for being selfish hedonists let's you know what sort of sermon it intends to be. You should be at home with your kids rather than out watching this movie. I don't think it is a coincidence that it was distributed by "Puritan Distributing Company."

The bad parents in the movie are laughable caricatures of inattentive, rich parents. The father is a power hungry rail tycoon (everyone during the Great Depression was)who only wants to make more money and fails to take his children to the zoo. The mother, who for some reason isn't expected to take the children to the zoo, is more concerned with her society friends and expensive clothes. She wants her husband to stop spending so much time at work so he can pay attention to her, but doesn't want to stop spending so much money, which he forces her to do. This leads to the divorce that "destroys" the family.

In a bizarrely unrealistic move, the judge grants the father the custody of the son, the mother of the daughter, and the siblings separate without ever making contact with each other until adulthood, where the story really begins. Each grown child has an unbelievable teen-angst temper tantrum about how they didn't get enough attention as children with their respective parent, and now we are to presume the kids are delinquents because of it.

That is where this moralistic story falls apart on itself however, as the children are actually very well adjusted, kind people. They get in to trouble, but it is none of their own doing. This story was presumably to show how a broken family would lead to degenerate offspring, but the children are quite well balanced, and the most morally centered people in the picture. Only because of bad luck and people doing them wrong do they ever have misfortune. If the film makers wanted to show that broken families lead to children who stray from righteousness, they failed miserably. The kids should have been the criminals, not the people around them.

Still, it is interesting to watch because of the absurdity of it all, and it does take some turns occasionally that you don't really expect.

What? We have children?

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 27 May 2015]

Mother and daughter don't get along; Neither do father and son. They are from a broken home, torn apart simply because father Robert Frazer and mother Natalie Moorhead have drifted so far apart that you can feel the invisible wall in between them. Frazer is so consumed with business that he barely ever makes it home for dinner, and by that time, Moorhead is too busy glamorizing herself up for a night at the club. He's fretting over her excessive shopping bills, and when a check she gave to charity bounces, she reveals she's had enough of his penny pinching ways. So the couple heads to divorce court, the judge grants custody of the son to the father and daughter to the mother. Years go by and each of the parents is told by their child that they blame them for the mess that their lives have turned into and that they do not want to see them ever again.

When brother and sister (Joan Marsh and Glen Boles) run into each other, not having seen each other since that fatal day of separation in court, it ends up being the worse day of their lives. Marsh has married a gangster, and Boles has been getting into all sorts of trouble with a blues singer. The siblings end up on trial for murder, and it is this trauma which brings the family back together as one broken unit for the first time in years. A moralistic tale of parent's responsibilities towards their growing children, the tale is given an opposite view of Frazer's law partner who has a son and daughter as well and manages to spend every free non-business moment with them. Of course, this makes it appear that every perfect family should have one daughter and one son, but then again, many Hollywood movies also showed parents who were actually old enough to be their child's grandparents, so the movie view of family is something which can't be taken seriously. It's either all good or all bad, but here, it is the bad which is the focus, and self-centered parents like Moorhead and Frazer must suffer horribly in order to grow up, while their now grown children must grow up overnight thanks to the neglect they felt in their childhood.

Low budget but fun, this is a moralistic post-code movie with warnings that come over the opening credits. The script really isn't time specific, so the transitions from the early scenes to the episodes of ten years later look like they could have also happened the following week. Still, it's believably acted and spicy in dialog, flowing by in a speedy manner. This may not change the way parents raise children, or even change children from blaming their parents for their own problems, but it certainly gives an interesting view to an issue that has been going on ever since Adam and Eve had similar tragedies with their own children.

More About Message

[boblipton · 4/10 · 18 April 2023]

Robert Frazer spends all his time building his railroad into the biggest in the US. Natalie Moorhead spends her time in society and his money on, well, it's never specified, except for one bridge debt. They pay no attention to their son and daughter until the divorce, then the girl goes with Miss Moorhead and the son with Frazer. Both are shuttled off to school, until they grow into Glen Boles and Joan Marsh; their parents' continuing neglect makes them each walk out, Boles into a job as a piano player at a night club, and Miss Marsh into a situation.

Walter Shumway's sole directorial effort is one of those lecturing, hectoring movies that Poverty Row producers putout to make their small-town audiences feel smug. They might not have millions of dollars, but they paid attention to their children! (even when they didn't). Most of the technical work is of the cheap-yet-competent variety, and the acting is pretty good, except for Frazer and Miss Moorhead, who tend to declaim at each other.

