Young Tom Edison Film Review

This is pure 1940's MGM hokum that they specialized in. MGM was very much into family fare that taught lessons and had happy endings. Mickey Rooney who was in the midst of his Andy Hardy series for MGM only had to slightly shift gears to be Young Tom Edison in a loving family with a stern but twinkling eyed father and a mother who was filled to the brim with charity and forgiveness. Edison like his cinematic cousin Andy Hardy was always getting in trouble for his shenanigans which his parents had to give him sage advice.

His troubles came from his curious mind and his scientific experiments - which often went wrong - so often in fact that the small town thought he was "addled" and rather a stupid child. Of course, he proves them all wrong by turning into a small fry MacGyver and saves a train and earlier his mother in need of surgery. At the very beginning of the film it states that this film is based on true incidents and after reading about Edison much to my surprise some of it is. The saving of the little boy on the railroad tracks is true, starting a fire on the train through his chemical experiments is true, selling food as a vendor on the trains is true, starting to lose his hearing because of a smack to the head is likely true and in the end Edison leaving his town to get a job as a telegraph operator is true. The other stuff I don't know.

Rooney who was magic for MGM was 20 at the time playing Edison from about age 12-16 - beginning right before the Civil War and does an ok job. It is hard to imagine that a mere two years later he is married to Ava Gardner. And soon got divorced because of his tom-catting. Edison went on to basically change the world with his inventions - the phonograph player, movies, the light bulb, bringing electricity into homes, he formed GE, the fluoroscope for x-rays and many more. He was also as seen in the film a businessman who fought hard for his patents and became quite wealthy and hated.