The Focus Is on Faith

Irish Jesuit Province

The Focus Is on FaithAuthor(s): Wilfrid ParsonsSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 72, No. 856 (Oct., 1944), pp. 412-423Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20515301 .

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412

The Focus is on Faith

By WILFRID PARSONS, S.J.

H OLLYWOOD, as everybody who goes to the cinema knows, has begun to take a tremendous interest in religion. It has not yet come to conversion, you under

stand. It is mnore like discovery. The sensational success of Tlhe Song of Bernadette, the story of the apparitions at Lourdes, has brought home the fact that there are dramatic values-and box-office-in depicting the operations of the Creator in the human soul. The trend is on (", cvele " they call it in Holly wood) and there is more to come.

Moviegoers whose hair is grey and menmories long wyill recall that through the years the moving pictures have always toyed

with religious subjects. Those whose memories are especially tenacious will remember the Italian-made film, Cabiria, a story of early Christian times, with its giant heroic Maciste. It was back in 1927 that Cecil B. DeMille made The King of Kings, and that picture is still shown every Lent in nmany a Protestant parish hall. Mr. DeMille, of course, specialised in this sort of spectaele, having made The Ten Commandments in 1923. Fred

Nibla, Sr., gave us the unforgettable Ben Hur in 1926. Henry Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis, another early-Christian story, was made twice in Europe, and now news comes that it may be made again, this time in Hollywood. The Sign of the Cross, in 1932, was one of the most famous of Mr. DeMille's pictures, and is

Reprinted from Columbia (U.S.A.).



THE FOCUS IS ON FAITH 418

tow to be reissued with a new prologue in a modern setting. The

'White Sister, Ramona, and The Garden of Allah were others

of this type. In ?spite of the fact that religion was the central theme of all

these pictures, they could not really be called religious films. They were primarily - pageants, with gorgeous settings and

costumes, and the Church and its ministers were incidental to the general effect. In 1934, however, and again in 1937, two pictures appeared in which religion played an entirely different

role. They were prophetic, a decade ahead, of a development which came to fruit only last year. Religion as a pageant is one

thing, good to look at, perhaps, but it does not touch the soul to any depth. It is eye entertainment. The mind and the con science are very little involved.

It was in .1934 that Hollywood first got an inkling of what it

might mean to put a priest into a picture as an integral part of

the story, the modern story. of modern -people with their problems. In that year Winfield Sheehan produced The World

Moves On. That picture is now remembered chiefly because it was the first one to receive the Production Code Administration

Seal which the industry had devised as the testimony that it had

exercised the self-regulation called for by the Legion of Decency.

It was P.C.A. No. 1. But, unknown perhaps to its makers, it was also a forerunner, a shadow of things to come. The priest who was the brother of the First-World-War hero was a sort

of John the Baptist. The hint was not taken until 1937 when a first-class sensation

was created by Spencer Tracy playing a priest in San Francisco,

a story of the Great Fire (earthquake to you), and made by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. There are some people who remember

it chiefly for the daring of the director (W. S. Vin Dyke) who had his priest suffer a good sound sock on the jaw iand got away



fs4 ~ THE IRISH MONTILX

with it. Others were so impressed by it that ever since when. there is question of a priest in a script they will invariably ask if Spencer Tracy will play it, whether he is suited to the part or not. What the picture really did was to salt away in Holly wood's memory files the idea that there can be a whale of a good 4tory in the doings and sayings of a priest.

Within a couple of years Spencer Tracy was again portraying a priest, and this time it, was a living character, Father Flanagain, in Boys' Town. It is true that this was also a Mickey Rooney picture, and so at that time sure of success, but the nation took the story to its heart and any motion-picture veteran will tell you it -was Father Flanagan who did it. It began to look as if religion, depicted, in daily routines, could become one of the stock situations of good cinema.

Some people may remember a football picture called Notre Dame, chiefly useful in this recital as one w%hich accustomed movie audiences to seeing a cassock flit in and out of a scene. We got the same experience in Angels With Dirty Faces, which was ahead of its time in depicting the gruesome, and which the Legion of Decency did not like for that reason. Another in the same course of education was The Fighting Sixty-Ninth, with its story of the Fighting Padre, Father Francis P. Duffy, and still another was the life of Knute Rockne.

