NR | 1 hr 14 min | Family, Drama | 1948
In “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944), Judy Garland sang “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to her little sister, who was played by 7-year-old Margaret O’Brien. Ms. O’Brien was MGM’s most popular child actress of the 1940s.
Ms. O’Brien performed in “Tenth Avenue Angel” from 1948; it’s not a Christmas classic, nor is it remembered as one of her best-known performances. In fact, few people have ever heard of this movie, which was a financial failure when it was first released. Except for a young Lansbury who played Ms. O’Brien’s aunt, most of Ms. O’Brien’s co-stars are not remembered today. But this forgotten gem deserves to be rediscovered because of its heartwarming story and its beautiful Christmas message.
A Childhood Story
Flavia Mills, played by Ms. O’Brien, is a little girl who lives in the poor Tenth Avenue area of New York City during the Great Depression. Her father (Warner Anderson) gives violin lessons; her mother (Phyllis Thaxter) tells whimsical fairy tales that enchant her daughter and which Flavia wholeheartedly believes. Mrs. Mills’s younger sister Susan (Lansbury) lives with the family.Flavia is very excited because her old friend, Steve Abbott (George Murphy), is coming home soon after traveling around the world. Little does Flavia know that Steve, a friendly cab driver and Susan’s fiancé, actually has been in jail for the past 18 months because he drove the getaway car on a robbery.
Now that he’s coming back, Susan is ready to help him put his past behind him as his wife. Steve wants to turn over a new leaf, but he doesn’t think he can ever escape the reputation of being an ex-convict in the old neighborhood. He plans to work at his old garage washing cars during his six months of parole and then to leave town. However, he won’t leave his friends in the old neighborhood if Flavia has anything to do with it.
Magic and Myths
Flavia is the darling of her neighborhood. On one roller skate, she pushes herself across the sidewalks and streets like she has a skateboard strapped to one foot. When strangers scold her for fearlessly crossing the traffic-filled street, she replies, “Why not? It’s my street.” She isn’t a defiant child, but she has a strong will and won’t let anyone push her around. One of her favorite things to do is help her friends, such as Mac (Rhys Williams), a blind newspaper salesman, by keeping his newspapers in stock while Mac doles out words of wisdom and amicable companionship in return.Flavia isn’t gullible; she can see through a flimflam razor salesman’s shady business tactics. However, she has great faith in her family and closest friends, like Mac and especially Steve. Like many parents, Flavia’s mother tells her fairytales and folk stories about luck, wishes, and other harmless myths. She doesn’t mean any harm by it; she just wants to put a little magic into her life.
Flavia believes everything her mother tells her wholeheartedly, since she thinks her family would never tell her anything but the truth. However, when she discovers that one of the old wives’ tales her mother told her wasn’t true, she realizes a lot of things she has believed aren’t true, including the story about Steve. The little girl becomes bitter and disillusioned.
One day, Flavia’s piggy bank shaped like a cow falls, and its front legs break off. To make her feel better, her mother tells her that, on Christmas Eve, cows kneel because the presence of God is near, just as on the night of Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem. Flavia wants to believe, but when her mother admits that she’s never seen a cow kneeling herself, Flavia thinks that it’s just another lie. However, when her mother’s life is in danger on Christmas Eve, Flavia must summon her courage and faith to find a cow before it’s too late.
“Tenth Avenue Angel” is a tender family story, which examines the fine line between honesty and faith. Just as some children become disillusioned about their childlike beliefs when they learn the truth about Santa Claus, Flavia loses her capacity to believe in anything outside of the temporal realm.
However, like so many people now who have abandoned traditional faith, she feels empty without believing in anything. On Christmas Eve, she searches for the divine inspiration of a higher power to restore her faith.
