When a Feller Needs a Friend

Eddie Randall (Jackie Cooper) is a spunky, sweet-natured kid, but since he has a lame left leg and must wear a brace, he's a constant worry to his loving but overprotective parents, who keep him from playing with the neighborhood kids (they call him "Limpy"), as well as the target of mean-spirited treatment by his newly arrived, pugilistic cousin Froggie (Andy Shuford). But Eddie has a pal in his corner: feisty, tall-tale-spinning Uncle Jonas (Charles "Chic" Sale), a rascally codger determined to toughen up and make a "reg'lar" boy out of him. Winning child star Cooper and loose-limbed vaudevillian Sale (who specialized in playing old salts throughout his 30s and 40s) spin gold from this slender, heart-tugging material. Eddie must take hard knocks and smile through tears toward an outcome not as totally triumphant as you'd expect but, in the mode of Cooper's indelible earlier teamwork with Wallace Beery in The Champ, still movingly satisfactory. For a simple yarn both rambunctious and tender, you can lean on When a Feller Needs a Friend.

• drama
• family