Boy Trouble (1939)

I kept imagining Clifton Webb in the role of "Fitch" (Charles Ruggles) here! He is the salesman husband of "Sybil" (Mary Boland) and they are going through the rather staid routine of their middle-class lives. One day, she has a bit of a brainstorm and decides to adopt a young boy. "Joe" (Billy Lee) greets his new and unsuspecting father when he gets home from work one evening and immediately the old man's hackles go up. This only gets worse when an altercation next morning saddles them with the now injured "Butch" (Donald O'Connor) and we are now off on a rather predictable, but actually quite enjoyable series of larks that sees the two boys ally quickly and cause their fair share of mayhem, upset the rather puritanical and gossipy neigbhotes and, of course, put a degree of martial strain on their "parents". The kids deliver well here, especially the younger Lee who has that butter-wouldn't-melt look down to a T. Turn on the tears and the grown-ups are putty in their hands! It starts to wear a bit thin towards the slightly too sentimental conclusion which is actually quite rushed, but there's a decent on-screen dynamic going on for most of this and with the gentlest of digs at small-town attitudes is worth an hour or so of your time.