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Polio Major 
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TITLE |
Interrupted Melody (1955) |
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DISABILITY |
Polio
Depression Wheelchair |
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DIRECTOR |
Curtis
Bernhardt
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NOTES |
An
Australian opera singer, Marjorie Lawrence, is disabled by polio while
on tour in South America and becomes severely depressed.
But she eventually makes a comeback. |
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I hate this
film. Not like I hate most made for TV films. This |
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film is
pretentious. It asks you to wallow in sentimentality as if |
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this weren't
akin to walking through a peat bog in your |
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bedroom
slippers. It is evidence fit to convict that audiences |
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in the
fifties were captive. This is melodrama at its mellowest |
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where
grown-up women( a 33 year old Parker) play |
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themselves
at 20 without any cosmetic effects. |
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At this
point I should warn you that this is the biography of |
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Majorie
Lawrence an opera singer who came from Australia. |
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There is a
lot of singing and a fair bit of early biography. Up |
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until this
point the film isn't so different from all those awful |
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Esther
Williams mermaid musicals. But then she gets polio |
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and she's in
a wheelchair and wears leg braces .
Her husband being a doctor tries to help. He
carries her to water but she won't swim. Now |
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anyone who
is paraplegic knows that water 'gives you back' your legs.
Its buoyancy allows you 'to stand' and you can |
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pretend for
some moments that you have no disability. No, |
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much like
Garfield in The Pride of the Marines she won't |
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accept her
disability and just lies in bed. She even says to her husband
"You're a doctor help me to die". And "I wanted to set you
free." At this point she should have starred in a film like "Sorry,
Wrong Number" where the 'bedridden wife overhears a
plot to murder her. Result, happiness not fear. |
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Worse to
come is her recovery. She gets back on the stage |
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in an opera
"re-staged for handicapped" and she goes to war |
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with the
boys in what is one of the most sickening and |
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patronising
scenes ever. You've heard how disabled people |
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are heroic
and courageous this is that par excellence. It's the |
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megaphone
equivalent of a scene you have perhaps |
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witnessed of
a voluntary worker patting the rump of a pony on which sits a young
disabled girl or boy and saying "aren't they just so brave".
This may be a true story but I doubt it reflects the experience of
Marjorie Lawrence.
From Marjorie Lawrence's autobiography. |
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Notes
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