Movie - "The Nun's Story."

She leaves the convent in the end.

Isn’t there a scene where a mental patient attacks Audrey? That freaked me out as a child. So much for family-friendly, good Catholic movies.

Very good movie

All I know is it’s considered her finest performance.

Still, I have little desire to see it.

R4, I think you'll like it.

Part of the film was shot in the Congo where it was stifling hot. It was said that Audrey Hepburn had no ego during the movie but she did ask for an air conditioner but instead they sent her a humidifier by mistake!

I love nun movies. This is a very good one. I appreciate the portrayal of her struggle with obedience and humility.

R2 Yes. As a young nun working in a mental hospital Sister Luke (Audrey's role) was told to always have another person present when dealing with violent patients locked in a cell. While alone in the room one day one of the patients asked her for a glass of water - in a show of naïve compassion Sister Luke opened the cell door to give the woman her water but was pulled into the cell and attacked. Needless to say she learned a lesson about obedience form this situation.

R8 The crazed woman ripped apart part of Sister Luke's habit but she struggled with her and managed to get out of the cell and back to safety.

Location photo with an African bird on her head.

Peter Finch played a gruff, no nonsense surgeon who sometimes tried to make Sister Luke reassess her vocation as a nun which she resented.

Such a beautiful, young nun!

I'm not a big Fred Zinnemann fan, but do I think his very different "The Nun's Story" and "The Day of the Jackal" are really good movies. "The Nun's Story" script tells an interesting and believably personal story, with some welcome humor, and it's beautifully photographed by Franz Planer (who also shot Hepburn in "Roman Holiday") and very well acted.

[quote]R8 in a show of naïve compassion Sister Luke opened the cell door to give the woman her water but was pulled into the cell and attacked. Needless to say she learned a lesson about obedience form this situation.

Was it a... sexual attack?

Maybe she learned a lesson about slamming’ clams, too.

Stopppppp R1. I really thought we were early enough in the thread that I would beat everyone to the punch. THE first response? Jesus lol.

Never seen the movie, btw.

As a young girl entering the convent - her hair has to be cut off!

Nobody bothered to mention the crazy inmate was none other than Colleen Dewhurst!

R15 The asshole at R1 should not have given away the ending so soon but since the story is out here is a photo of the former Sister Luke in her civilian clothes leaving the convent at the end of the film - through the back door which was the custom

I've wanted to watch this film so often to appreciate Dame Peggy Ashcroft onscreen between her two fascinating ingenue appearances and her later mature performances.

But the film proceeds so slowly and is interrupted by so many TV commercials that I give up. I have to assume that Dame Peggy only made brief appearances.

I think Fred Zinneman was like William Wyler. He was determined to avoid making the same film twice. He and Wyler were 'good taste' directors. You can appreciate them by what they exclude rather than include. So, their films appear to be bland if they don't have a riveting story or performer.

I have to consider Hepburn's appearance in this film as tasteful, scrupulously-edited and 'non-riveting'.

This link has a nice picture of Peggy—

The author of the book met the actual nun after WWII, when the ex-nun was in the resistance. It's suggested at the end of the film that she won't treat Nazi soldiers who are occupying Belgium. Not THAT obedient.

As a young postulant getting her hair cut off in the convent.

R20 Sister Luke's father was killed by the Nazi's and her brother was involved in the war so Sister Luke became even more conflicted which working in Nazi occupied territory.

Audrey Hepburn worked as a secret messenger for the SS while Holland was under occupation.

It really was shameful.

I thought she claimed she worked for the resistance...

My mother took me to see it when I was 7 and it was memorable.

R18 aha nooo I was just joking that the FIRST response was a fucking Golden Girls reference. I thought it would take at least, I don’t know, 30?

She did not, R23. Why would you say such a thing? She helped the Resistance.

I watched this once, so long ago. I thought it was a b&w movie but now I realize it was because I was watching it on my parent’s b&w tv.

This is one of my very favorite movies - I love the African Congo portions with the drums calling out her arrival - the natives called her “Mama Luke.” .... The young blond nun who leaves the convent is author Patricia Bosworth - she wrote wonderful celebrity profiles for Vanity Fair for several years. She died of Coronavirus a few months ago. .... The real Gabrielle aka Sister Luke did a lot of relief work in war torn Europe (I want to say France?) She had a long term lesbian relationship with a woman doing similar relief work after the war. At one point after the movie was made Audrey Hepburn had an accident on a movie ( I don’t recall exact details - fall from a horse, maybe?);Anyway - she recovered at the home of the real Sister Luke. ...... So interesting Gabrielle/Sister Luke could have been a brilliant Doctor - her desire was to work in the African Congo. By becoming a nun she was able to go to nursing school but was unable to “shine” because that would have meant that her ego won out over her love of God. The scenes where she had to give up all of her possessions and things that would remind her of her past were difficult - I would be far too selfish to make it through a month.

