EXTRA   MATERIAL

Chapter Twenty-four - 1944-1945
The Glorious Ten Commandments

A Story Told by Daniel Lord

Almost Saved From Disgrace

A Catholic girl, decidedly Irish in ancestry and taste, met a patronizing lady of society and then told her adventures to a friendly priest.

Haven’t you quite a bit of English in you?  The lady of fashion asked.

No, said the girl, emphatically.

Ah! then your are a Scot.

I certainly am not a Scot.  I’m Irish.

Then you’re from the north of Ireland, aren’t you?

My family came from the south of Ireland, from Dublin in fact.

Oh, said the lady.  And she turned away.

I was furious, said the girl to the friendly priest.

Well, said the priest, with a smile, at least she tried to make a respectable woman out of you.¹

Pamphlets of 1944

A Heart at Christmas

Let Me Lead My Own Life!

Let’s Pick a Name for Baby!

Sincerest Thanks to You: The Art and Practice of Gratitude

Success Through Personality

Pamphlets of 1945

All American Girl: A True Story for Americans Who Should Know Her

Grow Up and Marry: Interview with Raphael C. McCarthy, S.J.

May Your Christmas Be Merry

She Was a Heroine

All American Girl

In All American Girl Daniel Lord tells of meeting with a Hollywood producer and his writer who wanted to make a movie about a nun and have written a script.  Lord, called in to advise them, realizes they know nothing about nuns.  In his mind Lord recalls the story of 15 year old Jackie whom he met at a retreat.

She came to him and said I want to be a Carmelite.  She had been inspired by the Little Flower.  However, her wealthy parents were against her.  They pulled her out of Catholic School and sent her to a fashionable school, then sent her to a coed university with a good social life.  She continued to write to Lord and remained committed to her goal.

After college she got small parts on Broadway and even did a bit part in a movie which were still being made on Long Island in those days.  She reached the age of twenty and decided to enter the Carmelites on December 8, 1929.  When the stock market crashed in October her wealthy father lost everything, so she had to work to support her parents.  She got a job on radio singing incidental music for soap operas and doing children’s voices.  She even did a few small parts in Hollywood.

She continued to write to Lord about her desire to go to Carmel.  Finally she confronted her parents who had recovered financially.  Her parents become very upset and her father had a stroke.  Now she had to stay to care for her invalid father.

Several years passed.  Lord went to talk with parents and force the issue.  Jackie wound up happy in the Carmelite convent.  Her parents were never reconciled to it.

According to the pamphlet, the story of Jackie is true.  However, it is not clear about the set up for telling the story.  Did Lord actually meet in a producer’s office to discuss a movie about nuns?  It is very likely.

In Let Me Lead My Own Life: Two True Stories Meet and Overlap tells the story of Martha and Clive Hudson who are worried about their eighteen year old daughter Helen who is spending time with the glamorous Bill and Gladys Stevens.  The parents have asked Helen’s Uncle Bert to talk to her.

She does not want to talk and speeds off in Bill’s sports car.  It turns out the Stevens are running an elegant gambling joint in their mansion for the wealthy in town and for officers from the military bases.  Bill uses his wife to charm the patrons.

Late that evening Helen returns and Uncle Bert talks to her.  He tells his own story about his youth when he met a talented young singer and actress, Muriel, who was divorced and remarried.  Muriel invites Bert to play piano for her.  Bert falls in love with her and she leads him on.

After she performs in a show with Bert, he wants to introduce his mother to Muriel.  His mother rudely refuses.  Then Bert learns that Muriel is involved with a prosperous man in town.

In the end Bert concludes that his mother was totally correct in her judgment of Muriel.  After listening to the story Helen decides to go talk to her mother.

