Author: thehorsesheadblog

The Plot: “American Me” is a semi-fictional, decade-spanning epic about the rise to power of an L.A.-based Mexican Mafia. In 1959, teenager Montoya Santana (Panchito Gomez) starts a neighborhood gang with his friends, and quickly finds himself in juvenile hall. Upon murdering a fellow prisoner who assaults him, Santana gains the respect of the other inmates while simultaneously guaranteeing a transfer to Folsom once he turns 18. As an adult (Edward James Olmos), Santana is the leader of La Eme, a prison gang that has expanded into a full-blown criminal organization selling drugs throughout California. Upon Santana’s release and return to his old neighborhood, he meets Julie (Evelina Fernández), who shows him what a life outside of the criminal world can be like. Will Santana change his ways and break the vicious cycle of gang life? In his film directorial debut, Edward James Olmos tells a monumental story that is definitely not based on real-life Mexican Mafia boss Rodolfo Cadena. Not at all. Please don’t kill me.

Why It Matters: The NFR praises the film’s portrayal of the “dark, brutal realities” of L.A. gang life, and goes out of its way to remind you that this film is a work of fiction. There’s also a quote from Edward James Olmos about his struggle to get the film made.

But Does It Really?: In the NFR’s mission to induct every Edward James Olmos movie ever made, it was only a matter of time before we got one of his directing efforts. As an indictment of L.A. gang warfare, “American Me” succeeds at presenting a gritty, unflinching depiction of gangster life which, while seemingly accurate, is also quite distressing and hard to watch. While the film hasn’t really stuck around in our pop culture, it is the kind of quality filmmaking by and about Latinos that the NFR has made a conscious effort to induct in recent years. I’ll give “American Me” an NFR pass for its content and controversy (see “Legacy”), but I’m in no rush to watch it again.

Everybody Gets One: Not a lot of information out there about Floyd Mutrux, whose sporadic screenwriting credits include “Freebie and the Bean” and “Dick Tracy”. For “American Me”, Floyd Mutrux wrote the story and screenplay, and served as an executive producer. Coincidentally (or not), Mutrux also wrote the 1993 film “Blood In, Blood Out”, which covers a lot of the same ground as “American Me”.

Seriously, Oscars?: No nominations for “American Me” from the Oscars or practically any other awards body. Universal’s major awards contender that year was the much more conventional “Scent of a Woman” Hoo-ha!

• The screenplay is co-written by Desmond Nakano, who you may remember as the screenwriter for “Boulevard Nights”. Thankfully, this film is much better written than “Boulevard”, falling into far less cliché traps than its predecessor (though what the hell is going on with Santana’s rhyming narration?). Also greatly improved since “Boulevard Nights”; the acting of Danny De La Paz, the troublesome younger brother Chuco in “Boulevard”, seen here as La Eme devotee “Puppet”, who gets a great final scene.
• The most off-putting thing about this movie is that it includes four, FOUR, rape scenes. The scene in which Santana is assaulted by a male inmate at Juvie sparked the most controversy within the real-life La Eme. The scene was created especially for the film, but several members saw it as a slander on the late Rodolfo Cadena.
• “American Me” filmed on location in Folsom Prison for three weeks. Professional extras were used for prisoners in some scenes, though allegedly most of them were mistaken for actual Folsom prisoners and treated poorly, with several of them quitting after one day. In addition to its location shooting, there’s something about the presentation of prison life in “American Me” that feels more authentic than your typical movie prison. Perhaps it’s the unapologetic violence, but you get a sense that this is what prison must really be like.

• One of the movie’s prison murders takes place during a screening of a Woody Woodpecker short. In terms of cinematic prison movie screenings this ain’t exactly Rita Hayworth in “Gilda”, but I respect them for keeping it in the Universal family. Side note: The Woody Woodpecker short is 1953’s “Hypnotic Hick”, the first Woody Woodpecker short in 3-D, something I’m very glad this movie wasn’t filmed in.

