... or maybe the way you want to remember them.
Executive Steve Bradford (James Cagney) tells his company he is taking a leave of absence with no explanation. Nice work if you can get it. And in the 1950s you generally could. Bradford's reason for his absence is his plan to reunite with the son that was put up for adoption twenty years before.
Bradford finds the orphanage that his son was adopted through, and immediately tries to get information out of the woman who runs the unwed mothers' home, Ann Dempster (Barbara Stanwyck). He takes her at first to be an easy mark. To get the information he tries charm. He tries money. But this is Babs we are talking about. She does not back down from her position of protecting the identity of the children and the adopted parents. So Bradford tries hard ball and takes her to court based on charges of fraud. Ann shows up in court with transcripts of what happened when the mother of his child was in court twenty years before prior to the child's birth. Bradford's own words were it was not his problem if some girl was in trouble, that he barely knew the girl. That he was in Peoria at the time, honest. He had washed his hands of all responsibility. The judge throws out the charge, and Bradford has a dose of what he was really like all those years before and eats the entire humble pie.
He gives up. Does Bradford go home empty handed then? Nope. Does he meet his son? Yep. Are either of these things related? Watch and find out.
These are great mature roles for both Stanwyck and Cagney. Cagney is good as the tough businessman. Babs is great as the overseer of the unwed mothers' home who, just because she asks you to sit down and offers you a cup of tea is not a pushover. This is one of those - "They teamed once and should have teamed again" efforts. It has everything that the waning production code would want in a family friendly film, but you have three dimensional characters with three dimensional problems, and everything comes together in a warm and human way.
Executive Steve Bradford (James Cagney) tells his company he is taking a leave of absence with no explanation. Nice work if you can get it. And in the 1950s you generally could. Bradford's reason for his absence is his plan to reunite with the son that was put up for adoption twenty years before.
Bradford finds the orphanage that his son was adopted through, and immediately tries to get information out of the woman who runs the unwed mothers' home, Ann Dempster (Barbara Stanwyck). He takes her at first to be an easy mark. To get the information he tries charm. He tries money. But this is Babs we are talking about. She does not back down from her position of protecting the identity of the children and the adopted parents. So Bradford tries hard ball and takes her to court based on charges of fraud. Ann shows up in court with transcripts of what happened when the mother of his child was in court twenty years before prior to the child's birth. Bradford's own words were it was not his problem if some girl was in trouble, that he barely knew the girl. That he was in Peoria at the time, honest. He had washed his hands of all responsibility. The judge throws out the charge, and Bradford has a dose of what he was really like all those years before and eats the entire humble pie.
He gives up. Does Bradford go home empty handed then? Nope. Does he meet his son? Yep. Are either of these things related? Watch and find out.
These are great mature roles for both Stanwyck and Cagney. Cagney is good as the tough businessman. Babs is great as the overseer of the unwed mothers' home who, just because she asks you to sit down and offers you a cup of tea is not a pushover. This is one of those - "They teamed once and should have teamed again" efforts. It has everything that the waning production code would want in a family friendly film, but you have three dimensional characters with three dimensional problems, and everything comes together in a warm and human way.