Hollywood Madonna (31 page)

Come to the Stable
was inspired by the visit of Catholic convert and playwright Clare Boothe Luce (
The Women
,
Margin for Error
,
Kiss the Boys Goodbye
) to what was then the Priory of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Luce believed that the priory’s backstory was movie material and proceeded to write a screenplay, “From a French Battlefield to the Connecticut Hills”—not exactly the sort of title that would attract moviegoers. Luce was eventually given story credit, but the screenplay was primarily the work of Sally Benson, known for injecting a shot of humanity into scripts, particularly those about families (
Meet Me in St. Louis
[1944],
Junior Miss
[1945],
Joy in the Morning
[1965]). Benson had read Luce’s script, which catalogued the frustrations a Benedictine nun, Mother Benedict, experienced in her efforts to build Regina Laudis, which later became the Abbey of Regina Laudis. Benson also realized that certain changes had to be made. In the film, the nuns bury a medal of St. Jude at the top of the hill that marked the Abbey’s future site. Actually, it was a St. Benedict medal, as one would expect from Benedictine nuns. But Benson knew that more moviegoers were familiar with St. Jude, the patron saint of the impossible, than with St. Benedict.

Zanuck ignored Luce’s casting suggestions: Irene Dunne in the lead, Cary Grant as the composer, Zazu Pitts as the artist, and Monty Woolley as the owner of the property that the nuns desire. Irene Dunne, like Loretta, was a Hollywood Catholic, but while she succeeded in getting a king to honor his promise to give her a house (
Anna and the King of Siam
[1946], also coauthored by Benson), she was not Zanuck’s idea of the Chicago-born Sister Margaret: stationed in France during World War II, where she made a bargain with God that if her children’s hospital were spared, she would establish a similar one in the United States, named after St. Jude. Prayers are usually answered in movies, and Sister Margaret’s was no exception. Inspired by a postcard reproduction of
Come to the
Stable
, and believing it was providential that the artist, Amelia Potts (the ever delightful Elsa Lanchester) lives in Bethlehem, Connecticut, Sister Margaret and her companion, Sister Scholastica (Celeste Holm, sporting a flawless French accent) set out for the American Bethlehem.

Although Holm was not a scene-stealer, she had a way of deflecting attention from others—except Loretta, who held her own. But unlike Loretta, who had to speak some French, but with an American accent, Holm had to sound like a native, which she did, even though she was born in New York. Holm also had to compete in a tennis match to raise the money the nuns need for their hospital. The intercutting of closeups, medium shots, and long shots indicated that Holm had a double for some of the scenes, which were so skillfully edited that the audience assumed Holm was also a tennis pro. She was not, but Sister Scholastica had been. Still, Holm could work the court until it was time for a double. How many actresses could play tennis in a nun’s habit, as Holm did? Celeste Holm deserved the Oscar nomination she received. She did not win (Mercedes McCambridge did for
All the King’s Men
), although she had won the previous year for
Gentleman’s Agreement
(1947), which was more of a Zanuck production than
Come to the Stable
.

Although Sister Scholastica lost the match, the screenplay adhered to the setback-success model à la
Going My Way
(1944) and
The Bells of St. Mary’s
(1945), in which a church is rebuilt and a school is saved from the wrecking ball. The nuns also realize their dream after overcoming such obstacles as an initially dubious but eventually persuaded bishop, a shady businessman (charmingly played by Thomas Gomez), and a composer of popular music (Hugh Marlowe), who has no intention of having nuns as neighbors—until he discovers that the “original” song he composed derived from a chorale he heard the nuns sing when he was serving in France during the second world war.

