THE HAPPY FAMILY

THE HAPPY FAMILY

(Part 3 of SCARLET WOMEN, BASTARDS, AND HAPPY FAMILIES:

Cinematic Representations of Adoption)

By Marley Elizabeth Greiner
maddogmarley@worldnet.att.net

Starting in the 1920s adoption became trendy in Hollywood, and by the next decade, many of the stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood had adopted children into their families. George Burns and Gracie Allen, Wallace Beery, Bob and Delores Hope, Joan Fontaine, Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler, Constance Bennett, Jimmy Cagney, Perry Como, Irene Dunn, Barbara Lamarr, Hedy Lamarr, C. B. DeMille, Ray Milland, Dick Powell and June Allyson, Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, Anne Shirley, and of course, Joan Crawford, all adopted children—some more legally than others. The popularity of adoption in Hollywood had a profound impact on the production of adoption-themed films—especially the happy adoption films of the 1940s and 1950s—films which affirmed bourgeois family values and acknowledged that adoption was an acceptable way to build a family. Below is a discussion of several films representative of the era of the happy adoption.

Sentimental History:

One of the most influential pro-adoption films made in this era is multi-Academy Award nominated Blossoms in the Dust (1941), a pseudo-historical and sentimental look at child welfare and adoption. Blossoms possesses none of the social realism or grittiness of the contemporaneous Dead End, Boys Town and They Made Me A Criminal, nor the patriotic feminism of the Fallen Women films. Starring Greer Garson as Edna Gladney, the film is based on the life of the Gladney adoption agency's founder. The script, while strong, had little to do with Edna Gladney’s “real” life and the film falls somewhere between that era's great film biopics of Louis Pasteur, Lady Hamilton and Benito Juarez, and the fictionalized Cole Porter bio Night and Day. Since no serious historical study has been done on Edna Gladney, it is somewhat difficult to separate truth from fiction in this film. We do know that, unlike the film, Gladney had no foster sister who committed suicide on the eve of her wedding upon learning that she was a "foundling." Nor did she look like Greer Garson or wear Jean Louis gowns. We do know, however, that Gladney was indeed a pioneer of modern adoption practice in Texas and was instrumental in destigmatizing bastards and adopted children by getting the word “illegitimate” removed from Texas birth certificates. This accomplishment however, is presented in a vacuum, when in fact, similar campaigns had been waged for years by social work professionals in other states. Garson's rousing film speech, based on Gladney's actual speech to the Texas Legislature in which she declares, "there is no such thing as illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents", stirs the Bastard heart so strongly, that it is possible for a moment to forget that Gladney turned around and re-stigmatized adoptees as adults through her advocacy of secret adoption and sealed records.

Blossoms in the Dust influenced a generation of couples to adopt. It made people think about the stigma of illegitimacy, and even quite possibly helped create the culture that allowed records to be sealed.

Odd Couples

Early adoption films focused on the fallen woman. The biological mother gives up her baby but is often able to reassert her mother-right by the end of the film—usually through the untimely death of the birthfather’s wife, and her subsequent reunion with her lover and their child. Two films, The Old Maid (1939) and The Great Lie (1941), broke with tradition and played against type, exploring the relationship between birth and adoptive mothers, and the shared but missing lover/ husband and the baby, the object of desire who represents him.

The Old Maid, based on the Edith Wharton novel of the same name, starred Bette Davis as Charlotte Lovell and her studio rival Miriam Hopkins as Delia Lovell, cousins in love with the same man: ne'er-do-well Clem, played by George Brent. On the day of Delia's marriage into a proper family --and conveniently on the eve of the Civil War-- Clem returns to claim the bride for himself, but is rejected. Charlotte assumes the role of comforter and ends up pregnant, while Clem gets himself killed off halfway through the first reel. Charlotte, determined to have her baby in secrecy and to keep it, hides out in Arizona. Several years later she returns with her daughter, Clementine (aka Tina) in tow claiming that the child is a war orphan. Charlotte subsequently opens an orphanage in her home, much to the dismay of Delia who finds her cousin's devotion to Tina peculiar and not quite up to respectable snuff. When Charlotte has financial difficulties and Delia learns that Tina is Clem's daughter, she persuades Charlotte to let the girl move in with her and her family, and later to adopt Tina, which Charlotte reluctantly agrees to for Tina's future security. Thus, the nurturing, vivacious Charlotte turns into the Plain Jane old maid, sexually guilty and niggling Tina over nice girl behavior, convinced, much like Peyton Place's Constance McKenzie's, that Tina will "go bad" just like she did.