• Once Santana is released from prison, we get a few endearing scenes of him bonding with Julia and trying to adjust to life on the outside (I particularly enjoyed the brief scene of Santana learning to drive). But of course, this can’t last too long, as a sex scene between Santana and Julie not only takes a turn for the worst but is intercut with one of the aforementioned rape scenes, easily the toughest watch in the movie.

• Another Universal property randomly showing up here: “Abbott and Costello Goes to Mars”, which a few gang members watch on TV (dubbed in Spanish) while preparing a drug shipment. Despite the title, Abbott and Costello travel to Venus, not Mars. The fact that I’m willing to devote this much of the post to “Abbott and Costello Goes to Mars” should give you an idea of how little I have to say about “American Me”.

• When you make an epic gangster picture like “American Me”, comparisons to “The Godfather” are unavoidable (it doesn’t help that actor Tony Giorgio plays a powerful member of the Italian mafia in both films). Despite the similarities, these are two gangster movies with very different goals. Most of the more iconic gangster pictures show gangster life as exciting and desirable with the protagonist’s downfall the result of some internal struggle, while “American Me” is more interested in the systemic issues of gang life, which may be too wide a scope for any movie (or its audience) to fully comprehend.
• Despite my problems with this movie, I will give it points for how well it’s shot. Kudos to cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos, who is also represented on the NFR with “Love & Basketball”.
• [Spoilers] The film’s ending is powerful, though it spends a lot of time taxiing on the runway before it finally takes off. The “Julius Caesar” ending was another point of contention with La Eme upon the film’s release. Rodolfo Cadena was murdered by a rival prison gang and not, as depicted here with Santana, by his own men. Following this scene, and a final sequence of children being initiated into a gang, the film ends the way it began with another “Inspired by a true story” disclaimer, which as we’ll see, didn’t appease the real La Eme.

• Among the film’s admirers was the late Tupac Shakur, and apparently this was his favorite movie. He even sampled a line in the chorus of his song “Death Around the Corner”. “When we were kids, belonging felt good. But having respect, that feels even better.”

• While Edward James Olmos’ primary domain continues to be acting, he has directed a handful of other projects since “American Me”, most recently the 2019 film “The Devil Has a Name”. Olmos also directed four episodes of that “Battlestar Galactica” revival he starred in.

No trailer, but here’s a clip

The Plot: In Dublin following the tumultuous Irish War of Independence, Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen) is broke, unemployed, recently expelled from the IRA, and perpetually drunk. Trying to figure out a fresh start for himself and his girlfriend Katie (Margot Grahame), Gypo runs into his old friend Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford), who Gypo has recently learned is wanted by the Black and Tans, with a 20-pound reward for information on his whereabouts. With a half-baked plan to use the money to get him and Katie to America, Gypo informs on Frankie, who is gunned down in a confrontation with the Black and Tans shortly thereafter. Distraught and guilt-ridden, Gypo blows the money on drinks and other distractions, but learns he can rejoin the IRA if he can find out who informed on Frankie. There’s plenty of Irish guilt to go around in this early offering from John Ford.

Why It Matters: The NFR gives a rundown of the film’s story, as well as historical context on John Ford’s career. Joseph August’s cinematography is highlighted, as is Ford’s status as the most represented director in the NFR with 11 films (though one of those is a segment of “How the West Was Won”).

But Does It Really?: “The Informer” is one of those “Important Movies” that, while considered one of the greatest movies ever made in the decades following its release, has been eclipsed over the years by other movies. Heck, “The Informer” even gets left out among highlights of John Ford’s own filmography. It’s still a very good movie 90 years later, and I get what a breakthrough this must have been in 1935, but “The Informer” no longer has that je ne sais quoi that all the great movies seem to possess. Still, it gets mentioned often enough (mostly in conjunction with the John Ford canon) that its NFR recognition is understandable, even if no one was in a rush to get it on the list.

Shout Outs: Not a direct reference, but John Ford was greatly inspired by F. W. Murnau’s “Sunrise”, especially its cinematography, and he and Joseph August infused “The Informer” with the kind of shadowy camerawork associated with German expressionism.

