“In his peak years as a top Hollywood director in the 1920s, Herbert Brenon brought to the screen... such British literary works as Beau Geste,...Peter Pan and A Kiss for Cinderella.... The House Master (1938) was the most important and by far the best of Brenon's British films, and the original play by Ian Hay--light, witty but with serious undertones--was ideal material for Brenon. He stuck to the play (and the novel, The House Master) with remarkable fidelity.... Told primarily from the teachers' point of view, the film is warm, but also surprisingly accurate. The near-venomous headmaster--a superb performance by Kynston Reeves--is a dead ringer for one of my own headmasters, who alas was not removed by the cunning scripting convenience that Ian Hay provides. Otto Kruger is equally fine in what may well have been his best role, and Phillips Holmes is especially effective in the scene where he ‘finds' himself.... Sadly, this sensitive but hitherto rather ineffectual actor seemed also to be just ‘finding' himself as an actor, but was killed shortly thereafter in the early stages of the war.... (Note: Our print is the full British version.)” William K. Everson