Tenth Avenue Angel (1948)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Roy Rowland

Writers:

Angna Enters (story)
Eleanore Griffin (writer)

Release Date:

20 February 1948 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Flavia's been told that her Aunt Susan's fiancé, Steve, has been on a trip around the world, but in truth he's finished his prison term...

Plot Keywords:

Little Girl | Lie | Christmas | Gullibility | Ex Convict

Cast

Margaret O'Brien	...	Flavia Mills
Angela Lansbury	...	Susan Bratten
George Murphy	...	Steve Abbutt
Phyllis Thaxter	...	Helen Mills
Warner Anderson	...	Joseph Mills
Rhys Williams	...	Blind Mac
Barry Nelson	...	Al Parker
Connie Gilchrist	...	Mrs. Murphy
Tom Trout	...	Daniel Oliver Madson
Richard Tyler	...	Jimmy Madson (as Dickie Tyler)
Henry Blair	...	Rad Ardley
Charles Cane	...	Parole Officer
Richard Lane	...	Street Vendor

Runtime:

74 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Finland:S | USA:Approved

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

Filmed between March 11 and May 15, 1946, with retakes shot in April 1947, the movie was held back until its nationwide release on February 20, 1948. Moreover, the picture was not given a contemporary New York Times review.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Flavia brings home a loaf of "dark bread, your daddy's favorite", as her mother says. One look at the wrapper clearly reveals it to be Wonder Bread, which at the time made only white bread.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Forecast (1945)

Idealized poverty plus Margaret O'Brien make for a very sugary holiday treat

A second- or third-string feel-good movie trundled out perennially as the holidays draw nigh, Tenth Avenue Angel will charm or irritate viewers in proportion to their responses to Margaret O'Brien, who stays front and center throughout. Best known for stealing Meet Me in St. Louis away from Judy Garland, she was 11 years old at the time of this, her 17th film role, and her precocious tomboy routine was running on fumes.

The story's set in the Depression year of 1936, in the shadow of the El in Hell's Kitchen, where O'Brien lives in proud poverty with her parents and aunt (Angela Lansbury). Lansbury's set to marry George Murphy, who's been `away;' O'Brien thinks he was in Australia, although he was doing a stretch up the river. Coming to learn the truth over the course of the movie, and in the process discarding other falsehoods foisted on childhood, ushers her from girlish innocence to the dawning of grown-up wisdom. It's that kind of movie.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but....

In almost a counterrevolutionary movement against the cynical world-view of newly-hatched film noir, the late ‘40s also saw a spate of movies whose view of American family life was glacéed in sentimentality. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (which this movie resembles, with petty crime instead of alcoholism) was one; that canonized Christmas classic It's A Wonderful Life another. (I Remember Mama was the pick of the litter.) Struggling to make ends meet was gift-wrapped as ennobling, good for stiffening the backbone; hardship never bred discord or dysfunction. Maybe being poor once had its plus side, when most people were barely staying afloat in their small and leaky crafts. Or, if not, maybe the myth was necessary. At any rate, most of us will no doubt be finding out the truth for ourselves in very short order.