The Miracle Woman - 1931

The Miracle Woman (1931) stars Barbara Stanwyck as a con artist Evangelist preacher who is unexpectedly ministered to by someone in need.  The title character of the movie reflects its era with an obvious nod to the real-life Aimee Semple McPherson, the most popular media evangelist of her day, who reached celebrity status in the 1920s and 1930s, but the similarity ends there.  Stanwyck’s “Sister Fallon” has a backstory more mundane and a future more ordinary than McPherson’s lionized life path, but Stanwyck’s incredible adventure brings her, more than her followers, an epiphany and a kind of humble salvation.

Directed by Frank Capra, this was Miss Stanwyck’s second of five films with him.  The story is told briskly, with some beautiful camera work, and several of Capra’s tender touches.  It is not a story of a woman losing faith or mocking faith; it is the story of a woman deeply disgusted by the hypocrisy of churchgoers.  Ultimately, the faith lost and restored is her faith in mankind.

The title card warns us, “The Miracle Woman is offered as a rebuke to anyone who, under the cloak of Religion, seeks to sell for gold, God’s choicest gift to Humanity—FAITH.”  This is to keep the censors at bay and to reassure audiences that the studio does not support religious fakes. 

We are also reminded of the verse from Matthew, “Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing.”  That could apply, as it has for millennia, to the world of politics as well as religion.

But the story about Stanwyck’s character is far more interesting than the possible rise and fall of a corrupt preacher—we have seen real-life examples of that to fill a mountain of tabloids—because she is not an arrogant, greedy, sociopath, someone with whom we could not really identify and therefore might cheer her downfall.  She is simply a strong but troubled young woman who needs to right a wrong and find her place in the scheme of things.

The movie starts with the lovely hymn, one of my favorites, “Holy Holy Holy! Lord God Almighty,” and a large church, packed with congregants, as Miss Stanwyck takes the pulpit.  She is not the minister; her ailing elderly father is, but he is unwell, and she is standing in for him today to read his dictated sermon. After which, she delivers one of her own.

The church deacons have recently hired a younger man to fill the post as minister, and after twenty years, Stanwyck’s pop is getting the sack.  At the point in the sermon where her father quotes the 23^rd Psalm (King James version), “The Lord is My Shepherd,” she breaks off because that is where her father left off just before he dropped dead.

The congregation is stunned.  She plows ahead with a much more fiery sermon of her own, blasting them for throwing her father away and for their hypocrisy, accusing them of killing him.  “The laborer is worthy of his hire—but you wouldn’t pay him what you pay your chauffeurs.”  He hadn’t accumulated enough savings in his tenure at the church even for a decent burial.  She goes on to threaten to make public the temperance union members who subscribe to bootleggers, and the (apparently many) adulterers among them.

“This isn’t a house of God; this is a meeting place for hypocrisy!”

The congregation runs away from her; they can’t get out of that church fast enough.

Sam Hardy makes his entrance, a visitor to the church, who consoles her on the loss of her father and her home (they’re probably going to want her to vacate the manse pretty quickly now), and offers her a new career.

“Religion’s like anything else—great if you can sell it, not good if you can give it away.”

Aha.  Turning the tables on the “faithful” by feeding into their hypocrisy and profiting from it.  She wants revenge, but is uncertain.  He assures her, “You’re not a hypocrite if you admit it.”

He builds up her new career as a faith healer, an evangelist who gains a following through radio and through her own theatrical services at a barnlike church.

We are now introduced to David Manners, a handsome and charming actor who played affable, mostly lightweight leading man roles in the early 1930s, later returning to the stage and eventually leaving acting in the 1950s to write.  He is probably most famous for his role in Dracula, released this same year of 1931 and which we covered here.  Manners plays a blind World War I vet who will have a profound impact on Stanwyck.