[quote]R24 I thought she claimed she worked for the resistance...

Well, she was a lying, whey-faced whore.

[quote]R27 She did not, [R23]. Why would you say such a thing? She helped the Resistance.

[italic]Where you there ? !

[quote] (I want to say France?) Please do.

R29 Fascinating. I have a book about Montgomery Clift by Patricia Bosworth and it was excellent.

The real Sister Luke was Marie Louise Habets, and her "longtime companion" was Kathryn Hulme, the American novelist who wrote "The Hun's Story", based on Habets' own life.

"In 1960, Hulme and Habets moved to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where Hulme continued to write, with Habets's support and assistance. They grew tropical fruits, bred dogs, rode horses, had friends to stay, gave talks, and socialized among the other Kauai expats. They remained Catholics, and Hulme continued her involvement with the work of the mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. Habets did some nursing, though mainly on a private basis for friends. Hulme and Habets travelled widely, sometimes together, sometimes independently."

Hulme died in 1981; Habets in 1986.

Oopsie: Hun's=Nun's!

Don’t mind if I do - France, France, France .....

My grandma had a cameo in that movie. We're still waiting for the residual checks.

Op you might enjoy Therese, a French film, if you can find it. Not easy to find s good film about religion and spirituality but this one is a masterpiece.

"The Diary of a Country Priest" too.

Of course. Bresson ❤

Barbara O'Neil is so handsome that she looks like a man. Yet she only made 2 important movies.

In This House of Brede with the late great Diana Rigg

My neighbors growing up were a French Canadian family, five daughters, all of whom went to Catholic school and were taught by bona fide nuns in black habits. None of this lay sister jazz. One of them came home from (elementary) school one day and announced that their homework for the day was to watch “Heaven Knows Mr Allison” on the 4pm afternoon movie. (That’s Deborah Kerr as a nun marooned on a tropical island during WWII with Robert Mitchum)

You shall beg your bread in refectory!

There is a super book called NUN ny Mary Gillian Wong - no kidding a Young Irish nun named Mary Gillian married a hip Asian guy named Wong. She was from a large Irish Catholic family and their whole social life was centered around church stuff and the nuns - Mary started her church school stuff early and went into hard core strict early nun years - then Vatican 2 came and all of the doors flew open and a lot of the young nuns had a had time coming to terms with so much freedom in the sixties. Super good book. They made it into a cheesy TV movie with Valerie Bertinelli ..... Hey above - love House of Brede, too...... Does anyone remember the Masterpiece Theatre made sometime in the 1990s called “Heart and Souls?” Young Kristin Scott Thomas was a nun who had to come home and run the family business. It was a good book. I don’t know if they ever ran that miniseries again - I have kept my eye out for it for years!

This could have been a masterpiece in the hands of a better director. Zinnemann's direction always feels so creaky and lifeless.

I think it’s Audrey’s best performance. I still cover my eyes when she’s pulled into the cell and attacked. I really believe Sister Luke would have been raped had she not gotten away. So many great performances. And I love the nasty side eye look that nun gives Audrey when she directs her to the room where her civilian clothes are laid out at the end.

[quote] This could have been a masterpiece in the hands of a better director

But what would a better directer do to make it better?

I'm assuming that this movie (and 'This House of Brede') only appeals to Catholics. I'm non-Catholic and found it to be ponderous and non-involving. The movie's trailer seems utterly OTT to me describing it as 'dramatic', because I see it as tasteful, contemplative, introspective and NON-dramatic.

Audrey worked for the resistance as a child. Her father, on the other hand, was a nazi collaborator.

R43 I think that is "Body and Soul" with Kristin Scott Thomas. All 6 episodes are on Youtube; quality is a bit spotty...

omg #48 - Thank you!!! yes - BODY and Soul, Heart and Souls was the Robert Downey Jr movie - hey Thank you for finding this - every few years I have looked for this and have not found it - how fun! Thank you!!

