Just before Thanksgiving last year, I told you about my favorite childhood TV specials that revolved around a girl named Addie Mills set in the 1940s. These made-for-TV movies included Addie and the King of Hearts for Valentine’s Day, The Easter Promise for Easter, The Thanksgiving Treasure (sometimes called The Holiday Treasure) for Thanksgiving, and The House Without a Christmas Tree for Christmas. They were TV movies based on books of the same titles by Gail Rock.
In these movies, a young girl named Addie Mills (played by Lisa Lucas) lived with her father (played by Jason Robards) and grandmother (played by Mildred Natwick) in Nebraska during the 1940s. In each of them, there is usually some conflict between Addie and her father, and the grandma is caught in the middle. I liked these stories because like Addie, I, too, lived with my grandma. And I liked them because they were set just post the Great Depression era, and because I lived with my grandparents, I always heard their childhood stories about that time period. And I also liked them because they were just good stories.
For years, I had The Easter Promise, The Thanksgiving Treasure, and The House Without a Christmas Tree on store-bought VHS tapes. And more recently, I’ve even had those three on DVD. But I haven’t seen Addie and the King of Hearts since I was a kid.
Well, when I woke up Easter morning, I was so surprised to find that the Easter Bunny had left me a double DVD featuring Addie and the King of Hearts and The Easter Promise!
YAY! I’m so excited to watch these! I’m sorry I can’t stay and blog longer… I have some movies to go watch…
Let’s talk: Have you ever found a favorite childhood movie or TV show once you were an adult, and watched it for the first time after several years? Was it as good as you remembered?
Rachel Carrera, Novelist 
Until the day of my eventual arrest I always had a soft spot for ‘Muffin the Mule’ as it so happens young Rachel
Ah, is he any relation to Eddie the Earwig? 😉
Muffin the Mule was a top kids TV show when I was a kid then one day the right and proper squad realised the title of the show was…well..on the cusp of misinterpretation and the show ended. Sad really as I rather liked it!
Aww… Is Muffin anything like Mister Ed? (Do you know who Mister Ed was?)
That’s awesome. Someone was paying attention.
Yes, I was definitely impressed. 🙂
Really the closest I came might be the series that are in syndication on some of the cable channels, although those usually don’t date as far back as my childhood. It’s funny to see how the fashions have evolved. Some of the jokes are a little dated too, although the more intelligent shows just seem timeless in that respect.
Yeah, some of them are rather dated, but others carry over well. 🙂
True!
Not a tv show or movie, but a book. I remembered reading and loving a book about a little water sprite as a child, and often looked for it in bookshops and libraries as I got older, although I couldnt remember the title or author. A couple of years ago, I searched on Amazon and found it… it was The Little Water Sprite by Preussler, so I bought a copy, and guess what? It is just as enchanting now as I remembered it!
Aww, that’s awesome! I love when that happens!~ ❤
My favourite all-time childhood movie was Mary Poppins and I am just as delighted and enchanted by it as an adult. Thanks for prompting me to remember something magical from my childhood, Rachel. ❤
Diana xo
YAY! Yes, Mary Poppins had the best graphics for its time back then. 🙂
And I wanted to believe in magic. I think I still do too. 🙂
i loved mary poppins too, same as diana and still loved it as an adult. as for tv, i loved the brady bunch, lost in space and mod squad. bradys not so much anymore, lost is space still love and mod squad not found anywhere –
Yes, the Brady Bunch would have been better if they wouldn’t have rerun it to death. The Mod Squad was on MeTV for several months last year. 🙂
There was a television series I loved as a young teenager. I watched it again just a few years ago (about a quarter of a century after seeing it the first time), and it was as good as I remembered; my only disappointment was that I was no longer frightened by story’s antagonist.
LOL! Yeah, when that happens, it’s kind of funny to reminisce about how it made us feel the first time. 🙂
I think sometimes the mind builds things up as better than they were, Rachel. The child-to-adult prism fractures all of that, anyway, my friend. As a kid-kid I loved B&W “My Three Sons” and “The Adventures of Dobie Gilles,” which featured Dwayne Hickman as the title star and pre-Gilligan Bob Denver as a hipster doofus. I can’t find that show anywhere to test your theory, my friend.
I STILL love My Three Sons! And while I don’t love Dobie Gillis quite as much, I still like it a lot, too. They had them both on MeTV not too long ago. 🙂
MeTV? I never heard of that one, Rachel. I bet my cable has it and I never watch it.
WHAT?! Oh, that and Antenna TV are the best stations EVER!
Man, that’s an intuitive Easter bunny!!! 🙂 Glad you get to revisit some of your faves.
Thank you! 😀
I have never heard of this series of books. I know I would have liked them.
You get an Easter basket? Wow! I got nuttin’! (Mr. Loveton is in big trouble now.)
LOL! Poor Mr. Loveton! 😉
What a thoughtful gift the Easter Bunny left you! I hope you enjoy the movies.
I can’t think of any show I’ve had like that. There was a book that I loved as child about an English girl who could go back in time to the Elizabethan period. I described it to a friend once, and she found the book at a second hand shop and sent it to me.
Aww, what a great friend! 😀 That’s so cool! 🙂