the audience applauded

Fantastic!

The first must-see film of the year.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

For the past 30 years, I had been curious about this movie because of a pic from it in Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann's book, "The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang": that of Alfalfa and Spanky with a couple of other former child stars or "has-beens" as they were called in this movie. Both Alf and Spank had left Our Gang by the time they made this and this was their only appearance together outside of that series as well as Spanky's last credited film appearance-since the following two years had him in bit parts without billing-for the next 30 years. While Spank appeared in several scenes, Alf only appeared in a musical number (his voice as amusingly screechy as ever) with him as well as Bobby Breen and Robert Coogan. They don't even talk to each other much though they do exchange looks and use hand signals on each other. That's pretty much the highlight of this pic which otherwise concerns former child star Jane Withers as a teen who's tired of her typecast roles and decides to take a break and go off to whereabouts unknown while a lookalike fan (also Withers) arrives at her home. Supporting player William Demarest provides some funny stuff as her agent and there's other enjoyable musical numbers but the imply that the public figure Withers may be having an affair with a middle-aged playwright whose cabin home she's staying at would bring the creep factor if this were made today (and it probably did then)! So on that note, Johnny Doughboy is worth a look for anyone curious about that final team-up with Alfalfa and Spanky I mentioned earlier in the review.

The star of "Johnny Doughboy" is Jane Withers though she is assisted with several has-been child actors...kids who, in the film, are essentially called has-beens and lament that the studios don't want them any more! Talk about sad and depressing!!The story begins with Jane Winters (Withers) tiring of her life as a celebrity and she wants some time off from making films. So, this headstrong (and somewhat unlikable) lady disappears. Her agent (William Demarest) handles this by having an EXACT double pretend to be Winters. But when a group of has-been child actors approach her (assuming she is Jane) and want her to help out with the show, this double doesn't know what to do. In the meantime, the real Jane gets involved with a VERY creepy situation....she goes to live with a 40-something year old man! Talk about weird!!Apart from seeing a few children having a last hurrah, there isn't a lot to love about this film. And, some of the kids were a bit sad to watch as well...with Bobby Breen talking in such a high pitched teenage voice he sounded like he'd just inhaled helium and Alfalfa singing like he used to...which is sad when you're no longer young and cute. Overall, it's not terrible...but it's also not very good and has too many song and dance numbers and perhaps I would have enjoyed NOT seeing these awkward out of work children once more.

I think Zanuck fired Shirley Temple and Jane Withers almost simultaneously ... or maybe he just decided not to pick up their options. Miss Temple went to work for David Selznick. Miss Withers went to Republic. She plays a child star who wants to play adult roles.... fourteen at least. No dice. So she drives into the mountain and falls in love with reclusive writer Henry Wilcoxon. Meanwhile, in walks her exact double from Kansas, who is promptly recruited to impersonate her. A troupe of washed-up child stars want to do camp shows for the USO, but the Army wants Miss Withers, so.....Miss Withers is good as always. She sings a couple of numbers and gets to dance in a big production number at the end with Jack Boyle Jr. If they are not Donald O'Conner & Peggy Ryan, they certainly do well, and the picture garnered a reasonable Academy Award nomination for Best Scoring by Walter Scharf.What is unnerving about this movie is its exploitation angle: ex-child-stars, washed up by the time they hit puberty: Bobby Green, Carl Switzer (still singing -- yikes!), Spanky MacFarland, even Baby Sandy, a has-been at 4. It's positively ghoulish. It turns a pleasant B picture with a sock-o finish into a bit of an ordeal.

This Republic propaganda musical is second rate and often ridiculous. The film is good intended but often cloying as it deals with Hollywood's biggest teen star (Jane Withers...well her character is supposed to be anyway) who is sick of playing "baby" parts and escapes agent William Demarest and camps out at the home of middle aged Henry Wilcoxin, gets a crush on him in trying to be "adult" and turns down the opportunity to lead a show featuring "has been" Hollywood kids. The fact that as she escapes her agent and secretary (Ruth Donnelly), her lookalike shows up and takes her place for a few days, eventually confronting her in the mountains. Withers is far from the rambunctious pre-teen that she was in all of those 20th Century Fox programmers, and comes off rather cold and unfeeling. The lookalike really has no purpose other than to give Withers a likable side here, almost too nice to be believable."Our Gang" members Carl (Alfalfa) Switzer and Spanky Mc Farland (still appearing in shorts at MGM) are certainly not forgotten, and poor Bobby Breen makes you wonder why he was ever pushed on movie audiences. Of course, Withers pulls her real self out for the big finale, but it seems almost like an outtake from another movie. She's not a bad dancer and certainly not as whiny as Shirley Temple was as a teen, but she's no threat to Judy Garland or Deanna Durbin either.This is a time capsule of Hollywood propaganda at its gooiest, and in spite some good moments with Demarest, Donnelly and the sweet Etta McDaniel (Hattie's sister, playing a saintly housekeeper), this is instantly forgettable. Alfalfa spoofs his high pitched squeak but unlike the shorts he starred in a decade before, he's completely annoying here and deserves the thrashing he gets for making dogs bark on the other side of the Hollywood Hills. There was a better way to involve the teenagers in the war effort, as evidenced by what Mickey and Judy were doing at MGM and in public appearances.