Franciska "Francy" Gall was still delightfully in her "gamine" mode when she starred in Kleine Mutti (Little Mommy). The star plays a schoolgirl who runs into nothing but trouble when she finds an abandoned baby on the steps of an orphanage. Almost immediately, Gaal is presumed to be the mother of the child, which earns her instant dismissal from her school. Penniless, she takes a room in a fancy hotel, intending to beat the bill at the end of the week, giving her enough time to find a proper home for the baby. The hotel doctor, assuming Gaal is rich, chastises the girl for her "selfishness" in failing to care for the infant herself and forces her to leave with the kid in tow. Forced to take a job selling vacuum cleaners, our heroine runs into more problems at the home of a rich banker, who huffily assumes that she is his son's mistress?and on it goes until the happy ending, which comes as much of a relief to Gaal as to the audience. Kleine Mutti was directed by Herman Kosterlitz, who as "Henry Koster" directed several Deanna Durbin pictures in the late 1930s-early 1940s (many of which owed a great deal to Kosterlitz' earlier Francy Gaal vehicles).
by Hal Erickson
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