Giving a (Gentle) Finger from the Pulpit: The Miracle Woman (1931)
The remarkable moment comes about an hour into the film. Our protagonist, the “miracle woman” from the title (Florence Fallon, played by Barbara Stanwyck), has already been corrupted and is playing the faithful for suckers by staging fake healings in a barn of a tabernacle accompanied by a band of enthusiastic cheerleaders for Jesus. However, almost against her will, Sister Fallon has fallen in love with a blind WWI aviator, John Carson (David Manners), and is secretly seeing him in his apartment, transported there by her chauffeur, Lew. Sister Fallon’s seedy sponsor (Sam Hardy, played by Bob Hornsby), however, suspects something is amiss and warns Lew that his job depends on being loyal to his boss and not the straying sister. The chauffeur begrudgingly agrees, but once the door closes, he flips his employer the bird adding, “and that big black derby of yours!”
Upon first seeing the film, I had to go back and even freeze the frame just to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. He did just do that, didn’t he?!? I couldn’t believe it. Yet such irreverent flashes are sometimes found when encountering Pre-Code Hollywood, that all-too-short period between 1930 and 1934 when the movies talked but in an often-unfiltered manner. Of course, in just a few short years, such vulgarity would be forbidden. Church goers and the clergy were protected classes under the so-called Hays Code, and even the idea of revealing either as insincere, hypocritical, or less-than-holy became unthinkable. Quite explicitly, one of the don’ts of the Code was to “ridicule” ministers or clergy—not to mention “pointed profanity,” the very definition of Lew’s gesture to his boss.
But The Miracle Woman is full of righteous rage at the hypocrisy of those in the pews, at least at the beginning. Stanwyck’s Florence is the daughter of a longtime pastor who is dumped due to his advancing age. In a shocking diatribe delivered from her father’s pulpit, the now-grieving woman (her father has just fallen dead in the midst of composing his farewell sermon) lets the would-be saints have it. Claiming that her father preached to “empty hearts,” Florence calls the church a “meeting place of hypocrites.” She concludes in a very angry-Jesus-in-the-temple manner: “You are thieves, killers, adulterers, blasphemers, and liars six days a week, and on the seventh day you are hypocrites. Get out so I can let some fresh air into this church!” Having no people to call her own and stripped of her own religious faith, she is rather easily convinced to seek revenge on those types who indirectly killed her father. As voiced by Sam Hardy, the conveniently placed tempter/con man tells the distraught daughter that he has “a way of getting along” and neatly summarizes his philosophy: “Now religion is like everything else—great if you can sell it, no good if you give it away.” So Sister “Faith” Fallon enters the selling business, gaining her own flock, which she, along with a troupe of “shills,” gladly fleeces, in a temple large enough to host large wild animals and a full choir.
All of it—and the temple set is stunning in its size and detail for an early sound picture—is an extremely thinly-veiled copy of the charismatic preacher of the 1920s, Aimee Semple McPherson, and her Angelus Temple in Los Angeles. Often cited as one of the earliest examples of what would come to be called a “megachurch,” McPherson’s outfit was incredibly popular and powerful in its day. Founded in 1923 (eight years before the movie), the Angelus Temple received 40 million visitors in its first seven years. Filled with drama and live healings, Sister Aimee’s services became not only a source of faith but of entertainment to its parishioners/audiences. (Apparently, the great entertainer of the age, Charlie Chaplin, discreetly attended some of McPherson’s “illustrated sermons.”) Moreover, McPherson’s exhortations were broadcast on radio to a devoted audience.
The film plays on all these aspects of Sister Aimee’s ministry, with our romantic male lead being saved from suicide by hearing Sister Florence’s words over the radio, and a scene featuring live lions (no rear projection used here!) in which Sister Florence first meets the blind man who will become her own personal savior. Of course, it’s all a show done for profit, a fact that I’m guessing the film’s director, one Frank Capra, would have reveled in revealing. Capra, a Roman Catholic who would go on to direct several films centered on redemption emerging from despair, probably relished exposing in film fiction the (mainly) Protestant and charismatic preachers, like McPherson and her primary rival, Billy Sunday. Still, as a title card promises before the movie even starts: “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.” A great parallel film to Capra’s The Miracle Woman is another lesser-known Capra masterpiece, 1941’s Meet John Doe, which also focuses on a cynical woman coming to faith through the innocence and sincerity of a man she falls in love with. And who plays this would-be cynic? Barbara Stanwyck, of course!
If you have not seen it, then I would highly recommend this film. Stanwyck is a marvel; she is one of the very few actors of the Golden Age who is truly ageless. Forever relevant, forever fresh and refreshing in her performances, when she is on screen, even in a 93-year-old film, no time or social conventions separate her from us. She, in my estimation, exists in an eternal now.
One last note and suggestion is to view this film and Elmer Gantry (1960) together. The later movie is based on Sinclair Lewis’ scathing novel of the same name from 1927 and features another McPherson stand-in (in this case, Sister Sharon Falconer, played by Jean Simmons). The 1960 offering had to wait until the dying days of the Production Code to tell its tale of hypocrisy, but it lacks Capra’s redemptive element. It also has a surprising Shirley Jones as a woman led into prostitution by the title character’s seduction and abandonment. And speaking of Elmer Gantry, the man, he is played with muscular charisma by Burt Lancaster, whose voice I heard eerily echoed and forewarned in Bob Hornsby’s oily portrayal of the con man Sam Hardy in The Miracle Woman. They are both characters who deserve the finger!
Bernie Prokop is Associate Professor of English at Colorado Christian University, has curated the university’s Film Series for over 10 years, and will be doing the commentary track on the upcoming Film Masters release of Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Strange Woman (1946).
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