Wow, That’s Dated: The nickname “Gypo” is of course derived from “gypsy”, so that wouldn’t fly today. We never learn Nolan’s real first name, though with that nickname I assume it’s Rose Louise.

Seriously, Oscars?: The 8^th Oscars had their share of interesting occurrences, almost all of them concerning this movie. “The Informer” entered the race with six nominations, winning four of them, the most wins at that ceremony. Both John Ford and Max Steiner received their first Oscars (for, respectively, Best Director and Best Scoring), and although “Informer” lost Best Picture to “Mutiny on the Bounty”, Victor McLaglen beat out all three of the “Mutiny” leads for Best Actor. The most noteworthy of the film’s wins was writer Dudley Nichols for Best Adaptation, who became the first person to ever refuse an Oscar, in response to the tensions between the Academy and the newly formed Writers Guild (this is back when the Academy was a union-busting front first and an awards organization second). Nichols accepted his Oscar three years later when the Academy was completely restructured and added a bylaw prohibiting any union interference.

• As Frankie’s grieving mother Mrs. McPhillip, this has got to be Una O’Connor’s least grating film performance. It helps that this is not a horror movie, so Una doesn’t have to scream and be hysterical, though given that her son is gunned down in her own house you’d think she would.
• Longtime readers know that I love calculating inflation, so of course I needed to know how much 20 pounds in 1922 Ireland would be in 2024 US dollars. The conversion rates are a bit tricky (Ireland uses the Euro now), but my math comes out to about $1400. Imagine getting $1400 and blowing the whole thing in one night, mainly on alcohol. No wonder everyone’s suspicious of Gypo.
• I was not counting on this film to have not one but two romance subplots. In addition to Gypo and Kate, there’s revolutionist leader Dan Gallagher (Preston Foster) and his relationship with Frankie’s sister Mary (Heather Angel). I don’t know if this secondary relationship is in the book, but it feels like a studio mandate. Fun Fact: Heather Angel (who gets second billing here despite her short screentime) would go on to voice two Disney characters: Alice’s older sister in “Alice in Wonderland” and Wendy’s mother in “Peter Pan”. I guess she sounds like she must be related to Kathryn Beaumont.
• [Spoiler] As “The Informer” went along it started to feel more like homework. Again, there’s nothing wrong with the movie, but it isn’t the piece of entertainment it would have been in 1935. That all being said, I did enjoy the final scene with Gypo at the church. That is one of the great Hollywood death scenes; one of those where our protagonist can live as long as he needs to after getting shot in order to have a dramatic final scene.

December 2^nd 1996: As Americans were fighting each other Battle Royale style to buy any remaining Tickle Me Elmos, the NFR announced their next batch of inducted movies, bringing their total to 200 significant American films. Here are those 25, plus a few blurbs from my write-ups:

• Broken Blossoms (1919): “Have we all gone insane?…anyone who says [‘Broken Blossoms’] is one of the greatest films ever made needs to get their head examined.”
• The Thief of Bagdad (1924): “the quintessential Douglas Fairbanks epic”
• The Jazz Singer (1927): “will always have a place in the annals of film history, but…it’s remembered more as an antiquated relic than as a piece of entertainment.”
• The Forgotten Frontier (1931): “a fascinating historical document”, “lets [sic] give nurses three cheers…and significantly higher pay.”
• She Done Him Wrong (1933): “on here for Mae West…one of Hollywood’s most important stars.”
• Flash Gordon (1936): “if you’re going to include one film serial on your Registry, this is the one.”
• Show Boat (1936): “a breakthrough in its day, but its problematic story beats have caused it to age poorly.”
• The Awful Truth (1937): “an entertaining rom-com and a prime example of Classic Hollywood filmmaking.”
• Destry Rides Again (1939): “an underrated gem…that gets lost in the shuffle of classic westerns”.
• Verbena Tragica (1939): “represent[s] the long-lost practice of Hollywood studios filming multiple versions of the same movie in different languages.”
• Road to Morocco (1942): “The ‘Road’ movies were popular enough and have a long enough legacy to warrant NFR inclusion, but at this point the film is being held up on its reputation.”
• To Be or Not To Be (1942): “a thoroughly funny movie”, “both a satirical farce and a dark reportage of a country caught in war.”
• Topaz (1943-1945): “Having actual footage from one of the [Japanese] internment camps is a near-miracle.”
• Mildred Pierce (1945): “not one of the essentials, but overall it is still a pretty damn good film.”
• The Heiress (1949): “an entertaining film made by A+ talent.”
• Pull My Daisy (1959): “I don’t get this Beat stuff”
• Shock Corridor (1963): “What the fuck did I just watch?”
• The Graduate (1967): “might not capture the zeitgeist of the late ‘60s, [but] its examination of young adulthood’s uncertainties is timeless.”
• The Producers (1967): “a landmark in film comedy”, “led the way for the zany masterwork of Mel Brooks.”
• MASH (1970): “I’ll be curious to see if the film continues to hold up compared to the TV series.”
• Woodstock (1970): “an immersive, unforgettable movie about a landmark American event.”
• Frank Film (1973): “just as worthy of NFR recognition as any of the other crazy shorts on the list.”
• The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976): “a well-crafted encapsulation of [Clint Eastwood’s] strengths as actor and director.”
• The Deer Hunter (1978): “Well that was thoroughly depressing”, “well made…but I don’t need to watch it again anytime soon.”
• The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980): “a compelling examination of an underrepresented era of woman”.

Other notes

• As mentioned in my Class of ’95 post, the National Film Preservation Act got renewed in May 1996 through 2003. This reauthorization also established the National Film Preservation Foundation, with an initial goal to preserve smaller films like educational shorts, “orphan” films, and films in the public domain. According to a Variety article at the time, the first donation to the National Film Preservation Foundation was from Martin Scorsese for $25,000. Speaking of finances, part of the NFR’s 1996 reauthorization cut its funding down from two million dollars a year to $250,000 a year (and bumped down the proposed extension from 10 years to 7). This is back when Republicans were blaming Hollywood for all of society’s ills, so I’m sure that didn’t help matters. Damn you, Senator Bob Dole!
• Taking in all 25 of these movies, the emphasis seems to be on movies of their time, especially if those times are during World War II or the late ‘60s/early ’70s. Most of these films have a real sense of time and place, from the recreated time and place of period pieces to the literal time and place of documentaries. Yes, a lot of these films cover the same time periods, but like so many of these early NFR inductions, you have less than a century of American film to cull from, and the essentials have almost all been selected by the eighth round. As the years go on, both the timespan and subject matter of these films will diversify.
• My writings on these films are mostly positive; I can justify each one’s Registry status without too many caveats, even the ones I didn’t like. What struck me in re-reading my posts was how political these write-ups are. Part of that is the political nature of some of these movies (1996 was an election year, so I guess politics were on the Board’s mind), but a lot of it is the political times I was writing them in. We have lived through a lot of history since 2017 – the Trump presidency, the Me Too movement, COVID, the Trump presidency again – so some of that is going to bleed into my writing. Heck at one point I even reference “bone spurs”. Deep cut, 2017 Me, deep cut.
• When the Class of 1996 was announced, the live-action remake of “101 Dalmatians” was #1 at the US box office. Other noteworthy films playing in theaters that week include “Space Jam”, “The English Patient”, “Romeo + Juliet”, “The First Wives Club”, “Independence Day”, and “Mission: Impossible”. This is the first year where, as of this writing, no film playing in theaters the week of an NFR induction have entered the NFR (“Fargo” had already played theaters that spring and “The Watermelon Woman” wouldn’t receive a theatrical release until 1997).
• This year’s Double-Dippers include actors Jack Carson, Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, and Charles Winninger, costume designer Edith Head, and cinematographer Hal Mohr. My notes also include “Queen of the Background Extras” Bess Flowers, but she’s on this list practically every year.
• Thematic Double-Dippers: The aforementioned eras of WWII and the late ‘60s, radio comedians turned movie stars, Olympic athletes turned actors, extra-marital affairs, future sitcom stars, beatniks/hippies, plays making fun of Hitler, tense family dynamics, whitewashed casting, intermittent loudspeaker announcements, shoehorned musical numbers, and a whole lotta race issues grossly mishandled by White creatives.
• Favorites of my own subtitles: Come What Mae, Battle of the Exes, Bad Harem Day, Spying is Easy Comedy is Hard, Bridge Over Troubled Daughter, That’s Not Filming It’s Typing, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea?, and The Best Fucking Years of Our Fucking Lives

