All Mine to Give
Robert and Mamie Eunson (Cameron Mitchell and Glynis Johns) are Scots who have just landed in America (the year is 1856), having been invited there by Mamie's uncle. They arrive in the tiny logging village of Eureka, only to be informed that both uncle and his cabin have been incinerated in a house fire. The Eunsons are assisted by the friendly locals in reconstructing the house and Robert takes to tipping timber.
Mamie is heavily pregnant upon their reaching Eureka; she delivers baby Robbie (Rex Thompson) soon after the cabin is completed. Robert eventually starts a successful boat building business and Mamie gives birth to five more children: Jimmy (Stephen Wootton), Kirk (Butch Bernard), Annabelle (Patty McCormack), Elizabeth (Yolanda White), and Jane (Terry Ann Ross). The Eunsons are prospering and happy until little Kirk is diagnosed with diphtheria. Mamie and Kirk are quarantined while Robert takes the other children away. The boy recovers, but the goodbye kiss Kirk gave his Dadda before his departure proves fatal, and Robert succumbs.
Mamie takes to working as a seamstress and Robbie becomes the man of the house. Things stabilize, but only briefly: tired and work-worn, Mamie contracts typhoid. Knowing she will not survive, she charges Robbie, her eldest, with finding good homes for his siblings. After Mamie's death, Robbie places his brothers and sisters with kindly townsfolk on Christmas day. Stoic and resigned during the process, he does break down when he is alone and sees the tree outside the homestead where his father had carved the names of the children into the bark. Baby Jane is the last to be handed over — Robbie stands at the door of a house and asks the woman who answers, "Please, ma'am, I was wondering if you'd care to have my sister."
romantic, storytelling, melodrama