Breaking the Ice

3/29/2026

Now I tend to side with Herod and Rameses when it comes to children, though perhaps not quite as brutally, so I was fully prepared to hate this. Though it does contain more than it’s fair share of cheese, it’s not that sentimental and for my first encounter with Bobby Breen, it went fine. “Tommy” lives with his mother “Martha” (Dolores Costello). Neither they nor anyone else in their Mennonite community have much cash, so his dream of a career singing isn’t likely to come to fruition nor is them finding the $92 train fare they need to raise to join their family farming in faraway Kansas. Determined to help, and under the tutelage of the not entirely trustworthy “Terwilliger” (Charles Ruggles) he runs away to Philadelphia where he manages to find some work at an ice rink and then after he i