Thursday's Child Movie Review

Sally Ann Howes made a dozen films in the 1940s and ‘50s, long before director Ken Hughes tried to turn her into another Julie Andrews opposite Dick Van Dyke in the 1968 musical dud, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She was, in fact, an enormously appealing juvenile actress, as evidenced by her debut in Thursday's Child, Howes, then 12, plays Fennis Wilson, who has a scholarly life in mind for her future. Circumstances bring her into a film studio, where she is cast in a movie. Her new career leads to all sorts of family problems, a reality rarely addressed in Hollywood flicks where supposedly well-adjusted kiddie stars then reigned supreme. Howes steadily improved as an actress, but as Nova Pilbeam discovered before her, great teen roles weren't consistently there in Great Britain between 1934–59. (Hayley Mills was England's first really big teen star and even she had to go to Hollywood to sustain her career.) Stewart Granger, then 29, appears as David Penley, a grown-up sensitive to Fennis’ true interests and ambitions.

1943 95m/B GB Stewart Granger, Sally Ann Howes, Wilfred Lawson, Kathleen O'Regan, Eileen Bennett, Marianne Davis, Gerhard Kempinski, Felix Aylmer, Margaret Yarde, Vera Bogetti, Percy Walsh, Ronald Shiner; D: Rodney Ackland; W: Rodney Ackland, Donald Macardle; C: Desmond Dickinson. VHS