In all of these, Hollywood was feeling its way. I do not say that it was consciously setting up a situation. After all, the studios, hardened as they are to exotic costumes, had to accept a cassock without a gulp. They came around. Just the other day I saw Sir Cedric Hardwicke sitting nonchalantly in a studio restaurant in a Monsignor's robes, and nobody gave him a second glanee. But the cassock is only a symbol, after all. Where there is a cassock there is a priest, and that means a priest in the story, aand that means lines spoken by him, and more often than



THE FOCUS IS U-N FAITH 415

not it can mean that the story reaches its solution in what lie

says. You see the trend. It was the year 1943 which really marked the arrival of the

trend. The readers of Columbia will remenmber an article, "Padre of the Films" (August, 1942), of which Father John

J. Devlin wvas the subject. Father Devlin is the representative of Archbishop Cantwell, of Los Angeles, in all the studios, and he also speaks to them with the voice of the Legion of Decency.

When. there is anything Catholic in a script, it is Father Devlin who is consulted on ii, and he also has the onerous task of super vising the actual taking of a scene, especially when there is

question of sonme Catholic ceremony. The studios are extremely sensitive to criticisms on inaccuracies in technical nmatters, and

they go to extraordinary lengths in order to be right. (I might also say in passing that Father Devlin does all this in addition to his faithful duties as Pastor of St. Victor's in West Holly

wood; and also as Defensor Vinculi on the Archdiocesan iMatri

monial Court, and anybody who reads Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell can guess wvhat that means.)

Well, Father Devlin tells me tlhat, in the twelve months of

the year 1943, lhe was " called in " on no less than tventy-fouir pictures. One can try to imagine what that means. It means

that, on an average of twice a month, studios vere mlaking or

preparing to mnake a picture in which the Catholic Church was directly and expressly involved. Nobody was more staTtled by

this unsolicited wooing of the Church than Catholies themselves. But we might have known that sooner or later the seed that was sown by a producer ten years ago would come'to life and blossonm .treely. Religion as a subject for drama was always there. The

only wonder is that the producers did not discover it sooner.

4t any rate, by 1943 they did discover it. Strangely enouigb, however, the immediate forerunner of this new kind of cycle was



416 THE IRISH MONTHLY

the story of a Protestant minister, made in 1941. It was a film version of the best seller novel, One Foot in Heaven. In spite of the novelty, however, and good critical notices, and also a good stiff controversy, which always helps, this picture did not fulfil its makers' expectations at the box office. In this connec tion it may be recalled that the clergyman in Holy Matrimonty

was an Episcopal minister, and I am informed that in David Selznick's forthcoming big picture, Since You Went Away, Lgionel Barrymore delivers a sermon fran an Episcopal pulpit.

Mrs. Miniver hlso had several scenes from, Episcopalian church life.

In this category, of course, two other pictures stand out whieh I have not mentioned. They were both, as it happened, made by- Twentieth Century-Fox, which also made The Song of Blernadette and is making The Keys of the Kingdom. Guadal canal Diary was the story of the landing of'the Marines on the island of that name. In that picture'the Catholic chaplain,

Father Donnelly, was an outstanding character, and his heroic work was woven in as an integral part of the terrific sufferings and superhuman efforts of the Marines in taking the island and holding it long after hope of relief had passed.

The other film was The Sullivans That was the story of the five- Sullivan brothers who were assigned to the same cruiser and

who went down with her just as they were about to be saved. Now the extraordinary part of that picture was this. It was a biography of the five boys. Three years ago it would have been told'as the story of a family of young Americans of no specific religion; in fact, the audience would not have guessed that they had any religion at all. But the Sullivans were Sullivans. Ip

the new awareness of Hollywood to the whole of life, we were shown them at their Baptism, -at their First Communion, and in various serious and amusing scenes with their pastor, Father



rHE FOCUS IS ON FAITH 417

Francis. It is a rather encouraging symptom. It will be diffi cuilt in future pictures, if the characters in the story have any religion at all, to show them without it.

The climax of all this development was T'he Song of Berna dette. Franz Werfel's great novelised biography of the ignorant peasant girl who saw the Blessed Virgin at Massabielle was the the latest, but it was one of the greatest, in the long series of books which have been written about the miracle of Lourdes. To the surprise of a great many it became a best seller, read avidly by more non-Catholics than Catholics. lIt was inevitable that a film company snap it up, and I am told the competition was fierce for its purchase. But the interesting thing about it was that from beginning to end Catholics had nothing directly to do with it. It was written by a Jew, who is still a Jew; it was bought by a company whose chairman is Wendell Willkie; it was made into a script by a Protestant, George Seaton; it was produced by a Jewv, William Perlberg; and it was directed by a Protestant,

Henry King; only one or two of the parts were taken by baptised Catholics.

