Saturday's Children

1940 "Young, Married, Poor...and Proud of it!"
6.4| 1h42m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 11 May 1940 Released
Producted By: Warner Bros. Pictures
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

An inventor and his bride get testy in the city as they try to make ends meet.

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Reviews

KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?
HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.
Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
bkoganbing This version of Saturday's Children is the third film version of a popular Maxwell Anderson play that ran for 326 performances on Broadway during the 1927-28 season. It's a story of young love with sad to say a most miscast John Garfield.Of course Garfield might not have thought so since back on stage the role he plays as the young calf-eyed Rube Goldberg inventor was originated by none other than fellow Warner Brothers tough guy Humphrey Bogart. Hard to believe, but Bogey on stage played those kind of roles until The Petrified Forest changed his image. He and Ruth Gordon starred in the stage version.But image is everything and Garfield's similar image of a tough guy was set in the mind of the movie-going public then. Garfield insisted on doing this film and Jack Warner gave in. But when it flopped at the box office and it did, Warner was ready with the 'I told you so'. A silent version was done with Grant Withers and Corinne Griffith in 1928 and Warner Brothers later did the story again in 1935 with a more suitable Ross Alexander in the lead opposite Gloria Stuart.I suppose it was the thing back then for young marrieds to live with their parents. This film has Garfield and Anne Shirley living with her parents, Claude Rains and Elizabeth Risdon, along with other married sister Lee Patrick and her husband Roscoe Karns. No wonder these two want a little privacy.Rains brings Shirley to work in the office where he is a clerk and there she meets Garfield whom she falls for. Garfield is like George Bailey, a guy with an itch to do great things and sees an opportunity in the Phillipines for adventurous type work. But now he's got a wife who doesn't quite share that disposition.The best performance in the film belongs to Claude Rains. He almost makes quite the sacrifice to keep our young folk together.Even with a John Garfield that you can't quite get over, Saturday's Children is a nice film about people in love. That's a formula that always sells.
MartinHafer This obviously must have been a play first, as the film is very static and spends most of the time confined to small sets. I really wish the writers had done something to try to open the film up a bit--giving it some more energy and giving it life. Instead, you feel you are watching a play that was filmed--especially when it comes to dialog, as the actors seem to be, at times, making speeches to an audience. Now the acting is okay (though a bit too earnest if you ask me) and the general idea is okay, but just not super-compelling. You see, a young couple is married and face a huge battle against debts and struggle to get by---again and again and again. Halfway into the film, I felt like I'd had enough. Yes, they were young and in love but the day to day pressures put a lot of strain on their marriage--I understood that but after a while I just wanted this depressing film to end. About the only bright spot was the role played by Claude Rains--he was pretty funny and likable. As for the leads, Anne Shirley and John Garfield, this was definitely not one of their better films as they came off as rather whiny and immature. I just felt like yelling at the actors to buck up and deal with it--that's life!
pf9 This wartime movie about the struggle of a family in a still economically depressed New York environment, tries hard to entertain with its Neil Simonesque dialogue. Then comes the bombshell. When father Halevy (Claude Rains), a failure by anyone's, including his own, standards, realizes that his adored daughter Bobby (Anne Shirley) is headed for an unrealized life of failure not unlike his own for want of a mere one thousand dollars, he decides to give her this money the only way he still can, by staging a potentially suicidal elevator crash. The scene of Halevy's leaving home before going through with this scheme is very close to Willy Loman's corresponding scene in "Death of a Salesman." According to the credits, "Saturday's Children" is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play by Maxwell Anderson, which a young Arthur Miller surely must have seen. If it suggested the end of his major masterpiece "Death of a Salesman" to Miller, that alone would redeem this otherwise schmaltzy play/movie.
Michael O'Keefe This very entertaining film is directed flawlessly by Vincent Sherman and based on a Maxwell Anderson play. Top notch script providing laughter, sympathy and reflective determination.A lovely young woman(Anne Shirley) ends up tricking a hopeless schemer/inventor(John Garfield) into marriage. Is it tricked or trapped? The young couple struggle to the point of almost breaking up. They earn $101 a month, but spend $108. The poor lovers try to prove two can live as cheap as one...maybe if one doesn't eat!My favorite scene is when Garfield and brother-in-law(Roscoe Karns)come home drunk. Also funny is when Garfield is told that he was tricked into the marriage.Claude Rains is the young woman's father and plays the part cool and witty with his own brand of humor. Lee Patrick is sister Florrie, who is quite obnoxious from the get go.A very touching movie. Being poor is no fun, but it isn't the end of the world. Someone always has it worse. More than likely another Saturday child.