Bert’s story about Muriel follows Lord’s own story about getting interested in a young divorced actress and singer whom his mother refused to meet.  This True story of Lord has been repackaged as Bert’s story.  Also this account fills in the details of Lord’s story.²

Daniel Lord shows his skill in story writing in his description of Bert:

His own four children were all settled in life—or as settled as they could be until Bert, Junior, the youngest can come from the Southern Pacific, where he is stationed as a pilot in the Air Force.  Three Junes ago he had knelt while Stephen, the eldest, said his first Mass.  Two brides had walked up the aisle, one in the parish church, one in the chapel of the motherhouse.  His wife—and his eyes always misted a little when he thought of her—his wife had for the past ten years taken care of them all from heaven.  He and she together had done a good job or parenthood.³

In the story a gambling club is mentioned that straddles the boundary between two legal jurisdictions and because of that, is never raided.  Where did Lord get that detail?  One of the legends of St. Louis was that the Biltmore Country Club south of the city was never raided because it was on the St. Louis County/Jefferson County border.

In Success Through Personality Lord states: For personality is the high-powered motor that carries a person smoothly and easily to success.⁴  People recognize those with personality and those without personality though it is hard to explain the difference.  Lord defines personality as having ‘aliveness.’

Lord mentions factors that contribute to aliveness including good food, training, and work.  Those amazing personalities who fill our public life are very, very seldom—almost never—the products of that happy good fortune we call luck.  They trained laboriously for their triumphs.⁵

The pamphlet includes subtitles such as Companions Count, The Impress of Books, and The Alert Mind.  Then Lord’s pamphlet takes a religious shift: So we have two vitalities, two kinds of aliveness: one purely natural one wonderfully divine.⁶  Lord then develops the idea of spiritual aliveness based on good food—the Eucharist, good companions to encourage faith, and religious books.

Different readers may react differently to the second half.  To some, it will seem a thoughtful reflection on developing faith.  To others it will seem contrived.

In She Was a Heroine Lord tells the true story of Rose, a beautiful and talented girl who performed in Lord’s shows in college.  She falls in love with charming Bill and despite warnings from Bill’s friends that he gambles, she marries him.  All too pitiful is the fact that love seldom cures the drunkard or the gambler.⁷

In time Bill is playing the market and gambling with bank money.  One day men from the bonding company come and tell her that $3,650 is missing.  Bill will not go to jail if the money is repaid.

Bill later comes home with flowers and chocolates to take her out.  She sits him down to talk.

I’m sorry, he hardly whispered, I was so sure I could pay them back.  And really— his face brightened suddenly with that intense light of inner conviction that never dies in the faces of habitual gamblers—I still can.  A little run of luck. . .  He bit his lip too late to hold back that careless phrase.  He saw that it had slapped her blank, tear-drained face.

What will the run of luck be this time? she demanded, with brief bitterness.  Third race at Hawthorne?

There was nothing he could say.  He had actually been thinking of the fourth race, not the third; she had hit too close.⁸

She decides they need to sell the house and use the equity to pay off the debt.  She learns from the real-estate dealer that there is no equity.  She knew instantly that Bill had borrowed it and gambled it away.

They separate, but she will not divorce him.  She moves to a small town and buys a small store with an apartment upstairs, working hard raising the kids and paying off the debt.  Bill visits often and leaves a few dollars, but she will not take him back until he makes some effort to pay off the loan.

. . . .

[The end of this story will not be given away.]  Anyone who has dealt with people with addictive personalities can recognize the accuracy of Lord’s details in this story.

Going My Way

In 1944 the charming movie Going My Way hit the theaters, starring Bing Crosby as Father Chuck O’Malley and Barry Fitzgerald as the curmudgeonly, but lovable, Father Fitzgibbon.  Directed by Leo McCarey, who also developed the story, the film would be nominated for 10 Academy Awards and would receive seven; including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Screenplay.

In the movie the young Father O’Malley arrives to help the struggling St. Dominic’s parish.  He forms a boy’s choir as he plays the piano.  He also composes a song, Swinging on a Star that he sells to a music publisher and saves the parish financially.

One can only wonder if Daniel Lord—composer, piano player, and sing-a-long leader—might have inspired the character of Father O’Malley.  This is a speculative question with no real evidence.  Although the movie is ostensibly set in New York City, Father O’Malley is from St. Louis and a fan of the St. Louis Browns baseball team.  He and his friend Father Timothy O’Dowd sing their high school alma mater song for East St. Louie High.  Why are these St. Louis details in the movie?  However, the details were added by one who did not know much about St. Louis.  East St. Louis is not the east side of city, but rather across the Mississippi in Illinois.  And no one in the city says St. Louie.  Who knows if Lord influenced the movie?

