ALL MINE TO GIVE (1957)

Lots of good things in this Disney-like frontier family drama, thankfully not from Disney where homely production values, tear-jerking sentimentality and a bad case of ‘the cutes,’ swaddled in one of those cloying Paul J. Smith scores, would have over-egged the pudding.  (Out the same year, Disney’s OLD YELLER dodged many of these pitfalls, much helped by passing on house composer Smith.)  It’s a tru-ish story about young, married Scottish immigrants Glynis Johns & Cameron Mitchell who reach a small Wisconsin town only to find their relative has died, his home burned to the ground.  But thanks to a plucky town, our plucky couple are soon up & running with a quickly raised log-cabin (where they sleep in the same bed!), a logging job and enough kids to fill an orphanage.  That last one turns out to be the main plot when Dad goes down with diphtheria & Mom succumbs to typhoid, leaving eldest son Rex Thompson, 12 (he’s the son in THE KING AND I/’56), as man of the house, honor-bound to his mother’s dying wish that the six siblings not go to the State Orphanage.  They’ll have to be separated and placed, one each, at appropriate homes where they’ll be warmly embraced.  A childless couple; a family of boys wanting a girl; a family of girls wanting a boy; while stopping any wrong-headed adoptions.  Once he sets everyone up, he can leave school for that logging job.  Tough stuff here.  Sad as this all is, there’s a sense of uplift and accomplishment, too, tears held back as much as possible.  (Which only makes it that much more effective; get out your handkerchiefs.)  Director Allen Reisner moved to tv after this, and you’ll see why.  But he handles his cast very well, only to be stymied by soundstage exteriors that would have fit a more stylized genre piece or a musical (or in b&w instead of WideScreen TechniColor), but here push against verisimilitude.  You get used to it (William Skall’s lensing isn’t all bright & cheery), but it does keeps the film from reaching full potential.  Johns & Rex Thompson are particularly good.  And happy 100th birthday greetings to Ms. Johns, almost alarmingly pretty here.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The streamers are missing a trick on this one.  Not just remake possibilities, but to expand by following our six separated siblings, how they get along and come back together over the years.  RKO was in a death spiral when this film came out, but they seem to be active again and may have retained the rights.