When the Bough Breaks

A classic melodrama ,mainly interesting in its last half ,some kind of "little lord Fauntleroy " in reverse: the hero of this famous story in his grandpa's luxury château was miserable and would have given all the gold in the world to join his mummy in the modest cottage where she is relegated.

Here ,the biological mum's (Patricia Roc) and the foster one 's(Rosamund John )backgrounds are worlds apart :the former lives with her simple husband in a modest shop ,with a yard where she hangs out her washing , where the boy is bewildered :his naive questions are revealing :"are you also the maid ?"He's used to his foster parents' desirable mansion ,with its garden (park,more like) , its numerous rooms .But most of all ,he is used to loving the people who adopted him and who gave him all their affection. Had the situation been inversed , (namely from rags to riches) ,the boy would have come back to Roc's house without a moment's hesitation. By putting him in the "from riches to rags " situation, this melodrama is not so derivative.

This film has a rather dubious premise.Namely that a young mother would just give her child away without any formal paper work,and then walk back into her child's life 8 years later.The main thing that comes through is a class issue.Jimmie is taken from his nice middle class home to a working class area.He clearly doesn't fit in.So one wonders what might have happened if the roles had been reversed and Jimmy went from working to middle class?So it has to be said that overall the story remains unconvincing and it was clearly what would be called a"woman's picture".Bill Owen is by far and away the best actor in then film.Patricia Roc is rather out of her depth in the role of the unmarried mother.

Rosamund John has always been one of my film heroines.My collection of her films includes "Green for Danger" (1946), "The Way to the Stars" (1944), "The First of the Few" (1942), "The Upturned Glass" (1947) & "The Lamp Still Burns (1943).In each she plays stoic British heroines often with a background of WWII.In "When The Bough Breaks (1947) she plays a woman who works in a day care home for children while their mothers are at work.She cannot have children herself although she desperately yearns for one.

Along comes Pat Roc with her little Jimmy whose father is a bigamist and who we never see.Holding down a job in a departmental store and being a mother proves too much for Pat Roc and she agrees informally without legal documents that middle class Rosamund and her husband can adopt little Jimmy until such time as she can stand on her feet financially.She has a best friend (Brenda Bruce) who works at the same big store as her, who is married to Leslie Dwyer with four children. Going to a dance Pat meets Bill Owen when friendship gradually turns to affection and then love.

The nub of the film examines the emotional drama between the natural mother (Pat Roc) and the adoptive mother (Rosamund John) and how this affects Jimmy who after 8 years has to live with his natural mother despite loving his adoptive parents.I won't divulge the final scene, suffice it to say things turn out happily for all concerned.I've been waiting for this movie to be uploaded by someone for some time and am glad this is a new addition to the YouTube.com stable of vintage 1940s movies seen today 20/5/16

I thought the set-ups were a but too easily done -- the movie starts with Patricia Roc still in the maternity hospital bed being told that her husband has been arrested for bigamy, making her an instantaneous single mother; when she hands the baby over to Rosamund John and Patrick Holt, she refuses to sign any papers. Uh-oh!

That said, the performances are excellent. Bill Owen as Miss Roc's eventual husband gives a warm and wise performance, and Brenda Bruce adds a lot of needed humor with her brassy performance.

I must admit I don't have much sympathy for the situation, and consider the careful writing to make Miss Roc's moral situation irreproachable a bit strained, but overall, I find that the players overcome any qualms.

When this movie was made, the position of a young single working mother would have been just about too scandalous to contemplate. The movie provides a very sympathetic portrayal of the difficulties which at that time made adoption a common outcome. We also see how difficult it can be to live with the adoption decision over time, and how many implications there can be even years later. Some of the events may seem a little unlikely today due to changing attitudes and laws, but the calm and unsensational approach of this movie makes it more than a mere tear-jerker.