Reform School on AllMovie

Like many all-black films of the 1930s, Reform School is shabbily produced and unevenly acted, but still a rewarding experience for those patient enough to sit through the seedier passages. The magnificent Louise Beavers, so often wasted in maidservant roles, heads the cast as Mother Barton, a reform-minded matron who strives to improve conditions in a run-down reformatory. The youthful inmates at first resist her efforts, which include an Honor System, but they prove themselves to be good kids at heart by solving a robbery for which the middle-aged heroine has been arrested. The young reform-schoolers are billed as the "Harlem Tuff Kids", in obvious emulation of the Dead End Kids. The supporting cast includes Reginald Fenderson, one of the featured players in the original Broadway production of The Green Pastures, and Eugene Jackson, formerly "Pineapple" in the silent Our Gang comedies and later a member of the singing Jackson Trio.