After Judgment at Nuremberg, Lancaster fearlessly tackled another dire social message that Hollywood had never dared to address in such a direct, frank manner. The director of an institution for mentally handicapped and emotionally disturbed children, Lancaster’s stern disciplinarian Dr. Clark challenges the sympathies of Judy Garland’s music teacher who is taken with one child’s particularly heartrending, challenging story. With a couple of exceptions, the cast is comprised of children who were actual residents at the hospital, and their unvarnished performances give the earnest film a palpable edge. Ultimately, John Cassavetes’ cinema verité treatment clashed with producer Stanley Kramer’s classic vision and the young director was fired toward the end of the production. Both attitudes inform the unique film’s entreaty that the children’s lives have meaning; the only tragedy is not facing the parts of our world that fail to fit into society’s officially-sanctioned countenance.