The Boxcar Children (film)

Plot

The Boxcar Children tells the story of four orphaned children: Henry, Jessie (or Jess), Violet, and Benny, who have evidently been orphaned for some time.

They come to a bakery to buy some bread, and ask to stay the night. When a baker and his wife learn that the children are orphans, baker and his wife plan to take in the three elder children, who are big enough to be useful in the bakery, but to send little Benny to a Children's Home. The children overhear the couple talking about this, and escape from the bakery.The bakers decide to chase them but then leave the children to go on their own.

Finding an abandoned boxcar, the children start a new life of independence. Henry ends up working various odd jobs in a nearby town Silver City for a doctor, named Dr. Moore, in order to earn money for food and other materials they need. He also does gardening for the doctor's mother. The children's lives are pleasant and full of hard work until Violet becomes ill and they go to the doctor for assistance.

Unbeknownst to the children, by that time the doctor knows very well who they are and where they are living; indeed, he has been keeping a discreet eye on them for weeks. Their grandfather, who lives nearby, has been advertising in the papers, offering a reward for news of them, but the doctor hasn't wanted to spoil the children's fun by informing on them. When Violet becomes ill, however, he feels it is time to do so.

Their grandfather, a steel baron, named James Henry Alden, comes at once to see them. The doctor suggests that he gets to know them first before telling them who he is, so he is simply introduced to them as a friend of the doctor's. The children warm to his kindness and are surprised but delighted when they eventually learn that he is their much-feared grandfather (but the children had been brought up to fear their grandfather, whom they had never met, because he did not approve of their parents' marriage). They go to live with him after all, and he has the boxcar transferred to his backyard for their enjoyment.

Voice cast