The Plot: Determined to win a Pulitzer Prize, reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Brent) gets himself committed to a psychiatric hospital to solve the murder of one of its inmates. Once Johnny adjusts to life on the inside, he befriends three patients/witnesses (James Best, Hari Rhodes, and Gene Evans), but struggles to get their accounts of the murder while navigating their respective mental illnesses. As Johnny’s investigation continues, his girlfriend Cathy (Constance Towers) worries about the toll this is all taking on Johnny’s mental health. It’s an edgy examination of the collective mental illness that is America from one of Hollywood’s maverick filmmakers.

Why It Matters: The NFR describes Samuel Fuller’s filmography as “edgy and unseemly” with “breakneck storytelling and central characters who defy easy categorization.” As for the film itself, the NFR highlights the work of cinematographer Stanley Cortez and editor Jerome Thoms.

But Does It Really?: Every so often, the NFR likes to induct what I call a curveball movie: a movie that is such a drastic departure from the kind of films normally associated with the NFR that all I can do after my viewing is say “What the fuck did I just watch?” “Pink Flamingos” is a good example, as are a number of the Registry’s more avant-garde shorts, but before any of them, there was “Shock Corridor”. I didn’t necessarily like “Shock Corridor”, but its unapologetic outrageousness definitely left an impression on me, which is more than some of the movies I’ve covered here can say. In addition to its – well – shocking subject matter, “Shock Corridor” joins the NFR as representation of legendary director Samuel Fuller. A yes for “Shock Corridor” on the NFR, but will someone please tell me what the fuck I just watched?

Everybody Gets One: Samuel Fuller started off as a copyboy and eventually crime reporter for the New York Evening Graphic. This experience, along with his Army service during World War II, would heavily influence his later film work. Initially starting his showbiz career as a writer, Fuller was not happy with Douglas Sirk’s direction of his script “Shockproof” and wanted to direct his own movies, a level of creative control he could only get from the cheaper Poverty Row studios in Hollywood. We’ll see more of Samuel Fuller’s gritty, offbeat filmography when I finally get around to watching “Pickup on South Street” and whenever I can track down “V-E + 1”. This is also the only NFR appearance for pretty much the entire cast, who were primarily TV actors. Peter Breck was best known at the time for playing Doc Holliday on “Maverick”, while Constance Towers would eventually gain fame as Helena Cassadine on “General Hospital”.

Wow, That’s Dated: Everything. Ev-er-y-thing about this movie, from its medical jargon to its Cold War paranoia, is so dated it’s a wonder it still works at all. You could not, nor should you, remake “Shock Corridor” today.

Title Track: Fuller wrote the original screenplay of “Shock Corridor” back in the 1940s under the title “Straitjacket” (not to be confused with the unrelated 1964 Joan Crawford movie “Strait-Jacket”). Filming began as “The Long Corridor” before Fuller changed the title to the more provocative “Shock Corridor”.

Seriously, Oscars?: No Oscar nominations for “Shock Corridor”, but it did win a handful of international film festival prizes. Despite his lengthy filmmaking career, and probably due to his outsider status, Samuel Fuller never received an Oscar nomination.

Cathy: “Johnny, you’ve got to be crazy to want to be committed to an insane asylum to solve a murder!”

Johnny: “Every man wants to get to the top of his profession. Mine is winning the Pulitzer Prize.”

