The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima - 1952

Tomorrow, Friday, October 13^th, marks the 100^th anniversary of the “Miracle of the Sun,” the final apparition in Fátima, Portugal, of the Virgin Mary after several successive months of appearing to three children.  We turn our attention today to The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952), which dramatizes these events.

The story is inherently dramatic, involving the supernatural, as well as historical fact, but the obvious third leg of the stool—our human capacity for faith and what we choose to do about it—is not as strong an element in this movie as it might be.  Much of the unquestioning faith of the children, and the doubtful faith of their elders, seem conveyed as a lesson learned by rote.

One is tempted to regard this movie as an attempt by Warner Bros. to cash in on the tremendous critical and financial success of The Song of Bernadette (1943), made nine years earlier at 20^th Century-Fox, and which garnered several Academy Awards.  That movie addressed the visions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, France, in 1858 to Bernadette Soubrious. We discussed that movie here in this previous post.  Here, from that post:

The Song of Bernadette (1943) pits man against miracle in a many-layered universe. The first layer of this complicated universe is the historical 19th century event on which the story is based.  Then, there is the book by Franz Werfel and the World War II climate under which that book was written and published.  Finally, there is Hollywood, that tries diplomatically to be both pious and frank, spiritual and temporal, to present a money-making story, and yet present it under the auspices of a religious experience…

Man is by nature a creature which believes. We have religions and sometimes complicated protocols of faith. We have superstitions, and we have good luck and bad luck, and we have worries and fears and paranoia, and that is all part of what we willingly believe without proof. On the opposite side of man’s nature is an innate skepticism.

Someone who believes in the efficacy of the prayers of his own faith, may disbelieve the efficacy of prayers of another faith.  An atheist may disbelieve the efficacy of any prayer at all, and yet wholeheartedly believe in luck, or horoscopes, or that a co-worker who gives him a dirty look is out to get him.  It may be the co-worker is just in a bad mood, but that does not shake the belief of the paranoid.  A lot of logical, sensible people knock on wood.  Even people who believe in nothing believe in something, even if it is only the superiority of their own opinions.

So, we believe, regularly, commonly, without proof.  It may be part of our DNA.  But at the same time we are skeptical over someone else’s experiences.  The Song of Bernadette shows these disparate sides of human nature and the clinging onto of human dignity more than it puts forward of one belief over another, or promotes miracles.

That The Song of Bernadette dramatizes the struggle of faith as something normal and yet at the same time, monumental, is one of its most intriguing elements.  There are many other factors which, added together, simply make Bernadette a much better movie, including a strong cast of familiar character actors, and a strong script.

The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima relies on a cast largely unknown to us, though there are numerous uncredited extras that may make you play the old game “spot the villager”: Mae Clark, Jack Kruschen, J. Carroll Nash, and Anne Whitfield (our Susan Waverly from White Christmas).  Jay Novello has a role as the father of two of the children, but the only featured adult role in this film belongs to Gilbert Roland, a favorite of mine whom we saw here in The French Line (1954) and We Were Strangers (1949).  Mr. Roland’s role is a fictional character, a lovable rogue who does not believe, but who attempts to protect the kids when townspeople and officials go after them from spreading tales about being visited by the Virgin Mary.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the film is that it centers on the three kids.  Susan Whitney is Lucia, the eldest of the three who is the leader, and her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco, who are brother and sister, played by Sherry Jackson and Sammy Ogg.  All three child actors went on to do television in the 1950s, but Susan Whitney had the briefest career.  Sherry Jackson had an uncredited role as an extra in The Great Caruso (1951), which we discussed here.

 Unfortunately, there is no depth to the children’s roles as written or as played, so they come across as something of cardboard cutouts.  It might have been better if this had intentionally been made as a children’s film, giving them a stronger screen presence and focusing on their world rather than the angry grownups, who disbelieve them, try to silence them, imprison them, and ultimately relent in a burst of dancing sunlight.

