NR | 1 h 39 min | Drama | 1941
This fictionalized biopic on child-rights activist Edna Gladney was, uniquely for biopics, released while she was alive. For decades, she and her colleagues at the Texas Children’s Home and Aid Society helped babies born out of wedlock find homes and campaigned to remove the word “illegitimate” from birth certificates.
Both waiting to be married, Edna Kahly (Greer Garson) shares her youthful excitement with adopted sister Charlotte (Marsha Hunt). They grew up together, sharing everything like sisters, not stepsisters. That’s shattered when Charlotte’s would-be in-laws reject her because she’s a foundling. Broken, she commits suicide.
Distraught, Edna moves to Texas, marrying banker-turned-businessman Sam Gladney (Walter Pidgeon). They have a son, but doctors warn that Edna can’t have more children. Then another disaster: Their little boy dies.
As with all victories, Edna’s come at tremendous personal cost.
Garson, at 36, brings to her Gladney character extraordinary range. First, she’s a young bride, filled with self-loathing because she can’t bear more children. Next, she’s a sympathetic ex-mother who won’t tolerate children who are born alive but being given up for dead by callous parents. Then, she’s a feisty activist lobbying bureaucrats and politicians for humane policy and practice. Finally, with Tony, she displays a returning vulnerability as she clings to her right to love and be loved by one child rather than many.
Bressart is no supporting character. Like a doting father figure, he’s central to Edna’s commitment, raising the bar when she’s weary, lowering it when she’s too hard on herself.
Touching Tribute
Director LeRoy resists a close-up while filming Gladney’s impassioned intervention in the Texas Legislature. Instead, he frames her against a wall of seated politicians, all men, suited and stern, cautiously respectful of this woman who’s standing up for what they all once were: babies.Annoyance becomes admiration as she argues against branding innocents for the rest of their lives: in marriage licenses, passports, and other legal documents. And, against denying adopted children the inheritance rights that biological ones enjoy. To a sheepish legislature, Edna thunders, “There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents!”
Edna spends months studying prospective parents before handing babies over because “it isn’t just enough to give a baby to people who want a child. They should love the same things; they should, as far as possible, have the same characteristics.” She becomes an institution, all right, but never feels like one; there’s nothing impersonal in her bearing. Each parting with a new baby is as painful as the last: “I work like fury to get them adopted, and then cry like a fool when they go.”
Babies here are characters by themselves. LeRoy’s camera lovingly lingers on them: bawling their hearts out, sullen, smiling, giggling, gurgling, curious but always cuddly.
A horrid-looking gifted vase in Edna’s home serves as a playful metaphor for unwanted children. Laughingly, she and Sam try to get rid of it because it’s so unsightly. When they finally shed it at an auction, some ladies (ex-beneficiaries of her day-care center) buy it and gift it to her in gratitude. Barely able to conceal her laughter at the irony, Edna takes it back. Later, on a more serious note, she does her best to cajole parents into taking back children they’d rather abandon.
Screenwriter Anita Loos makes a startlingly convincing case for social, not just familial, responsibility for children. Like Edna, most parents shower love on babies well before birth. They buy goodies, they repurpose rooms, and, sometimes, even entire houses around an expected baby, months in advance. All this, without knowing the breadth of its smile, the sound of its voice, the state of its health, or the number of weeks or months it has to live.
If one child dies, they prepare all over again for the next, the willingness to give of themselves undimmed. Loos asks: Why should such unconditional love before birth become so conditional after?
