There's One Born Every Minute

Genre: Comedy
Released: 1942
Directed by: Harold Young
Starring: Hugh Herbert, Tom Brown, Peggy Moran, Elizabeth Taylor
Alfalfa portrays: Junior Twine, son of a pudding entrepreneur (!)
Alfalfa's screen time: 3:31
Lines of dialogue spoken by Alfalfa: 12

Alfalfa and on-screen sister Elizabeth Taylor (in her very
first film role) sing a little duet.

This happily brief film (clocking in at little over an hour) centers around a family, the Twines, that preside over a pudding empire. This pudding gains notoriety after it is found to contain Vitamin Z and something called "zumf". This premise is integrated into a political farce that features Edgar Kennedy as incumbent mayor of Witumpka Falls. Kennedy was probably the second-most popular grownup performer in the long history of the Little Rascals (second only to June Marlowe as Miss Crabtree). Lemuel Twine (Tom Herbert), the chief pudding baron, is drafted to run for mayor himself by the local political power broker. Soon the Twine family becomes involved in a pudding controversy after they are charged with falsifying the presence of Vitamin Z and zumf in their product. This flap complicates Twine's mayoral bid.

"There's One Born Every Minute" is primarily notable for the screen debut of nine-year-old Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria-Ann Twine. Alfalfa and Liz play a bickering brother/sister combo. Alfalfa's real-life mother Gladys reputedly was friends with Taylor's mother, and was at least partly responsible for convincing her to put her daughter into films. This was the first of two pictures in which Alfalfa and Taylor would appear together. In 1946's Courage of Lassie, Alfalfa played a teenage hunter who accidentally shoots Taylor's dog Bill (a.k.a. Lassie.) Incidentally, it is remarkable to see how quickly both young actors grow in the four years between the two films.

The film opens with a scene in the Twine living room. Mother Twine is hanging a portrait of a distinguished family descendant to impress a group of voters who she is hosting later that day. In this scene Taylor delivers her very first line of dialogue:

Taylor [referring to the portrait]: Is that funny-looking palooka my great-great grandfather Claudius?
Mother Twine: Now Gloria Ann, you mustn't say "funny-looking". Your father looks the same way.
Alfalfa: Yeah, so did grandpa. You'd think they'd turn out a new model once in a while.

Elizabeth Taylor plays opposite Alfalfa in her very first
film scene.

Alfalfa and Liz have a singing duet during a scene where a kind of ladies auxiliary group come over to the Twine house for a campaign event. The song is called "Lemuel P. Twine For Mayor", and Alfalfa, dressed in a Lord Fauntleroy outfit, is appropriately off-key during the song's rendition. So much so, in fact, that the figure of Claudius Twine in the portrait comes to life and winces in pain from our hero's crooning.

Alfalfa and Liz listen in on some gossip during a ladies'
auxiliary social.

Above: Little Rascals veteran Edgar
Kennedy as Mayor Moe Carson.

Below: During a parade, Elizabeth Taylor, as Alfalfa's
sister Gloria Ann, harasses our hero by pulling his hat over
his face and fleeing into the crowd.

Alfalfa turns in an amusing if unremarkable performance. He and Liz have an effective on-screen chemistry as brother and sister. Alfalfa made this film the same year as Henry and Dizzy; in both pictures, he shows us an impressive array of facial contortions and engages in a decidedly physical brand of comedy. "There's One Born Every Minute"— whose working title was "Man or Mouse", by which Taylor referred to it in her 1964 autobiography— was directed by Harold Young, whose other directorial credits included such works as "Juke Box Jenny", "Woman Trap", "I Escaped From the Gestapo", "Machine Gun Mama", and "Jungle Captive".

The screening copy of "There's One Born Every Minute" that 4alfalfa.com was able to locate was not of the highest quality, as can be seen by the rather grainy images we were able to extract from it.


Publicity photo of Alfalfa and Elizabeth Taylor during
production of "There's One Born Every Minute".


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