The Miracle Woman Reviews

The subject of phony evangelists is a tricky one, entailing the risk of offending believers. Barbara Stanwyck is convincing as the daughter of a pastor who has just been discharged from his parish and, as a result, has died of a broken heart. Stanwyck goes in front of the congregation and delivers a stinging denunciation of their hypocrisy. Sam Hardy, a two-bit promoter and con man, realizing that Stanwyck is mighty handy with her mouth, talks her into becoming an evangelist. Soon she is one of the most important pulpit pounders in the land, and, caught up in the furor of phony cripples "healed" and testifying to the pigeons, Stanwyck is too successful to stop. David Manners, a blind ex-pilot who is about to kill himself by leaping out a window, hears Stanwyck preaching on the radio and decides that she might be able to cure him. He goes to the tent and volunteers to step inside a lion's cage. His faith brings him closer to Stanwyck, and she is soon in love with him. Russell Hopton, the press agent for the group, wants a larger piece of the spoils, but Hardy won't hear of it and knocks Hopton off. Helped by his love for Stanwyck, Manners overcomes his shyness enough to declare himself through his ventriloquist's dummy. When Hardy sees that Manners and Stanwyck are getting close, he arranges a trip to the Holy Land to get her away from the blind lad. Stanwyck is beginning to understand that her faith healing is a lot of nonsense and that the people whom she has really healed just needed something--anything--to believe in. All of her ravings don't help Manners recover his sight. (To the credit of the authors and director, there is no miracle recovery for the blind man.) Hardy sets the tent ablaze as Stanwyck is about to confess to all that she is a sham. Later Stanwyck, who has become a member of the Salvation Army, receives a wire from Manners, opening the possibility that the two young people will get together. Riskin, who became Frank Capra's favorite screenwriter, went on to write such classics as IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, LOST HORIZON, YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU and and MEET JOHN DOE. THE MIRACLE WOMAN was an expensive film for its day, and every penny shows on the screen. There's hardly a wasted word or frame of film in the movie. It is a fine film, although it would have been even better had Capra and the writers had the freedom to attack their subject with sabers instead of pins.