The First Baby
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Lewis Seiler
Johnny Downs
Shirley Deane
Dixie Dunbar
Jane Darwell
Marjorie Gateson
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Johnny Ellis, a clerk at an auto loan and finance corporation, who lives with his working-class parents and seven siblings, continually bickers with his sweetheart, Trudy Wells, because she feels that she has to keep their romance hidden from her socially-conscious mother Ella. At a skating rink in their town of New Rochelle, Johnny and Trudy make up after a spat, and she accepts his proposal. Despite Ella's protests, the couple marry and celebrate at the Wells home, where Johnny's father Henry and Trudy's father Arthur try to slip away for a drink while Johnny's friend from the office, Maud Holbrook, who aspires to be a "hoofer," upsets Ella by giving Johnny a passionate kiss to congratulate him. On their honeymoon, the quarrels begin anew as Trudy reveals that she promised her mother they would live at the Wells home. Johnny refuses, arguing that marriages are broken up from parental meddling, but he reconsiders after he leaves Trudy crying and agrees to try. Trudy's announcement that she is pregnant provokes an anxious Johnny to try to book a hospital room eight months early. When the baby arrives, his unthinking remark that his son is "funny-looking" upsets Trudy. Six months later, Ella's meddling insistence that "modern methods" be employed in child rearing irritates Johnny, and when the baby accidentally swallows a toy football, Ella's reprimand drives Johnny away for the night. When he returns and tells Arthur that he and Trudy are leaving, Arthur, sympathetic to his plight, lends Johnny money for an apartment and suggests that he surprise Trudy with it as a present for her upcoming birthday. However, on Trudy's birthday, when Ella learns about the move, she feigns a faint, and Trudy refuses to leave. Johnny goes alone to the apartment, where his friends have arranged a surprise party for Trudy, and tells them that Trudy is sick. After all the guests but Maud, whom some wags got drunk as a practical joke, have left, Trudy, who has finally decided to leave her mother, arrives. However, when she sees Maud passed out in the bedroom, she leaves and agrees to go on a trip with her mother. Johnny, now back with his parents, turns to drink when his calls to Trudy are not put through, but his mother sobers him up and convinces him to stand up to Ella. As Trudy and Ella shop for their trip, Johnny arrives at the Wells home and demands that Arthur allow him to take his son to the park. After the baby gets soaked in a rain storm, Johnny takes him to his own house, where, during the next three days, the two families live together as the baby battles for his life against a fever. Ella blames Johnny and Trudy refuses to see him, but the doctor counsels Trudy that marriage and having a baby demand unselfishness. When the baby revives, Trudy embraces Johnny and announces to the group that she forgot that the only thing that really mattered was her baby and husband. She rebukes her mother, and Arthur tells Ella to "shut up." Soon, in their aparment, Trudy tells an excited Johnny that she is pregnant again.
Director
Lewis Seiler
Cast
Johnny Downs
Shirley Deane
Dixie Dunbar
Jane Darwell
Marjorie Gateson
Gene Lockhart
Taylor Holmes
Willard Robertson
Hattie Mcdaniel
Carmencita Johnson
Charles Flickinger
Dickie Jones
Mary Joan Felt
Doris Schaffer
George Callanan
Jack Brinker
Carol Holloway
Jean Houghton
Laura Treadwell
Dorothy Phillips
Myra Marsh
Clay Clement
Donald Arthur Secor
Sandra Stone
Madeline Holmes
Gloria Roy
Ella Mckenzie
Bryant Washburn Jr.
Richard Carpenter
Charles E. Evans
Cyril Ring
Richard Charney
Newton House
Landers Stevens
Tina Marshall
Grace Goodall
Brenda Fowler
Grace Hale
Wallis Clark
Harrison Greene
Jack Norton
Emmett Vogan
Niles Welch
Richard Powell
Ralph M. Remley
Billy Gilbert
William Wayne
David Newell
George Magrill
Marion Warner
Lester Montgomery
Edwin Mcbeth
Ward Bond
Esther Muir
Pat O'malley
Crew
Duncan Cramer
Al De Gaetano
William Eckhardt
John W. Green
Edward Heyman
Samuel Kaylin
William Lambert
Harry M. Leonard
Barney Mcgill
John Stone
Lamar Trotti
E. Clayton Ward
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
According to an unidentified news item dated June 1934 in the M-G-M story department card file at the AFI Library, Lamar Trotti and Dudley Nichols wrote an original story with this title, which was to be directed by James Tinling and to star James Dunn and Claire Trevor. No information has been located to determine if that story was the one produced in 1936. Motion Picture Herald noted that this film was the second in a series of American family pictures to be produced by Twentieth Century-Fox, the first of which was Every Saturday Night. However, that film was the first in the "Jones Family" series, of which The First Baby was not a part. This was Shirley Deane's first leading role. According to Hollywood Reporter, she and Johnny Downs were borrowed from Paramount. Sara Haden is listed as a cast member in the Hollywood Reporter production charts for this film; her participation in the final film has not been confirmed.
