In 1952, somebody knocked Eleanor Roosevelt out of the
number one spot as America’s Most Admired Woman, according to a poll by Time
magazine. Her name was Elizabeth Kenny, and in her own time she was a
controversial rebel who fought the medical establishment, got a movie made of
her life starring Rosalind Russell, and saved countless children from
suffering.
It’s hard for today’s generation to get a sense of how
terrifying polio was to our parents and grandparents. In 1952 – the year Sister
Kenny made her mark – there was a record high of 58,000 new cases. Between 1946
and 1953, there were more cases of polio than at any other time in history,
surprising for a disease that is traceable as far back as ancient Egypt, with
little end to the epidemic in sight.
The standard treatment in the early 20th century
was focused on immobilization of the muscles, but an Australian bush nurse was
beginning to change that, and in the process contribute enormously to the
progress of what we now call physiotherapy. She had no formal training, but had
served on “dark ships” during the First World War and had earned the rank of
Sister, which at that time in the commonwealth was reserved only for formally
trained nurses. (That was another point of controversy. The woman was a
lightning rod, and her public dismissal of doctors and her courting of press
coverage didn’t help at all.)
In 1943, what started in Australia moved to the United
States, as she began teaching her methods and establishing Sister Kenny
clinics. A number of notable people regained mobility thanks to these clinics, including
Alan Alda, Dinah Shore, and Martin Sheen.
Rosalind Russell was fascinated by Sister Kenny, and admired
her greatly. When there started to be murmurs of a biopic, Russell leapt at the
chance. Despite the poor box office performance of Sister Kenny, it’s a performance that deservedly won her a Golden
Globe. And the financial underperformance had way more to do with the mood of
the era than the quality of the film. In 1946, the year the film was released,
people didn’t want to see downer movies. War pictures, medical pictures, things
where the two romantic leads separated in a moving but tragic finale, these did
not do well.
Sister Kenny has
all of those elements.
Its structure is pure biopic, even at the expense of
reality. (But never let reality get in the way of a good movie, I say.) We
start with young Elizabeth Kenny deciding, against the wishes of a totally fictitious
mentor played by Alexander Knox, to devote herself to care of rural bush
communities with limited access to hospitals.
After a few years of setting broken bones and helping the
locals through various bouts of this and that, she finds herself facing a
totally new challenge when a little girl named Dorrie starts to exhibit the
symptoms of infantile paralysis. Dorrie, like all the kids in the movie, is
heartbreaking in her pain. When she tries to move her legs and can’t, it’s a
tear-jerker.
But Sister Kenny bucks the odds against little Dorrie, and
by the end of her makeshift treatment, Dorrie can walk, cartwheel, and dance
just like she wants to.
Yes, its melodrama, but its effective melodrama.
You’ll probably need a box of tissues for the scene where
Sister Kenny and her paramour, played wonderfully by Dean Jagger, take Dorrie
to the big city hospital to be examined by Australia’s foremost authority on
infantile paralysis. There, Dorrie meets a little boy in leg braces whose
excitement to show her how he can kick a ball is the biggest weepy moment in a
movie almost totally comprised of them.
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