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| Lobby card for "Little Iodine" (1946) colorized with Palette.fm Ai Technology. Left to Right, Irene Ryan, Hobart Cavanaugh, and Jo Ann Marlowe |
"Proof that comics strips can be good screen material" - Jimmy Fidler In Hollywood, newspaper column, September 1946.
Little Iodine was the only live action film adaptation of the mischievous child character created by Jimmy Hatlo for his long running comic strip (1943-1983). The film "officially" debuted in theaters October 20, 1946, several months after a delayed released due to a polio epidemic. It was feared that the illness would reduce the number of children who could come to theaters. Little Iodine was screened for critics a month earlier in September.
For decades, and across the internet, it it widely cited as a lost film, with no known surviving print. This post will shock many but "Little Iodine" IS NOT A LOST FILM. A print DOES EXIST in the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Film and Television Archives. A nitrate print and non-circulating research copies plus safety storage copies are cataloged in their library holdings. It has been commercially & publicly unavailable for over 70 years, which could still qualify it as a "lost" film today.
Little Iodine was the first film from newly formed Comet Productions, a company started by Mary Pickford, her husband Charles "Buddy" Rogers, and Columbia Pictures executive Ralph Cohn. The film was one of its few productions withins a couple of years. Little Iodine was distributed by United Artists.
After playing in countless kiddie matinees with serials, cartoons, and other B-features, Little Iodine disappeared from theaters around 1950, and has not been screened publicly since. I also have not found any accounts of prints being distributed by local television stations.
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| Matinee Ad from The Daily Alaska Empire, [Juneau, Alaska], page 5. November 12, 1948. From Chronicling America |
Child actress Jo Ann Marlowe (1935-1991) made her film debut in the Oscar winning musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and appeared in "A" & "B" vehicles throughout the 1940s. From existing promo photos she visually looks like a perfect match for Hatlo's chaos causing child. A press snippet from March 1946 claimed that Marlowe was suggested for the role to Charles Rogers by Joan Crawford. Marlowe had portrayed Joan's youngest daughter in her Oscar winning performance film Mildred Pierce (1945).
Audiences today are most familiar with Irene Ryan as Granny from TV's "The Beverly Hillbillies" (1962-1971), and it would be nice to see her in a lost performance from over 15 years earlier. Iodine's father Mr. Trimble was played by Hobart Cavanaugh. A review from Variety suggested that Ryan and Cavanaugh were the stand out performers of the film. Also in the cast was former child actor Lanny Rees (1933-2023) who passed away February of this year. Rees may have been the last surviving cast member.
Austrian director Reginald LeBorg (1902-1989) also helmed "Joe Palooka, Champ" from Monogram Pictures the same year as "Little Iodine". LeBorg would direct 10 sequels for this series based on Ham Fisher's famous comic strip character. One wonders what could have been if there had been a "Little Iodine" series.
Hatlo's Little Iodine would not appear again in a film until 1972's "Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter", an animated ABC Saturday Superstar Movie" with a cast of a comic strip greats. Iodine was voice by Corinne Orr.
Contemporary reviews suggest that it was an overall good picture. Little Iodine currently has an 80% Rotten Tomatoes scored from 5 surviving 1940s critic reviews. It would be fascinating to see Comet Productions' Little Iodine restored after so many decades. Columbia Pictures recently released a 2K scan of Little Orphan Annie (1932) with Mitzi Green as a bonus features in a movie set, so anything is possible.
Further Reading:
Graham, Shelia. "Rich, but He Wants To Be a Star". March 30, 1946. Washington [D.C.] Evening star. Page B-16. Link from Chronicling America.
Variety Review, September 11, 1946 - https://archive.org/details/variety163-1946-09/page/n65/mode/2up