The Nun Story was a reach-out to the 'fantasy nun crowd' -- either fucking them or adoring them. Total bullshit.

I think that Nun’s Story wasn’t at all about Nun worship! I think for so many years if a young girl didn’t have connections or an extended family or money, if she didn’t have anywhere else to go. She could work as a cook, maid or laundress, a schoolteacher or governess, a prostitute or join a convent. I think some young girls romanticized “marrying” Jesus - she got the pretty wedding that her friend’s had but hers was to Jesus. Joining a cnvenvent for some women was a place to live and eat for free the rest of her life. it was also a place to get a free education. It gave a lot of women an opportunity “to go to work” in places a single young woman would not be able to. Not to mention a lot of young women who were lesbian - or at least repulsed at the thought of marrying a man - had a place to live and enjoy the company of other women. ..... It was no bargain - Audrey Hepburn was wonderful in the scenes where here vanity and individuality were drummed out of her - the struggle to pretty much disappear and become a Stepford Wife. After so many years it showed how bitter and hard some of the women became. I think the movie was beautiful but more than that a cautionary tale that becoming a bland placid nun wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Yes, I saw that too. It was the first time I’d seen Kristin Scott Thomas in anything and she was mesmerizing .

Boring.

I'm Catholic. I know sisters. I know convents. I know missionaries and tyrants and saintly women and women who have dealt with balancing their priorities and their vows and their personal growth and bitches and women who found it wasn't the life for them.

And Ms. Hepburn's movie was sap.

By the way, she wasn't really a nun, which is a term more appropriately applied to the contemplative and cloistered orders.

Bresson also made a nun movie, his first (1943): LES ANGES DU PECHE/ANGELS OF SIN.

I love nun movies--it's one my favorites "jandras."

[R30] You need to eat your own shit.

R30, "Where" *you* there?

"The Devils" is a better lunatic choice.

Giallo Classic: Anita Ekberg is "SUOR OMICIDO" ("The Killer Nun"), with Alida Valli and DL Fave Joe Dallessandro.

The ultra-nutty nun movie of all time (1978). Bad English dub on Amazon Prime.

Much more enjoyable than Zinnemmann's pious, bloated flick.

Novitiate is a dreadful movie. Melissa Leo as the evil Mother Superior gives one of the worst screen performances I’ve ever seen.

R43, sounds like a good book. From my search you can only get it through InterLibrary Loan (ILL) at your local library. They can borrow it from the nearest university library for you. That's what I'm going to do. It doesn't take very long.

And now for another nun - this one, unlike Sister Luke, seemed to be happy all the time.

When it comes to nun movies give me BLACK NARCISSUS and David Farrar in his short-shorts any day.

Apparently it's been recently remade but the original is still so fresh and shocking, I can't imagine it can be improved. Deborah Kerr, Flora Robson, Jean Simmons, Kathleen Byron, Sabu (!) and yes, David Farrar are perfection.

Debbie Does Christ!

[quote] BLACK NARCISSUS

I'm also a fan. But I understand this Rumer Godden story was about Protestant nuns.

Whereas Rumer Godden's story 'In This House of Brede' was about Catholic nuns. I'm non-Catholic so I found 'House of Brede' to be confusing, cold and non-involving.

There's even a modern cassic Nun Opera (by a gay composer): Francis Poulenc's LES DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES.

It's like a horror movie at the end!

Don't forget Puccini's glorious one act SOEUR ANGELICA.

SUOR ANGELICA: an hour-long Nun Opera by Puccini. It's also fabulous.

r67, I beat you but you spelled SUOR correctly.

DL Fave Ann Blyth is a murderess on the lam, who ends up in Mother Claudette Colbert's nunnery: THUNDER ON THE HILL (51).

Directed by Douglas Sirk. Recommended highly.

R51 You have written a heartfelt post but unfortunately it is being buried by irrelevant flippant posts.

The flip side of these thoughtful, pious nun movies is the Irish movie about the Magdalene Sisters, a true horror story about young girls who were “troublesome” or “wild” (ie had a boyfriend and got pregnant), sent to work in the laundries run by the convent and never allowed to leave.

There are no Protestant or Jewish nuns.

[quote] There are no Protestant or Jewish nuns

'Black Narcissus' was written in 1939. Time Magazine (in 1964) said 'more than 60,000 women, mostly in Europe, have taken up the religious life within Protestantism, in organizations that range from convents of veiled nuns to mother houses of deaconesses devoted to public service'.