Conversely, it might have also been a better film had it addressed that wider world in which these awesome, and harrowing, adventures take place.  That is the chief difference that would have stood apart from The Song of Bernadette, which had its roots in a novel about an event from the middle of the nineteenth century.  The Fátima apparitions occurred in one of the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century, and set the foreboding prologue for what was to come in decades hence.  It is the modern aspects of the story of Fátima that makes it so compelling, even eerie, and would have made a stronger film.

The historical setting begins before the 1917 start of the film story and extends beyond its epilogue of the modern basilica in 1951 at the site of the former apparitions.  In October 1910 Portugal endured a violent political revolution, one consequence of which was the closing of many churches and imprisonment of many clergy.  The three children of the story are poor, living a secluded rural life as shepherds, pastorinhos, and are unaware of most of the politics of their own country, let alone the enormous events taking place in the rest of Europe.  We are in the thick of World War I, begun with an assassin’s bullet and toppling the governments of several nations, leaving millions of dead strewn across muddy battlefields, and millions of refugees starving.

One government in peril is czarist Russia.  The coming communist regime will have consequences for the rest of the world, for the rest of the century.  When the Virgin Mary appears to the three children, she brings messages of future chastisement of the world if people do not repent and pray, including the daily praying of the Rosary, and the coming of a worse war if her warnings are not heeded.  She also tells the children, who are illiterate, they must learn to read and write, so that they may tell others of her messages to them.  The two younger children will die in the impending Spanish Influenza pandemic, which killed possibly as many as 100 million people worldwide.  These are only some of the modern events that serve as backdrop to the Marian apparitions of Fátima that made it a quite different tale to dramatize than the backdrop to the events at Lourdes, and which should have induced Warner Bros. to intentionally make Fatima a movie with a different slant and not lazily follow a template of how simple villagers take to miracles.

Interestingly, the real-life Lucia, who, as the Virgin Mary instructed her, did learn to read and write and carefully documented her experiences, recalled that when they were first told to pray that Russia might be converted, she had never heard of Russia.  The kids thought Russia was probably another little girl who needed prayers.  At the time of these apparitions from May to October 1917, Russia had not yet even become communist.  The request for prayers for Russia’s conversion was a prediction.

So too was the prediction of a second, more brutal war.  Though the Soviet Union eventually collapsed and the Cold War ended without nuclear war, still it does not take too much of a stretch of the imagination to concede the warning about the future spreading of Russia’s “errors” to the world include the current threat to overthrow our own government and democracy at the direction of the soulless Vladimir Putin, with the help of his acolyte Bannon and his puppet, Trump.  The political background of the story about three kids entrusted with heavenly messages, dire warnings, and even well-publicized three “secrets” is enough material to make a movie that is not only entertaining, but even astounding.

The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima remains today as a simple primer to show at Catholic school assemblies, but is little more than that, and I can’t imagine that was what the execs at Warner Bros. really wanted to create.  Perhaps miracles, in any form, are really too uncomfortable for us to tackle.  We want miracles, nice miracles, like winning the lottery, but when faced with miracles that carry so much weight and consequence, perhaps we really just don’t have the “courage of our convictions.”

The Miracle of the Sun was an event well documented by the press, as tens of thousands gathered to the spot where the three kids observed their last encounter together with the Holy Mother.  They had requested from her a sign that the grownups would believe them.  They were getting a little sick of being told to shut up, and put in jail.  The Blessed Mother came through big time.  While the multitudes stood in the rain, the sun came out and wobbled around, zigzagged a bit, changed colors, seemed to pulsate, and then the sun starting growing bigger, as if it was hurtling toward the earth.  The people panic.  This part in the movie where the sun comes at us is pretty scary, even despite the simple technical craft of the day.  You may find yourself running for the exits.

Then the show stops, and all the people, though having been standing in the rain for some hours, are completely dry, and the ground is all dry, and the newspaper men have quite a story to tell in their next edition.