His introduction to us is one of Capra’s skilled emotional moments.  We see a woman sitting quietly in her apartment before an open window, slowly rocking her child in a cradle next to her.  She looks off, with an expression that is enigmatic; seems to convey weariness and yet serenity, as she listens to Stanwyck preach over the radio.  The woman’s vacant expression is fascinating; we don’t know her story, but she is not conveying feelings of being inspired or comforted by the evangelist.  Capra could have had her easily rapt, but she is in a world of her own, maybe just enjoying a quiet moment after a morning of housework and never-ending chores and obligations.

Manners leans out from a window above across the alley and asks her to turn down the radio, which she does.  Before he pulls his head in, there is a downward shot over his shoulders showing us what the alley looks like and how high up he is.  Another deft Capra shot that, though we don’t know it yet, is a kind of foreshadowing, because Manners will contemplate killing himself by jumping out that window in a moment.

As he pulls his head in and we see his apartment, the Army helmet draped over a lamp and various photos and souvenirs of the war, we understand his past, and discover he is blind. 

His kindly landlady, Beryl Mercer, brings the mail with bad news—his songwriting efforts fail to get him published.  When he eventually returns to the window to consider throwing himself out, he hears Stanwyck’s voice from his neighbor’s radio again.  Her sermon has taken a turn into a pure Depression-era keep-your-hopes-up theme, reminding her followers that John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, was a blind man.

Manners’ expression softens, and he gently laughs, feeling, if not inspired, then at least a little foolish for feeling so sorry for himself.

He wants to know more about the voice on the radio, and his landlady takes him to one of her services, which he attends as one amused by the circus-like setting rather than being immediately drawn in.  He is not looking for religion; he is just curious.

The large choir in their sweaters and singing World War I songs like “Over There,” seem more like a college football cheerleading squad than a church choir, but Stanwyck, or more to the point, Sam Hardy, knows the way to catch profits is to catch the most gullible segment of the population, and to catch them, one needs to appeal not to their intellect, but to what makes them feel good, and to put on a good show.

To this end, the curtains part, revealing lions in a large cage.  Stanwyck makes her entrance from an upper balcony, walking down a long ramp to the stage below, wearing a white gown, dressed as if she is an angel.  She enters the cage (Hardy makes sure the lions have been fed and staff are standing by to shoot the animals if they attack Miss Stanwyck), and begins her call to the faithful, to encourage them to enter the cage with her and be healed.

The hired shill for tonight is drunk and misses his cue, but Manners stands to volunteer.  He is not really seeking a cure; he just wants to find out more about Miss Stanwyck and talk to her.  He also senses she has been left hanging by no one going up to accept her challenge.  His landlady is concerned, “The lions will eat you!”

He responds with easy self-effacing humor, “No, they won’t; I’ve got a Murad.”  I think this might be a reference to the advertising slogan for the aromatic Turkish Murad cigarettes.

We have another topical reference of the day to vaudeville’s worst act, The Cherry Sisters, when Sam Hardy berates one of the other hired shills about her lousy performance, “You ain’t even one of the Cherry Sisters.”

After the show, Stanwyck, in her dressing room, tells Hardy she feels frustrated, like a prisoner, and is growing tired of the act.  He insists she continue, partly because they are so successful, and partly because he is growing obsessed with her and is increasingly possessive.

Giving Manners a ride home in the rain—Capra often sets romantic or sensual moments in the pouring rain in his pictures—he invites her up to his apartment and they get acquainted. He amuses her with his toys, a mechanical music toy and a “dancing doll,” and, rather creepily, his ventriloquist’s dummy dressed like a WW1 soldier.

She learns to laugh again and is perhaps touched that his gentle man, with all his problems, has no malice in his heart, no thirst for revenge as she has had.  

Before she leaves Manners after her first visit to his room, there is sweet moment where she turns to glance back at him, and the camera shifts to David Manners, standing there with something like expectancy, more on our part perhaps than his. He cannot see her looking at him, but he senses she has not left yet.

Stanwyck hesitates, then she goes back to him for a brief, soft kiss. 