Deaconesses were active in my country from the 1920s to the 1970s. This link says more—

Zinnemann and Wyler were scrupulous and tasteful.

Wyler carefully cast his film Ben-Hur according to race and caste. All the (American) Jews are cast in opposition to the (British) Romans. I feel it give this story a much greater resonance so much so that it's like a prototype of 'Exodus'.

Zinnemann seems blind to it all. New Yorkers and Hollywoodites are thrown into 'The Nun's Story' with lots of Britons and an Australian attempting to be Belgians etc.

He was similarly blind in 'A Man For All Seasons' with an American Cardinal Wolsey and the wonderful Wendy Hiller is married to a man a full decade younger than her.

[quote]There are no Protestant or Jewish nuns.

So what do they call all the Anglican midwives and nurses on "Call the Midwife?"

Wasn’t Audrey banging the screenwriter during filming? That’s not very nun like.

Audrey didn't 'bang' anything.

She was as fragile as a leaf. She would bruise if you 'banged' her.

Audrey suffered with malnutrition.

Look at the grey flesh under her eyes.

I’m telling you, Auds was a WHORE.

The very worst kind.

Home wrecker

Dark Habits (1983)

Twee mumsy fragile leaf who can't act.

Miss Battle-Axe Emma, R82, the late Audrey provided a touch of glamour and elfin charm for a full decade of box office earnings..

[quote] Twee…

Audrey was delightful in her tweeness.

Well, as obsessed with good Nun movies as I am - who can resist ultra groovy Elvis and Mary Tyler Moore in guilty pleasure "Change of Habit!"

When watching this as a child I was convinced she was lovelorn for handsome Peter Finch.

I imagine my surprise years later rewatching and discovering this wasn’t the case.

I must have been projecting my desire for his manly self.

[quote] handsome Peter Finch

R78 He's not classically handsome but he has integrity. He matured from the beginning of the decade when he looked so thin and gangly opposite Liz Taylor.

R87. I was convinced that she was lovelorn for fellow novice Patricia Bosworth.

Why was it necessary to tell us where you watched the movie?

Good writing displays evocative, transportive specifics such as that.

Why was it necessary to be a sour, cunt-faced bitch about it, r90?

I read the book. The film is based on a true story and sticks pretty close to the original book, which is a biography of Gabrielle/Sister Luke. It's an outstanding script with a terrific cast, beautiful cinematography, and a beautiful score by Franz Waxman.

Waxman was severely beaten on a Berlin street in his youth by a group of Nazi sympathisers. He headed out to America in the early 30s by way of Paris. He also did the score for Hitchock's "Rebecca", "A Place in the Sun", and his most famous especially amongst other film composers was the one for "Taras Bulba".

The one Waxman did for this film is sombre but not creepy, spiritual but not treacly, and majestic without being "Biblical" so to speak, with wonderful use of bells.

The last frames of the movie are quietly compelling - once seen, never forgotten.

R77 - You're pulling our legs, right?

She wasn't too fragile to let hun William Holden bang her. They had a torrid affair during the filming of "Sabrina".

^*Dammit, "hunk" not "hun".

A few years ago the movie was screened at Film Forum with Pat Bosworth doing the introduction. I had to work and couldn’t go but I would love to see this on the big screen. I did hear that Bosworth adored Audrey and said she was very friendly and easy to work with.

Audrey was a saint compared to Grace Kelly and her record of sleeping with her married costars. Didn't Grace also bag Holden?

Watched it as a child and was traumatized when the African man hit the nurse nun with a club. I still recall the blood seeping through her habit headwear, then...she just fell over dead.

Why wasn't this film a musical? Meh.

"Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today. Queen of the angels; Queen of the May."

One of the best depictions ever of cloistered life pre-Vatican II. My Mom had a good friend in college who entered the convent before they graduated the early 1950s. She remained a nun until her death a few years ago. Of course, everything changed after Vatican II. She went to Africa in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And she later became a chaplain at a SUNY college. I remember asking her about certain things I picked up from the film. She told me that as a novice or postulant she and the others were returning to their rooms the time of the Grand Silence. As they ascended the stairs, there was a sign that read, "There shall be no intercourse beyond this point." They thought was great fun.

The ending of the movie is terrific. There's just silence to convey the neutrality the director intended as regards to her decision.

