Come to the Stable
Encyclopedia
Come to the Stable is a 1949 American film which tells the story of two French
nuns who come to a small New England
town and involve the townsfolk in helping them to build a children's hospital. It stars Loretta Young
, Celeste Holm
, Hugh Marlowe
, Elsa Lanchester
, Thomas Gomez
, Dooley Wilson
and Regis Toomey
.
The movie was based on a short story written by Clare Boothe Luce
, and the screenplay was written by Sally Benson
, Clare Boothe Luce
and Oscar Millard
. It was directed by Henry Koster
.
It was nominated for Academy Awards
for Best Actress in a Leading Role
(Loretta Young), Best Actress in a Supporting Role
(Celeste Holm), Best Actress in a Supporting Role
(Elsa Lanchester), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White
(Lyle Wheeler, Joseph C. Wright
, Thomas Little
, Paul S. Fox
), Best Cinematography
, Best Music, Song (Alfred Newman
and Mack Gordon
for "Through a Long and Sleepless Night") and Best Writing, Motion Picture Story
.
--given the Abbey of Regina Laudis
in that real town and the proximity to New York City), where they meet Amelia Potts, a painter of religious pictures. The Sisters announce that they have come to build a hospital there, and Chicago-born Sister Margaret explains that during the war she was in charge of a children's hospital in Normandy
when it became a potential target during a military campaign. As many of the children could not be evacuated, Sister Margaret made a personal plea to an American general not to shell the hospital, which the Germans were using as an observation post. The hospital was spared but at the cost of American lives, and Sister Margaret made a promise to God that, in gratitude for saving the children, she would return to America to build a children's hospital.
When Miss Potts is puzzled as to why they chose Bethlehem, and Sister Margaret tells her that they had received a postcard with a reproduction of a nativity scene painted by Miss Potts, entitled "Come to the Stable," with information about the Bethlehem area. The Sisters then decide that a local hill depicted in another of Miss Potts's paintings would be a good site for the hospital.
After composer Bob Mason, who is Miss Potts's neighbor and landlord, tells the Sisters that the hill is owned by Luigi Rossi of New York, the Sisters go to see the Bishop in a nearby city. He is unable to help them with their project, but does give them a small amount of money to tide them over. When they return to Bethlehem, Bob's religious porter, Anthony James, offers them a ride from the railroad station in Bob's jeep (he continues to help them throughout the movie).
As Sister Margaret learned to drive a jeep during the war, they arrange to borrow the jeep to go to New York City to find Mr. Rossi and ask him to donate his land. Rossi runs a "bookie" operation and, despite his security, the Sisters manage to see him. However, he tells the Sisters that he intends to build his retirement home on the site. As they prepare to leave, Sister Margaret notices a picture and they learn that Rossi's son was killed in action near their hospital in Rouen
. The sisters then tell Luigi they will pray for his son. Suddenly, Rossi changes his mind and informs them that, if they will install a stained glass
window in the hospital in memory of his son, the land is theirs.
Elated, they return to Bethlehem, where Bob and his girl friend, Kitty Blaine, are listening to a demo of a new song he has composed and the Sisters come to thank him for the use of the jeep. Bob then announces that he will be going to Hollywood for a few weeks to work on a picture.
The Sisters acquire for $5,000 a three-month option on a former witch-hazel
bottling plant opposite the Rossi property for use as a temporary shelter to stage the construction of the hospital. However, when the Bishop looks over the papers, he discovers that the purchase price carries a $25,000 mortgage, significantly more than the operating funds the Sisters have available. He tells the Sisters that he will have to cancel the contract, but at that moment, eleven more nuns and a chaplain arrive from France, having been previously summoned by the Sisters following their success. The Bishop relents, allowing them to stay for the period of the option with the understanding that if they cannot raise the additional money within that time they must all leave, but later remarks to his monsignor assistant that he feels unstoppable forces at work.