The smaller roles, including Claudia Dell, Barbara Pepper, and an uncredited Franklyn Farnum go by so fast you can't form much of an opinion, but Boles is surprisingly good. He started out as a stunt man, worked his way up to small roles at the major studios, then headed east, where he was part of the original cast of You Can't Take It With You. During the War, he worked as a code breaker. After, he went to Columbia University and became a practicing psychologist. He died in 2009 at the age of 95.

Rich and uninvolved parents totally suck!

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 18 February 2012]

While the above statement seems harsh, this is THE focus of this odd little exploitation film. It's solution to society's ills is simple--be involved with your kids. It's actually NOT a bad message but the message is hammered through with all the subtlety of a nudist showing up at a Baptist prayer meeting! The parents are one-dimensional caricatures and are not realistic in any manner--forcing the kids to live life on the edge and becoming involved in murders and the like!! However, I must admit that compared to many of the more sensationalistic exploitation films (which featured many references to sex, drugs and pregnancy), this one is a bit easier to watch and works a bit better. However, like the genre, the acting, editing, camera-work and direction are pretty poor--so don't expect Shakespeare! But also don't expect it to bad enough that it's good for a laugh!

By the way, most of the folks in these film never went on to better things in Hollywood. But look for Elsie--she's played by Barbara Pepper--who later played the first Mrs. Zipfel on "Green Acres". Also, the leading lady in the film, Joan Marsh, actually had a pretty good career during the 1930s-50s--having appeared in well over 50 productions.

A Who's Who of "Whatever Became of Her?"!!!

[kidboots · 7/10 · 1 October 2012]

The other night I was watching "Perry Mason" when Barbara Pepper made an appearance. She played the blowsy mother of a pretty young blackmailer and her entrance caused a smile (among the actors) as she was overweight, gaudily dressed and dying for a beer - not what they thought the mother would be like. Yet only 20 years before she had been a flashy blonde, never really a star but always dependable in "schemer" and gangster's moll roles. She first came to attention in "Our Daily Bread", she was the blonde tramp who entered the farming co-op and tried to lure Tom Keene away. Through the years she had her ups and downs and unfortunately turned to food for comfort. Actually this movie is like a Who's Who of "whatever happened to her?". Claudia Dell looked forward to a promising career - she was so beautiful in "Sweet Kitty Belairs". But it was an operetta without songs and in those months at the end of the first musical cycle, studios were desperately advertising "This is Not a Musical" but the public still stayed away. Even though only the next year (1931) she had a very supporting part in "Confessions of a Co-Ed" she managed to eke out a career via poverty row although definitely not the career people would have predicted at the start.

Probably the saddest story was Mary MacLaren who plays Gertrude the governess. She had started at Universal at 16 and at once was given the lead in "Shoes" which was hailed as one of the best films of 1916 and a big future was predicted, her specialty being in heart wrenching dramas. But she made the mistake of letting her elder sister Katharine manage her and Katharine managed to alienate studio bosses and Mary's career petered out. When Mary returned to movies in the mid 30s she found she was forgotten.

After a preachy prologue pointing the finger at people who neglect the real reason for marriage - their children, we meet the Worthingtons, little Freddie (Sonny Bupp) and Marion (a Shirley Temple wannabe) who are upset that their father can't take them to the zoo - he is too busy involved in his favourite pursuits of power and money and of course Mother is too busy lounging around in her bedroom to have time for them - played to perfection by Natalie Moorehead, Queen of the Slinky Sirens. When Marion has a serious accident (from which she recovers quickly!!) the problems of the marriage surface and the parents seek a divorce. The judge reluctantly grants it and also that the children be split up (which does the real damage) with Marion going with her mother and Fred with his father but as the years go on it seems the parents haven't learned a thing.

Fred is making headlines for all the wrong reasons - having punch ups in night clubs and being expelled from yet another college until his father washes his hands of him. That is all Fred needs to try to make good on his own and with the help of night club singer Gale Addams (beautiful Claudia Dell, who seemed to grow lovelier with each year) he finds a job as a piano player. He also remembers his sister. Marion is paying a heavy price for her mother's neglect, she has impulsively married a thug and is, in turn, taken under the wing of tough gal Elsie (Barbara Pepper) who, unbeknownst to Marion, was hoping to marry Scott herself and is livid that he has thrown her over for Marion. She takes Marion to a club to drown their sorrows and it is there that she is reacquainted with her brother Fred, the resident pianist.

The sensational death of Scott puts the siblings in the headlines, brings the parents to their senses and sees them at the film's close trying to be the type of parents they should have been from the start.

Puritan Pictures weren't a releasing company for moralistic movies, they were a typical poverty row outfit, formed in 1935 (and making their last movie in 1937) and initially releasing some interesting actioners. "The Rogue's Tavern" (1936) also with Barbara Pepper, is probably their most prestigious release.