In the movie, the rascal Gilbert Roland becomes a true believer when he sees the Miracle of the Sun, and we see him in the epilogue talking to Lucia, now a nun, many years after the event.  Oddly, the director chose to use the same child actress, Susan Whitney, to play the adult Lucia, but who speaks lip-synching to the voice of an adult actress.  It has a weird effect and seems a very poor compromise at establishing the continuity between the child and the adult visionary.

Lucia lived to be 97 years old, and died in 2005.  This past May 13^th, on the 100^th anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fátima, Pope Francis canonized the two younger children, Jacinta and Francisco.  World-wide prayer services will commemorate the October 13^th “Miracle of the Sun” and pilgrims to Fátima will likely add a great number to those who regularly flock to that site.  Fátima, unlike the well-intentioned movie, is indeed a modern tale with political and social threads; that is it’s compelling “hook” and is still with us.

Star in the Night - 1945

Star in the Night (1945) is a short subject, about 20 minutes long, that has, thanks to showings by TCM, has enjoyed rediscovery by fans of classic films and has become for many as beloved a holiday classic as It’s a Wonderful Life or Christmas in Connecticut.  It is like one of the smaller presents under the tree—insignificant-looking, but sweet in its simplicity.

We covered The Trail of Robin Hood (1950) with Roy Rogers last week as an example of a movie with a Christmas theme that is an uncomplicated and innocent slice of holiday fare, and Star in the Night is similarly a movie with a Christmas theme that hits a minor chord among the giants of the season: Holiday Inn, White Christmas, etc.  Unlike the Roy Rogers Christmas tree caper, Star in the Night hints at a theme religious in nature, but with a decidedly secular wrapping.  We think we know the story, but it leaves us with a catch in the throat and a tear in the eye just the same.

We meet three saddle tramps, with gaudy, cheap presents strapped to the horns of their saddles, bemoaning that they threw away their pay in town trying to impress a pretty young salesgirl by buying so many things—which they have no use for.  Simple toys, a basket that looks like a cradle, a small tree, looking for all like carnival items.  They ride slowly at night across a desert scene, and in the far distance through the fog, they see a star, far brighter than the others, and hanging strangely close to the horizon. 

Before we can get too taken in by a Christmas star and Nativity theme, we are wrenched from a spiritual moment by J. Carrol Naish, who is atop a water tower hammering at a gaudy tin star with lights on it.  He obtained it from a movie house that went out of business, the Star Picture Palace, and he’s using it as an advertising sign for his auto court, which is what we now call motels.  They were a new idea back in the day, a cheap string of bungalows on the highway where people could stop and sleep for the night, get a bite to eat, not as fancy or expensive as a hotel.  Nobody expected much in the way of comfort, just eats and a bed.

Hitchhiker Donald Woods isn’t even expecting even that much.  He’s down and out, a hobo, and he asks Mr. Naish to allow him to come into the office and warm up, and perhaps give him a cup of coffee.  Naish scoffs at him, angry to have a bum try to play on his sympathies.  Naish is a businessman, not doing too well himself, and he’s already got his auto court filled with guests who are demanding, and downright rude.  He doesn’t need one more person to ask favors of him, especially a guy who can’t pay.

Woods is riveting in this role, he draws our attention and compassion in extraordinarily subtle acting and what I would expect to be brilliant directing by Don Siegel.  Woods in the background of many shots, just observing, a silent witness to the proceedings.  A B-movie actor who occasionally played minor roles in A-films, here Woods is compelling.  He speaks softly, and in his soothing voice and his dark, kindly eyes, there is a gentleness that is equally inspiring as it is remonstrative to Naish, and us.  He is open and guileless, yet seems to bring secrets with him. There is a Christ-like demeanor to his character, but he is not really the protagonist, or the narrator, or the Greek chorus that represents the theme or the conscience, nor does he really stand in for us.  He is a mystery, perhaps an angel, or could he really just be a guy with a three-day beard and no coat, who glances under the floppy brim of his battered fedora with such presence that we have difficulty taking him for who he is?  Because we don’t know who he is.

