MOKEY (1942)

Fascinating and horrific in unequal proportions, this M-G-M B-pic, taken from Jennie Harris Oliver boys-will-be-boys magazine stories, likely a test run for a series that didn’t happen.  Directed by journeyman scripter Wells Root (a second & last megging credit, he’s lucky to have Charles Rosher as DP), all about 8-yr-old Mokey, motherless troublemaker, and his racially mixed neighborhood pals.  (Unusual for 1942.)  Played by young Robert ‘Bobby’ Blake, Mokey’s no domesticated DENNIS-THE-MENACE type or even the middle-class (juvenile delinquent-worthy) scamp of Booth Tarkenton’s PENROD (how that boy ever got to SEVENTEEN), but downright pathological, Mokey, meant to be lovably misunderstood, more serial risk taker who nearly gets two people killed* with self-centered lack of empathy and the attention span of a gnat  Dan Dailey (with a just grown mustache) is the neglectful/on-the-road dad who dumps child bride Donna Reed on the kid and lets his domestic go.  (Look!  It’s Hattie McDaniel’s sister Etta.)  Step-mother & kid a quick misalliance, with a lack of communication and Mokey fucking up over and over.  Eventually he gets in real trouble (Grand Larceny, nearly killing his new half-sister), runs away and (BLACKFACE ALERT!) hides out with his Black pals for three weeks in Blackface!  (Not the stylized showbiz type, but blacked up to ‘pass.’)  Meanwhile, Step-mom and Dad think the boy’s dead.  It takes a judge to untangle this mess and extend probation, but Mokey finally shows contrition by drinking a whole glass of warm milk to save this budding American family.  As a look at child-rearing and race relations of the day, this is gasp-worthy stuff; a Bizarro World to the corn-fed Mickey Rooney/Andy Hardy movies.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Highly likely that in real life, Blake got away with murdering his wife.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Watch for a strange haunting bit where Mokey’s almost adopted by a sad farming couple who’d lost a little boy just about Mokey’s age.  (This is where the movie ought to have been all along.)