You don't have to be a child to appreciate this film and its lesson, which premiered on a 1969 children's special that aired around Christmas of that year starring Kevin Hooks as J.T. J.T. is about ten years old and lives in a poor section of New York surrounded by nothing but ugliness and poverty. He doesn't even have a bedroom to call his own and the building he lives in has a communal bathroom. He steals a transistor radio out of a car one day and is pursued by two other boys who want that radio too. In the process of escaping the two boys, J.T. runs across a bony homeless cat in an abandoned building. He learns to feel by caring for that cat, probably the first time in years he has felt loved or noticed for something other than bad deeds. Not to say that J.T.'s mother is negligent - she's just too busy trying to survive working long hours at a low paying job to give sufficient time to J.T.'s rather complex needs.
The end will shock you and probably make you cry regardless of your age. I haven't seen the movie on TV since 1989 and I don't know why this isn't out on DVD - it's a great family film. I'm sure the networks would rather run something like "Dancing with the Stars - A Christmas Special" than bring this great old film out of mothballs, so I'm not holding my breath.
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