A Promise to Keep (1990) (TV)

Director:

Rod Holcomb

Writers (WGA):

Jane Yarmolinsky (memoirs)
Susan Cooper (teleplay) ...

Release Date:

1 October 1990 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Fact-based story about a low-income couple (Delany, Russ) with three children who fight for the right to raise four orphaned brothers. |

Plot Keywords:

Death | Brothers | Children | Teenage Boy | Train Crash

Cast

Dana Delany	...	Jane Goodrich
William Russ	...	Carl
Adam Arkin	...	Louis Colt
Frances Fisher	...	Sarah
Mimi Kennedy	...	Annie
Richard Poe
David Seaman
Greg Young
David Cromwell	...	David
Devon O'Brien	...	Molly
Kyndra Joy Casper	...	Amy
Tiffany Ann Casper	...	Nelly
J.R. Nutt	...	Matt
Jesse R. Tendler	...	Cubby
Matthew Leonard	...	Pauli

Also Known As:

Promises to Keep (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:L

Filming Locations:

Charleston, South Carolina, USA

Company:

Sacret

It's Not Always Easy Living in a Beachfront Home

Jane and Carl are up against the fight of their lives. All of a sudden their family has grown from three kids to seven! Close friends of theirs have both recently passed away and a promise was made that their kids would stay together and not be doled out to relatives who could take one or two. Both Dana Delaney (Jane) and William Russ (Carl) put in fine performances as the living adults, the two main characters of this story. They have a lot to deal with and in the ninety minutes of Made-for-TV movie we see them going through a lot... without seeing them go through a lot. A good job was done with the shortness of time to get a pretty good range of emotions in and to get a decent background story in. We don't see a whole lot of what the kids are going through but heck, they've just lost both parents, we the audience can pretty well figure it out. One thing that didn't jive with me so well was the money problems. It's understandable how on a limited income it might be monetarily tough to suddenly have to feed a family of nine day in and day out. Carl & Jane, though, lived in nice home ON THE OCEAN, yes, right there on the beach, in a very nice area of South Carolina convenient to downtown Charleston. At the time of this story their home and property had to be valued at easily a half million dollars (quite possibly more because today it would be worth well over one million dollars.) In order to do what you have to to survive why didn't they discuss selling their home and moving inland to a large enough house at half the cost and banking the rest of the income to help them live? At the end of this movie that was the only thing that I didn't like - that their money problems weren't ironed out. What I did especially like was the little twist which I guess wasn't so much of a twist considering the title of the movie. I just didn't make any predictions for this one so it was a twist at the time for me and gave me a nice smile. A nice ending to this story. This movie gets a B+ grade from me - thoroughly enjoyable and even interesting... I was constantly eager to see what would happen next. I truly wonder how they're all doing today. I'm now really looking forward to ordering a copy of Jane Yarmolinsky's book to get the real story as she wrote it. What would be great is a sequel to follow up on how their family turned out.