The Children's Hour

Those who have Netflix should watch this classic film from 1961 starring Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, and James Garner. The story is of an exclusive and idyllic private girls boarding school in northeastern United States in which a girl was prevented from attending a boating event as punishment for a rules infraction.

Furious, the girl invented an untrue and malicious story about the two headmistresses which she told her very wealthy grandmother. Shocked, the well-connected grandmother worked her telephone to tell all the other parents of the girls in the school about this scandal. Never explaining themselves, one after another all these families withdrew their children from the school, and within days the school was forced to close without the head mistresses knowing the cause.

The movie expertly shows the motivations of all the key players that fed into this hellish destruction of the reputations of these two women. By the time the truth becomes known, the gossip started by this one spoiled schoolgirl had resulted in the ruin of the school, the end of the wedding engagement between Garner and Hepburn and the suicide of MacLaine.

The schoolgirl learned that lies are very powerful weapons indeed--and the viewers are left with the question, were any other lessons learned?