There’s your set-up and your motivation in two lines of clunky dialogue.

• What an odd concept for a movie. I can’t really elaborate on that: it’s just weird. Like, how in hell do you even come up with that idea? Also, I know that poking holes in this movie is a pointless exercise, but I’m doing it anyway: If you are going to infiltrate a mental institution, why not work with the institution and let them in on it rather than trying to fool them too? Granted, if Johnny had done that either a) they wouldn’t have cooperated or b) the movie would be far less interesting.

• Yes, Peter Brent has a generic ‘50s leading man look about him, and when he’s pretending to be insane his acting is borderline Shatnerian, but he is clearly relishing his chance to star in a movie. Breck might have been too dedicated to this film because shortly after filming wrapped, he was hospitalized for exhaustion.
• As for the film’s leading lady, Constance Towers doesn’t have a lot to do but stand on the sidelines and exclaim things like “Johnny, no!” It’s a bit much, but with this kind of over-the-top material you can see how Towers succeeded in the world of daytime drama. Side Note: Every time, and I mean every single time, a character in a movie is named Cathy, all I can think is “Aack!”
• Say what you will about this movie, at least Fuller was ahead of the game with diverse casting. Right up front we get Korean American actor Philip Ahn as Dr. Fong. Longtime readers may remember Ahn for starring alongside Anna May Wong in fellow NFR entry “Daughter of Shanghai”.
• Whatever I was expecting from this movie, it didn’t include a musical number. Between Cathy’s striptease performance (the aptly named “Cathy’s Song”) and her later fantasy appearances in Johnny’s dreams, parts of this movie feel like they were directed by David Lynch.

• I don’t know anything about mental institutions, but I assume “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a more accurate depiction.
• Shoutout to the actors playing the two orderlies: Chuck Roberson (John Wayne’s longtime stunt double finally showing his face to the camera) and John Craig (who kinda looks like if Bill Hader played a young Orson Welles)
• Johnny’s roommate Pagliacci is played by Larry Tucker, who would go on to co-write “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” with his comedy partner Paul Mazursky, which earned them both an Oscar nomination. Also, despite his character being named Pagliacci, the song he sings throughout the film is “Largo al factotum” from “The Barber of Seville”.
• Another future TV star in the cast is James Best as Stuart, the patient who thinks he’s Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart. Best would go on to play Sheriff Coltrane on “The Dukes of Hazzard”, which, like this movie, also prominently features the song “Dixie”.
• There’s a weird scene where Johnny accidentally enters the women’s ward and is attacked by, in this movie’s parlance, “nymphos”. I get the minor plot point that this scene serves, but I found it all unsettling. Though I’m sure that was the point.

• Another thing I was not expecting to see in this movie: Color! Two of the patient’s flashbacks are color footage Samuel Fuller shot for earlier film projects: the footage of Japan is from his 1955 film “House of Bamboo”, while the Brazil footage is from his unfinished film “Tigrero”. The color footage was clearly shot for a widescreen process (in this case, Cinemascope), with the image being squished to fit this film’s smaller aspect ratio. I don’t recall the Great Buddha being so skinny.

• Hari Rhodes deserves a medal for his performance as Trent, a Black patient who think he’s a White supremacist. Rhodes somehow maintains his dignity even as his character spouts some nasty racial slurs. It’s like if Chappelle’s “Clayton Bigsby” sketch wasn’t played for laughs. With this hateful rhetoric, however, Trent could successfully run for elected office today.
• One thing I’ve learned about movies is that if your protagonist is trying to find a mystery figure, odds are it’s someone who has already been introduced in the movie. In this case: the murderer is someone in the hospital we’ve already met. No spoilers, but during my viewing I narrowed it down to two characters: One obvious choice and one less obvious but more interesting choice. Thankfully, Fuller went with my latter guess, although I wasn’t keeping track of character names, so when Johnny learns the name of the murderer, my first thought was “Which one were they again?”
• For the record, the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting went to Oscar Griffith Jr., editor of the Pecos Independent and Enterprise for its expose on Billie Sol Estes, a businessman whose fraud schemes were connected to the US Department of Agriculture. To the best of my knowledge, neither Oscar Griffith Jr. nor any of his reporters got a job with the Department of Agriculture to write the articles.

