Adventures of Tom Sawyers DVD 1960

In this glorious adaptation of the Mark Twain classic, young Tom Sawyer (Tommy Kelly) is a big troublemaker. When he's not tricking others into doing his work, he's upsetting his aunt Polly (May Robson), or wooing his young love, Becky (Ann Gillis). But sometimes Tom's mischief gets him in over his head, and when he and his pal, Huckleberry Finn (Jackie Moran), witness a murder, they take a vow of silence and head down the river on a raft. The whole town believes they're dead, so when the boys return they're in a world of trouble. Norman Taurog (Boy's Town) directed this David O. Selznick (Duel in the Sun) production featuring Walter Brennan (Dakota), Victor Jory (Canadian Pacific) and Margaret Hamilton (Driftwood).

The 1938 version of Adventures of Tom Sawyer appears to be producer David O. Selznick's dry run for Gone with the Wind, what with its similarities in period, costumes, color scheme and production design (both films shared the services of the great Hollywood art director William Cameron Menzies). Selected from hundreds of applicants (a precursor to Selznick's upcoming search for Wind's Scarlet O'Hara), Tommy Kelly is visually perfect as Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer though his acting varies from scene to scene. Better cast is Jackie Moran as the laconic, pipe-smoking Huck Finn (Moran would show up in Wind as Dr. Meade's son). Never forcing its pace, the film manages to include most of Twain's classic sequences, including the fence-whitewashing episode, Tom's rescue of Becky Thatcher (Anne Gillis) from the wrath of their schoolmaster (Olin Howlin), Tom and Huck's "death and resurrection" after the boys briefly skipped town for an idyll on a remote island, the murder trial of town drunk Muff Potter (Walter Brennan) and ultimately unmasking of the vicious Injun Joe (Victor Jory) as the real killer, and of course the chilling climax in the cave, wherein Tom protects Becky from the fugitive Injun Joe. Originally released at 93 minutes, Adventures of Tom Sawyer was trimmed to 77 minutes for a 1959 reissue; it has since been restored to its full length on videotape. In 1960, Tom Sawyer was syndicated to television by Selznick, with accompanying commentary by the film's now-grown-up "Becky Thatcher," Anne Gillis.