Played within the framework of antebellum soap, the heart of the film is the relationship between the cousins. Rivals in love, rivals in motherhood, the two women forge an uneasy truce for Tina's sake. Charlotte regretfully takes on the role of the crank and the nag, ridiculed for her old-fashioned ways and school marm appearance, the butt of Tina's jokes---while she watches her cousin reap the benefits of her secret daughter's devotion. Twenty years of resentment, deceit and lies break open the night before Tina's marriage to a wealthy young local when Charlotte threatens to tell Tina the truth about her parentage. In the tense climax, Charlotte goes to Tina's room, fully intent on telling her the truth, while Delia stands on the steps in fear of what the truth will bring. Then in a moment of Stella Dallas clarity, Charlotte, realizing that she will only destroy Tina, kisses her--something she had apparently not done since Tina was a child--and leaves the room to join Delia. By the end of the film, both Charlotte and Delia make peace with themselves and the past, content that they have co-mothered their daughter.

A not-so-tolerable and often disturbing relationship is explored in The Great Lie, a film that subtlely turns the birth mother/adoptive mother stereotype on its ear. First wife/concert pianist Sandra Kovac (Mary Astor) and second wife/horsy set Maggie (Bette Davis) form a symbiotic relationship—an odd couple, after their shared husband, Peter Van Allen (George Brent), is reported missing in a plane crash in the Amazon region. Unlike today's uneasy gal pal feminist films, (or The Old Maid) where enemies at least come to respect each other, Sandra and Maggie, operate their Mutual Aversion Society throughout the film.

Sandra, married to Peter during a night of heavy clubbing, finds herself pregnant after their quickie divorce and his subsequent even quicker marriage to his true love, Maggie. Career or motherhood? It never seems to be a real question for sophisticated Sandra who looks good in beaded dresses and has a personal hairdresser. Jealous of Sandra's fertility though she had shown no previous penchant for motherhood, Maggie grabs at the chance to take the baby off Sandra's hands. Maggie fakes her own pregnancy, and spirits Sandra off to a shack in Arizona where the two play house in some beautifully bitchy scenes written by Astor and Davis.

While Sandra is ambivalent about her own baby, Maggie attaches herself to Sandra's baby in utero, seemingly convinced that God make a mistake putting the Van Allen baby in Sandra's tummy instead of hers. Maggie, cloyingly concerned about Sandra’s health, takes control of her rival's life, demanding that Sandra pay the price for her fertility--or more likely, her fling with Peter. No drinking, no smoking, no onions. And plenty of vitamins. After one particularly unpleasant. attempt to force Sandra to comply with her prissy regimen, Maggie slugs Sandra in the face. Sandra, who likes to refer to herself as a "healthy woman with a healthy appetite," retaliates by slouching around in a terrycloth bathrobe, smashing classical 78's, and wanting the whole unpleasant business to be over with.

After the birth, Maggie returns home with "her" baby, whom she promptly deifies as Peter Van Allen, Jr. Sandra goes on an overseas tour. Both women are determined not only to avoid each other, but to ensure that no one, not even the baby, will ever know the truth. As fate would have it, the missing Van Allen Sr. is mysteriously recovered in the Amazon and returns to Maggie and his new son, dumb to what has transpired between his wives. So dumb, in fact, that he is eager for this odd menage to pal around together. The climax comes when Sandra visits the Van Allens for a weekend, planning to out Maggie and snag Peter for herself through the baby. In some touching scenes, Sandra emotionally connects with her son for the first time, especially when she learns that he already has an ear for music. Maggie frets, eyerolls, and whines over the impending loss of her illegitimate family. At the last minute Sandra decides to take the moral high road. Watching Maggie, Peter and the baby together in a family scene, she announces she must return to the city; thus sacrificing her own happiness and mother love for the sake of her son's future with the only family he knows.

