Forty Little Mothers (1940)

★ 6.4 1h 30m IMDb
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An out-of-work professor gets a break from an old college buddy to teach at an exclusive girl's school. But events conspire against him: he finds an abandoned child which he takes under his wing, despite the school's rules against teachers having a family; and the girls in the school resent his replacing a handsome and popular teacher, and do everything in their power to get him fired.

Forty Little Mothers

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Cast

Eddie Cantor
Eddie Cantor as Gilbert Jordan Thompson Died 1964 · New York City, New York, USA Eddie Cantor (born Isidore Itzkowitz; January 31, 1892 – October 10, 1964) was an American comedian, actor, dancer, singer, songwriter, film producer, screenwriter and author. Cantor was one of the pr...
Bonita Granville
Bonita Granville as Doris Died 1988 · New York City, New York, USA Daughter of Bernard 'Bunny' Granville and Rosina Timponi, Bonita Granville was born into an acting family on 2 Febuary 1923, in New York, New York. It's not surprising that she herself became a child...
Judith Anderson
Judith Anderson as Madame Granville Died 1992 · Adelaide, South Australia, Australia Dame Frances Margaret Anderson, AC, DBE (February 10, 1897 – January 3, 1992), known professionally as Judith Anderson, was an Australian actress who had a successful career in stage, film and televis...
Rita Johnson
Rita Johnson as Marian Edwards Died 1965 · Worcester, Massachusetts, USA Rita Ann Johnson (August 13, 1913 – October 31, 1965) was an American actress. Early in her career, Johnson was busy in radio. Johnson began acting on Broadway in 1935 and started her film career tw...
Ralph Morgan
Ralph Morgan as Judge Joseph M. Williams Died 1956 · New York City, New York, USA Ralph Morgan (July 6, 1883 – June 11, 1956) was a Hollywood film, stage and character actor, and the older brother of Frank Morgan (who played the title role in The Wizard of Oz, 1939). Description a...
Martha O'Driscoll
Martha O'Driscoll as Janette Died 1998 · Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA Martha O'Driscoll (March 4, 1922 - November 3, 1998) was an American film actress from 1937 until 1947. She retired from the screen in 1947 after marrying her second husband, Arthur I. Appleton, presi...

Audience Reviews

waltzma 7/10 Dec 14, 2017
Eddie Cantor goes from pop-eyed to gooey eyed.

A bunch of bratty college age girls are forced to look at themselves in this overly sentimental comedy drama (with a few songs added), raising the sugar count in my system to diabetic coma level. Finding an abandoned baby in a train station, impoverished professor Eddie Cantor must hide him when he gets a job at an all-girls college. Wrongly blaming him for the firing of a teacher they all had a crush on, these girls (which includes a young Veronica Lake) attempt all sorts of schemes to expose him to school head Judith Anderson. But when they realize the truth, they change their tune and apologize. One girl proclaims, "We didn't mean to hurt you", to which the obvious response is, "Ah, yes you did."

If the screeching young females (including one with an extremely annoyingly cheery southern accent) don't sound like nails down a chalkboard to you, try the coo's and laughs from Baby Quintinella as the oh so cute toddler. Cantor sings a nursery rhyme to him that won't ever be a threat to "If You Knew Susie". A far cry from his earlier Goldwyn films, this has its share of amusing moments, most notably Anderson's overly dramatic reading of a love letter and assistant Nydia Westman's fluttery reaction to its "intenseness". It's an odd film in the career of much of its cast and director Busby Berkeley, but for me, it will remain interesting for Anderson's lighter take (still wearing Mrs. Danvers long severe black dresses), one of the rare times she was able to "let loose" on film.

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