I suspect this movie and Audrey's exquisite portrayal led a lot of impressionable Catholic girls in the 1950s into the convent and then many of them to leave it dismayed and disenchanted.

Audrey's father was not the Nazi, her mother was. Quite a fervent one too, her maternal grandfather was a fan as well until the Nazis invaded the small Belgian town in which they lived and wanted to use his mansion as a headquarters of some kind. He became bitter towards them after that.

Excuse me, the Belgian town in which they lived, don't know if it was small

I stand corrected again. Both of her parents were Nazi lovers, her dad left when Audrey was young as he was involved in a fascist movement in England, her mother was a friend of Unity Mitford as well. After her parents separation Audrey and her mother moved to the Netherlands to live with Audrey's maternal grandparents, also Nazi supporters

Audrey famously incensed the Paramount hairdressing department by insisting they shave her nether regions each day before shooting began, then again before she left work to go out.

As longtime studio employee Hattie Granger said, “It’s not even like she had very much down there; she just wanted to rub our noses in it.”

r99 Talk about a blast from the past. Next up, we'll be reciting the "Regina Coeli."

May was a big deal in my elementary school, since we had IHM(Immaculate Heart of Mary) nuns teaching us. As well as attending Mass daily before school started, we also had a devotional in our classroom. Every boy in turn had to compose a special prayer, and each girl had to make a tiny crown of flowers to fit the statue of Mary placed prominently at the front of the classroom.

Oh MARY!!!

I preferred the original title, "Nun of the Above."

R106 I wondered if anyone would get the reference.

"Queen of Heaven, rejoice! For He whom you were worthy to bear has risen as He foretold..."

Self will is said to die fifteen seconds before we do; or is that after?

In any event Sister Luke's problems stemmed largely from just that; her inability to bend her self will and follow obedience to the rule.

Obedience in holy orders then nor now means blindly following all orders given etc.. without question. If your superior told you to jump off a bridge, do something illegal, or whatever, that is obviously isn't what obedience is about.

You don't join holy orders to become a nurse, doctor, or anything else; that can be done on the outside. Rather it is what your superiors see as best use of your talents for the community. Sister Luke from the start can't get her self will under control. Pre-Vatican II holy orders had all sorts of rules that were often centuries old. In Sister Luke's time however those rules were still in place and expected to be followed.

Sister Luke was expressly and explicitly instructed not to enter rooms of certain psych patients alone. What doe she do? When said patient seemingly all sweetness and light asks for something, she unlocks door to room and is at once attacked. Anyone who has been around those suffering from schizophrenia can tell you they change personalities literally within seconds. You can be talking to what appears to be a perfectly rationale and sane person one minute, then it's like a switch was flipped; their countenance changes and sometimes all hell breaks lose.

R51

"It was no bargain - Audrey Hepburn was wonderful in the scenes where here vanity and individuality were drummed out of her - the struggle to pretty much disappear and become a Stepford Wife. After so many years it showed how bitter and hard some of the women became. I think the movie was beautiful but more than that a cautionary tale that becoming a bland placid nun wasn’t all it was cracked up to be."

Holy orders then (and maybe some still for all I know) were no different in that regard then other institutions such as the military.

In some societies you as an individual do not matter; but rather the success and whatever of community as a whole is what counts. In order to "mold" someone into that sort of thinking usual way is to (pardon the expression) beat out all forms of individuality. What that done the process of building someone into a team member and valuable to community can begin.

Far as religious life then was concerned Sister Luke (or anyone else) was a "nun" first, then nurse. Sister Luke's problem was she didn't (or couldn't) see things that way

Like so many other children of the time Audrey Hepburn was severely malnourished as consequences of WWII. Effects of which last in some form or another last rest of most people's lives.

For those unaware AH lived though the Dutch famine of WWII.

"During World War II and the Dutch famine of 1944, Hepburn and her mother and aunt lived in the Netherlands, where she suffered from malnutrition, acute anemia, respiratory problems and edema. At one point, the Germans blocked supply routes for food and fuel, forcing Hepburn and many others to make do with tulip bulbs, which they used to make flour.

More in link below...

Am more of a Dialogues des Carmelites person myself.

Enough of this crap about Auds being thin from the war! She gorged on chocolate while sailing to America to rehearse for her Broadway debut in GIGI. The production team was shocked and almost fired her. She starved herself thin in time for the play’s opening and thereafter had a pathological fear of gaining weight.

