Our Very Own

A suburban Los Angeles family is rocked by the revelation one of three daughters is adopted. The label is placed upon eldest Ann Blyth (as Gail Macaulay), a high school teenager about to graduate. She dates handsome TV installation man Farley Granger (as Chuck), who says "mother knows best." As it often happens, middle daughter Joan Evans (as Joan) arrived right after the adoption. Jealous of older sis, Ms. Evans would like some kissing time with Mr. Granger. Otherwise perfect mother Jane Wyatt (as Lois) could never find the right moment to tell Ms. Blyth she was adopted...

Real mother Ann Dvorak (as Gert) has a hard life. Father Donald Cook (as Fred) smacks his girls with an open palm. Mouthy littlest daughter Natalie Wood (as Penny) annoys the heck out of genuinely funny Gus Schilling (as Frank) when he installs the family's new TV set. Fresh-faced teenager Martin Milner has the best up-and-coming role and adoring family servant Jesse Grayson dons her maid uniform for the last time. "Our Very Own" is a slickly produced melodrama which suggests that Samuel Goldwyn, if he were born 50 years later, would have been very successful in 1950s television.

****** Our Very Own (7/27/50) David Miller ~ Ann Blyth, Farley Granger, Joan Evans, Jane Wyatt

Our Very Own starts out presenting the average American family picture that folks would later come to expect on such shows as Leave It To Beaver and The Donna Reed Show. Parents Jane Wyatt and Donald Cook have three beautiful daughters, Ann Blyth, Joan Evans, and Natalie Wood in descending order. It's a red letter day in the family with Ann's impending graduation from high school.

The girls have their usual teen problems including a nice little rivalry between Blyth and Evans for Farley Granger. But when Evans while looking for her own birth certificate finds Blyth's adoption papers, she uses them without measuring the consequences.

The film is nice family entertainment for the time and I have to say the sentiment is kept in check for this type of film. Our Very Own got an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Recording.

But the young leads Granger and Blyth are too old and look it to be playing teens. Granger was 25 and Blyth 22. On the other hand Joan Evans was 16 and Martin Milner 19 and the script has them a year younger than Granger and Blyth. There's also a great performance by Ann Dvorak as Blyth's birth mother.

Still Ann delivers a nice performance and it really would have been nice had they given her a song to sing, maybe at the climax which is the graduation.

Ann Blyth is "Our Very Own" in this 1950 film also starring Joan Evans, Jane Wyatt, Donald Woods, Phyllis Kirk, Natalie Wood, Ann Dvorak, Farley Granger and Martin Milner. Blyth is Gail, the oldest of three girls in an idyllic '50s family. She's in love with Chuck (Farley Granger) whom her sister Joan is trying to take away from her. She's also preparing for her high school graduation; she will be speaking at the ceremony. On her 18th birthday, Gail gets into yet another heated argument with Joan, during which Joan blurts out something she just learned by accident - that Gail is adopted. Even with a perfect mother like Jane Wyatt and a loving father like Donald Woods, Gail doesn't take it well and demands to meet her "real mother," Mrs. Lynch (Ann Dvorak).

"Our Very Own" gives a good idea of what the '50s were like. You never told anyone anything for their own good was just one of the tenets - that includes Gail's parents not telling her she was adopted and Mrs. Lynch not telling Mr. Lynch she had a baby that she surrendered for adoption. Also, this was a private adoption, done through an attorney, which was very common in those days.

Ann Dvorak has the strongest role as the biological mother, and she's excellent, creating a vibrant character without the class of Gail's adopted mother and with a lout for a husband. Her intentions are good - they probably always were - but she's lived her life under someone's thumb and has never been able to pull it together. Blyth does a complete turnaround from Veda in "Mildred Pierce," the role for which she will always be identified, and plays a mature, responsible young woman. Natalie Wood plays her brat sister - by the end of the first scene, you want to slap her. Joan Evans and Phyllis Kirk are both very good, Joan with her slutty moments and beautiful Phyllis, a favorite of mine from the "Thin Man" television show is good as Gail's best friend. Was there ever a mother as ideal as Jane Wyatt? Like Margaret on Father Knows Best, she's practical, kind, wise and lovely. Donald Woods doesn't have much to do, but plays the loving father well. Handsome Farley Granger makes a great suitor, and Martin Milner as a goof - a role he played often in his early career - is cute.

My only objection is that Gail's mother is too good to be true, her boyfriend is too good to be true, and her best friend is too good to be true. But those sisters - whoa.

A good movie with a lot of heart.

Director David Miller takes us into the lives of a homespun family where everything appears to be peachy until one of the teens find out that she is adopted. After such a shock she eventually wants to locate her birth mother and thats when "Our Very Own" gets interesting. The dependable cast includes Ann Blyth as the adoptee, Joan Evans and Natalie Wood her sisters, Jane Wyatt and Donald Woods their parents, Farley Granger and Martin Milner as the guys who console the gals. However its Ann Dvorak as the distraught birth mother who walks away with the picture with her usual expertise. Although this Samuel Goldwyn production didn't meet critical expectations it did make money for RKO Studios.

It's 1949 and adoption is a stigma—at least in some people's eyes. Anyway, the Goldwyn studios continue their saga of America's middle class (e.g. The Best Years of Our Lives {1946}) by building a screenplay around this social theme. Of course, the Macaulay family are a highly idealized version of the real middle class. For example, note how unfailingly courteous and civilized family members are despite surging emotions. Sure, daughter Joan's hormones get the best of her and she behaves badly, but in a way that's still refined. And note Mom's unfailingly wise council and forbearance in Jane Wyatt's early version of Mother Knows Best.

Despite obvious sincerity, the film's Hollywood treatment guarantees a predictable ending from the very start. I just wish the screenplay had dealt with the more difficult aspect of adoption—namely, the factor of an unknown genetic inheritance among those contemplating marriage and who care about such things. And that could well apply to an upwardly mobile neighborhood such as the Macaulay's. But including a genetic factor would have resulted in a much more difficult and darker film.

Still, it's an entertaining movie despite the compromises. That opening sequence is a gem of youthful high-spirits and frustration thanks to Natalie Wood and Gus Schilling even if he is doing schtick (as one reviewer noted). The scene is not just a good one, but also aims to persuade us that the Macaulay's are a real family like anyone else's. Anyway, I agree with those reviewers who find Blythe and Granger a little long-in-the-tooth to be playing teenagers, though it's one of the movie's lesser compromises. Yes, Ann Dvorak is good as the self-conscious birth mother. But I really like Joan Evans' turn as the jealous sister. Catch her subtle facial expressions as she goes through any one of her many emotional conflicts— a fine, unheralded young actress. Also standout is young Martin Milner. His totally unaffected teenager seems light years from his high school peer, the maturely sophisticated Blythe.

And speaking of Milner's gawky teen, I can't help noticing the chuckles we get from his rather callous treatment of pudgy, plain-Jane Gwendolyn (Rita Hamilton). For a film otherwise sensitive within its limits, that same concern apparently doesn't extend to an unattractive girl made the butt of mood lightening gags in a seemingly guilt-free manner. I'm not sure what the moral is, but I don't think it's a good one. Anyway, the movie remains an interesting, if idealized, time capsule of a period when apparently every teenage boy owned a hotrod.