Driftwood

This charmingly bucolic tale stars Walter Brennan as a likeable doctor, who looks after an orphan waif who's never before strayed from the backwoods. She's winsomely played by nine-year-old Natalie Wood. Though some may feel Wood's performance a tad calculated, she shows all the early glimmerings of that bright shining talent that rightly made her a major star of the 1950s and 1960s. Veteran director Allan Dwan wisely keeps the sentimentality reined in. There's also fine work from Ruth Warrick and stalwarts Dean Jagger and Charlotte Greenwood among the supporting cast. A class act for Republic studios.