• Along with the rest of Samuel Fuller’s filmography, “Shock Corridor” got a reevaluation in the late 1960s, where it gained traction with the European auteur crowd. Fuller continued to write and direct his own movies, as well as act in films by such luminaries as Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Wenders, through the 1980s, and enjoyed mentoring younger generations of filmmakers. Samuel Fuller died in 1997 at age 85.
• Among the list of film directors who cite Samuel Fuller as an influence are Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, and Martin Scorsese, who paid homage to “Shock Corridor” with his 2010 film “Shutter Island”.

• According to IMDb, there’s a 1997 movie called “Asylum” with Robert Patrick and Malcolm McDowell that, while not a direct remake of “Shock Corridor”, seems to follow the same major story beats. I’m guessing there’s a reason you’ve never heard of “Asylum”.

• But seriously, what the fuck did I just watch?

The Plot: Before she was a world-famous author and disability rights advocate, Helen Keller was a child left deaf and blind after a bout of meningitis at 19 months old. By age seven, Helen (Patty Duke) lives an uncommunicative, almost feral existence with her family in 1880s Alabama. Faced with the prospect of institutionalization, Helen’s parents (Victor Jory & Inga Swenson) contact the Perkins School for the Blind, who send one of their recent graduates Anne Sullivan (Anne Bancroft) to be Helen’s teacher and governess. Nearly blind herself, Anne quickly realizes the difficulties Helen presents to her, but she is determined to teach Helen communication skills, showing her manual sign language, and strictly disciplining her bad behavior. What follows is a powerful movie about two inspirational people played by two outstanding actors.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film “an inspiring account of human potential and ability realized”, praising the “remarkable” performances of Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.

But Does It Really?: Longtime readers know that I submit “The Miracle Worker” for NFR consideration every year, so I’m very happy that the film finally made the cut. Despite having never seen “Miracle Worker”, I nominate it every year as a favor to my mom, a disability rights advocate herself (and lifelong Patty Duke fan). Having finally seen it, I get the appeal. “The Miracle Worker” portrays Keller and Sullivan as real people without any false sentimentality or manipulation, thanks in large part to the compelling, committed performances of Bancroft and Duke, as well as the organic, intuitive direction of Arthur Penn. It is this unsentimental approach to the material that makes the film hold up far better than so many other movies dealing with disability and keeps the film watchable all these decades later. Thank you NFR for giving “The Miracle Worker” its rightful spot on the list and freeing up a space on my annual ballot.

Everybody Gets One: Born to an alcoholic father and clinically depressed mother, Anna Marie Duke was taken in by unscrupulous talent managers John and Ethel Ross, who pushed her into showbusiness and changed her first name to Patty to ride the success of fellow child actor Patty McCormack. In her early career, Patty Duke worked primarily in television, including as a contestant on the fixed game show “The $64,000 Question”. At age 12 she landed the role of Helen Keller in the Broadway production of “The Miracle Worker” because during her audition, a very physical scene where Anne slaps Helen, she was the only actor who slapped Anne Bancroft back. By the time Duke left the show to appear in the film adaptation, her name on the theater marquee had been moved to star billing above the title alongside Bancroft. 

Title Track: Anne Sullivan was dubbed “the miracle worker” by none other than Mark Twain, who had a friendship and correspondence with both Sullivan and Helen Keller around the turn of the century. Unlike practically every other quote attributed to Mark Twain, we have evidence that it was Twain, and not one of his more obscure contemporaries, who referred to Sullivan as a miracle worker.

