The Miracle Man

"The Miracle Man" is a great film....up until the very disappointing and hard to believe ending. It's a real shame, as it was quite compelling up until then.

When the story begins, you see that John 'Doc' Madison (Chester Morris) is the leader of a gang of grifters who steal folks blind. However, after he gets in a fight with Nikko (Boris Karloff), he nearly kills him...and takes it on the lam. He eventually finds himself in a strange small town. Strange because there is no doctor and folks go to a local faith healer, 'The Patriarch', for healing. John gets the idea to exploit this and use it to make a big killing...so he contacts the gang and has them meet him there. However, over time, several gang members come to believe in the power of The Patriarch...and John is having a hard time getting this big score. What's next? Well....it's pretty disappointing!

There are two things I didn't like about the film. The first was minor...Karloff's accent seemed weird. The second one, however, was HUGE....after such a wonderful setup, the ending is a real wimp out...and left me very disappointed. It's a shame, as up until then it was great!

The Miracle Man is a hokey, overdone Paramount remake of a 1919 hit Starring Lon Chaney that is somehow oddly compelling. It is about a gang of crooks who think they have stumbled onto the mother lode of con games in the persona of a faith healer who is oblivious to their scheme. The movie picks up steam as it goes along and becomes absorbing and hypnotic,and the gang members outdo themselves in the acting department.

I have not seen the original 1919 version of this film but John Wray, who plays the deformed 'Frog',gives what has to be the performance of his career. He was mostly a character actor and bit player but here generates what ought to have been at least a Supporting Actor award nomination (there were no supporting awards until 1936). And deadpan comic Ned Sparks? here he plays it straight and is very convincing - I can't recall him in a more prominent role. Usually he could be seen in snatches of one picture or another. Sylvia Sidney carries the load in the acting department with a performance that is both sympathetic and heartfelt. Hobart Bosworth plays the Patriarch and has little to do but to gaze heavenward and look enrapt.

I would imagine this film is not for all tastes but if you have a chance it is well worth your while even if you are not religious. I saw this film at a film festival in Rome, N.Y. in 35MM, in a print restored by the UCLA Film Dept. It reinforces my opinion that the only way to see most films is in this format, in which the figures are bigger than life. That is the way movies were meant to be seen.

Four con artists in San Francisco: John Wray, who can twist himself into a pretzel, and wrack the heart of alms givers; Ned Sparks, who can pick any pocket, lift any pocket watch; Sylvia Sidney, who can weep people into giving her the fare to get home; and Chester Morris, who runs the operations, including paying off Boris Karloff, until he catches Karloff peeking through Miss Sidney's keyhole, and throws him down three flights. So he has to get out of town fast.

He winds up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, where they don't even have a doctor. Hobart Bosworth is a faith healer who can cure anything. So Morris figures out a new swindle. He puts Miss Sidney in Bosworth's home as his newly-found great-niece; he sets Sparks to tout the miracle healer far and wide; he sets Wray to crawl to Bosworth so his 'recovery' can be public. Then he'll collect money from the suckers to build a shrine, and the four of them can skip with the money. Except when Bosworth performs his 'miracle' on Wray, he also gets crippled Robert Coogan to throw away his crutches and run, and wheelchair-bound Virginia Bruce to stand up and walk.

This is as close as we can get to seeing the 1919 version, which made a star of Lon Chaney and arguably Betty Compson too. It's easy to see how, with John Wray's performance in Chaney's role as a man able to fix himself into a contorted shape. It didn't make Wray a star, but he did work steadily through his death as a character actor in a huge variety of roles.

The show also plays expertly with Ned Sparks, starting with his urban cynic, who ends up humbled and content in his humility. The other major roles are well cast, with Hobart Bosworth at his hoariest, Chester Morris at his pre-code nastiest, and giving Sylvia Sidney, Paramount's low-class weeper, a chance to show her dazzling smile at the end.

That's because it's a comedy, despite its religious basis; a comedy is, after all, a story where the situation at the end is better than at the beginning. We have a tendency to confuse comedy and farce, because so many farces are comedies. Even if you are not actuated by belief in god, you can recognize redemption, and a decision to live a better life as a good thing. It's easy, like St. Dismas, to repent on the cross: Heaven guaranteed and no chance of backsliding! How much more difficult and admirable it is to know that you will live years, decades, and strive to do better in the world, no matter what the motivation!

1932's "The Miracle Man," a remake of the lost 1919 silent that made a star of Lon Chaney, should be better remembered than it is. John Wray admirably fills the role of Chaney's phony cripple 'The Frog,' and Boris Karloff, still a supporting player in the brief six month period after "Frankenstein," adds to its position as a pre-code Hollywood curio (Boris would never return to Paramount, which did very few horror films). Chester Morris, Ned Sparks, and Sylvia Sidney round out the quartet of confidence tricksters who get more than they bargained for when they take on 'The Patriarch' (Hobart Bosworth), alias 'The Miracle Man.' John Wray was enjoying one of his most prominent seasons, with memorable turns in both "Doctor X" and "The Death Kiss." As for Karloff, he only features in the opening reel, playing Chinatown tavern owner Nikko, slight Oriental accent not unlike his Chinese general in 1937's "West of Shanghai," whose lecherous designs on Sylvia Sidney are not reciprocated. Rather than accept his usual cut from Morris, he chooses to spy on the undressing girl through a convenient keyhole, earning him a well deserved fall from grace. Following "Business and Pleasure" and "Night World," Karloff's star status at Universal would be solidified by "The Old Dark House," with genre vehicles thereafter prepared especially for him.

In 1931 there was "The Miracle Woman." It was almost the opposite of "The Miracle Man." "The Miracle Woman" was about an elaborate con much like Steve Martin's in "Leap of Faith." "The Miracle Man" was about the real McCoy. Apparently, a miracle man is good while a miracle woman is not.

The Miracle Man in question was called The Patriarch (Hobart Bosworth). He was an old man who lived in the small town of Meadsville and had the power to heal the sick and the crippled by faith. He wasn't an evangelist with a big tent and a big congregation, in fact, he had neither. He was a simple old man who did little else but pray and heal folks.

He was discovered by John 'Doc' Madison (Chester Morris). Doc and his two man and one woman crew were grifters. He, Helen Smith (Sylvia Sidney), The Frog (John Wray), and Harry Evans (Ned A. Sparks) did cons, grifts, and pickpockets throughout San Francisco. When Doc threw a guy down a flight of stairs for spying on Helen he had to skip town. He landed in Meadsville where he heard about the faith healer which gave him a bright idea. He'd bring The Frog up with his bent and crippled act, have him pretend to be healed which would bring people flocking to Meadsville, then fleece all the suckers who'd pay to be healed as well. It was a cinch.

Everything was going swimmingly until Helen, The Frog, and Harry began to have second thoughts. They began to really believe.

I don't know how I feel about "The Miracle Man." On the one hand, it is overly religious with strong implications that a man could heal people with the power of faith. On the other hand, it wasn't about a lying cheat and it had a message about faith and how it can change people. I'm in the middle of these two lines. I believe that faith is powerful, however I don't believe in faith healers even a little bit.

So, had it been about faith changing the lives of thieves and crooks, then I would've been more inclined to it. Since they had to throw in there the sick and the handicapped who walked away from the Patriarch like new, I have my reservations. But even with my reservations I'm more pro than I am con.

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