Little Nellie Kelly (1940)

When the film begins, Nellie (Judy Garland) is living with her father, Michael (Charles Winninger), in Ireland. Inexplicably, Michael is against Nellie marrying Jerry Kelly (George Murphy)--and the reason for this is never explained in the film. Soon after Jerry and Nellie marry, they head to America--and Michael follows (even though he vowed never to leave Ireland). Then, Michael moves in with them--though this makes no sense. Michael refuses to talk to Jerry and is a nasty old b--, I mean, 'jerk'. Later, Nellie dies during childbirth--and still Michael won't talk to Jerry---yet he continues to live with him! The child, also called Nellie, grows up to be...Judy Garland!! Yes, Judy plays both her mother and daughter--a bad Hollywood cliché. And, during all this time, STILL Michael won't talk to Jerry--yet is allowed to live with them. Considering all the divisiveness caused by Michael, the film made no sense--Jerry SHOULD have thrown the old jerk out long ago. Oh, and did I mention that Michael refuses to get a job and doesn't work for decades?! Overall, he's a terribly written and completely unsympathetic character who seemed to take pleasure in ruining his daughter's and granddaughter's lives. He really needed to be written better--a serious weakness in the film AND people in the film shouldn't have put up with his abusiveness. He should have been written as a lovable grouch--instead he comes off as a nasty creep who you want to see get hit by a bus or beaten to death by all the people this nightmare of a character insults during the course of the film!!! It's a shame because Winninger's boorish character completely overpowers Garland's nice performance. At only 18, she is very poised--especially when playing the mother. And, while I didn't love the song selection, she did a great job. This film didn't seem to hurt her career any--but it SHOULD have been a much better showcase for her amazing talents, not a showcase for poor writing and a hateful character.By the way, although it didn't hurt the film any, George Murphy's Irish accent was amazingly absent. With a name like Murphy, you'd have thought he could have done better. Additionally, on a sad note, Judy's love interest later in the film, Dennis (Douglas McPhail), killed himself just a few years after making this picture. He had an incredible voice.

I have to confess some disappointment in Little Nellie Kelly. Not that I was disappointed with the performances of Judy Garland and the rest of the cast. But I was actually hoping to see an adaption of some kind of George M. Cohan's musical comedy that ran 276 performances during the 1922-23 season on Broadway. But other than the title song and another number, this is not what ran on Broadway at the time. Pity because I would like to have seen just what a George M. Cohan musical comedy was all about. Other than the straight drama/mystery Seven Keys To Baldpate none of Cohan's work was ever brought to the sound screen.I'm surprised that this film is not run as often as The Quiet Man in and around St. Patrick's Day every year. The story has Judy Garland playing a mother and daughter. Mother marries George Murphy over in Ireland to the distress of her father Charles Winninger. After all of them emigrate to America, Judy dies giving birth to Judy. So the young girl is raised by her father and maternal grandfather.Which wasn't easy to do because Winninger and Murphy quarrel rather stupidly and don't speak to each other even though they're living in the same household. If it wasn't for the fact that Winninger is helping to raise Garland his granddaughter by staying at home, Murphy would have and should have thrown him out years ago. Winninger is just plain allergic to work.In the scenes he's in Winninger's a lovable loafer and really steals everything he's in. Barry Fitzgerald must not have been available though his brother Arthur Shields is in the film as the father of Douglas MacPhail that the younger Garland falls for. Winninger is playing a part Barry would normally have been cast in. He and Garland clicked so well that they were cast as father and daughter again in Ziegfeld Girl the following year.The soundtrack is an odd mix of Cohan's songs, Irish ditties, and some new numbers and for Judy, a revival of Singing In The Rain which producer Arthur Freed coincidentally enough wrote the lyrics for. However her best number is with Douglas MacPhail, It's A Great Day For The Irish which she made a Decca record of as a solo backed by The Wearing Of The Green. It's a more modern version of the same type of song as MacNamara's Band.Judy's worldwide legion of fans will love Little Nellie Kelly. Still it might have been nice to have one of George M. Cohan's musicals done in some fashion.

Judy Garland was a sensation in THE WIZARD OF OZ and BABES IN ARMS--but in 1940 she was eighteen years old, and LITTLE NELLY KELLY finds her in transition between the child star she was and the adult star she would become.Based on a George M. Cohan play, the film offers Garland a double role: first as Irish-born Nelly Kelly and later as her teenage daughter, "Little" Nelly Kelly. The storyline is sentimental. Against father Charles Winninger's wishes, Mother Garland marries George Murphy and leaves Ireland for America--with her stubborn and ill-tempered father in tow. After becoming an American citizen, she dies in childbirth (Garland's only death scene, and she plays it very well), leaving possessive grandfather and police officer husband to wangle over the future of daughter Garland.The first portion of the film is the weakest, with neither Garland nor Murphy entirely at home with their Irish accents; another flaw is the fact that Winninger's irascible grandfather eventually becomes a shade too obnoxious to fully engage our sympathies and Murphy is none-too-convincing in old-age make-up. Although not a musical per se, the real highlight of the film are Garland's few songs, which include "A Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow," "A Great Day for the Irish," and an elaborate staging of "Singin' In The Rain." Although she still shows traces of the affectations forced upon her in previous films by director Busby Berkley, she performs both her numbers and her scenes with a playfulness and sincerity that is quite charming.Although expertly made, LITTLE NELLY KELLY is essentially an inexpensive programmer designed to test Garland's potential as an adult actress--a test which she clearly passes. But the film is so greatly overshadowed by both her earlier and later achievements that it is negligible in both her cannon and the musical genre as a whole, and as such will be of interests more to Garland completest than to casual viewers. Recommended for hardcore fans only.Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

MGM, as was its unfortunate habit, sure lays on the patriotism and sentiment with a trowel, but this handsome Arthur Freed production gets the main thing right: It provides the young, post-Dorothy Garland with a successful transition into adult roles. Playing a feisty Irish-American colleen and her own mother, she gets to be both girlish and womanly, does an affecting death scene (Garland was far more of an actress than most of her song-and-dance peers), and of course her vocals are tops (more music wouldn't have hurt, and why was only one Cohan song retained from the stage original?). She's pretty much the whole show, since her respective sweethearts George Murphy and Douglas MacPhail seem incapable of appreciating her sufficiently, and Charles Winninger's lazy-but-bellicose Irishman act was old hat even then. Highlight: The title song, fluidly staged and a real showcase for Judy, who's radiant.