Her need for revenge is fading away, and this is noticed by Sam Hardy.  He trails her with a jealous heart.  She rebuffs his advances.

Her faithful chauffeur, played by Frank Holliday, can cover for her only so far, and Hardy becomes menacing.  Their manager, who gets a third of a cut of the offerings and merchandising they take in (Manners had bought a plaster bust of Stanwyck to “see” what she looks like, and she is embarrassed at the tacky merch), is found dead.  Later, Hardy will threaten Stanwyck with the same fate if she does not run away with him to the Riviera.  He plants news stories that she is going to take a break for her health and travel the Holy Land.

She agrees to go, to protect David Manners from Hardy.  She confesses to him that she is a fake, but he comforts her.  She "writes" notes to him in fabric on paper so that he can feel the outline of the letters. It must have been an arduous process and looks like a ransom note.

He and the landlady break into the “tabernacle” and to Stanwyck’s dressing room so he can become familiar with the placement of the items in the room, to pretend to Stanwyck that his sight has been restored, freeing her to leave, but it doesn’t work.

On her farewell performance, the crowd is overflowing and exuberant, and she is about to confess her fakery to them, when Hardy cuts the lights.  It is reminiscent of the scene in Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941, previously covered here) when Gary Cooper is about to “out” the Edward Arnold gang and his microphone is cut in the stadium, and no one can hear him.  This was Barbara Stanwyck’s fifth and final film directed by Frank Capra.

A horrific fire breaks out, and people panic, and Stanwyck, strangely, encourages them to stay and sing, that fire cannot hurt them if they have faith and believe in God.  Perhaps she has begun to believe her own powers.  Sensibly, they leave the building. 

Manners, who wakes up in her dressing room after having been punched in the face by Hardy, heroically makes his way down to the stage and rescues her.  They are both removed from the scene outside on stretchers as the crowd recites The Lord’s Prayer.

We jump to many months later, when in New York City, Sam Hardy is working on another scam with a boxer, and he spots Stanwyck on the street wearing a Salvation Army uniform, singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” with her new fellow Salvation Army colleagues.  She is happy, having just read a telegram from David Manners stating a possible operation might restore his sight, but concedes it might not, “Who cares?”  He also mentions that the ventriloquist's dummy will be his best man at their wedding.  I think he's kidding.

Hardy remarks, “She gave up a million bucks for that?  The poor sap.”

The truly religious are servants to mankind, not managers of mankind.  Stanwyck has found her redemption.  She had never really demonstrated a lack of faith in God; such a question was too difficult for the studio system of the day, even Pre-Code, to examine unless the character could be brushed off as evil and dispatched by the final reel.  What she needed to overcome was her cynicism over mankind, which I think is a more interesting subject to explore; it leads far more easily to corruption. 

The Miracle Woman can currently be seen on YouTube.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

Buy this or any of my books online here at Bookshop.org.

The Negro Soldier - 1944

The Negro Soldier (1944) – was a groundbreaking film for its almost astonishing portrayal of Black Americans as just Americans, with as deep a sense of responsibility for fighting a war against fascism and as profoundly courageous as their so-often portrayed white fellow citizens in inspirational films of this period.

The “inspirational films” are, of course, commonly referred to as “propaganda,” but since that word has an obvious negative connotation, I prefer to separate the wheat from the chaff and state simply that many of these World War II films were actually less about the evil enemy (propaganda) and more about our resolve to stand for integrity and justice (inspiration).

That the portrayal of Black Americans without stereotype in this movie is astonishing is, just as obvious, due to the overwhelming stereotype and often outright negative imagery of African Americans since the start of cinema.  We know that, while prejudice did not end with the conquering of our enemies in World War II, the end of the war nevertheless did mark a beginning of a more introspective examination in movies of racial injustice that slowly began to change the mood in this country.  Many historians would point to the fact that Black Americans, having contributed to the victory, were not willing to continue being treated as second-class citizens and a foolish, even ugly, stereotype.