When Bob returns from Hollywood with Kitty and three house guests he discovers the now increased number of nuns having a produce-and-arts sale in Miss Potts's yard, and Bob insists that she evict all the nuns. On the day before the option is to lapse, the nuns find themselves $500 short of the necessary amount. That evening, after Kitty performs Bob's new song for his guests, they hear the nuns singing a hymn which they recognize to be similar to Bob's song. Concerned about the allusions to plagiarism
, Bob swears that he first thought of the tune after his Army outfit landed in France four years earlier, but guest Al Newman, a music critic, identifies the melody as a 2000-year-old Gregorian Chant
.
The next morning, after Sisters Margaret and Scholastica accidentally drive a stake through Bob's water line, he visits the real estate agent and arranges to buy the witch-hazel plant in order to keep it out of the nuns' hands. Sister Margaret, meanwhile, discovers Bob's guests playing doubles tennis and arranges a wager for $500 if Sister Scholastica can help Al beat the other couple. Although Sister Scholastica is a former tennis champion, she loses the match.
Later, after Sister Margaret tells the Sisters that they must leave, Bob apologetically comes to bid them goodbye and overhears their prayers, discovering that their Mother House is in Normandy, near where he was stationed. When the Sisters ask him to pray for them, Bob is moved to change his mind about their project, and the film ends with Bob, Kitty, Miss Potts, Mr. Rossi and the Bishop all attending the dedication of the temporary home of the hospital of St. Jude.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
nuns who come to a small New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
town and involve the townsfolk in helping them to build a children's hospital. It stars Loretta Young
Loretta Young
Loretta Young was an American actress. Starting as a child actress, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953...
, Celeste Holm
Celeste Holm
Celeste Holm is an American stage, film, and television actress, known for her Academy Award-winning performance in Gentleman's Agreement , as well as for her Oscar-nominated performances in Come to the Stable and All About Eve...
, Hugh Marlowe
Hugh Marlowe
Hugh Marlowe was an American film, television, stage and radio actor.Marlowe was born Hugh Herbert Hipple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. Marlowe was usually a secondary lead or supporting actor in the films he...
, Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Lanchester
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....
, Thomas Gomez
Thomas Gomez
Thomas Gomez was an American actor.Born Sabino Tomas Gomez in New York City, Gomez began his acting career in theater during the 1920s and was a student of the actor Walter Hampden...
, Dooley Wilson
Dooley Wilson
Arthur "Dooley" Wilson was an American actor and singer. He was born in Tyler, Texas, and is remembered as piano-player "Sam" who sings "As Time Goes By" at the request of Ilsa Lund in the 1942 film, Casablanca - the Sam in the famously misremembered line "Play it again, Sam" -- a phrase which...
and Regis Toomey
Regis Toomey
John Regis Toomey was an American film and television actor.-Early life:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was one of four children of Francis X. and Mary Ellen Toomey and attended Peabody High School...
.
The movie was based on a short story written by Clare Boothe Luce
Clare Boothe Luce
Clare Boothe Luce was an American playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador, socialite and U.S. Congresswoman, representing the state of Connecticut.-Early life:...
, and the screenplay was written by Sally Benson
Sally Benson
Sally Benson was an American screenwriter, who was also a prolific short story author, best known for her semi-autobiographical stories collected in Junior Miss and Meet Me in St...
, Clare Boothe Luce
Clare Boothe Luce
Clare Boothe Luce was an American playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador, socialite and U.S. Congresswoman, representing the state of Connecticut.-Early life:...
and Oscar Millard
Oscar Millard
English writer Oscar Millard found success in Hollywood when he collaborated on the screenplay to the 1949 hit Come to the Stable, a comedy about nuns...
. It was directed by Henry Koster
Henry Koster
Henry Koster was born Hermann Kosterlitz in Berlin, Germany. He became a film director and later moved to Hollywood. Koster's father, a salesman, left home when Henry was a young man...
.
It was nominated for Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for Best Actress in a Leading Role
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
(Loretta Young), Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
(Celeste Holm), Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
(Elsa Lanchester), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White
Academy Award for Best Art Direction
The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...
(Lyle Wheeler, Joseph C. Wright
Joseph C. Wright
Joseph C. Wright was an American art director. He won two Academy Awards and was nominated for ten more in the category Best Art Direction...
, Thomas Little
Thomas Little
Thomas Little was a United States set decorator on more than 450 Hollywood movies between 1932 and 1953. He won a total of 6 Oscars for art direction and received 21 nominations in the same category...
