Room for One More

TCM ran a bunch of family-friendly movies over the Thanksgiving holiday, so I took that opportunity to watch Room for One More.

Cary Grant plays George Rose, a civil engineer for the small city in which he lives, married to Anna (Grant's real-life wife at the time Betsy Drake), with three children and too many pets -- Anna takes strays in, much to George's constant irritation.

He's about to get more irritated. Not only does a dog show up, but another human does, too. Anna and the other members of the local PTA have made a visit of one of the orphanages for older children who can't be adopted, and after the visit, administrator Miss Kenyon (Lurene Tuttle) knows of a case that would be just right for the Roses to take in as a foster child on a trial basis. Anna pretty much accepts without even discussing it with George, which should be a serious red flag in any marriage, but somehow this marriage survives.

Jane (Iris Mann) is about 16, so older than the Roses' own children, and has a lot of problems. Her father died and Mom didn't want her, so she has serious abandonment issues and doesn't expect the Roses to want to keep putting her up after the two-week trial period. Somehow, though, the Roses -- Anna especially -- are just such magically good parents that they're able to keep Anna, who grows to like living with the Roses.

But if one foster child isn't bad enough, Anna inflicts a second, much more difficult case on George. Jimmy John (Clifford Tatum Jr.) is a boy of about 10 with polio, who wears leg braces and has become extremely withdrawn as a result of all the times he spent in hospital. It's to the point that he doesn't talk at all, and can't read either. Anna is determined to help him, but he's going to be a much more difficult case. And then both Jimmy John and Jane have serious problems over the Christmas holidays....

Room for One More is a movie looking at a topic that didn't get much mention in the movies, that of foster parenthood. There's always been adoption of infants, as in the recently mentioned My Blue Heaven or Cary Grant's earlier Penny Serenade, but the emotional difficulties of older children in need of a stable home weren't discussed very often. In that way, Room for One More is a really nice addition to the family movie genre.

But I also had some pretty big problems with this one, notably in the relationship between Anna and George, as well as the fact that everybody's problems seemed to be solved way too neatly. I can't help but feel Jane would have had problems for a lot longer than two weeks, for example, while in the real world nobody would have let Jimmy John try to get his Scouting merit badge in the dead of winter.

Still, Room for One More is definitely worth a watch, and available at Amazon on a Warner Archive DVD as well as from the Prime streaming video.