I think, however, part of the change in society had seeds that were sewn not only by returning Black veterans but by movies of this type.  Though The Negro Soldier was not the only one of this genre, it was, and is, a fine movie that left a positive impression with the white civilian population.   It was not originally meant for them but meant only for Black recruits to inspire them to be good soldiers, but so pleased were they with the representation of themselves, that it was decided to show it to white soldiers as well, and then to the general public.  It was received very well, and in its own quiet way, made, I think, an important contribution not only to the war effort, but to the peace that followed.  Today, it is part of the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress.

Produced by Frank Capra as a follow-up to his Why We Fight series, this short documentary was made under the auspices of the War Activities Committee of the Motion Pictures Industry, commissioned by the U.S. War Department.  It was directed by Stuart Heisler and the script was written by Carlton Moss, who also appears in the role of a minister.

Mr. Moss came from the theatre.  After college he was one of the leaders of the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration endeavors to employ writers, artists, directors, actors during the Great Depression.  Moss was recommended to help run the Negro Theatre Unit by John Houseman, who was leaving that role.

The Negro Soldier begins with a Black congregation singing in a packed downtown church, and Carlton Moss is the minister who addresses them from the pulpit.  He is not fiery or emotional, but quiet, professorial, and those of us who are fans of Mrs. Miniver (1942) (a much more famous film roundly referred to as “propaganda”) may recall the vicar played by Henry Wilcoxon.  His “Wilcoxon speech” at the end of the movie has a different tone that the words of Preacher Moss, but Moss’s sermon is just as important and necessary to hear.  Like the “Wilcoxon speech,” it is good for the soul.

First he gestures to the service flag hung in church with stars for members who are now in the military and he points out members of the congregation who are in uniform, welcoming them and including among them, a woman who is a WAC.  There is a sense of equity here not only for African Americans but for Black women, in particular.

Heavyweight champion Joe Louis is recalled for his symbolic trouncing of the German Max Schmeling in the ring, and both were now in the uniform of their respective countries “fighting for the real championship of the world.”

Jesse Owens, likewise, is recalled for his triumphs, along with Ralph Metcalfe and other team members, over the track and field German competitors at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.  Having thus far made the connection between the phony declarations of the superiority of the Aryan race,  Preacher Moss then quotes from Hitler’s memoir, Mein Kampf.

Moss refers to it as “The gospel according to Hitler.”  He reads a passage wherein Hitler outlines his desire to conquer by force, and as regards to themselves as Black Americans, of the folly of America to “train a born half-ape.”

This is perhaps the most startling image, to hear the vile words of an evil man read calmly from the pulpit in a house of worship, insulting to the congregation, but this has an even greater effect than angry outcry.  It is as if the evidence is put on display in court.  The camera shows us closeups of many faces in the congregation.  Here, too, is a kind of judicial proof.  They are human beings and they are not stereotypes

Then the minister takes us through United States history and Black participation in every major event from the Boston Massacre, the Battle of Lexington-Concord, Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, battles of the War of 1812, pointing out with images perhaps revelatory to those in the theater audience who were unaware of the longstanding and unbroken involvement of African Americans in the history of the nation.  We catch a glimpse of Black faces peering out from broad-brimmed hats and bonnets on covered wagons heading West as pioneers.  These people are part of history but were not part of history books for likely a majority of the theater audience.

Moving closer to the present day, Black soldiers are seen in the Spanish-American War and in World War I.  Then Moss moves on to images of notable Black Americans in fields of science, literature, art, finance, medicine. 

In the present war, Dorie Miller, who was awarded the Navy Cross for heroism at Pearl Harbor, and who died in battle the year before this film was released, is briefly mentioned, as well as the Tuskegee pilots, but the film shifts at this point from these noble images to the equally noble if mundane review of a new recruit’s experiences.

A mother in the congregation reads aloud a letter from her son, who recently entered the Army.  She is Mrs. Bronson, played by Bertha Wolford or Woolford (who seems to have had uncredited parts in only three other films, including Night and Day, covered here). 

