Despite an A-list cast, I was about to give up on Close to My Heart because it was quite slow-moving and nothing much was happening in the first half-hour.
Gene Tierney plays Midge Sheridan, a housewife, unable to have children with her newspaper columnist husband Brad (Ray Milland). They adopt a dog which is about the extent of the excitement until Midge finally suggests adopting a child.
Brad is lukewarm about the idea, but Midge finds out about a foundling left on the doorstep of a police precinct. Things start to get interesting!
The baby (named Danny) becomes a ward of the court assigned to a Probation Officer. An adoption agency run by a tough-as-nails director Mrs. Morrow (Fay Bainter) places the child temporarily with a woman who looks after abandoned infants and Midge starts visiting the child and begins bonding with him.
Morrow informs the Sheridan's there's a two year wait and it's likely another couple will claim the child before them. Morrow and the adoption agency are wary of foundlings as there's a recent case of adoptive parents who raised a child that became a criminal and recently murdered a police officer.
Morrow doesn't like the idea that Brad intends to investigate Danny's parentage as in her mind once adoptive parents discover a parent has a criminal background, they will end up treating the child differently (the case of the adopted boy who became a criminal is attributed to the "passive-aggressive" attitude of the adoptive parents).
Luckily the Sheridan's get the chance to adopt little Danny after they're moved up on the adoption list due to other prospective parent's dislike of the idea of adopting foundlings.
Brad doesn't seem to know whether he'll reject Danny if he finds out if one or both parents were criminals-it's more natural curiosity and a desire to promote his newspaper column (much to Midge's chagrin he begins writing about the search for Danny's mother).
The bulk of Act II is split between Brad's search for the parents and Midge's interaction with the cute-as-a-button Danny (played by Baby John Winslow).
I am not going to chronicle how Brad discovers who Danny's parents are but suffice it to say he obtains leads and interviews interesting characters who lead to other interesting characters. It is established early on that the mother is deceased.
The dark moment at the end of Act II emerges when it's discovered that Danny's father is a murderer on death row at San Quentin. While Brad visits him there, Mrs. Morrow acting on a judge's order takes back custody of Danny, devastating Midge.
Her decision to take the child back is based on the assumption that because Brad failed to sign the adoption papers for final custody before leaving (with the knowledge that the child's father is a murderer), he had already made up his mind that he did care to be a parent to the child in the future.
I found it difficult to believe that Midge would capitulate so easily to the cold Mrs. Morrow and basically agree with her characterization of Brad as a parent rejecting the adopted boy. A normal mother would have contacted the husband and told him to return immediately to fight to regain custody.
The contrived scenario is designed to allow for Brad's late hour heroics in which he returns and makes an impassioned speech to Mrs. Morrow that she had pegged him all wrong--that he wanted to keep the child despite knowing that the father was a murderer.
It's the old nature versus nature argument and the film scenarists clearly come down on the more liberal "nurture" side by depicting Brad as a man who refuses to condemn a child on the basis of who his father was. The narrative ends with a predictable happy ending!
I had to watch the pivotal climactic scene over several times since the plot description in Wikipedia claimed that Danny's father was not the murderer but his brother now dead.
I do not believe this is correct. The warden "introduces" Brad to the brother, but it's not made clear whether he's an inmate or lives in the area. I don't know where they got the idea that the brother is dead and that he was the father.
The murderer explained to Brad that he liked to read books and that's how perhaps the mother (who was a librarian) became attracted to him. When she learned he was a criminal, she left him.
The brother is introduced during Brad's conversation with Mrs. Morrow to illustrate the fact that he and the murderer's other siblings were good people and that proved heredity had nothing to do with Danny's father going bad.
Rather it was the bad environment that Danny's father had to endure that turned him into a criminal not because of a genetic disposition. Thus, Brad proved to Mrs. Morrow that he did not buy the idea that Danny would turn out bad due to heredity and could accept his son as a veritable "tabula rasa."
Ray Milland finally proves his mettle as a fine actor only after beginning his quest to track down the parentage of his adopted son. Aside from the contrived distrust of her husband and emotional capitulation to the adoption agency head once her child Is taken away, Gene Tierney is convincing as a caring mother bonding with her child.