Shirley MacLaine said AH ate a single hard boiled egg for lunch while they worked together. Patricia Neal was served broiled fish with no side dishes at AH’s house for dinner.

Can we just accept that the woman was anorexics?

Her son said her evening dessert consisted of just one piece of chocolate. Less than the size of a small postage stamp.

Acclaimed. That was funny!

She didn't eat, she smoked. 2-3 packs a day. That's why she looked 10 years older than her age once she hit 50...

And if this isn't anorexic, I don't know what is!

I mentioned earlier that Nun’s Story was one of my favorite movies. In my early 20s i was social and pretty (like any early 20s ). I had worked at a hotel and was friendly with everyone on the staff. I worked in the sales office and an awful humorless woman was hired in as my direct supervisor - I secretly referred to her as Betty Broderick - she was borderline abusive. According to her everything I did was wrong - from the amount of coffee I drank to how I worked the fax machine. She didn’t want me to speak to anyone in the office - I had to speak to her first. The situation would never fly now - the woman terrorized me - what I wore, how I spoke, what I said, who I spoke to, what the tone of my voice was. She scared the hell out of me and I found myself starting to stammer when I spoke. I really needed the job but this woman made it a joyless slog - ANYWAY - I started playing a secret game - I thought of Audrey Hepburn in Nun’s Story - I let go of any pride, snark - I just buckled down and tried not to set her off - I remember thinking of Audrey’s inner monologue “I accuse myself of looking in the mirror, I accuse myself, I accuse myself” .... Upshot - I got REALLY good at my job - six months later they fired Betty Broderick I got promoted to her position - but Nun’s Story gave me the mental place and discipline to get through it.

R96 - Yes, Kelly also bagged Holden whose reputation as (he put it delicately) "a real stick man", got him lots of top tier pussy. And, yes, Kelly slept around and the marital status of her many lovers was inconsequential to her. As Ray Milland's wife later put it bitterly (paraphrasing), "She came along with her little white gloves and helped herself to my husband."

Cooper and Glenn Ford were also amongst the era's alleged great fucks.

R108, 'tis not the season for the Regina Coeli. We say the Angelus before Daily Mass, thank you very much.

Did Grace Kelly have affairs with James Stewart, Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra?

R121 - I doubt Stewart, but neither Crosby nor Sinatra would surprise me. However, that said, no first hand information on what occurred on the set of "High Society".

Factoid: Lauren Bacall had an affair with Sinatra whilst Bogart was dying of cancer. All right, maybe she was looking for comfort at a bad time, but really, no one in HW seems able to control himself for five minutes.

R121 - Here you go - apparently, yes, Crosby and Sinatra were notches on her bedpost. Remember she and Crosby also starred together in "The Country Girl" for which she got her Oscar.

Thank God she didn't get the role of Sister Luke, too - for sure Peter Finch would have ended up a notch on her bedpost, too.

Fascinating that Grace retired from films in 1956 at the height of her beauty and career to lead a solitary life with one husband (even if he was a minor prince) when there was still so much to explore and conquer in Hollywood. Unlike Tippi Hedren, she would surely have enjoyed Rod Taylor and Sean Connery. I wonder how soon she regretted it all.

Most religious sisters and nuns I’ve known are lovely people. They look so frumpy in lay clothes though.

It was all about the expensive pen her father gave her.

I thought the pen was a gift from her boyfriend, Jean.

[quote]R125 Fascinating that Grace retired from films in 1956 at the height of her beauty and career to lead a solitary life with one husband (even if he was a minor prince) when there was still so much to explore and conquer in Hollywood.

There wasn’t any higher Kelly could go in Hollywood. She hated most of the scripts she was offered at MGM, and told someone, [italic]”I’ll tell you one of the reasons I'm ready to leave. When I first came to Hollywood five years ago, my makeup call was at eight in the morning. On this movie, it's been put back to seven-thirty. Every day, I see Joan Crawford, who's been in makeup since five, and Loretta Young, who's been there since four in the morning. I'll be goddamned if I'm going to stay in a business where I have to get up earlier and earlier and it takes longer and longer for me to get in front of a camera.”[/italic]

I don’t think she realized that her principality was going to object to her ever acting again, though. Even MGM, to whom she was still under contract, didn’t grasp that for quite a while.

Grace Kelly was a crappy actress and stole Judy Garland’s Oscar.

Nuns on the Run (1990)

“Come To The Stable” with Loretta Young and Celeste Holm....

