looking for a movie from TV 1967 - 70 ?? (scenes, dvd, short)

[icequeen95]

I watch a movie with my mom around about these years on Christmas Eve night. I don't recall much. Our TV was black and white and I suppose the movie is/was as well. I don't remember it being a 'Christmas' movie. The scene I remember most is of a young girl on a sea side cliff. She was lost or had ran away (I seemed to remember that she had ran away from an orphanage but I am not sure) She had a figurine horse that she took with her and was her only possession. She it feel off the cliff into the sea surf at night.

To try to make a very long story short my mom is 94. The year we watched this movie my dad was on strike from his job and working in New Orleans and not home for Christmas. Financially times were hard. I only got 2 items for Christmas that year and one happened to be the exact horse the child had in the movie. My mother had not idea of the movie. This Christmas was the most memorable of all my childhood. I want to watch this movie with my mom again. I have tried desperately to find it but just don't have enough memory of it know how to start. I am hoping that there is a movie buff on this sight who may can help me.

Any help would be appreicated more than you can know.

[Tracysherm]

I think it might be The Gift of Love (1958), which was a remake of an earlier movie Sentimental Journey (1946).
Here are quotes from what people posted about the 1958 movie on IMDB; it sounds like your movie:


"This is a great movie I remember watching on TV when I was young. I haven't seen it since I was 15, but I love it. Basically the premise is that Lauren Bacall adopts a young girl - she's a great mum, and tries to provide her with a nice life, but the new daughter is trying desperately to impress the stoic father (Robert Stack) which is not easy. Nothing Evelyn does works - and you feel so sorry for her, she's so cute and when we were young we felt so sorry for her. The scene where Evelyn Rudie "cleans" Robert Stack's blackboard to be helpful, only to find that she has erased months of Stack's work on important math formulas (I can't remember but I think he's an astronomer)is tragic to watch. As it turns out, they do become close eventually for tragic reasons - the scenes of Evelyn Rudie running close to the cliffs near the beach by their home still haunt me. I've tried to find this on DVD and VHS with no luck so if you see it on TV watch it! "

"LAUREN BACALL is the noble wife who knows she has a terminal illness, so she prepares the little girl and hubby for her demise, wanting them to go on loving each other and helping each other when she's gone. That's the plot, in a nutshell, and naturally--when she dies--hubby goes off his rocker and makes thing difficult for the girl, ending up sending her back to the orphanage where they adopted her. What happens after this will try your patience to the utmost as the girl leaves her snug bed at the orphanage to run out into a rainstorm with her toy horse along the seashore. You know whatever happens next will reunite her with her father, who seems to be getting a message from his dead wife that the girl needs emergency help."