Benson was not the sole screenwriter; she shared credit with Oscar Millard, who early in 1948 submitted a brief to Zanuck, identifying Loretta’s character as the historical Mother Benedict Duss, “
an American raised
since early childhood in France.” The London-born Millard had only turned to screenwriting in 1945, after having been a journalist, novelist, and short story writer. He may have been hired because he had worked for French and Belgian publications and could write the kind of English that Sister Scholastica would speak—the words carefully chosen, precise and unambiguous, as might be expected of a woman whose native language was French. Millard’s brief supplied the facts. The St. Benedict medal that the nuns buried was on a forty-five-acre property
on the outskirts of Bethlehem. Determined to build the priory on that site, Mother Benedict contacted Lauren Ford, the artist whose painting inspired the trip to America, and who provided a home for her and her companion. On the site was a vacant factory, whose owner agreed to sell if the nuns could pay off the mortgage. To raise the money, other Benedictine nuns and a German priest come over to sell their handicrafts and ceramics, but the profits only amounted to a down payment. In the same file with Millard’s brief is a treatment that adds an important plot point: the owner agrees to give the nuns the property if the body of his son, who was killed during World War II, is buried there. The father (Thomas Gomez) makes a similar bargain in the film, but it’s for a stained glass window commemorating his son. Eager to get papal recognition, the historical Mother Benedict and her companion, Mother Mary Aline, with the aid of a contessa, fly to Rome where they have an audience with the pope, who gives them his blessing but nothing more.

With the officially designated “Holy Year” coming up in 1950, the year after the film’s release, an apathetic pope, who could only have been Pius XII, would not have set well with Catholics. Naturally, neither the contessa nor the papal audience even reached the script stage. But the composer did, religion unspecified. In an early draft he was a Jew, Tony Marx, who is at first opposed to the nuns’ founding a priory on the property adjacent to his, but soon does a spiritual turnaround and composes a Christmas symphony. In the film, the religion-neutral composer (Hugh Marlowe) writes pop music, but has unconsciously appropriated the melody of his latest song from a medieval chorale. Benson and Millard did not make the composer a Jew, who decides to convert to Christianity after being exposed to the nuns’ transcendent faith. A Jewish convert in a film about Catholics might have proved edifying to some, but anti-Semitic to others. Zanuck wanted a moneymaker that incorporated religion in a plot about overcoming setbacks, convincing moviegoers that they, too, could realize their dream with the right combination of grit, luck, and divine assistance.

Antoinette Bosco’s
Mother Benedict: Foundress of the Abbey of Regina Laudis
provides the historical context for
Come to the Stable
, inspired by the true story of the Pittsburgh-born Vera Duss, who spent much of her early years in France pursuing a degree in medicine until she discovered her true calling. Vera was the daughter of a controlling mother and a father whose gentle ways were misinterpreted as lack of ambition. Since Vera’s mother, Elizabeth Duss, had converted to Catholicism, divorce was out of the question; instead, Elizabeth left for Paris, her father’s home,
with her (almost) two-year-old son and three-year-old Vera. They arrived at the outbreak of World War I, which they survived. Since Elizabeth returned periodically to America, Vera was raised for the most part by her grandmother. Although a Catholic education attracted Vera to the religious life, she preferred to study medicine at the Sorbonne before making her decision. By graduation time, she was ready to enter the Benedictine abbey at Jouarre, first as a postulant, then as a novice with the name of Sister Benedict, and finally a nun, known for the rest of her life as Mother Benedict. Mother Benedict believed it was her mission to establish a Benedictine presence in the United States. When World War II erupted in 1939, and France fell to the Nazis the following year, Mother Benedict, technically an American, was in danger of being imprisoned or perhaps sent to an internment or, worse, a concentration, camp. When the Nazis began checking the papers of Americans living in France, members of the Resistance furnished Mother Benedict with a new identity card and name.

If
Come to the Stable
seems like a boilerplate “triumph in the face of adversity” film, the true story, with its supporters and skeptics, is not that dissimilar. The difference is that the actual supporters were a heterogeneous group that included Major General George S. Patton, the future Pope John XXIII (then papal nuncio, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli), President Truman’s personal representative to the Vatican, Myron Taylor, philosopher Jacques Maritain, and Monsignor Giovanni Montini, the Vatican Undersecretary of State and future Pope Paul VI.

