addiemills.flyingdreams.org"Flying Dreams" The Addie Mills Page

PRESENTING ADDIE THE CHARACTERS THE HOUSE WITHOUT A CHRISTMAS TREE THE THANKSGIVING TREASURE THE EASTER PROMISE ADDIE AND THE KING OF HEARTS GRANDMA'S RECIPES RELATED LINKS MISCELLANEOUS PHOTOS FAN FICTION: "ADDIE AND THE WAR HERO" FAN FICTION: "COLLEGE BOUND" Warning: This page may contain spoilers. Updated February 13, 2015, with news of The Easter Promise and Addie and the King of Hearts on DVD (see below!). S he loves to paint and draw, she's a good student and enjoys learning new words, She loves games and puzzles of all kinds, she's a natural leader but in many ways is very vulnerable, especially in believing she is loved. She isn't perfect: she's critical, impulsive, and often quick to come to judgment. In short, she's one of the most realistic children ever portrayed on television. She's Adelaide Mills, known to family and friends as "Addie." Smart, spunky Addie Mills was introduced to television audiences in the Yuletide season of 1972 in the drama The House Without a Christmas Tree . Three subsequent movies followed (although the final "movie" is only an hour long). The character of Addie Mills was based on the real-life experiences of Gail Rock, who grew up in a similar family environment in Valley, Nebraska, the real-life counterpart to the story setting of Clear River. Her original story and the subsequent Thanksgiving tale were adapted to the screen by Eleanor Perry, and Gail Rock and Alan Shayne did the remainder. The distinctive piano theme was composed by Arthur Rubenstein and the stories were directed by Paul Bogart (Joseph Hardy directed Addie and the King of Hearts ) and produced by Alan Shayne. Unfortunately, CBS filmed these stories on "soap opera" quality videotape rather than having the productions filmed, therefore many people consider them to look "cheap." They actually look as if they were filmed for a reality series and give you the impression of peeking into the Mills' home and other settings as events unfold. It would be nice to dream about them being run through an editing unit like an AVID machine, which was used to make the AMC series Remember WENN look as if it were filmed on old Technicolor stock from the 1940s. That would give them a "period" look that would be just perfect. In any case, the stories are so excellent that this brief breach of artistic perfection can be overlooked! The Characters When we meet her, Adelaide Mills is a bright, lively precocious ten year old, born in 1936. She wears glasses, loves school and is a straight A student like her late mother, who was valedictorian of her high school class and won a silver cup when she graduated. Addie never knew her mother, who died when she was just a few weeks old (sometime, the story indicates, around or after Christmas, although it's never specifically stated; the novel further muddies the waters by saying Addie was a few months old), and has been raised by her nurturing grandmother and her sober, often grim father. She loves boyish games and especially horses (her favorite movie star is Roy Rogers, but she most often has her eye on his palomino stallion, Trigger), but Addie's favorite activities are painting and drawing. She plans to become an artist when she grows up and study in Paris. (She also wants to change her name, which she hates.) She is a very opinionated young lady and her favorite critical word is "dodo." When she likes something, it's "nifty." The Minor Mystery of Addie's Birthdate: Addie is ten at the time of The House Without A Christmas Tree . The story indicates that her mother was able to celebrate her first Christmas, but died shortly thereafter. In the special James says Addie was "a few weeks old" for her first Christmas, the book "a few months old." In either case, judging from the gifts her mother made her: bib, booties and sweater, and a toy consisting of jingle bells strung on a ribbon and hung over the crib for Addie to kick, it is sensible to presume she was born in the fall, somewhere between September (book timeline) and November (television timeline) In The Thanksgiving Treasure , Addie is eleven, which tallies with the television timeline. However, in The Easter Promise , taking place a mere six months later, Addie is now twelve, and in Addie and the King of Hearts , almost a year later, she is thirteen. This is a minor bobble; for Addie to be twelve in the spring of 1948, her birthday would have to be somewhere between Christmas and Valentine's Day. But that would have meant she was nearly a year old on her first Christmas, not "a few weeks" or "a few months" old and the gifts Helen made for her would be inappropriate for a child who would possibly be walking by then. So Addie probably was born some time in the fall and the age change was presumably made to make Addie older to fit the more mature themes of the final two specials. I notice several reviews of the story say that James resents Addie because her mother died when she was born. This is not true, also per James' statements in the story; he says that Addie used to smile all the time as a baby, but Helen just said it was gas and would burp her. Babies start smiling at four to six weeks old. Helen died of pneumonia, not in childbirth. Addie's father is James Mills, a taciturn, thrifty Midwesterner. Given the timeline presented by The House Without a Christmas Tree novel, he is about 48 years old. Addie thinks he is handsome, which he is, in a rather bleak way. James was always a proud, serious man, but in the past ten years since his wife Helen died, he has been withdrawn and overly strict with his only child. Addie resembles Helen so much that sometimes it is hard for him to have her around and he seems occasionally baffled by her quicksilver personality. He operates a crane at the gravel pit for a living and insists Addie do well in school because he never finished high school. He and Helen married in 1926, when she was eighteen and he was about 28. Grandma Mills (we learn her name is "Sarah" only later in the series) is a bulwark in Addie's life. She gives Addie the love and caresses that her son cannot seem to manage with his own child and encourages her in all her projects. Grandma is also very old-fashioned about Addie eating her breakfast and wearing long underwear during the cold months. She's also considered a bit of a character by the neighborhood children as she calls Addie with a police whistle and takes Addie's red wagon to market with her. (The books further elaborate on Grandma's eccentricities, including her habit of "skipping" pancakes from the frying pan to the plate with a spatula, which is only hinted at in The House Without a Christmas Tree. ) Carla Mae Carter is Addie's best friend who moved to Clear River earlier in the year (in the books it is two years earlier, but Carla Mae says in the opening scenes of House Without a Christmas Tree that the previous year the Carters had a taller tree at their house in Omaha). You don't receive a lot of information about her in the specials, but in the books we find out she is one of six children in a happy, messy home. Her brothers have electric trains the two girls like to play with. Carla Mae is basically Diana Barry to Addie's Anne Shirley; she's a quiet, practical girl, much less flamboyant than Addie; her one dream is to "wear a long white dress and a veil and be married." Cora Sue is Addie's best friend in The Thanksgiving Treasure and The Easter Promise , and moved into the house across the street. The change is not explained in The Thanksgiving Treasure , and, indeed, if you read the books, which differ slightly from the filmed stories in small ways, Carla Mae remains Addie's friend rather than Cora Sue. Like Carla Mae, Cora Sue is a follower, not a leader. (Cora Sue is not present in Addie and the King of Hearts and no reference is made to her.) Billy Wilde (spelled "Wilde" in the television credits but "Wild" in the books) is a schoolmate of Addie's who, she remarks in one story, had been arou...