Seriously, Oscars?: “The Miracle Worker” received five Oscar nominations, including Director and Adapted Screenplay. Although the film lost out in those categories to, respectively, “Lawrence of Arabia” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” (and missed out on a Best Picture nod), both Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke took home acting trophies. Bancroft was in New York on Oscar night, so her Best Actress award was accepted on her behalf by Joan Crawford (but that’s another story). Winning Best Supporting Actress at age 16, Patty Duke was the youngest competitive Oscar recipient ever until Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon”.

• We open with a pre-credit scene of Helen’s parents discovering that she is blind and deaf. It’s a bit distressing, but thankfully the hysteria of this scene is tampered down for the rest of the movie. Also, thanks to one shot in the opening credits of a Christmas tree ornament, “The Miracle Worker” qualifies for my “Die Hard Not Xmas” list.

• Normally I would devote part of this write-up to the real Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, but I’m holding off until I’ve watched their other NFR representation: the 1954 documentary “Helen Keller in Her Story”. What I will point out is that in real life Anne Sullivan did not speak with an Irish brogue. Anne Bancroft played Sullivan with an Irish lilt to help shake off the pronounced Bronx accent she used in “Two for the Seesaw”. Despite this historical inaccuracy, practically every Anne Sullivan since Bancroft has performed the part with the brogue.
• For anyone who only knows Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson, watching her riveting performance here demonstrates her underrated range as an actor. I especially love Anne’s first scene with Helen as she tries to teach her the words “doll” and “cake”. In an almost-one take sequence, we watch Sullivan as she is simultaneously teaching and learning from Helen, calculating the best way to approach her first student. There’s a steady determination in Bancroft’s performance that propels the character throughout the movie.

• On the one hand, the role of Helen Keller is not a supporting one; she’s a co-lead whose screentime takes up well over half the movie. On the other hand, you can’t have Patty Duke competing against her co-star at the Oscars, to say nothing of such competition as Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, so the Supporting category it is. Despite all this, Duke is worthy of any trophy you want to give her for this performance; somehow playing all of Helen Keller’s disability without becoming saccharine or cringe-inducing. Side Note: Helen Keller was still alive when both the stage and film versions of “The Miracle Worker” premiered, and while I don’t know what her thoughts on either of these were, she did meet Patty Duke in the spring of 1961, just before filming began.
• In addition to the great performances by our two leads, I also enjoyed Inga Swenson as Helen’s strong-willed mother Kate. It’s nice to know that Inga Swenson’s acting capabilities went far beyond trading Germanic barbs with Robert Guillaume.
• The most memorable scene in the film is Anne teaching Helen how to behave at the breakfast table, which quickly escalates into an extended physical altercation as Helen lashes out and Anne tries to restrain her. The 10-minute sequence contains almost no dialogue, but thanks to these two performances and some excellent staging, you know exactly what they’re both thinking as they recognize each other as an equal adversary. And shoutout to an uncredited Beah Richards as the family maid, who gets to deliver the scene’s punchline.

• One weird thing about this movie is that while there are several scenes between Anne and Helen with minimal dialogue, the scenes with Anne and the rest of the Keller family are spoken at a quick, Sorkin-esque pace. It’s like they’re making up for lost time or something. Thankfully, the dialogue slows down for the crucial parts, but there were times where I debated putting on the subtitles.

• Surprisingly, there were several moments in this film that made me laugh out loud. The film’s occasional comic relief never feels forced and always stems from the characters and their interactions. My favorite is Anne trying to sign “crochet” for Helen but forgetting how to spell it midway through and instead signing “sewing”. “It has a name, and sewing isn’t it.” Having once read “crocheted” aloud in school as “crotch-et-ed”, this hit hard for me.
• The film’s climax, in which Helen finally comprehends that Anne has been teaching her the corresponding words to everything she encounters, has appeared throughout pop culture for the last 60 years, and I was afraid the occasional parody would ruin it within its proper context (I blame “Family Guy”). But I’ll be damned if I didn’t tear up when Helen finally exclaims “Waa-waa”. The moment is a natural extension of everything that came before it, and I couldn’t help but be moved by it.

Bonus Clip: Great, now I got the “Patty Duke Show” theme song in my head. “But they’re cousins, identical cousins all the way…”