The Church's One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord!
Dear Friends,
It’s been a little hurly-burly around here with family in from the West Coast and sending off a precious granddaughter to the Musical Theatre program at the University of Michigan. So, with little fanfare, let’s jump right into our third and final podcast of “Hi-Diddle-Dee, The Actor’s Life For Me.” Well, there may be a fourth!
I trust this “lite summer fare” will add to your wonderful August days.
Thankful for You!
D. Paul
"Hi-Diddle-Dee, The Actor's Life For Me!"
The first movie-house film I ever saw may have spoiled my view of movies for the rest of my life. That’s how high the bar was. But first, in way of context: we were living in Marshall, Michigan, where my father owned a Hudson dealership. He used to run a full-page ad in the Battle Creek, Ann Arbor, and Lansing newspapers, touting, with a banner headline: “What the CadiLacks, the Hudson Offers,” employing a bold, black line running down the middle of the page to compare their features side by side. Amazingly, somehow the Hudson always came out on top. Sales soared, and my father’s advertising skills made his small dealership in this small town of Marshall, MI, one of the most successful in the entire state. Corporate headquarters in Detroit soon called him in to be the Editor-in-Chief of their in-house “Hudson” magazine, a position he enjoyed until 1957, when Hudson closed its doors after an impressive fifty-year run as a distinctive automaker. Dad always blamed Hudson’s demise on their merger with Nash in 1955, morphing into American Motors and losing their true, stylistic and engineering identity in the process.
Marshall itself was a quaint town of around 5,500 souls and remains so today. Something of a flâneur by the age of eight, I’d stroll out of my father’s dealership (with his knowledge), saunter down Michigan Street (Marshal’s Main Street) past the Bogar Theatre (which is still there), and slip into the S S Kresge department store where you could read all of the latest and greatest comic books—from Superman to Little Archie—with a row of chairs offered gratis if you lingered long in your reading. A gracious fountain adorned the entrance to the business district on Michigan, surrounded by beautiful Italianate and Gothic styled homes. People still come from far and wide for a taste of Win Schuler’s famous “Cheese Spreads and Chips.” But it was that Bogar movie house that intrigued this eight-year-old the most.
One afternoon, my mother informed me that we were going to go see a movie at the Bogar. My heart began to race. Though my parents had allowed me to see a few “appropriate” films on TV, I’d never seen one in a movie house, for as good members of the Church of the Nazarene, we abided by it bylaws, which at the time forbade attendance to what was apparently the devil’s playground—movie theaters. Seems terribly provincial and puritanical today, doesn’t it, but such was often the position of the conservative, evangelical churches of years gone by. Now, “At the Movies” is common fare for such churches, although their theatrical cuisine may be somewhat lean. But now, in 1953, in charming Marshall, MI., we were attending a small, Bible-believing community church that had no theological restrictions against the cinema, and my mother, God bless her, took advantage of the liberating moment, albeit surreptitiously.
It was a matinee. The movie was Pinocchio. It was obviously a rerun, the movie having premiered in 1940. As we entered the verboten, dimly-lit movie house, I still recall the smell of real-buttered popcorn, juicy hot dogs, and a endless display of candy bars, the ubiquitous Mars & Snickers, plus Milk Duds, Necco Wafers, and Chiclets candied gum, Eldorado Ice Cream, and a variety of sodas, including root beer floats!
I couldn’t help but wonder why a church would ever think such a movie house was home to the devil. “This has to be what heaven looks like,” I thought. As we crept into our center, ground-floor seats with our popcorn in hand, my mother seemed like a young girl again, whispering for me to be quiet about our private excursion, and giggling as the lights went down, the curtain opened, and the screen came to life. And there it was!