Who we are in the story is plain: we are Naish, the angry owner of the auto court who is sick of being pushed around.  We are his various guests:  the couple who want more blankets and refused to accept no for an answer; the guy, played by Irving Bacon, who’s mad because his shirts came back from the laundry all wrecked; and the woman who’s fit to be tied because she can’t sleep for the noise the bunch of rowdies in the next bungalow are making.  Later the rowdies reverently sing Christmas carols.

Then Anthony Caruso, who pops up as minor characters from time to time in movies, plays a Mexican immigrant with a sick wife.  He wants a room so she can lie down, but the auto court is full up.  Naish’s kindly wife, played by Rosina Galli, suggests the shed in back, and Naish blusters, but he lets his wife have her way.  The immigrants are led to the shed, and the woman is allowed to lie down in the hay.

She’s not sick.  She’s pregnant, and soon the husband panics because the baby’s suddenly coming.  Here.  Now.  What does he do?

He tells the others, and asks for help.

But this is a 20-minute short, and moreover, it has a distinct lesson to tell us.  There is no time wasted by the irritable other travelers.  They snap to attention, and, as so often happens in a crisis, they get to work to help someone who needs it.  They give the blankets, the shirts, the hot water, and the women go to the shed to comfort the woman and help deliver the baby.  They are immediate in their reaction, a blessed contradiction to our usual vacillating whims.

Naish, we are told by his wife, is really a softy, though we can’t believe it.  She tells Donald Woods that when she first met him, Naish was crying over an animal that he saw being mistreated.  She was so moved, she decided then and there he was the man for her.

Naish is none too happy about the Mexicans camping on him and sponging off him, but he is worried about the pregnant woman, and he gives Woods a free cup of coffee, and later on his coat.  He needs to help somehow.  Helping gives us a sense of control.

The baby is born, it’s a boy.  Relief washes over everybody as things seem to be okay.  Then the three cowboys come in.  We forgot about them.  They are, of course, the Magi bringing their presents (which suddenly are useful) to the baby in the shed. 

Naish, bewildered, looks around at his happy guests, and glances over to the shed where they kneel before the mother and baby.  His eyes squint and flicker as they catch the light of his cheap, shabby star with its many movie marquee light bulbs that pierce the foggy night.  He looks up at the star, and suddenly it hits him.  A look of humility, gratitude—and horror, wash over his face. 

He almost turned away the Christ child. 

The events of this night have been his test, and his gift, and his redemption.  Sometimes redemption is just a second chance to be a nice guy.  His eyes fill with tears.

 And so do ours. 

We may have a tacky tin star, but we don’t have any movie “stars”. The character actors will handle this one just fine, thank you.  Star in the Night won an Oscar for Best Short Subject.  It is currently an extra on the Christmas in Connecticut DVD.   Who would have thought something so short, so small, could be such a giant?

 Here it is:

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"Lynch’s book is organized and well-written – and has plenty of amusing observations – but when it comes to describing Blyth’s movies, Lynch’s writing sparkles." - Ruth Kerr, Silver Screenings

"Jacqueline T. Lynch creates a poignant and thoroughly-researched mosaic of memories of a fine, upstanding human being who also happens to be a legendary entertainer." - Deborah Thomas, Java's Journey

"One of the great strengths of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is that Lynch not only gives an excellent overview of Blyth's career -- she offers detailed analyses of each of Blyth's roles -- but she puts them in the context of the larger issues of the day."- Amanda Garrett, Old Hollywood Films

"Jacqueline's book will hopefully cause many more people to take a look at this multitalented woman whose career encompassed just about every possible aspect of 20th Century entertainment." - Laura Grieve, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings

"Jacqueline T. Lynch’s Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is an extremely well researched undertaking that is a must for all Blyth fans." - Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 
by Jacqueline T. Lynch

The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.

The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and CreateSpace, which is the printer.  You can also order it from my Etsy shop. It is also available at the Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.

If you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.

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