MovieChat Forums > Mister 880 (1950) Discussion > Skipper too sweet

Skipper too sweet

posted 14 years ago by knight1192a
4 replies | jump to latest

Does anyone else think that Skipper is too sweet? The only thing I'd ever seen Gwenn in was Miracle on 34th Street until I saw Mister 880 yesterday on either AMC or TMC (can't remember which, but most likely TMC). And all I could think at the end was that Skipper was just too sweet and innocent for his own good. I'm not saying that's a bad thing here cause I think that's what made the end of the movie so funny. He knows what he's doing is wrong but he's not trying to harm anyone and was perfectly ready to spend fifteen years in prison for counterfiting. And the whole deal with not letting anyone lie for him. I mean it was like folks ended up feeling like they should be arrested for even trying him.

[–] daynlarz 13 years ago

If you want to see Edmund Gwenn portray a gruffer, out-of-sorts character watch "Thunder in the Valley".

[–] alecwest 13 years ago

Well, he was a sweet old man in the movie - the perfect antihero that people sympathize with. But, I think Gwenn was merely trying to capture the real-life character on whom the movie was based - an Austrian immigrant named Emerich Juettner.

Juettner, by all accounts, was a sweet old man. A short biography of his life and exploits was published by the New York Sun in 2005:

http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/little-old-moneymaker/9282/

[–] gribfritz2 10 years ago

Just wanted to say, based on the date of your post, it must have been on AMC. TXM just showed it for the first time (or so Robert Osborne said in the intro) on 11/20/2013

[–] SashaDabinski 10 years ago

Back when AMC was actually showing classic movies.