Pinocchio, in all of its technicolor splendor, with its wonderful cast of characters that remain in my mind seven decades later: The sometime narrator and frequent “conscience,” Jiminy Cricket; wood carver and toymaker Geppetto, who wishes upon a star that his puppet, Pinocchio, were a real boy; the Blue Fairy, who tells Pinocchio that if he proves himself “to be brave, truthful, and unselfish,” he will become a real boy. Narratively, soon follow a cast of villains who lead the innocent Pinocchio astray—the con artist fox, ironically named Honest John; his sidekick, Gideon the Cat; the traveling puppeteer, Stromboli, who locks his star attraction, Pinocchio, in a bird cage. When the Blue Fairy arrives to free him, Pinocchio lies about his foolish ways and his nose, as you surely know, grows longer and longer, until he makes amends and the Blue Fairy frees him and restores his nose to normal. More precarious adventures follow on Pleasure Island, where Pinocchio, a delinquent named Lampwick, and other boys engage in smoking, drinking, and vandalism. With Jiminy Cricket’s help, Pinocchio escapes the island before being totally transformed into a donkey, like Lampwick is, and sold into slavery, though Pinocchio now has donkey’s ears and a residual tail for his “jackass” ways. Assuming the form of a dove, the Blue Fairy informs Pinocchio and Jiminy that Geppetto sailed to Pleasure Island to rescue Pinocchio and has been swallowed up by the gigantic whale, Monstro. Courageously, Pinocchio jumps into the Mediterranean Sea with Jiminy, only for both to be swallowed by Monstro as well. In the “belly of the beast,” Pinocchio devises a plan that makes Monstro sneeze them all out, but as he pulls his father, Geppetto, to safety inside a cove, Monstro crashes into it and Pinocchio is killed. Back home, as Pinocchio is being mourned by Geppetto, Jiminy, Figaro (Geppetto’s pet cat), and Cleo (his pet goldfish), the Blue Fairy arrives again and revives Pinocchio, and since he has proven himself to be “brave, truthful, and unselfish,” transforms him into a real, human boy. Yes, it is a happy—no—joyful ending! In a nice closing touch, the Blue Fairy rewards Jiminy with a gold badge, certifying him as an “official conscience.” Long after the closing credits roll, lines like "A lie keeps growing and growing until it's as plain as the nose on your face" and "Let your conscience be your guide" reverberate in the minds of young and old alike. It certainly did in mine as I left the theatre.
And I’m not sure when the tears first came, but I and millions of others will never forget when Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Cliff Edwards, aka “Ukulele Ike”) begins to sing in that final scene and over the credits:
When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you
If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do
[CHORUS]
Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of their secret longing
JIMINY CRICKET]
Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true. (written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington)
How many endless times over the past eighty-five years since Pinocchio premiered have millions sung with joyful hope that opening line—When You Wish Upon A Star. Soon after seeing the film, I found another star to wish upon, or rather it found me. An eternal star that will never fade— “The Bright and Morning Star”—Jesus Christ himself. But the moral teachings and archetypal characters and themes reverberating in Pinocchio strike me as blending graciously into the Gospel narrative. The genius of Walt Disney and Company created a work of art, if you’ll permit the phrase, of prevenient grace, with its eternal struggle between good and evil, its aspirations for the wooden to be made human and the lifeless to come to life, clothed in the virtues of bravery, truthfulness, and selflessness.
Entertainment and cultural journalist, Christian Blauvelt, accurately articulates the enduring influence of Pinocchio when he writes, “This is not a film you'll ever fully wrap your head around, never 'solve', never stop finding things to wonder at. It's a singular work of depth and ambition, the kind that all artists would aspire to from the core of their being.”
Perhaps this is what we ought to ask of the filmmaker, the playwright, the artists of our post postmodern age: Yes, by all means entertain us, but point us to the eternal, to all that is good, true, and lovely. Yes, show us life in all its brokenness and nuanced complexity, but affirm the redemptive over the nihilistic. Not all films can or should be “spot on” like “The Chosen,” and the wonderfully conceived “The Most Reluctant Convert,” or the biblically-themed “House of David”—but, my dear artist friends, like the “Pinocchio” of old, point us onto a vertical path, one that helps lead us to a star of enduring hope.
Amen