There have been few who have been able to view this picture without deep emotion. This story of an innocent and not par ticularly bright girl who stood out unflinchingly against the

Church, the State and Science in her unswerving claim, " The Lady did speak to me," and was never spoiled in all her triumphs, is a tremendously moving one. This effect is greatly, heightened

by the simplicity with which the director had the part played by

Jennifer Jones, who in private life is Mrs. Robert Walker, and

who was Phyllis Isley in her convent school days at Monte Cassino in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There is very little " cinema " about it in the arty sense.

The great crowds who have viewed the picture at advanced

prices show that Bernadette has an appeal to more than



418 THE IRISH MONTHLY

Catholics. Anybody can see it and enjoy it for its own sake, s

a great motion picture. To Catholics, naturally, there is als the great interest that it is the story of Lourdes, the living proof that miracles still take place in God's Church, and that God still

walks among His children healing the souls and bodies of thoec who invoke Him in faith and hope. The Song of Bernadette will reach more millions with this demonstration than have been influenced by all the hooks written about Lourdes since th beglnning,

To Catholics there is another profound significance about the story of Lourdes. Fundamentally, it is a revelation of the Immaculate Conception. The apparitions took place in February and March, 1858. It was only four years before, in 1854, that Pope Pius IX had defined the dogma of the lmmacu late Conception, to the great scandal of nmany non-Catholics who saw in the act of Papal teaching authority the foreruinner of a definition of Papal infallibility (which actuallyr took place at the Vatican Council in 1870). The miracles of L1ouirdes, performed in the name of her who told Bernadette that she is the Immacu late Conception, put the seal on the act of the Pope four years before.

In this connection there is an amusing story told in the studio as having happened during the filming of the pietture. It is well known that most non-Catholics conftuse the Inmmnaculate Conception of Our Lady with the Virgin Birth of Our lIord.

When Mr. Perlberg, the producer, learned the real distinctioni between the two he went abolut Los Angeles and Hollywood buttonholing Catholic acquaintances and asking them with, apparent innocence what is the Immaculate Conception. To those who answered correctly, he solemnly conferred the brevet of good Catholic. Try-it on your own friends.

So The Song of Bernadette is a landmark in the history of



THE FOCUS IS ON FAITH 4u9

the mwtion picture. It is the first film in which the truth and

power of God's grace are an essential part of the story, in fact, the story itself.

Another picture which many readers will have seen before

these lines appear is one of a very different sort. First of all, Going My Way ranks as-comedy, not as drama. Secondly, it is

all about life in a big-city parish house in our day. Thirdly, the principal characters are priests. Fouirthly, two of the principal persons connected with it are Catholics: Leo McCarey, as writer, producer and director, and Bing Crosby as featured star. The other two who play priests in it are not Catholics in spite of

th-eir rnames: Barry Fitzgerald and Frank McHugh. Then there is the Metropolitan Opera star, Rise Stevens, who romps charmingly through it as if she were having a lovely -time, and a group of boys from a Los Angeles choir, playing touglh city kids whom Bing Crosby turns into choir-singers.

The story is a simple one. Father O'Malley (Bing.Crosby) is

sent by the Bishop to St. Dominic's to save the parish which has been ruled for forty-seven years by old Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald) and is financially on the rocks. Father

O'Malley's boyhood friends, Father Tim O'Dowd (Frank McHugh) and Genevieve Linden (JRise Stevens), arrange for a

music publisher to buy one of his songs, and the church is saved. In between, however, there is a succession of scenes of parish life,

with tears and laughter, with a minor love interest played by two new juveniles, an aria from Carmen and an Ave Marni from Risie

Stevens, with Crosby's crooning voice weaving in and ouit of the story, and a charming hit, The Mule Song, wdone by Bing and the boys.

As I said, Bing Crosby is the featured actor, but the picture is Barry Fitzgerald's, as Bing himself keeps saying on the radio. It is a character part of a lovable, crabbed old priest, played by



420 THE IRISH MONTHL Y

a consummate actor who learned his trade at Dublin's Abbey

rrheatre, and half of Hollywood is saying that if it does not bring him the year's Academy award there ain't no justice. At any

rate, Paramount, which made it, is pretty proud of the picture. It is not a world shaker in the ideological sense, just a happy picture. of clerical life at its best, and perhaps that is an ideology, too.

Still a third " big " picture has just, as I write, been filmed and is being cut and edited. It is Dr. A. J. Cronin's best seller of three years ago, T'he Keys of the Kingdom, the story of the griefs and triumphs' of a holy Scottish priest named Francis Chisholm, mostly on the foreign missions in China. It was first oxvned by David 0. Selznick, who sold it last year to Twentieth Century-Fox. First Nunnally Johnson and then Joseph Mankiewicz wrote the script, and John Stahl was the director with Mr. Mankiewicz the producer.

