1880 Brooklyn, New York, a poor boy(Freddie Bartholomew)and fatherless is living with his mum(Dolores Costello).A messenger(Henry Stephenson)communicate them which he turns out to be the only heir state to the earl of Dorincourt(Sir C. Aubrey Smith).He leaves his friends(Mickey Rooney and Guy Kibbee) and set out for England as heir to his grandpa and a British dukedom .But the grandfather is a grumpy and and crusty nobleman and the problems are always cropping up.<br /><br />Classic and better version of known novel by Frances Burnett with elitist and sincere interpretations from Bartholomew,Aubrey Smith,Rooney, enough to make the creaky ancient tale actually work. Freddie Bartholomew had starred Anna Karenina and David Copperfield but his great success is this film.Dolores Costello,married with John Barrymore,plays the lovable mummy in an affected and forced acting. Sir C. Aubrey Smith is magnificent as the bitter-grumbler and grouchy count.Una O'Connor,as always,plays a maid with her habituals gestures and grimaces.For comic relief ,as is usual,is Mickey Rooney making a hilarious and sympathetic acting. This was originally made for black and white with an excellent cinematography by Charles Rosher but there is also available in computer-colorized and the musical score is by the classic Max Steiner. Director John Cromwell worked a lot with the great and powerful producer David O.Selznick and seems largely to have been content to follow his instructions,though he was always loath to allow too much sentimentality as happen on the sometimes heavily relationship between mother-son and grandfather-grandson. The picture was remade for television in 1980 by Jack Gold with Alec Guinness and Rick Schroder and in 1976 by Paul Annett and 1995 with George Baker. The motion picture was immensely successful in America and all the world ,is actually an authentic and charming classic.