Blossoms in the Dust

Released Jul 25, 1941

1h 40m

Biography

List

33%

Tomatometer

9 Reviews

70%

Audience Score

250+ Ratings

Edna Gladney lost her son when he was very young. By chance she discovered the injustice within the law towards children whose parents are unknown, and decided to open an orphanage for these children, despite the stigma. She fought against the unfair laws that discriminated against children born out of wedlock.

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Variety Staff

Variety

Result is a sentimentally sugary flavor which also extends over the romantic portions of the film. There is no comedy relief.

Mar 26, 2009

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Tom Milne

Time Out

Pretty Technicolor, but the tearjerking is shameless.

Jun 24, 2006

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Bosley Crowther

New York Times

With lovely Greer Garson playing the leading role, the spirit of the story is maintained on a level generally above its frequent insipid spots.

Rated: 3.5/5

Mar 25, 2006

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Elena de la Torre

Cine-Mundial

A magnificent movie made from the biography of this exemplary lady (Edna Gladney). [Full review in Spanish]

Sep 19, 2019

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TV Guide

It was a noble deed and a noble effort to make a biography about a woman who was virtually unknown outside Texas, but the picture was long, overly teary, and didn't excite too many people at the box office, although it did make money.

Rated: 2.5/4

Jan 31, 2012

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David Cornelius

DVDTalk.com

Littered with stilted melodrama, wooden dialogue, and over-the-top courtroom showdowns.

Rated: 2/5

Dec 11, 2008

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david l

Blossoms in the Dust deals with an inspirational figure and message as it tackles an issue rarely portrayed in movies of the period. Greer Garson entirely steals the show with an outstanding central performance. But others were inferior, the movie is badly paced and it felt obviously manipulative in its intentions to make audiences cry with some overly manufactured melodramatic plot points.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

I really enjoyed this movie, Everyone in the movie played their part very well. My only upsetting thing about the movie was some awful music at certain times in the movie. the lady who ran the orphans home had an african american man and woman who worked for her helping take care of the children. And in several scenes (that were not comedy scenes) when one of the black actors came in the scene they started playing awful banjo music like you might see in a movie about slavery. The people were not servants, they were not playing comedic characters and i found it very offensive. I cant believe greer garsen or any of the other prominent actors didnt protest till they removed that awful out of place music.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/08/23

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Steve D

Shameless tearjerker with little to recommend.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

06/04/23

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Audience Member

I liked it a lot. The movie does move thru things fast, but it only has 2 hours to explain the enormous work on adoption this woman did. Since it moves fast, you don't get bored either, but some things could've been delved a bit deeper. Some of the story is fictitious, but a lot of it is true like her work at the orphanage, getting bills past, and her husband dying. I thought the lead actress did a great job. It's a tearjerker for sure. I can't believe how they treated orphans. Bless this lil Texan lady!!

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/15/23

Full Review

rose a

I love this movie it is very moving and Greer is always a great actress. I don't see how anyone wouldn't love this movie. I guess if you are very young and all you want to see is ACTION movies.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

I was not alive in the 1940s but I imagine that by the mid-1940s I would have Greer Garson fatigue as her various star vehicles in which she played the exact same character, noble, supportive, resilient and above all respectable, offered very little in the way of interest. This was a film made right before she peaked with the World War II propaganda film Mrs. Miniver (1942) but it did a lot to establish her persona and set her off on a streak of Academy Award nominations that was not to end until 1945. I am not a fan of her persona and because her supposed charms were clearly meant to carry the film I recognized it's weaknesses more easily and was left disappointed at the end of the film despite my low expectations of it from the outset. Wealthy Wisconsinite Edna Kahly, Greer Garson, plans to marry Damon McPherson, John Eldredge, but falls in love with the impetuous Texan cashier Sam Gladney, and chooses to leave behind all that she has known to be with him. She is devastated when her adopted sister Charlotte, Marsha Hunt, who had planned to marry on the same day as her commits suicide as a result of her illegitimacy being revealed by her future mother in law. Edna faces another trial when her child Sammy, Richard Nichols, dies after only a year but she finds a way to emotionally fulfill herself in the absence of children by taking in abandoned and unwanted children. After Gladney loses his job the couple are forced to relocate and in Fort Worth, Texas he finds employment and she opens a home for unwanted and illegitimate children. She becomes very close to the children she takes in, especially the crippled Tony, Pat Barker, and after bridling at a story similar to that of her sister's she launches a successful campaign to have illegitimacy removed from birth certificates. The big issue with the film was in it's structure as it is one of those films where things just happen with no real connective tissue and the film lands at an expected but abrupt ending. The amount of tragedy that this woman faces is probably meant to make the film an effective tearjerker as the pain piles on and yet she keeps going. Unfortunately each of these horribly depressing occurrences is glossed over and it was unrealistic to believe that a woman would recover from the death of her child so quickly or nobly stand by as her husband dies. While this would based on a true story it was a largely fictionalized version of her life and I tend to believe that she would not have bounced back from all the tragedy in her life so quickly. She was probably a deeply damaged woman who struggled to repress her emotions and retained much of the anger and resentment she felt from her youth. Another way in which the film is not helped is in Garson's performance as she is too glamorous and emotionally distant for an audience to believe as a woman facing so much stress. There are long periods in which the film will simply stop to admire Garson's face and they were uncomfortable for me as in the same scenes we are asked to believe that this woman is caring for several children every day. The film never really shows us any of the difficulties that would occur in the day to day life of this woman as we only see her tucking in individual children and appearing mildly concerned while sipping tea. Garson spends most of her time giving those glib smiles that the camera seems to adore so much. She is let down in part by the fact that the film will often cut away from her emotional reactions to horrific events and the jump into another scene in which she has a sickly smile plastered to her face. Even in these moments I think she could have given something more as there was something artificial about her portrayal that she never quite got over and it was hard to swallow her inert characterization. Often listed among the worst films nominated for Best Picture this is a film that earns it's reputation as a real failure.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

02/01/23

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Mervyn LeRoy

Director

Greer Garson

Edna Gladney

Walter Pidgeon

Sam Gladney

Felix Bressart

Dr. Max Breslar

Marsha Hunt

Charlotte

Fay Holden

Mrs. Kahly

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Synopsis

Edna Gladney lost her son when he was very young. By chance she discovered the injustice within the law towards children whose parents are unknown, and decided to open an orphanage for these children, despite the stigma. She fought against the unfair laws that discriminated against children born out of wedlock.

Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Production Co: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Genre: Biography
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Jul 25, 1941, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Jan 1, 2009
Runtime: 1h 40m

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