![]() ![]() At one point she effectively keeps Helen hostage for two weeks, ensconced in a dilapidated old cottage so she can exert her will on her stubborn pupil without intrusion or contact from the parents. Annie is hardly gentle in imparting her lessons to Helen, manhandling her and even slapping her in a way that would probably land a teacher in jail these days. In 1962, though, my guess it was seen as a powerhouse movie with a lot of dynamic rule-breaking. ![]() In today’s lights it’s a finely crafted film, well-acted, a bit stiff. It’s got a lot of quotable lines and emotional scenes that would serve nicely as the clip during the Academy Awards ceremony. It’s a period costume drama set in the South - the sort of thing where men wear three-piece suits to dinner and black people occupy the background as live-in servants, seen but not heard. If it were coming out today, I think “The Miracle Worker” would be quickly pegged as an “Oscar bait” kind of movie. He had a rather short but vibrant heyday with “The Chase,” “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Little Big Man.” It also revived the Hollywood viability of Penn, whose only film to that point, 1958’s “The Left Handed Gun,” was re-edited against his wishes and ended up a flop. It turned out well, launching the film careers of Bancroft and Duke, who won the Academy Awards for best actress and supporting actress, respectively. But Penn stuck with his leading lady, as well as Patty Duke reprising the role of Helen, even though she was 15 years old by then. This provided the impetus for a film version, though at first the studio wanted a bigger star than Bancroft, suggestion Elizabeth Taylor instead. William Gibson turned it into a television play in 1957, and then a smash Broadway hit in 1959 that won Tony Awards for Gibson, Bancroft and director Arthur Penn. Keller became famous in the early 1900s for her scholarship and writings, especially her 1902 autobiography, “The Story of My Life.” (Less well remembered these days is her political activism and embrace of socialism.) She and Annie became lifelong companions, and her autobiography chronicles their journey from the time they met when Helen was 7 until about age 22, when she became the first deaf-blind person in America to graduate from college. ![]() For the record: Bogie never actually says “Play it again, Sam” in “Casablanca,” either. I seem to recall a “South Park” segment in which teacher Annie Sullivan repeats the line, “Water, Helen, water!” to blind-and-deaf student Helen Keller as she magically makes the connection between objects in her world and the words that have been spelled out by hand to her, and then the student chorus picks it up for a kicky musical number.īut like many lines from the movies that have become immortal, Annie (Anne Bancroft) never actually says those words in the film - at least not in that sequence and context. I knew the film mostly through its various spoofs and references. Typical Sunday-afternoon Disney production values don't do much for the picture, but if you're looking for a primer on the handicapped to show to children, The Miracle Worker might be a good bet.“The Miracle Worker” is one of those works that has become a staple of popular culture even though many people today haven’t actually seen the movie or the play that originated it… including me. David Strathairn's turn as Captain Keller (also angry and mean) is forgettable, but it's the small performance by Lucas Black (All the Pretty Horses) as Helen's brother that is actually the best part of the movie. Alison Elliott, so memorable in films like The Wings of the Dove, plays the titular worker of miracles Annie Sullivan as angry and almost mean, but in the end she is called upon to carry the picture, and she mostly does. While Eisenberg grates, at least she doesn't get to speak. The Miracle Worker? The real miracle worker is the guy who cast Pepsi pitch-child Hallie Kate Eisenberg as Helen Keller, forcing the diminuative star to stumble about with a vacant look in her eyes, smashing plates and grunting obscenely.īelieve it or not, Disney's watery version of the classic play and true story is not as bad as you'd think. ![]()
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