by the huge success of Captains Courageous. She threatened to break his MGM contract in order to find a better-paying studio. The contract battle kept him out of work for a year, causing among other things the postponement and eventual loss of his planned lead in a film of Rudyard Kipling's Kim, and the loss of his planned lead in Thoroughbreds Don't Cry with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. He eventually resumed acting through 1942, in mostly lesser-quality films and roles, only three out of 11 of which were with MGM, and after 1938 he was less popular than in his heyday. This fall in popularity stemmed not only from the quality of the roles and his conflicts with MGM, but also from the fact that by late 1938 he was a tall, nearly 6-foot teenager, and the fact that the world was focusing on the growing problems of World War II and therefore the literary classics and costume dramas Bartholomew excelled at were less in fashion. In 1938, Twentieth Century Fox hired him for the lead in their film of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped. MGM then re-teamed him for the fourth and fifth times with Mickey Rooney in Lord Jeff (1938) and A Yank at Eton (1942), and he co-starred with Judy Garland in the lightweight MGM musical Listen, Darling in 1938. In 1939 Universal re-teamed him for the third and fourth times with Jackie Cooper in The Spirit of Culver and Two Bright Boys. For RKO distribution, he performed in Swiss Family Robinson and Tom Brown's School Days in 1940. And as World War II deepened, Columbia had him star in three military-related films: Naval Academy (1941), Cadets on Parade (1942), and Junior Army (1942). World War II and beyond Enlistment and aftermath World War II military service interrupted Bartholomew's career even further. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces on January 13, 1943, at the age of 18, and worked in aircraft maintenance. During training he fell and injured his back, was hospitalized for seven months, and was discharged on January 12, 1944. He had one film role in 1944, in the low-budget comedy The Town Went Wild. The film reunited him with Jimmy Lydon, with whom he had starred in Tom Brown's School Days, Naval Academy, and Cadets on Parade. This ended up being Bartholomew's penultimate film performance, and his last for seven years. His