Typical Hollywood fanfare with tinsel town probably taking advantage of Bob Stack and Lauren Bacalle two years before in "Written on the Wind." From the beginning, you would swear that this was going to be a comedy. That all changes when Lauren Bacall discovers a fatal illness and hopes that by adopting a child, the latter can continue to do the things her husband, Stack, is used to.Unfortunately, the father and child really can't relate to one another and of course the situated is exacerbated when the Bacalle character dies.Notice how the child constantly refers to her parents by their first names and that Bacall smokes after learning of her fate. Ed Platt, who was the doctor in "Written on the Wind," repeats his doctor-like role in this one as well.The ending is typical Hollywood with love conquering all. Doesn't one think that Stack was miscast here? Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart would have been much better.

I love this movie! This is my second time and I cried like a baby like I have never seen the movie before and I didn't know the ending! I love the story. You see it is real that folks will ask someone to look after a loved one when they are gone! A neighbor of ours asked my mother to look after his wife. My mother never told the wife this but she does look after her. We are humans and we know some folks can handle death better then others. Cope better. Sometimes love is not instant either. It grows slowly. It almost sneaks up on us. I think this movie shows those two things! I think this movie is worth much more then a 6.3 stars. Grief is a process. This movie teaches sometimes folks are there to help us through grief but are we willing to accept the help!

In this film, we have 70 minutes to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the lead character (Lauren Bacall) is going to die. If we've already seen the original version of this Fox melodrama, we know just how much of an eternity that hour and ten minutes may seem. For most of this time, however, our interest is sustained by Lauren Bacall's credible performance as a terminal woman who wants to adopt a little girl (Evelyn Rudie) and leave it behind to keep her husband (Robert Stack) company. The Freudian implications of such thoughtful generosity are not fully disclosed, but we are expected to accept this contrivance just the same. Beginning with the 71st minute of this motion picture, we are subjected to a series of painful scenes where Stack deals with death and the unlikelihood of raising Rudie without Bacall. There are countless moments where the characters mention talking to Bacall's spirit, presumably out of camera-range. This begs the question: why not just have Bacall hover over them, superimposed, to suggest some sort of present supernatural form? But the real reason the last thirty minutes without Miss Bacall are terribly difficult to watch is because the narrative at this point must rely strictly on Mr. Stack and Miss Rudie, who are just not able to hold our attention. Quite frankly, the young actress is not good enough to handle such a huge part; some of Rudie's line deliveries are so monotone and emotionless that all the hard work Bacall had done earlier in the picture is compromised. And when it becomes apparent that Rudie lacks the ability to bring some depth to the role, we feel sorry for Stack having to go through the paces with her, and we envy Bacall who took the last exit and got off at Heaven.

THE GIFT OF LOVE has got to be one of the most cringe-inducing movies I've seen from the '50s when sentimental tear-jerkers were still the rage, especially if they were dressed up in handsome Technicolor photography and settings...and preferably, with stars like ROBERT STACK and LAUREN BACALL for box-office appeal.This one is a sad remake of an even weepier B&W original called SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY that starred Maureen O'Hara and John Payne (with Connie Marshall as the little girl), a Fox film so banal that you wonder why they bothered to toy with the script again. It's still banal, all the way, with a ludicrous script and inept performances you've got to see to believe how bad the acting is.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.It's as sticky and mushy as these things can possibly be with ROBERT STACK at his absolute worst feigning mournfulness over his wife's sudden departure--the scene of him at her gravesite is almost laughable. And the little girl (EVELYN RUDIE) makes you appreciate what a marvelous actress Shirley Temple was as a child star.Surprisingly, it's all directed by the wonderful Jean Negulesco, who must have been forced into fulfilling contract demands to even come near this maudlin script.I see from the other comments that this sort of nonsense appealed strongly to teen-age girls when first viewed. I hope they have a chance to reconsider calling it "wonderful" if they see it again as adults.