The flashback scenes show her son arriving on the train platform with other men, including white recruits, as they shed civilian dress and go through the process of induction.  They are interviewed, taught military courtesy, yelled at by sergeants, stumble around marching, until they finally become soldiers.  

On leave, he attends a dance and there is the romantic image of him dancing with a lovely young woman.  He also observes WACs in training and offers his admiration for them in his letter to his mother.

His next post, he hopes, will be officer’s candidate school.  He is no stereotype, nor is his quietly proud mother, nor is anyone in the congregation.  Over 900,000 African Americans served in the military in World War II all over the globe.  One of the few complaints of the film is it does not stress the injustice of a segregated military.  Nevertheless, the film leaves its audience, as all good films should, with something to think about and to broaden their minds.

Have a look at The Negro Soldier here on YouTube.

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Our greatest gift from the Greatest Generation was freedom from fascism. Relive, and celebrate, how evil was faced, discussed, dramatized...and fought. Classic films were Hollywood's weapon.

Get your copy of my book Hollywood Fights Fascism here at Amazon in print or eBook, or here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online shops.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Prelude to War - Requiescat in Pace, Greatest Generation

Tomorrow, December 7th, marks the 77th anniversary of the day America stood on the precipice of World War II, and a generation -- now referred to as The Greatest Generation, faced another moment of destiny.

Yesterday, we held a national day of mourning for former President George Herbert Walker Bush, who was our last president to have served in World War II.  Characteristically of that generation, he enlisted on his eighteenth birthday.

Here is archival footage of twenty-year-old  Lt. J.G. Bush being rescued after being shot down.

To keep faith with that Greatest Generation and the continuing gift of freedom they have left us, we need to remind ourselves of the reasons they had to give up their youth, in many cases, their lives, to a higher purpose.

Hollywood contributed a unique perspective and legacy of that era.  We classic film buffs are familiar with the wartime dramas, the musicals, the patriotic messages, as well as the number of actors who left their careers to enter the military and the hundreds of others who supported the nation's war mission by entertaining troops, appearing at bond drives, and volunteering in many ways.

We've discussed in this previous post about the Hollywood Commandos or the FMPU which produced wartime training films.  One of the most important projects made by this unit was director Frank Capra's Why We Fight series.  This was meant to inform, inspire, and provide the necessary background to the purpose of why the service personnel were required to fight.  Training them to use certain weapons, or how to act in certain situations was not the only important education they received in boot camp.  The fight against fascism was as intellectual and emotional as it was tactical.

The first film in that series, Prelude to War is up at the top of this post.  One hopes that in an era where fascism has found a foothold in our country, and young people know next to nothing about World War II, that an imperfect, decades-old training film, called "propaganda" today, is not so remote that it would not touch even the most stupid and cynical teenager posing for a class photo while giving the Nazi salute, or painting swastika graffiti, or draping a rope noose where it will be noticed.

Requiescat in pace, President Bush.  Requiescat in pace, Greatest Generation.

American Madness - 1932

American Madness (1932) reaffirms the decency and pluckiness of the American people even though filmed during the depths of the Great Depression and boldly addresses the financial crisis of the day.

Hollywood has the reputation of producing fantasy films during this period to take us away from our troubles, but really there were just as many hard-hitting and bravely realistic films that unflinchingly examined the perils of everyday life among a population with 25% unemployment.

“It is what it is” is a saying common today, and this is the attitude adopted by the characters in this movie with the foreboding title.  They see things the way they are and they scramble to survive.  It was the worst year of the Great Depression, but the presidential campaigns of Herbert Hoover versus Franklin D. Roosevelt get no play in this story, nor any mention of “someday this will all be over”.  Nobody’s waiting for someday; we’re just waiting out today, and yet this is not a movie of weary acceptance, but of vigor, humor, and if there is little optimism, there is at least a belligerent refusal to succumb.

