Main Cast: Fredric March, Betty Field, Agnes Moorehead, Skip Homeier, Joan Carroll
Release Year: 1944
Country: US
Run Time: 60 minutes
Plot
14-year-old Skip Homeier repeats his stage role as an unreconstructed Hitler Jugend in the film version of the James Gow/Arnaud D'Usseau stage play Tomorrow the World. A German orphan, Homeier is taken into the home of his American uncle (Fredric March), a gently liberal university professor. Though the son of an anti-Nazi, little robot-like Skip has become a parrot for the Third Reich, denouncing his late father as a traitor and being as nasty as possible to the professor's Jewish fiancee (Betty Field). Homeier accepts democracy only when the professor forgets his fuzzy-headedness and applies a little "physical culture." The moral really shouldn't be "Love America or We'll Break Every Bone in Your Body," but given the times in which it was made, Tomorrow the World can be forgiven its excesses. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Tomorrow the World was an important film at the time of its release in 1944, when America was one year away from victory in WWII. At the center is an American family trying to cope with a brainwashed German orphan, Emil Bruckner (child star Skippy Homeier). Emil, the product of a Hitler Youth academy, has been trained to hate his father, a leftist intellectual of the Weimar Republic. He has been brought to America by Professor Mike Frame (Fredic March), one of his father's old colleagues. Trouble starts when Emil tries to live out his Nazi ways in America, wreaking havoc on everyone around him. In many ways, the problems faced by Professor Frame in rehabilitating this child was a preview of what lay ahead for audiences of the 1940s, the problem of reintegrating the brainwashed German masses back into the civilized world. In this sense, the film did what it needed to do at the time. It educated audiences about the need to reintegrate, and more importantly, the need to show compassion and forgiveness. From a modern standpoint, however, the film comes off as a long Hitler Youth cliché, a shopping list of dastardly behavior that we've come to expect of a Nazi automaton. A compelling family drama gets lost along the way, smoke screened by an over-the-top performance by young Homeier who raises the material to comic heights. From a contemporary standpoint, Tomorrow the World has more to tell us about America than Germany during WWII. ~ Connor McMadden, All Movie Guide
Edith Angold - Frieda; Boots Brown - Roy; Rudy Wissler - Stan; Marvin Davis - Dennis; Mary Newton - School Principal; Tom Fadden - Mailman; Patsy Ann Thompson - Millie
Credit
James Sullivan - Art Director, Leslie Fenton - Director, Anne Bauchens - Editor, Henry Sharp - Cinematographer, Lester Cowan - Producer, James Gow - Screen Story, Arnaud D'Usseau - Screen Story, Ring Lardner, Jr. - Screenwriter, Leopold Atlas - Screenwriter, James Gow - Play Author
