Movie Biography: A Man Called Peter

1955 Biography

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by Henry Koster

Starring

Richard Todd

Jean Peters

Marjorie Rambeau

Jill Esmond

Les Tremayne

Gladys Hurlbut

Robert Burton

Billy Chapin

It is mostly a forgotten movie but in its day it was extremely popular.  Perhaps even today it is remembered fondly by religious folks as a big screen treatment on religious themes that wasn't a big spectacle along the lines of The Ten Commandments or The Robe or its sequel Demetrius and the Gladiators.  This is a small, tender film of a minister and his relationship with God, his family and parishioners. 

Despite my freedom from a religious tether, I consider myself bound to spiritual principles and perhaps it is those that allowed me to find beauty, meaning and truth in this story.  Highlighted as much as the religious parts are a love story and a marriage that inspired me.  I know to some this part is corny but it is no worse than in most biographies and I found it far more touching than is usually presented.

At the center of the story is a young Scot, Peter Marshall (and no, he never hosted Hollywood Squares), who comes to America with the intention of becoming a minister.  The film is based on a mega best-selling book of the same name by Marshall's widow, Catherine.  The Marshalls' story and marriage are interspersed among a collection of his actual sermons which had been preserved.

The story opens in 1915 in Scotland and young Peter's heart belongs to the sea.  He dreams of going to sea one day but he works in the mines and takes night classes.  One night after class he has a brush with death (nearly falling off a cliff) and quickly determines that divine intervention kept it from happening.  He decides to go to work for God and become a minister.  He calls it orders from the chief.

With $50 in his pocket, he sails to America and enters the Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.  Four years later he graduates summa cum laude.

He accepts a position at Covington Church in Atlanta, preaching first to small crowds and as they grow larger and larger, a balcony is added and the crowds are still so large outside that loudspeakers are installed.  Marshall's message was always strong, loving and persuasive and delivered with his strong Scottish brogue.

For two years pretty college student Catherine Wood listened to him faithfully every Sunday in a pew near the front.  She would come to admit that she loved him from the first moment of laying eyes upon him.  

One day he is asked to speak at an outside event for college students and she is randomly picked to accompany him.  After he speaks to an uninvolved crowd, she takes over and wows both the crowd and the minister.  Using quotes from his sermons to glorify the sanctity of women, the crowd erupts in spontaneous applause.  Now he notices her... oh yes, he does.

Yes, we get a half dozen scenes covering their romance and marriage.  They seem to have everything in common including intelligence, humor, goals and she is 1000% into being the wife of a minister because she was the daughter of one.

He became so popular that most of the country knew who he was.  His sermons were, in part, sometimes quoted or written up in the newspaper.  His Sunday sermons in his little church were events.

Was it a surprise to him when he was offered to be the pastor at the New York Avenue Church in D.C., known as the Church of the Presidents?  The film doesn't clarify the point but it would seem likely Marshall would have been hurt had he not even been considered a candidate.

While he was Presbyterian, everyone was welcome to attend his services... well, actually outsiders were encouraged.  The fruition of that notion annoyed the local gentry and watching it unfold is fun.  One result of Marshall's plan (if you will) was to increase the size of the congregation which it does considerably.

There are a number of sermons highlighted in the film, most of which help to advance the story and include ones actually written by the real Marshall.  

We see that the Marshalls become parents to one son.  Peter John Marshall will grow up to be a minister himself.

At the same time both Marshalls have serious health issues.  She contracts TB and is bedridden for three years.  After she recovers, they buy a beautiful seaside cottage on Cape Cod.  Father and son go out in their rowboat.  Mom stays on the beach, sewing and watching.  She hates being on the water.  She loves being with her husband.  He wishes he were with her more.

After they return home from a trip to the Cape, Dr. Marshall has a heart attack while preaching.  He recovers and after a short rest (too short), he steps into another prestigious position when he becomes the chaplain of the Senate.  

During the morning hours several weeks after starting his new position, Marshall awakens Catherine, telling her he is in pain.  She calls the hospital but is not able to go with him because she needs to stay home with her son.  He tells her see you in the morning.  Peter Marshall died in the hospital at age 46.

Of course the ending does bring about the tears although it is not mawkish, at least as I see it.  Catherine and her young son are back at their cottage and he is attempting to haul the boat into the water.  She tells him that he cannot go out in the boat alone and he responds by asking her to come with him, knowing full well her fear of the water.  Guided, it seems, by her husband from above, she grabs the dog and climbs into the boat.

Fox went all out with high production values.  The movie is gorgeously photographed, indoors and out, courtesy of Harold Lipstein's Oscar-nominated cinematography.  Eleanore Griffin's adaptation of Catherine Marshall's book makes those sermons sparkle and brings an eloquence to the entire production.  Alfred Newman handles the music with his usual expertise as he had done in several religious pictures of the previous decade.  

The supporting cast tags all the bases.  Marjorie Rambeau is wonderfully imperious as the church's main pillar and Les Tremayne is touching as a senator who feels he's in over his head.  Billy Chapin is charming as the young son.

Far and away, however, it is Richard Todd's magnetic, vibrant and loving interpretation of the famed pastor that raises this picture to the popular heights it attained.  Todd in his tenaciousness and with a clear-eyed concentration delivers Marshall to us by sensitively showing all that was human.  Nowhere is the actor more compelling than when he is delivering one of those sermons, speaking rather than preaching, and always coming more from the heart than the written word.  It is a performance I have never forgotten.

Richard Burton was first sought for the title role but was tied up on another project and could not be ready in time.  I liked Burton but I'm glad.  It would have been a whole other movie.  Both Todd and Fox were ecstatic over his reviews and the studio signed him to a contract.

Jean Peters, in a less showy role, of course, still matches Todd all the way.  She infuses Catherine with wholesome, ladylike ways, a woman devoted to God and her husband and son while still standing up for those things she believes in.  It is assumed that her portrayal must have met the approval of the real Catherine since she was on the set as a technical adviser.

Peters may not have been as wholesome as the real Catherine Marshall but she was far more so than studio head Darryl Zanuck had given her credit for.  He wanted to turn her into a sexpot and she refused to go that route.  She had recently had good roles in Viva Zapata, Niagara, Pickup on South Street, Three Coins in the Fountain and Apache.  She was very pleased with her work on this film and thoroughly enjoyed working with Todd.

But her heart and mind were elsewhere.  She had been secretly dating wealthy oddball Howard Hughes for several years and demanded that he marry her or they would go their separate ways.  How she got him to capitulate is something else but she did.  He asked her to quit acting and A Man Called Peter would be her swan song to the silver screen.

Henry Koster, one of Fox's most trusted directors, took the production on location for the D.C. scenes.  He was an old hand at religious-themed films having helmed The Bishop's Wife and Come to the Stable in the forties and The Robe in the early fifties and would go on to make The Story of Ruth and even The Singing Nun.    

In the end, this true and absorbing story of a vibrant pastor leaves one with a warm glow and a feeling of being uplifted.  Its message of sincerity, decency, kindness, respect, honor, love for fellow human beings and a portrait of a loving marriage is more important today than it was when the film was made.

Here's a preview:

Next posting:

a family's secret