The Happy Family

Adoption was expected to painlessly make the incomplete family complete. Adoption-related films moved out of women's weepies, classical adaptations and the children's ghetto (discussed in the previous installments of this series) and appeared in all genres: Westerns (Jack Ass Mail, 1942; Shepherd of the Hills, 1941; Duel in the Sun, 1946; Red River, 1948; The Searchers, 1956; The Unforgiven, 1960 ); Mysteries (After The Thin Man, 1936; Family Plot, 1976); War (The Search, 1948; This Man's Navy, 1945; The Proud and the Profane, 1956); Horror (The Cat People , 1942); Film Noir (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946; The Bad Seed, 1956); and Musicals (Daddy Long Legs, 1955). Adoption also became a standard comedic plot. Bundle of Joy (1956) and Tunnel of Love (1958) played confused paternity and adoption for laughs. The fabulous Auntie Mame (1958) made us all wish that we'd been adopted by an eccentric relative. Room for One More (1952), a Cary Grant/Betsy Drake comedy in which the couple adopts what would now be termed "special needs" older children, received a special mention award in the Films for Children Fete at the Venice Film Festival, citing its "positive treatment of social problems regarding childhood and adolescence." Walt Disney created a number of adoption- themed cartoon shorts: The Orphan's Benefit 1934, and 1941; The Three Orphan Kittens,1935; and the Orphan's Picnic, 1936. Hal Roach Studios produced the Our Gang shorts, Choo-Choo (1932) and Kiddie Kure (1940). The Three Stooges played in the quintessential ungrateful bastard short, Three Lone Wolves (1946), in which their adult adopted son, left as a marker by his mother at their pawnshop years before, dumps his dads when she returns. Even Lupe Velez got into the act with Mexican Spitfire's Baby (1941).

Two films which attempted to discuss infertility and adoption in a sympathetic manner while teaching the public about the adoption process are Ida Lupino's surprisingly sensitive The Bigamist (1953) and the sentimental Penny Serenade (1941). The Bigamist, told in flashback, is the story of well-to-do wholesale refrigeration dealer Harry Graham (Edmond O'Brien) and his wife Eve (Joan Fontaine). When Eve learns that she in infertile she throws herself into their business, making it highly profitable and enabling them to live in a posh apartment with a great view of the ocean. Secretly grieving her infertility, Eve realizes how much she'd like a child and how important her family and friends are to her when her father dies. When she tells Harry that she'd like to pass that love and care on to a child who needs it, Harry balks but finally agrees to contact a local agency.

While the Grahams are clearly financially successful, Julie (Irene Dunn) and her reporter husband Roger Adams (Cary Grant) in Penny Serenade are dreamers with little money. The opening scenes of the film set the tone--children make a marriage. Even during their early dates, Julie is thinking about the babies she'll have one day. After Julie recovers from a miscarriage and is unable to conceive any more children, she takes the advice of family friend Uncle AppleJack (Edgar Buchanan), himself an adoptee, and tells Roger that she wants to adopt. Like Harry Graham, Roger, who is clearly not child oriented, hesitates, but eventually comes around.

