Blossoms in the Dust

Edna marries Sam Gladney, who runs a flour mill in Texas. They have a son and the boy dies young. By chance Edna learns where children without parents stand before the law: their birth records carry the mark of illegitimacy and that mark is never removed. Edna opens a home for abandoned children. Opening the home is not enough; when she tries to place the children with families the respectable part of the town stands in her way. Edna finally goes to the Texas legislature and fights to have that mark removed from birth records. The film is based on a real person, Edna Gladney. Greer Garson was nominated for an Oscar for the part; Mervyn LeRoy directed. The telling is too sentimental in places, but the question at its centre was genuinely contested in its time.