The Devil Is a Sissy

United States

1936

92 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English, French

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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DIR W.S. Van Dyke, Rowland Brown

SCR Rowland Brown, John Lee Mahin, Richard Schayer

DP Harold Rosson, George Schneiderman

CAST Freddie Bartholomew, Jackie Cooper, Mickey Rooney, Ian Hunter, Peggy Conklin, Katharine Alexander, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart, Jonathan Hale, Etienne Girardot, Sherwood Bailey, Buster Slaven

Claude Pierce is delighted to move in with his father, Jay Pierce, a struggling architect living in lower Manhattan, for the six months the divorce agreement of his parents specified. He’s come at a particularly bad time for his classmate, Gig Stevens, whose father is to be executed that night for murder, so he’s treated badly by Gig as well as Gig’s pal, Buck Murphy, and their gang. But he takes boxing lessons and holds his own in a fight with the older and heavier Buck, so he is grudgingly accepted into the gang. Their chief interest is to get a proper tombstone for Gig’s father, costing $80. When stealing and selling tires proves too slow, Claude suggests burglarizing some rich kid’s home for his toys, and pawning them. Claude leads them to a house at night, where rich looking toys are found, stolen and pawned. However, a suspicious policeman has them brought before a judge where Claude eventually confesses they were his toys; he knew his mother was away and the house was unoccupied. Claude goes free since he knew it wasn’t stealing, but Buck and Gig get probation, further alienating them from Claude. On the day they were supposed to report to the probation officer, Buck and Gig decide to run away. Despite a bad cold, Claude tries to convince them that running away will only hurt them in the long run. But they are adamant and the three hitch a ride with two men and an old lady who turn out to be gangsters on the run. Further, Buck lets on that Claude’s mother is a millionaire, hatching the gangsters’ plan to hold them for ransom. At a cafe owned by a Frenchman, Claude ostensibly orders a special sauce in French, but actually tells the owner to call the police. When they come, the bullets start flying. —IMDb

Director

W.S. Van Dyke

W. S. \“Woody\” Van Dyke II inaugurated his career at age three as a stage actor, in the company of his widowed actress-mother. When acting jobs were scarce, young Van Dyke worked as a miner, electrician and (allegedly) a soldier-for-hire in Mexico during the ‘teens. In 1916, he was hired as one of several assistants to director D.W. Griffith, working in this capacity on Griffith’s mammoth Intolerance. After assisting director James Young at Paramount, Van Dyke was allowed to direct his first solo film in 1917. He spent most of the 1920s laboring on quickie Westerns, earning a reputation for speed and efficiency. In 1928, he was brought into MGM’s troubled production White Shadows on the South Seas, which, under the snail’s-pace direction of Robert J. Flaherty (a brilliant documentary maker whose skills at fictional filmmaking was slight), was running way behind schedule. When White Shadows opened to critical and audience approval, Van Dyke was elevated to Hollywood’s A-list of directors… read more

W. S. \“Woody\” Van Dyke II inaugurated his career at age three as a stage actor, in the company of his widowed actress-mother. When acting jobs were scarce, young Van Dyke worked as a miner, electrician and (allegedly) a soldier-for-hire in Mexico during the ‘teens. In 1916, he was hired as one of several assistants to director D.W. Griffith, working in this capacity on Griffith’s mammoth Intolerance. After assisting director James Young at Paramount, Van Dyke was allowed to direct his first solo film in 1917. He spent most of the 1920s laboring on quickie Westerns, earning a reputation for speed and efficiency. In 1928, he was brought into MGM’s troubled production White Shadows on the South Seas, which, under the snail’s-pace direction of Robert J. Flaherty (a brilliant documentary maker whose skills at fictional filmmaking was slight), was running way behind schedule. When White Shadows opened to critical and audience approval, Van Dyke was elevated to Hollywood’s A-list of directors, though even when handed huge budgets and big stars he never altered his rush-it-through directorial technique (the one exception to this was his year-long sojourn on Trader Horn ¹⁹³¹). “One Take Woody” was often derided by his fellow MGM directors, who bemoaned Van Dyke’s “carelessness” and “sloppiness.” However, Van Dyke’s best films — The Thin Man (1934), San Francisco (1936), It’s a Wonderful World (1939) — hold up far better than the works of many of his more art-conscious colleagues. A favorite of no-nonsense leading men like Clark Gable and William Powell, Van Dyke was not held in as high esteem by certain actresses accustomed to being fussed over for hours before stepping in front of the cameras; still, he got along quite well with the temparamental Norma Shearer when he took over direction of the troubled Shearer epic Marie Antoinette (1938). Working at MGM until 1942, the year before his death, Van Dyke could take pride in the fact that virtually all his films made money for the studio — and virtually none went over budget. —allmovie guide

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