Our Very Own ** (1950, Ann Blyth, Farley Granger, Joan Evans, Jane Wyatt, Ann Dvorak, Donald Cook, Natalie Wood) – Classic Movie Review 8,783

The good-hearted, sentimental 1950 drama film Our Very Own is lovingly crafted but largely wastes the talents of Ann Blyth, Farley Granger and a 12-year-old Natalie Wood.

Director David Miller’s good-hearted, sentimental American drama film 1950 Our Very Own is lovingly crafted but largely wastes the talents of Ann Blyth, Farley Granger and a 12-year-old Natalie Wood.

Blyth goes through the motions as Gail Macaulay, a teenager who discovers that she has been adopted and therefore thinks that she is not her adoptive mother Jane Wyatt’s very own. Worse still, young Blyth finds her real mother Mrs Lynch (Ann Dvorak) at the wrong end of town, but, happily, then finds comfort in the arms of nice, gleamingly handsome young Chuck (Granger).

Farley Granger stars as the gleamingly handsome young Chuck.

Alas, this soggy saga of Middle American life did nothing for anyone’s career, but it does boast some charm, a nice 1950 period atmosphere and several appealing performances. Wood plays Blyth’s younger sister, Penny. Also in the cast are Joan Evans as Joan Macaulay, Jane Wyatt as Mrs Lois Macaulay, Donald Cook as Fred Macaulay, Martin Milner as Bert, Gus Schilling, Phyllis Kirk as Zaza, Jessica Grayson (in her final film) as Violet, Rita Hamilton, Ray Teal as Jim Lynch and Harold Lloyd Jr.

The main problem is the too soft and over-simple family values screenplay written by F Hugh Herbert. Farley Granger recalled the screenplay as ‘pointless and meandering’ and thought the director David Miller was ‘a perfectly nice man but no help to anybody’.

Jane Wyatt disliked her role as an advice-dispensing mother, until she was cast a few years later in the hit TV series Father Knows Best as a direct result of her performance in Our Very Own.

Universal lent Ann Blyth to Samuel Goldwyn Productions.

Release date: July 27, 1950.

It fared quite well at the box office, taking $2,050,000 in US rentals.

Our Very Own is directed by David Miller, runs 93 minutes, is made by The Samuel Goldwyn Company [Samuel Goldwyn Productions], is released by RKO Radio Pictures (1950), is written by F Hugh Herbert, is shot in black and white by Lee Garmes, is produced by Samuel Goldwyn, is scored by Victor Young, and is designed by Richard Day.

Ann Blyth (born Anne Marie Blythe on 16 August 1928)

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8,783

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