The =immense= popularity of "The Robe" (and "The Ten Commandments," which followed two years later) speak to the overwhelmingly prevailing values, beliefs, ideals, convictions, attitudes... and fears... of America in the A-bomb, drop drill, Cold War decade that followed the stand of the "greatest generation" against the forces of evil in fascist Europe.
"American" values, beliefs, ideals, convictions and attitudes, as well as anxieties, were so much clearer in an age of certainty about what was right and wrong in a world increasingly threatened with nuclear oblivion. Seen through the framework of that mindset, it's much easier to understand why a tale that seems so orthographically simplistic today struck so many then at a profoundly emotional level.
I was five years old when I began to get up before dawn to watch the A- bomb tests in Nevada on live TV. I was only eight years old when "The Robe" premiered, but I recall many of the adults in my world (which was in Hollywood, by the way) speaking of it in reverential terms, even though many of them went to temple on Saturday. I also recall hearing that it was being shown in this church or that for some years to follow.
1953 was a mere seven years from Jean Simmons' portrayal of Sister Sharon in "Elmer Gantry," but that was part of another epoch. This was an era just on the heels of millions of boys fighting the Good Fight for God & Country. Hundreds of thousands more stood guard in distant Asia and Western Europe against godless communism's cheap labor and state- controlled economic threat to a commercialist leadership striving to identify itself with the moral high ground of bible belt values.
It was also, some will remember, the era of the House Un-American Activities Committee, James Eastland, Dick Nixon, Bill Knowland, Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy. The studio system was being eaten away by network television, every bit as much as it was running scared in the face of claims by such as the fore-mentioned of "communist infestation." Family films, travelogues, heroic war stories, stylish musicals, adventure tales and bible epics were in. And they made money because they were "too big" for the small screen.
Victor Mature might have done his best work with Henry Fonda in "My Darling Clementine" (1946), but he starred in "Samson & Delilah" (1949). Robert Taylor's last big one was "Quo Vadis" (1951). Charleton Heston built =his= career on "The Ten Commandments" (1955) and cemented it forever in "Ben Hur" (1959). Kirk Douglas did much the same a year later in "Sparticus."
George Stevens's "Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965) was the end of the road, at least in terms of the unquestioningly reverential approach. (John Kennedy had been shot down in front of a thousand extras in Texas, and a Texan was throwing men and money at Vietnam in a way that was testing the cultural tolerance for the white Anglo-Saxon protestant zeitgeist by then.)
Despite Mel Gibson's run at the genre in 2004, reverential religiosity hasn't made a comeback in the current era of fundamentalist revivalism. Some observers suggest we have come full circle back to (emotion-soaked) faith in the last sixty years, but I favor Strauss & Howe's notion in their 1992 best seller, =Generations=, that we're only half-way there. I sense the lingering effects of the assassinations, suspect wars and other suspicions of authority that put an end to films like "The Robe."
But in what may be a future offering challenges as (or even more) monumental than those faced in the 1930s and '40s smack the masses between the eyes, we may again see a return to the sort of unified, anxiety-driven hopefulness that was the common cultural norm when the moguls gave so many green lights to these expensive, but hope-providing cultural manipulations.
I'd love to see reality and rationality win out, but history says the sort of socially approved emotionalism that made "The Robe" work so well in 1953 is the better bet in the face of any "big scare."
"American" values, beliefs, ideals, convictions and attitudes, as well as anxieties, were so much clearer in an age of certainty about what was right and wrong in a world increasingly threatened with nuclear oblivion. Seen through the framework of that mindset, it's much easier to understand why a tale that seems so orthographically simplistic today struck so many then at a profoundly emotional level.
I was five years old when I began to get up before dawn to watch the A- bomb tests in Nevada on live TV. I was only eight years old when "The Robe" premiered, but I recall many of the adults in my world (which was in Hollywood, by the way) speaking of it in reverential terms, even though many of them went to temple on Saturday. I also recall hearing that it was being shown in this church or that for some years to follow.
1953 was a mere seven years from Jean Simmons' portrayal of Sister Sharon in "Elmer Gantry," but that was part of another epoch. This was an era just on the heels of millions of boys fighting the Good Fight for God & Country. Hundreds of thousands more stood guard in distant Asia and Western Europe against godless communism's cheap labor and state- controlled economic threat to a commercialist leadership striving to identify itself with the moral high ground of bible belt values.
It was also, some will remember, the era of the House Un-American Activities Committee, James Eastland, Dick Nixon, Bill Knowland, Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy. The studio system was being eaten away by network television, every bit as much as it was running scared in the face of claims by such as the fore-mentioned of "communist infestation." Family films, travelogues, heroic war stories, stylish musicals, adventure tales and bible epics were in. And they made money because they were "too big" for the small screen.
Victor Mature might have done his best work with Henry Fonda in "My Darling Clementine" (1946), but he starred in "Samson & Delilah" (1949). Robert Taylor's last big one was "Quo Vadis" (1951). Charleton Heston built =his= career on "The Ten Commandments" (1955) and cemented it forever in "Ben Hur" (1959). Kirk Douglas did much the same a year later in "Sparticus."
George Stevens's "Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965) was the end of the road, at least in terms of the unquestioningly reverential approach. (John Kennedy had been shot down in front of a thousand extras in Texas, and a Texan was throwing men and money at Vietnam in a way that was testing the cultural tolerance for the white Anglo-Saxon protestant zeitgeist by then.)
Despite Mel Gibson's run at the genre in 2004, reverential religiosity hasn't made a comeback in the current era of fundamentalist revivalism. Some observers suggest we have come full circle back to (emotion-soaked) faith in the last sixty years, but I favor Strauss & Howe's notion in their 1992 best seller, =Generations=, that we're only half-way there. I sense the lingering effects of the assassinations, suspect wars and other suspicions of authority that put an end to films like "The Robe."
But in what may be a future offering challenges as (or even more) monumental than those faced in the 1930s and '40s smack the masses between the eyes, we may again see a return to the sort of unified, anxiety-driven hopefulness that was the common cultural norm when the moguls gave so many green lights to these expensive, but hope-providing cultural manipulations.
I'd love to see reality and rationality win out, but history says the sort of socially approved emotionalism that made "The Robe" work so well in 1953 is the better bet in the face of any "big scare."