James Barton

I've mentioned a lot how I think Warner Bros. made some really fun B movies, while B movies from other studios aren't quite as good. This is a bit true of MGM which has the whole MGM gloss that makes the B movies look a bit artificual. In the case of RKO, it feels more like the ideas are lacking. I couldn't help but think of that as I watched His Family Tree.

James Barton, who was apparently a vaudeville dancer, stars as Patrick Murphy, a former boatswain who now runs a pub of that name in Ireland. His son emigrated to the States, and is living in the sort of small city -- this time in Iowa -- that features a lot in movies of the 1930s. Supposedly they're small, but they've got so much of everything that you wonder how the US could have so many such cities with a population about 40% what it is today. But the bigger point is that Patrick's son Charles (William Harrigan) hasn't written to Dad in a while, so Dad decides that he's going to go over to Iowa to look up his son and see what the deal is.

Charles seems to have done reasonably well for himself, with a wife Maggie and daughter Elinor who is engaged to be married to one of the wealthier guys in town. The good government types even want Charles to run for mayor against long-time mayor Holtsapple (Ferdinand Munier), who isn't quite as corrupt as the local politicians in other movies, but is definitely the villain of the piece if there is one. Apparently the election is set to come down to which candidate the fourth ward comes down to, led by Irish-American community leader Nellie Oulihan (Maureen Delaney).

And herein lies part of the rub. Charles, when he came to Iowa, changed his name the way a lot of immigrants did. Except that he made up a bogus story to go along with the name change to Murfree (not much disguise there) that involves having a family in Murfreesboro, Tennessee that goes back generations. Now this was only seven years or so after Al Smith lost the presidential election, so maybe small cities in the midwest still weren't ready for an Irish Catholic mayor. But for whatever reason, it's decided that the idea that Murfree isn't Charles' original name is something that's totally going to sink his election chances, which you'd think he would have told his backers before running. And having one's Irish father come over certainly wouldn't help in that regard.

But Patrick is Movie Stereotype Irish, the guy who's got a charming brogue and Irish jig and all that goes with that, along with being able to bring everybody over to his son's side regardless of whether the thing about Charles having changed his name is true. Mayor Holtsapple and his campaign managers see this, and realize that the only way they're going to win is to stop Patrick from campaigning for his son, using force if necessary.

I've also stated before on a couple of occasions that I find Hollywood's doe-eyed view of Ireland to be detrimental to films because of the treacly attitude it induces, but that's not the big problem with His Family Tree. Instead, it's that the script is so unintelligent and unoriginal that I found myself rolling my eyes at it all. People who are interested in seeing what James Barton was all about may enjoy the couple of scenes where he gets to do his dance routine, but the movie as a whole doesn't quite hold up.