The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) on Netflix
Passed19381h 31mAdventureDramaFamily
Tom Sawyer gets into mischief in 1850 Missouri with his friend Huckleberry Finn and whitewashes a fence. He is fond of Becky Thatcher, and the boys witness a killing in a graveyard.
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- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.0/102,541 votes
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Trailer
Plot summary
Tom Sawyer lives in 1850 Missouri, along the Mississippi River, and gets into mischief with his friend Huckleberry Finn; the two boys pretend to be pirates. Tom wants the attention of Becky Thatcher, and Aunt Polly is the aunt he lives with. Muff Potter is the local drunkard. The whitewashing of a fence is among the episodes, as is Sunday school, with Mr. Dobbins the schoolmaster and the Sunday School Superintendent. Tom and Huckleberry Finn also witness a killing in a graveyard. The story stays close to the Twain novel, with the character Jim a boy rather than a man.
Cast
- Tommy Kellyas Tom Sawyer
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Tommy Kelly, a Bronx fireman's son, won the title role in a national talent search run by producer David O. Selznick, who first hoped to cast an orphan as Tom, telling story editor Katharine Brown in a 1937 memo that the stunt would add enormously to the gross.
- H. C. Potter was signed to direct but was fired and replaced by Norman Taurog after George Cukor declined the assignment; Cukor directed some scenes but received no on-screen credit.
- After a sneak preview, Selznick read audience comment cards calling the cave climax too horrible for children and had Norman Taurog cut a close-up of Becky, whose hysteria he thought looked like that of a very ill woman rather than a little girl.
- William Cameron Menzies designed the cave sequence, and the work was strong enough that David O. Selznick hired him for Gone with the Wind.
- The film was the fourth adaptation of Mark Twain's novel, following versions released in 1907, 1917 and 1930, and the first of them made in Technicolor.
- Scenes were filmed on sets recycled from A Star is Born (1937), including the Blodgett family home interiors, and the film's Mississippi River long shots were later reused in MGM's 1951 musical Show Boat.
- Tommy Kelly never reached the stardom of fellow child actor Freddie Bartholomew, and after an inconsequential career he retired and became a school teacher.