In making this picture, the writer and producer were con fronted with unusual difficulties. When the book first appeared it caused a great controversy a mong Catholic reviewers. It was roundly condemned for the heretical-sounding opinions it put into the mouth of its principal character, Father Francis

Chisholm, for the unsympathetic character of several other priests and a nun in the story. On the other hand, it depicted in Chisholm one of the most interesting priest characters in

modern fiction. Now when a novel is made into a film, not more than half of

it can go into the picture, unless it is to go to the lengths of a Gone With the Wind. Hence the writer must pick and choose his incidents from among many. In the case of the Keys of the Kingdom it was wisely decided that Chisholm himself was more interesting and dramatically valuable than any particular thing he' said along theological lines. The producers could not take



THE FOCUS IS ON FAITH 421

everything; they decided to take the man and let his opinions go. The result is that we will have a finely drawn picture of a saint

on the foreign missions, of a deeply human priest who, by his holiness, compounded of humility, charity and fortitude, sur

mounts all his obstacles, in nature and human nature, and, at the end of all his triumphs still thinks everybody else is better than he is. The part is played with deep sincerity by a young actor with some Broadway and road experience, and only one role in the films before this. His name is Gregory Peck and he is a fine actor. Workers in the studios are unusually critical of actors, especially new ones, and those in the Fox Studio were unanimous in praising his acting. That is the accolade in Holly wood, and the proof of it is that four companies have signed him to contracts for twelve pictures in the next five years.

As for the other priest rOles, circumstances avoided most of the difficulties of the novel. Some of them were necessarily eliminated for reasons of space. There were fourteen priests in the original story; seven of them are left. Of these the very choice of several of the actors- to play the part dictated the character of the roles. For instance, Monsignor Sleeth, who in the book is a cold hard man, is played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke in a dignified but fundamentally warm fashion. Mealey, who in the book is a pompous individual, is played with fine under standing of a complex character by Vincent Price. Incidentally,

Mealey never appears in the picture as a Bishop. Bishop MacNabb, an eccentric in the book, is played as a straight char acter part by Edmund Gwenn. The unfortunate Father Kexar

of the book does not get into the picture at all. Nor does the fake miracle. After all, a studio which made Bernadette could not follow that up with something phony. Thus do the exigencies of art solve many a problem.

Incidentally, the editors of our foreign-mission magazines are



422 THE IRISH MONTHL Y

going to love the photography of the Keys. The mission scenes are lovely specimens of the art of illusion. Millions of people are going to get an insight into the heartbreaks and consolations of mission life who never had it before. John Stahl, with many past successes to his credit, made this film in his usual painstaking and sympathetic fashion. And, by the way, in case any ladies read this piece, the principal nun part, Mother Maria Veronica, is played by Rose Stradner, a convent-school graduate, a

Viennese actress of much experience, and the wlife of the pro ducer, Mr. Mankiewicz. To those who remember this nun frontl the book I will whisper that in the picture she is aristocratic but never nasty.

1 have said that more is coming. The list of the pictures with religious subjects or- sequences is too long to mention here, but some of them can. Jean Valjean is Les Miserables remade, with its religious- aspects emphasised. Even A Tree Gros in Brooklyn has a priest in it now, at the graveside of Johnny. T'he Good Thief will be the story of Father Hyland at Dannemora Prison, and his chiapel of St. Dismas. The Robe will be Lloyd Douglas's best-seller story of early Christians. The life of Blessed Mother Cabrini is being prepared for a film.

Music For Millions, which was written by Myles Connolly, pre decessor of the present editor of Columbia, is a story of the efficacy of prayer, written for little Margaret O'Brien, Jimmy

Durante and Jose Iturbi. Mr. Connolly has another story, which Paramount will make, Make Way For O'Sullivan, which is the story of a man who is saved, body and soul, by the prayers of three women. Archbishop Spellruan's story, The Risen Soldier, vill, I am told, also be made into a picture. And these are just some of them.

Is Hollywood being converted to religion, or has it "chit the sawdust trail ", as Time put it? Not in the opinion of anybody



T"HE FOCUS IS ON FAITH 423

out there. What has happened is that several studios have dis

covered the picturesqueness of a cassock, the dramatic values 'in

Catholic life, and the almost infinite sources of story material

that religion can supply. The returns at the box-office are what

will ultimately determine how long the trend will last'. As I

said, also, the war has made all conscious of religion, too. And it may be that, as the motion pictures grow up, they are seeing

life more in its integrity and have found that the whole of life includes also and especially man's relation with God. Who are

we to complain of that?



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