Pat O’Brien plays a bank clerk in a large New York City bank.  He opens the vault in the morning in a long sequence, a process of many steps, while fellow tellers wait to enter and remove rolling steel cases with all the money in it.  Director Frank Capra uses this imagery masterfully.  They laconically talk of $25,000 transactions for the bank, but when O’Brien asks a fellow teller if he can borrow ten bucks, he is told, “Sorry, pal, didn’t you ever hear of a Depression?”

The scene is both an ironic image of water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink—which must have driven poor audiences crazy, and also sets up the plot of the story.  The bank will be robbed, and Pat O’Brien will be the prime suspect.

Sterling Holloway, with that slow and sticky as honey Winnie the Pooh voice and the impossible mop of hair as his trademark is another teller. He self-importantly milks his story, being the one who discovered the vault had been broken into and a guard killed.  Black humor is the order of the day.   Later Holloway tells O’Brien, “I’ll be seeing you in the breadlines.”

Photo from Stars of the Photoplay, 1930

But this is no gangster movie; it’s a message film, as so many movies during the Depression and distinctly about the Depression were message films.  Walter Huston is the bank president, who built this business from nothing.  Though he has a board of directors, it’s his bank.  He picks and chooses his deals, he loans to people he trusts rather than who have a good credit rating.  He is no airy optimist who sees only good in people; he can spot a no-good person in a minute.  He is stubbornly independent, and this makes his board crazy.  They are trying to take power from him and merge with another bank.

“Talk is you’re too liberal,” his chief antagonist accuses him in an angry moment.

“Yes, and I’m going to going to continue to be liberal.” he answers.  When he rolls off a list of names of small businessmen he’s made loans to—to the chagrin of the board of officers—it reads like a who’s who of the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”: Manny Goldberg, Tony Rosario, Joseph McDonald, Alan Jones.  The script writer is pointedly including an ethnic smorgasbord as a demonstration of Walter Huston’s lack of bigotry as much as his fiscal liberality.

“Character.  It’s the only thing you can bank on, and it’s the only thing that’ll take this country out of the doldrums,” he says.

Sometimes in movies of this period, the big businessman is portrayed as a bad guy, and sometimes as a pie-in-the-sky dreamer of well-intentioned but almost moronic innocence.  Huston is neither.  He’s a savvy banker, and a great guy who treats his employees like pals, and even rescued Pat O’Brien from his life as an ex-con, trusting him with handling the bank’s money in his teller’s job—but Huston is not a man without fault.  He is impatient, brusque with those who oppose his solitary command, and so intently focused on his business that he neglects his adored wife.  This will lead to trouble.

Interestingly, pretty nearly all the action in this movie takes place in the bank.  It is a marble temple of columns and mahogany, where a large staff, from male tellers in suits to the secretaries, receptionists and telephone operator, and uniformed guards, are on the payroll and serving the public with polished shoes and brave smiles. Not an ATM in site.  It’s gloriously opulent in architecture, décor, and human service in a way banks now are not.  It lends confidence as much as money.

The head cashier, played by Gavin Gordon, is involved with gangsters, to whom he owes $50,000 from gambling losses.  To square things with them, he agrees to fiddle with the timed lock on the vault so they can sneak in, in the middle of the night, and rob the bank.  To plan his own alibi, he cozies up to Walter Huston’s neglected wife, played by Kay Johnson, takes her out for the evening, and brings her back to his apartment.  She is more interested in a fun evening with someone to talk to, not an affair, and when he gets too amorous, she is embarrassed and backs away.  At that moment, Pat O’Brien interferes.  He suspects their relationship and wants to protect the boss who gave him a second chance.

Photo by Ruth Harriet Louise from Stars of the Photoplay, 1930

There is a tense scene of confrontation, and a gun drawn, but both O’Brien and the wife leave, neither realizing the bank is about to be robbed in five minutes.  O’Brien, by virtue of his criminal past, will be accused of orchestrating the job and he will not confess to the cops where he was when the job went down—getting his boss’s wife away from a dalliance in other man’s apartment.

