Saturday's Children (DVD), Warner Archives, Drama

Saturdays child has far to go. This film version of Maxwell Andersons Broadway play celebrates a rich tapestry of life through the lens of a young couples marriage, challenged by lost jobs and lost dreams and rescued by love. The superb cast includes Claude Rains, Anne Shirley, Lee Patrick, Roscoe Karns, George Tobias and, in a part played on the stage by Humphrey Bogart, a compelling john Garfield in one of his finest early roles. With a poignant and warmly funny script by Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein (Casablanca), Saturdays Children is a minor classic. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it gently humored and deeply affectionate. All the bitter-sweet essence of that little play... is appealingly captured. Crowther also singled out Garfield for praise: The sallow Romeo with the sad face and troubled soul falls into the part of the harassed young lover as though it had been written for him.