Almodovar's Dark Habits was turned down for entry at Cannes because it was deemed too sacrilegious. I recall on of the nuns names was Sister Sewer Rat. Another was a heroin addict.

Come to the Stable has that memorable scene with Hugh Marlowe (Lloyd Richards in All About Eve) taking a long hot shower. He actually looked hotter out of clothes than in them.

That movie has a review with one of the funniest quotes ever. I think it was by James Agee?

“As for Loretta Young, whatever it was this vaunted beauty never had as an actress, she still hasn’t got it.”

The Singing Nun (1965)

Come to the Stable is a sweet little movie and it’s fun seeing Celeste Holm and Hugh Marlowe play opposite eachother again after All About Eve. Was Hugh family?

[quote]“As for Loretta Young, whatever it was this vaunted beauty never had as an actress, she still hasn’t got it.”

And she still hadn't got it in her last movie, "Lady in a Corner" (1989), which was no "Lady in a Cage".

Why wasn't Loretta ever on any of the '80s prime-time soaps?

R139 She turned almost everything down except 2 made-for-TV movies at the end of her career.

Hugh Marlowe was dull as dust. Loretta Young was probably insufferable on the set----plus that whore knew she could never be a nun which probably bugged her more than it did Hepburn. Roz Russell probably had more fun in her nun movies than these two.

I wonder if Shelley Winters ever played a nun.

Shelley beat a nun to win her second Oscar.

Lady in a corner?!

Was she in the corner with Baby?

[quote]It’s not even like she had very much down there; she just wanted to rub our noses in it.

Damn. Where was I?

R139 Why wasn't Loretta ever on any of the '80s prime-time soaps?

She was very uptight, religiously so, and wouldn’t want to be in anything even faintly tawdry. In 1985 she was replaced by Joan Fontaine in an Aaron Spelling series called DARK MANSIONS.

————-

[italic]Young, 72, had been scheduled to report Thursday for a get-acquainted meeting with other cast members signed for “Dark Mansions,” a Gothic serial that ABC plans to introduce next season. Instead, her agent, Norman Brokaw of the William Morris agency, released a statement saying the Academy Award-winning actress “will not be rendering her services because of creative differences over the story.”

[quote] In 1985 she was replaced by Joan Fontaine in an Aaron Spelling series called DARK MANSIONS.

And God knows that cunt would do anything.

Did anyone here watch Dark Mansions? It looks like a camp hoot

The Luminous Ingrid Bergman in the Bells of St Mary's the Sequel to Bing Crosby's "Going My Way." I love that one - it makes me cry - especially Too Ra lo ra lo ra - and they bring Barry Fitzgerald's mother to visit from Ireland - alot of nifty schmaltz in that movie.

Dark Mansions is on YouTube. Only a pilot was filmed (and aired). I wonder why ABC did not pick it up.

It has a good, tawdry cast! Alongside Fontaine there’s Michael York, Nicollette Sheridan, Melissa Sue Anderson, Lois Chiles, someone named Raymond St. Jacques (!!??) ....and Linda Purl as Shellane Victor.”

^ Damn, that cast is datalounge heaven

You don't know who Raymond St. Jacques was? His nude pictorial with Barbara McNair in Playboy was one of my first sources of masturbation material.

R149 It was almost like a take on Dark Shadows.

I regret making fun of Raymond St. Jacques’ name. It just sounds like that of a DL romance novelist! Or something you’d see on a menu.

I see now he was a noted Black actor.

Watch at your peril.

^ The poor woman was only 5 foot 4.

She was an accommodating midget.

Got a problem with 5'4" dames?

R21

Sister Luke had just taken her vows as a novice after passing the probationary postulant period. It only then that women had their hair cut. Novices generally take vows of three years on average (it varies by order), and if they don't cut it still can leave (or be sent out) easily. Should they pass their noviate period and go onto become professed religious their veil changes from white to black (or whatever the order had), and they take either vows for life, or in some orders a specific period of time. Once that period is over in case of latter a religious either renews her/his vows, or leaves the order.

For centuries monastaries of female orders made income from selling all that cut off hair to wig makers. They were perhaps the next best reliable source next to lunatic asylums (which cut hair of females for reasons of safety and hygiene).

Post WWI and certainly by the 1940's or so when many young or other women began wearing their hair shorter anyway, that dramatic hair cutting upon taking novice or whatever vows wasn't a huge deal. Prior to this for centuries women rarely cut their hair their whole lives, it was part of their beauty in most cultures.