A dual plot of the bank’s solvency runs along with the news of the theft the next morning, and a scene that steamrolls through the rest of the movie concerns the public’s trust of the bank.  A few come to make transactions, and when they notice the cops doing their investigation, rumors spread of the bank’s insolvency.  More and more people spread the gossip on the phone and in whispered, then screamed conversations on the street.  A full-blown panic occurs, and a mob of customers floods the great marble lobby of the bank, a sea of bobbing heads and urgent, angry shouting.  Lots of extras got work that day.  It’s an exciting, fast-paced sequence of events.  Capra doesn’t just film the mob as an inhuman mass—he picks out the individuals and never fails to show us inside the soul of the common man.

An elderly woman begs for her money, fearful of going to “the old ladies’ home.”  No social safety nets (this is before FDR).  She’d be lucky to get into an old ladies’ home.  The only other alternative was a Hooverville in a park or under a highway bridge.

Mob mentality is ugly and stupid, and frightening.  The bank’s board of directors, though understandably horrified, nevertheless are pleased to use this as an opportunity to pry Huston from his seat of power.  They wait for him to fail, so they can sell their shares of the bank and complete the merger.

Pat O’Brien endeavors to rescue his boss. He shouts two conversations at once into two candlestick telephones to alert the small-time businessmen who have loans with the bank to come and help. He and his girlfriend, played by Constance Cummings, who also works at the bank, man the phones like election campaign workers.

Finally, the cavalry comes in the form of the aforementioned small businessmen: Manny Goldberg, Tony Rosario, Joseph McDonald, and Alan Jones, and all their like who got their loans from Walter Huston.  It’s a It’s a Wonderful Life ending with the men pushing their way through the chaos and announcing in defiant voices that they are depositing thousands of dollars, that they will put their faith in Huston. 

The panic is over.  The board of directors have a change of heart, as armored cars arrive and guards carry in sacks of money. People cheer as at a football game, and leave in relief.

But Huston’s troubles are not over.  Though Pat O’Brien stubbornly will not tell the cops he has an alibi for the time of the robbery—because it would implicate the boss’s wife and shame his benefactor—nevertheless the cops put two and two together and go after head teller Gavin Gordon.  There is a chase in the bank, through employees’ lockers in the cloakroom.  Gordon has a gun.

But the news about Huston’s wife gets out, and Huston is devastated, on the brink of suicide.  His wife attempts to console him.

Pat O’Brien is exonerated.  The panic is over, but, just as in the days after the stock market crash of 1929, the time has come to settle in, calm down, and figure out what to do next.

The ending is less exuberant than we might expect ordinarily, but it is more comforting.  Pat O’Brien keeps his job, he and his girl will marry, and Huston has patched things up with his wife.  He is not going to neglect her anymore, but will start on a second honeymoon and travel to Europe on the great liner, the Berengaria.

A footnote that the movie does not refer to, but that we may note here, is that the R.M.S. Berengaria, as we noted in this previous post, sailed from London to New York that very week of the great stock market crash in October 1929.  It was the first ship to have a special salon for trading stocks over the shortwave radio.  Millionaires passed the time during the sea voyage keeping up with the news of their investments.

They left England millionaires, at least.  They docked in New York, paupers.

Huston’s bank evidently weathered the Crash.  The movie ends with another long, ponderous sequence of Pat O’Brien carefully opening up the vault for another business day.  Shoulder to the wheel, literally.

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Tomorrow, Turner Classic Movies is presenting a day of Debbie Reynolds films to commemorate her passing and celebrate her movie career.  One of those films will be Singin’ in the Rain (1952).  Come back next week for a discussion on the recent big screen showing nationwide of Singin’in the Rain.

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The audio book for Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is now for sale on Audible.com, and on Amazon and iTunes.

Also in paperback and eBook from Amazon.