Marie Dionne

This James A. FitzPatrick TravelTalks short visits Callander, the Ontario, Canada hometown of the world-famous Dionne Quintuplets, where we meet the five girls and the doctor who delivered them, and take a look about the town.

A doctor has a rough time obtaining the money for his services in a lumber town until he delivers quintuplets.

Cécile, Annette, Yvonne, Émilie and Marie, the Dionne Quintuplets, turn five years old and have a private birthday party in their garden. Other than the five little French-Canadian princesses-of-the-world, the attendees at the party for the sheltered sisters are their doctor-and-mentor Roy Dafoe; a priest and two nurses; radio's "Town Crier" Alexander Woollcott; and RKO-Newsreel cameraman Harry Smith.

Rival reporters compete to sign the Wyatt Quintuplets to be guests on their radio shows.

Newspapers around the world proclaim the birth in Moosetown, Canada of the 3,000th baby brought into the world by the doctor, John Luke, known for delivering the famous Wyatt quintuplets. To honor the doctor on his retirement and to publicize their town, the Moosetown chamber of commerce decides to hold a reunion of all the babies delivered by the doctor, some of whom have become famous.

In 1934, Elzire Dionne delivered five identical girls. The Dionne Quintuplets follows Cecile, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne and Annette through twenty-one years of strange upbringing. When the girls were just infants, the premier of Ontario issued a court order removing them from parental care. Cut off from the world and their family, over-publicized, viewed twice daily in a special viewing compound, they grew up as prize exhibits. Director Donald Brittain uses old newsreel footage, home-movie sequences and interviews to depict a historic event that became a tragic exploitation of a family.