Review of Newly Rich

This is the story of two of the world's worst stage mothers--women who try to one-up each other through their children. The film starts with Maggie (Louise Fazenda) arriving back in her old home town just to rub her son's Hollywood success in the face of Bessie (Edna May Oliver). She and her little brat, 'Tiny Tim' (Jackie Searl) are insufferable and Maggie's faux sophistication is really annoying. So Maggie decides that her daughter, Daisy (Mitzi Green), is just as wonderful...perhaps more so. So the pair soon show up in Hollywood and Daisy miraculously also becomes an instant star-- though Tiny Tim and his mother do their very best to try to derail her. Through the course of the rest of the film, it's one dirty trick after another as the warring moms try to prove conclusively that their child is amazing...and the other children are just commoners! Eventually, the pair both learn that a child king is in town...and they go to all sorts of lengths to try to suck up to the King and his mommy.

This film is clearly intended as a comedy. Sadly, while it's a cute movie, it's also a sad commentary on stage mothers--both then as well as today. In other words, as you watch you suspect that the mothers' god-awful behaviors aren't really that different from real stage mothers...and you also wonder if the writer (Sinclair Lewis) was perhaps writing this as an indictment against these awful people. This is especially true of the later part of the film...which is less comedy and more about the kids rebelling against their god-awful mothers. Overall, enjoyable and clever...but also a bit depressing.