Several common schemes appear in both these films before they diverge in totally different directions. Both sets of PAPs (potential adoptive parents) think they can just order up a kid and it will be delivered to them that same afternoon, and both are put out when they learn they will be investigated. Harry Graham, of course, has something very big to hide, as suggested in the title of the film. The social workers who handle the adoptions are portrayed as benevolent, conscientious and thorough. Edmund Gwen in The Bigamist is compared to Santa Claus, and Beulah Bondi in Penny Serenade is a kindly aunt. More important, the idea that adoption is for children who need homes (rather than for homes that need children) is stressed repeatedly. Interestingly, from today's viewpoint when HWIs (healthy white infants) are at a premium, Eve and Harry specifically request a child 5-6 years old who is in the custody of the State, and Julie and Roger want a two-year old boy with blond curly hair, blue eyes, and dimples. Bondi's social worker declares that older children are scarce and that the Adamses will have to settle for a newborn. Roger grudgingly agrees to take home 5-week old Baby Fleetwood after, in grand adoptee style, she grabs his finger. As Bondi offers to give the new parents the baby's history, (still common practice in 1939) Roger scoops the baby up in his arms and runs out the door shouting, "If she's willing to take a chance on us, then we can take a chance on her," thus facilitating the clean slate for baby theory. Roger quickly falls in love with the baby whom they name Trina. When finalization time arrives, however, the Adamses are broke, their smalltown newspaper having folded and Roger with no job offers. Bondi helps as much as she can, but finally the devastated couple are ordered to return Trina to the agency for re-placement with a more financially suitable couple. Julie quietly packs up Trina's little suitcase and Roger takes the toddler to the courthouse where he intends to turn her over to Bondi. Then, inspired by his unfolding personal tragedy, Roger speaks out eloquently, defending adoption, declaring his love for his daughter, imploring the judge to let him keep his baby--while Trina (Baby Biffle) sits in a chair and watches unaware that her fate is in Daddy's hands. Trina goes home with Daddy.

Up until this point, Penny Serenade has been an entertaining, sweet and sentimental adoption advocacy film, with sympathetic and humane characters. From here it takes an inexplicable dark and ugly turn. After a short mysterious illness just before Christmas, Trina dies. (Could that medical history that the Adamses rejected have helped?) Roger drinks and Julie cries. The center of their life, the core of their marriage, is gone. Social worker Bondi, dismayed at their downturn of fortune, locates a 2-year old-- the exact order that Roger had placed several years earlier. In the closing scene, the once-more hopeful couple is seen , arms around each other, standing in front of Trina's bedroom discussing redecoration plans, as if Trina, who has been dead only three weeks, had never existed. She is obliterated like an old coat of paint.-a nasty warning for adopted children--or all children for that matter.

Contemporary Film

Starting in the mid-1970s, adoption-related films, reflecting the changes wrought by the sexual revolution, moved away from simple Fallen Women and bourgeois Happy Family films to address contemporary social and legal issues surrounding bastardy and adoption. Most of these films are hardly great art, and usually do not deviate from the traditional melodramatic (and sometimes outrageous) formula, especially the made-for-TV selections. Nonetheless they represent a corpus of films that on the whole "normalize" and destigmatize single motherhood, illegitimacy, adoption, search and reunion--and even to a small extent, adoptee civil rights.

The Girls of Huntington House (1973) recounts life in a maternity home, and I Want To Keep My Baby (1976) starring 15-year old Mariel Hemingway, portrays an intimate and moving portrait of an unwed teenager's unsuccessful struggle to rear her baby on her own. Carol Schaeffer's account of her relinquishment and reunion, The Other Mother (1995), produced by NBC, appears several times a year on cable, and is considered by many to be the best film of its type. Another first rate film, A Child Lost Forever (1992), is an account of a birth mother who learns that her relinquished child has been murdered by his adoptive mother. Our Son The Matchmaker (1996) and Second Chance (1997) are based on true stories of reunited adoptees who bring their birth parents together romantically. Second Chance, like The Other Mother, is notable for the well-scripted confrontation between birth mother Lindsay Wagner and a social worker who informs her that her records are sealed and that she has no business learning anything about her daughter. The Black Market Baby (1977) and Where Are My Children? (1994) tell stories of illegal or unethical relinquishment and adoption. Whose Daughter Is She? (1995) features the return of a mother who abandoned her daughter 10 years earlier. One of the most convoluted plots appears in Dirty Little Secret where birth mother Tracey Gold and the adoptive mother of her son join forces to bring down County Sheriff Jack Wagner who not only fathered Gold's child through rape while she was in police custody, but then forced her to relinquish the baby to him and his wife, who had no idea of the circumstances surrounding the birth. Surrogacy is explored in Baby M, an account of the Mary Beth Whitehead/Baby M affair.