, Paul S. Fox
Paul S. Fox
Paul S. Fox was an American set decorator. He won three Academy Awards and was nominated for ten more in the category Best Art Direction.-Selected filmography:Fox won three Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and was nominated for ten more:Won...
), Best Cinematography
Academy Award for Best Cinematography
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
, Best Music, Song (Alfred Newman
Alfred Newman
Alfred Newman was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of music for films.In a career which spanned over forty years, Newman composed music for over two hundred films. He was one of the most respected film score composers of his time, and is today regarded as one of the greatest...
and Mack Gordon
Mack Gordon
Mack Gordon was an American composer and lyricist of songs for the stage and film. He was nominated for the best original song Oscar nine times, including six consecutive years between 1940 and 1945, and won the award once, for "You'll Never Know"...
for "Through a Long and Sleepless Night") and Best Writing, Motion Picture Story
Academy Award for Best Story
The Academy Award for Best Story was an Academy Award given from the beginning of the Academy Awards until 1957, when it was eliminated in favor of the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay, which had been introduced in 1940.-1920s:...
.
Plot
One winter's night, two French nuns, Sister Margaret and Sister Scholastica, come to the small New England town of Bethlehem (most likely modeled after Bethlehem, ConnecticutBethlehem, Connecticut
Bethlehem is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 3,422 at the 2000 census. The town center was designated in the 2000 census as a census-designated place ....
--given the Abbey of Regina Laudis
Abbey of Regina Laudis
The Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis was founded in 1947 by Mother Benedict Duss, O.S.B. and Mother Mary Aline Trilles de Warren, O.S.B. in Bethlehem, Connecticut. This monastic foundation was one of the first houses of contemplative Benedictine nuns in the United States. Mother Benedict and...
in that real town and the proximity to New York City), where they meet Amelia Potts, a painter of religious pictures. The Sisters announce that they have come to build a hospital there, and Chicago-born Sister Margaret explains that during the war she was in charge of a children's hospital in Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
when it became a potential target during a military campaign. As many of the children could not be evacuated, Sister Margaret made a personal plea to an American general not to shell the hospital, which the Germans were using as an observation post. The hospital was spared but at the cost of American lives, and Sister Margaret made a promise to God that, in gratitude for saving the children, she would return to America to build a children's hospital.
When Miss Potts is puzzled as to why they chose Bethlehem, and Sister Margaret tells her that they had received a postcard with a reproduction of a nativity scene painted by Miss Potts, entitled "Come to the Stable," with information about the Bethlehem area. The Sisters then decide that a local hill depicted in another of Miss Potts's paintings would be a good site for the hospital.
After composer Bob Mason, who is Miss Potts's neighbor and landlord, tells the Sisters that the hill is owned by Luigi Rossi of New York, the Sisters go to see the Bishop in a nearby city. He is unable to help them with their project, but does give them a small amount of money to tide them over. When they return to Bethlehem, Bob's religious porter, Anthony James, offers them a ride from the railroad station in Bob's jeep (he continues to help them throughout the movie).
As Sister Margaret learned to drive a jeep during the war, they arrange to borrow the jeep to go to New York City to find Mr. Rossi and ask him to donate his land. Rossi runs a "bookie" operation and, despite his security, the Sisters manage to see him. However, he tells the Sisters that he intends to build his retirement home on the site. As they prepare to leave, Sister Margaret notices a picture and they learn that Rossi's son was killed in action near their hospital in Rouen
Rouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...
. The sisters then tell Luigi they will pray for his son. Suddenly, Rossi changes his mind and informs them that, if they will install a stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
window in the hospital in memory of his son, the land is theirs.
Elated, they return to Bethlehem, where Bob and his girl friend, Kitty Blaine, are listening to a demo of a new song he has composed and the Sisters come to thank him for the use of the jeep. Bob then announces that he will be going to Hollywood for a few weeks to work on a picture.
