Young Tom Edison

Plot

The movie follows the imaginative boy Tom as he continually gets into mischief and causes accidents locally with his chemical experiments. The townspeople regard him as a troublemaker. As the Civil War breaks out, Tom starts a business enterprise peddling food and snacks on board trains, and later composing and handing out news sheets to passengers. In a stroke of inspiration, Tom at night cleverly focuses light from multiple lamps onto a large mirror, enabling a surgeon to successfully operate on his mother. The story ends with Tom desperately signaling in Morse Code with a train whistle, alerting the engineer of another train filled with passengers to stop before it plunges into a river. These two acts finally vindicate Tom who is now a hero.

Cast

Reception

Upon the film's release Rooney had his picture on the cover of the March 18, 1940 issue of Time. An accompanying article called Rooney "a rope-haired, kazoo-voiced kid with a comic-strip face, who until this week had never appeared in a picture without mugging or overacting it." The magazine said the film featured Rooney's "most sober and restrained performance to date, [of someone] who (like himself) began at the bottom of the American heap, (like himself) had to struggle, (like himself) won, but a boy whose main activity (unlike Mickey's) was investigating, inventing, thinking."

Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times wrote:"Mr. Rooney's portrait defers to its subject only to the extent of being a trifle less Rooneyish than his Andy Hardy, the implication being that, if young Tom Edison was not Mickey Rooneyish, the fault was with Edison, not M. Rooney. And, for all we know, that may be the wisest attitude to take ... One thing is clear: Spencer Tracy as Edison the Man has a tough assignment ahead." A review in Variety called it "one of the finest biographies, from entertainment standpoint, ever filmed," and complimented Rooney for playing down his "past thespic effervescence." Harrison's Reports wrote: "Here is a picture that should prove not only inspiring to the youth of the country but vastly entertaining to both young and old." Film Daily wrote: "Mickey does fine work in the title role and demonstrates he can handle serious, dramatic moments as well as he does his popular comedy roles." John Mosher of The New Yorker called the film "a particularly routine piece" but "a pleasant, innocent item, on the wholesome side, and to be admired, we older types can only hope, by the young element."

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: