Plot Summary for
The Children's Hour (1961) More at IMDbPro »

Karen Wright and Martha Dobie are best friends since college and they own the boarding school Wright and Dobie School for Girls with twenty students. They are working hard as headmistresses and teachers to grow the school and make it profitable. Karen is engaged with the local doctor Joe Cardin, who is the nephew of the powerful and influent Mrs. Amelia Tilford. While the spiteful and liar Mary, who is Amelia's granddaughter and a bad influence to the other girls, is punished by Karen after telling a lie, Martha has an argument with her snoopy aunt Lily Mortar in another room. Lily accuses Martha of being jealous and having an unnatural relationship with Karen. Mary's roommate Rosalie Wells and a friend overhear the shouting and tells Mary what Mrs. Mortar had said about her niece. The malicious Mary accuses Karen and Martha of being lesbians to her grandmother and Amelia spreads the gossip to the parents of the students that withdraw them from the school. Karen and Martha lose a lawsuit against Amelia and have their lives destroyed. Further, Karen calls off her engagement with Joe when he asks her if what was said about Martha and she was true. The lie ends in a tragedy. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

A private school for young girls is scandalized when one spiteful student, Mary Tilford, accuses the two young women who run the school of having a lesbian relationship. Written by A.L.Beneteau <albl@inforamp.net>

Best friends Karen Wright and Martha Dobie are headmistresses at a successful private school for girls in New England. Mary Tilford, a spiteful, angry child, is caught in a lie and punished. In retaliation she tells her grandmother, a matriarch in the town, that Martha was "jealous" of Karen's relationship with Dr. Joe Cardin, and tells that Martha's Aunt Lily thought those feelings were "unnatural." Grandma believes her and pulls Mary out of school. The word quickly spreads and within days Karen and Martha are faced with empty classrooms. Joe is fired from the hospital for siding with the teachers. Karen and Martha sue for slander in a case that makes national headlines. Written by filmfactsman

Related Links