I was not impressed with everything in Close to My Heart, but if you can get past the lugubrious beginning, this is a reasonable entertaining flick.
Gene Tierney plays Midge Sheridan, a housewife, unable to have children with her newspaper columnist husband Brad (Ray Milland). They adopt a dog which is about the extent of the excitement until Midge finally suggests adopting a child.
Brad is lukewarm about the idea, but Midge finds out about a foundling left on the doorstep of a police precinct. Things start to get interesting!
The baby (named Danny) becomes a ward of the court assigned to a Probation Officer. An adoption agency run by a tough-as-nails director Mrs. Morrow (Fay Bainter) places the child temporarily with a woman who looks after abandoned infants and Midge starts visiting the child and begins bonding with him.
Morrow informs the Sheridan's there's a two year wait and it's likely another couple will claim the child before them. Morrow and the adoption agency are wary of foundlings as there's a recent case of adoptive parents who raised a child that became a criminal and recently murdered a police officer.
Morrow doesn't like the idea that Brad intends to investigate Danny's parentage as in her mind once adoptive parents discover a parent has a criminal background, they will end up treating the child differently (the case of the adopted boy who became a criminal is attributed to the "passive-aggressive" attitude of the adoptive parents).
Luckily the Sheridan's get the chance to adopt little Danny after they're moved up on the adoption list due to other prospective parent's dislike of the idea of adopting foundlings.
Brad doesn't seem to know whether he'll reject Danny if he finds out if one or both parents were criminals-it's more natural curiosity and a desire to promote his newspaper column (much to Midge's chagrin he begins writing about the search for Danny's mother).
The bulk of Act II is split between Brad's search for the parents and Midge's interaction with the cute-as-a-button Danny (played by Baby John Winslow).
I am not going to chronicle how Brad discovers who Danny's parents are but suffice it to say he obtains leads and interviews interesting characters who lead to other interesting characters. It is established early on that the mother is deceased.
The dark moment at the end of Act II emerges when it's discovered that Danny's father is a murderer on death row at San Quentin. While Brad visits him there, Mrs. Morrow acting on a judge's order takes back custody of Danny, devastating Midge.
Her decision to take the child back is based on the assumption that because Brad failed to sign the adoption papers for final custody before leaving (with the knowledge that the child's father is a murderer), he had already made up his mind that he did care to be a parent to the child in the future.
I found it difficult to believe that Midge would capitulate so easily to the cold Mrs. Morrow and basically agree with her characterization of Brad as a parent rejecting the adopted boy. A normal mother would have contacted the husband and told him to return immediately to fight to regain custody.
The contrived scenario is designed to allow for Brad's late hour heroics in which he returns and makes an impassioned speech to Mrs. Morrow that she had pegged him all wrong--that he wanted to keep the child despite knowing that the father was a murderer.
It's the old nature versus nature argument and the film scenarists clearly come down on the more liberal "nurture" side by depicting Brad as a man who refuses to condemn a child on the basis of who his father was. The narrative ends with a predictable happy ending!
I had to watch the pivotal climactic scene over several times since the plot description in Wikipedia claimed that Danny's father was not the murderer but his brother now dead.
I do not believe this is correct. The warden "introduces" Brad to the brother, but it's not made clear whether he's an inmate or lives in the area. I don't know where they got the idea that the brother is dead and that he was the father.
The murderer explained to Brad that he liked to read books and that's how perhaps the mother (who was a librarian) became attracted to him. When she learned he was a criminal, she left him.
The brother is introduced during Brad's conversation with Mrs. Morrow to illustrate the fact that he and the murderer's other siblings were good people and that proved heredity had nothing to do with Danny's father going bad.
Rather it was the bad environment that Danny's father had to endure that turned him into a criminal not because of a genetic disposition. Thus, Brad proved to Mrs. Morrow that he did not buy the idea that Danny would turn out bad due to heredity and could accept his son as a veritable "tabula rasa."
Ray Milland finally proves his mettle as a fine actor only after beginning his quest to track down the parentage of his adopted son. Aside from the contrived distrust of her husband and emotional capitulation to the adoption agency head once her child Is taken away, Gene Tierney is convincing as a caring mother bonding with her child.
I was not impressed with everything in Close to My Heart, but if you can get past the lugubrious beginning, this is a reasonable entertaining flick.