"OUR MISS BROOKS" AS AN ANTI-CATHOLIC BIGOT
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
The night before last I downloaded from MovieLink a free movie, "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs." I was in the mood for a little diversion, and this 1960 picture caught my eye.
It stars Robert Preston as a traveling salesman who loses his job and nearly his wife (played by Dorothy McGuire). Since 1957 Preston had been playing the lead in the Broadway version of "The Music Man," and he would star in the motion picture version of that production in 1962.
What especially caught my attention was the listing of Eve Arden as supporting actress. She plays McGuire's sister in her trademark loudmouth style, this time complete with flapper beads. (The story takes place in the 1920s.)
At one point Arden and her husband, played by Frank Overton, are in her sister's living room. Their young nephew comes downstairs with his collection of movie star photographs. Overton asks if he has one of Norma Talmadge, who was the biggest female star of silent films.
At this point Arden starts a harangue. It's worth reproducing for its period anti-Catholicism:
"Norma Talmadge, Norma Talmadge, that's all I hear is Norma Talmadge. I don't know what you see in her anyway. Besides, she's Catholic."
Her husband responds: "You've just got a bug about the Catholics, honey."
"Oh, I have?" replies Arden. "Well, maybe you'd like to marry Norma Talmadge some day and then let the Pope tell you what to do the rest of your life, making you swear to leave all your money to the Church and to bring up all your children Catholic and then join the Knights of Columbus and take an oath to go out and kill all of the nice Protestant women when the day comes for the Catholics to take over the world."
Her husbands pooh-poohs this claim, but Arden says she knows that Catholics have stocked rectory basements with guns and are ready to pounce on an unsuspecting country.
A few moments later Preston and McGuire join Overton in telling Arden--though not in so many words--that she is a nitwit. Later in the film she reveals another side of her character and ends up looking not entirely reprehensible.
If you are of a certain age, you remember Eve Arden in the title role of the television comedy "Our Miss Brooks." The series ran from 1952-1956 and then into long-lived reruns.
I suppose Arden was one of those actresses who always played herself, much as Preston always seemed to play Prof. Harold Hill. No doubt her religious views were not reflected in the character she played in "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs." I do not know what religion, if any, she practiced, but she was too savvy a woman to believe the words put into her mouth by the screenwriters.
Those words have a period ring: the Pope commanding Catholics what to do, Catholics having to leave their possessions to the Church, the Knights of Columbus plotting to do away with Protestants, and guns hidden in rectory basements.
At one time those charges were disseminated widely and were believed widely--and not just in this country. John Henry Newman gave lectures on "The Present Position of Catholics in England" precisely to rebut parallel charges circulating in that country. The nineteenth century was the heyday of the "Catholics are out to get us" mentality, but that mentality was alive well into the twentieth century, even up to the 1960 presidential election.
It hardly can be found today, perhaps because the Church's enemies have become more sophisticated but perhaps because even they no longer think the Church has the power to accomplish such things.
Given the disarray in the Church in this country, can anyone find an American Protestant who believes the Pope is able to "tell you what to do the rest of your life"? The Pope is unable to get his own bishops and priests to toe the line--and let's not even mention Catholics in the pews.
If something is kept hidden in rectories nowadays, it isn't guns, as the recent scandals have shown. And, as much as I would like to imagine a day when Catholics really do "take over the world," I suspect there is no chance of that during this century (and probably during this millennium).
I almost feel nostalgic for the bad old days. Twenty years ago one still could hear echoes of the anti-Catholicism that so long held sway in the popular imagination. Even today it has not disappeared entirely--you still can find people who, watching "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs," would nod their heads in agreement with Arden's character. For the most part, though, the low level bigotry has evaporated.
This does not mean that bigotry itself has evaporated. In this country the Church has as many enemies as before, but now they are chiefly college educated. They do not subscribe to the old fears. They do not fear the temporal power of the Pope or the unveiling of Catholic guns. They fear what they regard as retrograde Catholic thinking.
In a way, they are on the right track. The faith's most potent weapon is its truth, and the cure for the modern variant of anti-Catholic bigotry is more truth more forcefully stated.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please do not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' new discussion forums at:
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the forum dedicated to the E-Letter. You will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
of
Discuss
Index
Prior issue
Next issue
Sign up