Cutting off a woman's hair for religious purposes served to satisfy their leaving behind one huge source of female vanity, but obviously there were practical reasons as well. You'd never fit tons of piled up hair under a wimple and or coif/coronet worn by various orders. Also in times before modern shampoos (detergent based) women seldom washed their hair because of the ordeal it involved. Then there were issues with lice.......

Under the old rules head of a consecrated virgin (nun or sister) was never uncovered. Thus orders had head gear for outside, indoors, and while sleeping. When they went swimming their were caps as well (think those things our mothers wore at pool or beach).

Actress Dolores Hart starred in film about Francis of Assisi. Not many years later she would enter religious life herself.

I'm begging my bread! This is refectory, right? I'm begging my bread!

Footage from 1960's film shot at Ladywell monastery in Surrey, UK

A lot of lezzie lickery went on in those convents.

Well...did Garbo ever play a nun?

Garbo was offered The Trouble With Angels before Roz. She decided to stick with retirement and passed.

[quote] ...did Garbo ever play a nun…

You can see her wearing a lovely nun-like outfit within this link.

R128 - You are correct. The fountain pen was from the fiance, Jean, that her surgeon father had forbade her to marry because there was "madness" (probably schizophrenia) in his family, and in those days the belief that all that was genetic was strong. That view went out of favour in the 1960s and then returned in the 1990s as medical science began to learn more about the brain and the genetic "code" began to be understood better.

R167 - "The Painted Veil" is a great story and a very respectable version of it made in the 2000s with Edward Norton as the microbiologist, Naomi Watts as the wayward wife, Liev Schrieber as the sleazy seducer, and Diana Rigg as the Mother Superior running the Chinese orphanage.

General paralysis of the insane or general paresis was often the "insanity" in persons (mostly men but could affect women as well), back in the day and resulted from untreated late stage venereal disease (syphilis).

Well into early part of last century mental hospitals were full of people suffering from mental illness caused by late stage syphilis.

The Painted Veil was also remade in 1957 as The Seventh Sin with Eleanor Parker.

Black Narcissus (1947)

R168. I had no idea her father didn’t want her to marry Jean. The last time Sister Luke sees her father late in the movie he tells her Jean never married which sounds like he’s still hoping she’ll leave the order and marry him. I guess that was just added for the movie. Fun fact: Dean Jagger dubs one of the actors playing a patient in a Congo hospital scene. He doesn’t even try to disguise his voice which is odd.

R168 - Yes, that was changed for the movie. They probably figured it was too much detail. Did not know that about Jagger - thanks!

Loretta Young and Ethel Merman famous incident...

"Ethel Merman was [also] known for her salty language, never delivered in a whisper. Once while rehearsing for an appearance on the Loretta Young television show, she was told it would cost her a dollar each time she swore since Young disapproved of foul language. As she was fighting to get into an ill-fitting gown, Merman shouted: “Oh shit, this damn thing’s too tight.” Young held out her curse box and said, “Come on Ethel, put a dollar in. You know my rules.” Merman is said to have replied: “Ah, honey, how much will it cost me to tell you to go fuck yourself?”

PRIDE AND DISOBEDIENCE, PRIDE AND DISOBEDIENCE.

Count me among THE NUN'S STORY's greatest fans. But has no one mentioned the invaluable contribution of the great Dame Edith Evans, who elevates every scene she's in?

Donna Reed portrayed a jilted woman whose fiancé married her sister (Lana Turner), loses both her parents, subsequently entering the convent in GREEN DOLPHIN STREET (1947).

R175

And how!

Like Fraulein Maria, Gabrielle van der Mal didn't belong in a convent, and her superiors long sensed and finally knew that bit of information. OTOH instead of a kindly mother abbess belting out "Climb Every Mountain", which brings Fraulein Maria around, Sister Luke has to struggle through years of inner torment before she finally gets the message.

You can cheat your fellow sisters but you cannot cheat yourself or God.

Five years earlier, the two-time Oscar winner Emma Thompson sparked a public backlash when she described Hepburn’s acting as “mimsy-mumsy sweetness without any kind of bite.... She can’t sing and she can’t really act, I’m afraid.”

Emma really is a cunt isn’t she?

I love Emma but she was wrong about Audrey Hepburn.

Emma has her blindspots---she's a long time friend of Stephen Frye and probably thinks he's humorous and decent actor, even though he's neither.