Once Mother Benedict and Mother Mary Aline (
Come to the Stable
’s Sisters Margaret and Scholastica) learned that they could stay with painter Frances Delehanty (who shared her Bethlehem home with another artist, Lauren Ford, like her a devout Catholic), they sailed from Le Havre on 20 August 1946, arriving in New York eleven days later. Like their film counterparts, the two nuns ran a similar obstacle course, including an encounter with an indifferent bishop. Their savior is a wealthy donor, who wants his property used as a place of worship. By 1947, a converted factory became the Priory of Regina Laudis, then and three decades later The Abbey of Regina Laudis. Mother Benedict’s life was far more complex than the simplified version in
Come to the Stable
. In 1949, the true story could never have succeeded on the big screen—any more than it could today, despite the intriguing plot points: a troubled marriage; a three-year-old expatriate child; a woman with a medical degree subjected to the rigors of convent life; endangerment during an enemy occupation; and the realization of a goal born of belief, courage, and
unstinting effort. Rather, Mother Benedict is the perfect subject of a TV documentary, for among the nuns at the Abbey is Mother Dolores Hart, currently Mother Abbess.

In 1963, Dolores Hart—a Broadway (
The Pleasure of His Company
) and movie (the Elvis Presley films
Loving You
and
King Creole
, and others including
Wild Is the Wind
and
Where the Boys Are
) star—made a decision that shocked Hollywood: She gave up an acting career to become a postulant at Regina Laudis, which she had visited earlier, hoping to find the longed-for peace that passes understanding. That she found it there resulted in a commitment that lay beyond the powers of ordinary mortals. But then, Regina Laudis is not a community of ordinary women.
Despite some unfavorable press
, the Abbey has survived, attracting visitors from the entertainment world such as Maria Cooper Janis (Gary Cooper’s daughter and pianist Byron Janis’s wife), and actresses Patricia Neal, Gloria DeHaven, Celeste Holm, and Martha Hyer Wallis, all of whom have benefited from exposure to an environment that comes close to offering what T.S. Eliot in
Ash Wednesday
calls “the still point of the turning world.” Strangely, perhaps, Loretta never visited.

Half Angel
completed Loretta’s three-picture agreement with Fox. Although Julian Blaustein was nominally the producer, Zanuck, as production head, gave the film his imprimatur, considering it a minor addition to Fox’s 1951 slate of releases that was rather thin in terms of quality. The best of the lot were
People Will Talk
and
Decision before Dawn
. That
Half Angel
’s running time was a mere seventy-eight minutes was an indication of the studio’s lack of faith in its drawing power. Critics and audiences felt similarly, and
Half Angel
disappeared shortly after it opened in 1951.

Zanuck had no reason to make
Half Angel
, except to provide Loretta with a third film. Story analyst Michael Abel wrote a two-and-a-half page critique of a draft, then entitled “Half an Angel,” dismissing it as “
unreal
and imaginary,” with a “contrived and artificial” plot. Abel was also disturbed that the heroine’s alter ego was a “crude and self-centered tart, with her dangling cigarette, undulating hips, and a general emphasis on sex.” By 1950’s standards, the script seemed to be—to use the vernacular of the period—“hot stuff.”

Abel was not the only one offended by the script. Joseph Breen found the material “
totally unacceptable
,” chiding Fox’s director of publicity for submitting a script to the Production Code Administration in which marriage was treated shabbily and “without dignity.” He was also concerned about the heroine’s less angelic self, insisting that “breasts should
be completely covered” and “the subconscious conduct herself” in good taste—as if a film with Loretta could be otherwise.

Amazingly, Robert Riskin, Capra’s best screenwriter (
American Madness
,
Platinum Blonde
,
It Happened One Night
,
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
) was responsible for the screenplay. Riskin was in his early fifties, with his best work behind him. However, since he had to adapt George Carleton Brown’s story, he treated it as just another assignment. Possibly, he exaggerated the pervasive sexuality of the scenes depicting the heroine’s other self to emphasize the disparity between the daytime woman and the nighttime seductress. The sexed-up scenes could also have been the inspiration of the original director, Jules Dassin, whose forte was certainly not romantic whimsy. He was a specialist in the dark side (
Brute Force
[1947],
The Naked City
[1948],
Thieves Highway
[1949], and especially
Night and the City
[1950]) and assumed that even a repressed nurse had hers. When
Half Angel
was at the story conference stage, Dassin was still involved. But Dassin was also a Communist, who decided to return to his native France, knowing that it was only a matter of time before he would be blacklisted. It was a wise move;
on 23 April 1951
, director Edward Dmytryk one of the original Hollywood Ten, realizing that unlike writers he could not work under a pseudonym, cooperated with HUAC, naming Dassin along with five others.