Lord Jeff (1938)

LORD JEFF  (1938)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Sam Wood
    Freddie Bartholomew, Mickey Rooney, Charles Coburn,
    Herbert Mundin, Terry Kilburn, Gale Sondergaard,
    George Zucco, Monty Wooley, Peter Lawford
Freddie Bartholomew plays a snooty young con artist who gets sent off to a military boarding school for his role in a jewelry store theft. His affected, high-brow manner does not go over too well with the working-class kids at the school, and life lessons are learned. It's all pretty obvious, but nicely done. Interesting for the pairing of '30s child stars Rooney and Bartholomew, whose voices were changing by then, and whose career tracks would soon diverge. Bartholomew was all but finished in films by the mid-1940s, while Rooney would continue to turn up on screen well into the 21st century.