While birth mothers are often the subject of this new generation of films, adoptees take on new importance becoming masters of their fate, not just bit players as in the past.. Flirting With Disaster (1996) features Ben Stiller's comedic and desperate cross-country hunt for his birth parents. The Academy Award nominated Mike Leigh film Secrets and Lies (1997) is a sensitive and often funny portrayal of reunion and reconciliation between a black adoptee and her white working class mum. Secrets and Lies also shows how an adult adoptee in England can easily access her entire adoption file. Redwood Curtain (1995) tells the story of an adopted teen in search of her Viet Nam War veteran father. Loner adoptee Wynona Rider is convinced that her birth mother is actually a local celebrity in Welcome Home, Roxie Carmichael. LDA (Late-discovery adoptee) issues are explored in the highly acclaimed A Family Thing (1996), High-Line (1998) and sensationally in Always Remember I Love You, the story of a young LDA who learns he was kidnapped at birth and goes in search of his biological parents. Lou Diamond Phillips', Sioux City (1994), despite its weak ending, tells an effective story of a Lakota adoptee's return to his native roots when he investigates the murder of his birth mother. In the first-rate film The Cleaner (1994) Natalie Portman convinces hitman Jean Reno, (who unwillingly, unofficially adopts her) to teach her his trade in order to avenge the murder of her family by renegade DEA agent Gary Oldman. The Nightmare on Elm Street series (1984-1997) and Natural Enemy (1997) with their bizarre Adopted Child Syndrome scenarios, portray adoptees as psychos.

Formerly the centerpiece of adoption films, adoptive parents are almost an afterthought in some of these new films, and are often played in a passive or victim position. Broken Promises: Taking Back Emily (1993), Losing Isaiah (1995) and the one-sided account of the DeBoers case, Whose Child Is This: The War for Baby Jessica(1995) explore disrupted adoptions. In To Find My Son (1980) Richard Thomas struggles as a single man to adopt a "problematic 8-year old." Dennis Quaid plays an earth soldier forced by circumstances to rear the son of his alien enemy, Louis Gossett, Jr, in the strangely engaging science fiction film Enemy Mine (1985), and Woody Allen pursues his adopted son's birth mother in Mighty Aphrodite (1995). In The Tie That Binds (1995), adoptive parents are forced to literally fight for their lives when criminally insane birth parents track them down and try to steal back their daughter.

Finally, several documentaries about adoption have been released in the last few years. Performance artist Reno's postmodern docu-comedy, Reno Finds Her Mom (1997), with cameo appearances by Lily Tomlin, Mary Tyler Moore, and Joe Soll, raises secret adoption to new heights of absurdity, and explains as no other film has, the venality of the sealed records system. Other documentaries take a more serious and traditional look at adoption. Adopting Olya (1995) tells the story of a Russian adoption, Welcome to Sarajevo: Natasha's Story documents the adoption of a girl from Sarajevo during the War in Yugoslavia; and First Person Plural (2000), by Korean-American filmmaker Deann Borshay, is an account of her search for her roots. New documentaries include Dear Jesse (1997), a look at what happens when a gay filmmaker goes home to explore his family's similarities with local-boy-made-good, Jesse Helms; Lost Innocents (1998), a disturbing HBO-produced look at orphans, street children, and child selling around the world; and the historical documentary The Orphan's Train (1997) join the pioneer adoption documentary Who Are the DeBolts And Why Did They Adopt 19 Kids? (1977) in the small but growing adoption documentary field.

German cultural historian Siegfried Kracauer says that films reflect the mentality of the nation that makes them. The current crop of theatrical and made-for-TV adoption films reflect the growing openness in adoption. While still centered on sentimental search and reunion stories, films such as Secrets and Lies, Flirting with Disaster, and especially Reno Finds Her Mom bring up the issue of open records and adoptee civil rights. Hopefully in the future we will see more films dealing with the political realities of adoption.

Marley Greiner is a Co-founder and Executive Committee member of Bastard Nation. Marley also heads the MOB - MadOhio Bastards, which has been instrumental in educating Ohio citizens on adoptee civil rights through direct action and press outreach.

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(This feature appeared in the Winter 2001 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)