The Sisters acquire for $5,000 a three-month option on a former witch-hazel
Witch-hazel
Witch-hazel is a genus of flowering plants in the family Hamamelidaceae, with three species in North America , and one each in Japan and China...
bottling plant opposite the Rossi property for use as a temporary shelter to stage the construction of the hospital. However, when the Bishop looks over the papers, he discovers that the purchase price carries a $25,000 mortgage, significantly more than the operating funds the Sisters have available. He tells the Sisters that he will have to cancel the contract, but at that moment, eleven more nuns and a chaplain arrive from France, having been previously summoned by the Sisters following their success. The Bishop relents, allowing them to stay for the period of the option with the understanding that if they cannot raise the additional money within that time they must all leave, but later remarks to his monsignor assistant that he feels unstoppable forces at work.
When Bob returns from Hollywood with Kitty and three house guests he discovers the now increased number of nuns having a produce-and-arts sale in Miss Potts's yard, and Bob insists that she evict all the nuns. On the day before the option is to lapse, the nuns find themselves $500 short of the necessary amount. That evening, after Kitty performs Bob's new song for his guests, they hear the nuns singing a hymn which they recognize to be similar to Bob's song. Concerned about the allusions to plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
, Bob swears that he first thought of the tune after his Army outfit landed in France four years earlier, but guest Al Newman, a music critic, identifies the melody as a 2000-year-old Gregorian Chant
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
.
The next morning, after Sisters Margaret and Scholastica accidentally drive a stake through Bob's water line, he visits the real estate agent and arranges to buy the witch-hazel plant in order to keep it out of the nuns' hands. Sister Margaret, meanwhile, discovers Bob's guests playing doubles tennis and arranges a wager for $500 if Sister Scholastica can help Al beat the other couple. Although Sister Scholastica is a former tennis champion, she loses the match.
Later, after Sister Margaret tells the Sisters that they must leave, Bob apologetically comes to bid them goodbye and overhears their prayers, discovering that their Mother House is in Normandy, near where he was stationed. When the Sisters ask him to pray for them, Bob is moved to change his mind about their project, and the film ends with Bob, Kitty, Miss Potts, Mr. Rossi and the Bishop all attending the dedication of the temporary home of the hospital of St. Jude.
Cast
- Loretta YoungLoretta YoungLoretta Young was an American actress. Starting as a child actress, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953...
- Sister Margaret - Celeste HolmCeleste HolmCeleste Holm is an American stage, film, and television actress, known for her Academy Award-winning performance in Gentleman's Agreement , as well as for her Oscar-nominated performances in Come to the Stable and All About Eve...
- Sister Scholastica - Hugh MarloweHugh MarloweHugh Marlowe was an American film, television, stage and radio actor.Marlowe was born Hugh Herbert Hipple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. Marlowe was usually a secondary lead or supporting actor in the films he...
- Robert Mason - Elsa LanchesterElsa LanchesterElsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....
- Amelia Potts - Thomas GomezThomas GomezThomas Gomez was an American actor.Born Sabino Tomas Gomez in New York City, Gomez began his acting career in theater during the 1920s and was a student of the actor Walter Hampden...
- Luigi Rossi - Dorothy PatrickDorothy PatrickDorothy Patrick, was an American film actress and a John Robert Powers model.-Early Life:...
- Kitty - Basil RuysdaelBasil RuysdaelBasil Ruysdael was an American film actor and opera singer.-Early life:He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and started as a bass-baritone in the Metropolitan Opera Company from 1910 to 1918...
- The Bishop - Dooley WilsonDooley WilsonArthur "Dooley" Wilson was an American actor and singer. He was born in Tyler, Texas, and is remembered as piano-player "Sam" who sings "As Time Goes By" at the request of Ilsa Lund in the 1942 film, Casablanca - the Sam in the famously misremembered line "Play it again, Sam" -- a phrase which...
- Anthony James - Regis ToomeyRegis ToomeyJohn Regis Toomey was an American film and television actor.-Early life:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was one of four children of Francis X. and Mary Ellen Toomey and attended Peabody High School...
- Monsignor Talbot - Mike MazurkiMike MazurkiMike Mazurki was an Austrian-born American actor and professional wrestler who appeared in over 100 movies. His towering 6' 5" presence and intimidating face usually got him roles playing tough guys, thugs, strong men, and gangsters.Mazurki was born as Mikhail Mazurkevych in Tarnopol, Galicia,...
- Sam