..... Good old hokum with an emotional wallop that almost lifts it out of the 'B' class. Picture will satisfy nearly all types of audiences. It's a sure bet for the family trade.
..... Director Archainbaud rates praise for his handling of a story that expertly mixes pathos with laughter and keeps the action going with plenty of slants and unexpected twists.
..... Mary Boland and Charles Ruggles are co-featured and share honors with two youngsters, Donald O'Connor and Billy Lee. Performances all around are uniformly good, but in the last analysis the pictures leans heavily on Ruggles, who scores in a tailor-made part out of which he squeezes every ounce of effect.
..... The Fitches are a small-town childless couple, pretty much set in the even tenor of their domestic ways. Mr. Fitch (Ruggles) is a Caspar Milquetoast, easily upset when his routine habits are disturbed and with an unhappy faculty of blundering into situations not of his making.
..... Mrs. Fitch (Miss Boland), thinking only of her husband's happiness is misled into adopting an orphan (Lee) and also a homeless waif (O'Connor). Fitch, who takes a daily browbeating in the department store where he works finds his peaceful home retreat completely upset by the newcomers. He orders Mrs. Fitch to get rid of the youngsters, and sets his heart against showing any signs of affection or understanding for them.
..... Numerous other events in the meantime conspire against him and when the orphanage takes Billy Lee back for a more suitable adoption and the other lad also takes to the high road when he finds he is not wanted, Fitch shows signs of weakening. Other complications, such as the loss of his job and the crucial illness of little Billy brings things to a high emotional pitch with everything finally working out happily in the end.
..... Ruggles' best scene is that at the bedside of the sick child when he gives the child a reason to live and tunrs the crisis favorably.
..... Exhibitors can use more pictures of this type.

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