I took a quick look at the career of director Allen Reisner who worked at Studio One before taking on this feature film. Reisner went back to working mostly for television after All Mine To Give. But never in his career did he come close to doing anything as good as this film. Very few have.
All Mine To Give has become a Christmas classic in its own right as well received as It's A Wonderful Life. The story though is one of the most depressing you'll ever see and yet it's about an unconquerable spirit present even in our children.
The film is the story of the Eunson family, Scottish immigrants who settle in frontier Wisconsin in the 1850s. The parents are Cameron Mitchell and Glynis Johns who then raise five children, the oldest being Rex Thompson.
All Mine To Give while showing the Eunsons and most of the rest of their neighbors as decent folks is a no frills, uncompromising look at frontier life in those days. So many diseases we've conquered now were present back then. When both Mitchell and Johns fall to them the orphaned Eunson kids are left in a terrible fix. It's up to Thompson to decide their fates.
And this is all happening at Christmas time which has made All Mine To Give a staple on TCM in December. The story is based on a true incident at the time this story is taking place. It also is strikingly similar to what happened to Herbert Hoover and his two siblings when they were orphaned.
Such fine character players as Sylvia Field, Reta Shaw, Royal Dano, Alan Hale, Jr. play some of the townspeople. All Mine To Give will pull on so many emotions at once you'll be drained with a single viewing. Filmed during the last years of RKO Studios, All Mine To Give is a flawless holiday classic with a great story and a wonderful cast to tell it.