Interestingly, in 1947 in his pamphlet Catholic Education is a Waste, Lord’s character, Father Hall would comment:

Within the last year or so the country has been amazed because we got a few successful religious motion pictures.

They wowed ‘em at the box office, interjected Mr. Bradley.

... And caused such an uproar and protest among those who dislike the publicizing of religion, especially among Catholics, that Hollywood canceled a few more stories that were in schedule for production, said Father Hall.⁹

A Typical Day for Daniel Lord

Lord described a typical day.

My day runs somewhat as follows: I usually am up between six and six-thirty and say my Mass at St. Louis University High School where I live as a kind of member of the community and boarder.  Then I take the street car or bus to my office which is about four miles from where I live.  I am usually at my desk somewhere between eight and nine.  The correspondence which I conduct is a very heavy one and I put that on a dictaphone.  By transcription I go on the radio every day for fifteen minutes answering the questions which people have been asking me over the course of the last few years and questions which they send in as a result of the program period.

Following the mail I usually have to see a number of people in the building.  We have always taken the attitude that though we are executives, we are primarily foster fathers of a family here, so we give to the staff as much time as they need for their problems, their personal interests and the things they wish to discuss with us.

During the morning we usually have whatever meetings are necessary, and a good many are.

The priests of the staff have lunch together almost every day, and the laity have the use of the lounge and the kitchen for their lunch.

I am back at my desk about one o’clock and usually I try to get in two or three hours writing if that is at all possible.

The executive work takes the rest of the day and by five o’clock the office clears out, I usually get a quick sandwich here at my desk and then the real work of the day begins, for it is after five that I usually take care of the writing that must be done, the letters which I must answer personally and everything of that sort.

I spend about one week out of every three on the road lecturing, talking, organizing, etc.

About twice a year I shut myself away for two weeks and do nothing but write from the early morning until late at night.¹⁰

Occasionally the staff would have picnics where Lord made ‘Lord-burgers.’  His recipe was secret.  One wonders if this recipe went back to his days hiking at St. Stanislaus.  Lord also liked ceramic figurines.  When he traveled he often visited shops to examine them.  But he never bought any, this way I don’t have to worry about them.¹¹  Also he had no money to buy them.

In 1944 Lord reflected on his strategy with the Sodality.

Going back historically over my connection with the Sodality, it was my first effort and desire to see the Sodality brought from its position of obscurity, from its subordination in year books, schedules, place in the catalogue, space in the school papers, etc., to a point of influence and prestige in the mind of the student.

It seemed to me that the American boy is impressed by something that the faculty regards as dominant on the campus.  So our first effort in advertising was to create in the minds of the students the conviction that the Sodality was extremely important, playing a part in everything that actually interested an American student, not in the sense of controlling but in the sense of cooperating, and more important still, of creating a Catholic spirit for all things within the school.

One of the first schools to attempt a program of this kind was a Jesuit High School in New Orleans.  The Sodality became the dominant organization.  It was tremendously interested in everything that concerned the school.  No one but a Sodalist could be captain of the athletic teams or an officer in any of the major organizations.  The result was that the Sodality ... put a real Catholic spirit into all of the campus organizations.¹²

Getting Catholic Men Interested in Their Faith

One thing is clear: we have to do some serious thinking about the care of men in civil life.  Personally in my work with the Sodality I became convinced that there is practically a despair of men. . . . My observations, which would seem to be justified by the reports from the army and navy, would run thus:

1. Nobody really wants to be bothered with the hard work necessary to run a good men’s religious organization.  Note the acceptance of the minimal Holy Name...and the complete unwillingness of even S.J’s. to work on the Sodality for men.

2. Our American men’s societies are deader than dead.  The National Council of Catholic Men is a joke.  I could give you date and day for that.  The KC’s [Knights of Columbus] are dying on their feet.  Our Alumni are almost non-existent—with rare exceptions.  What good men’s organization is there?  The German parishes are about the only ones with signs of life and activity for men.  The St. Vincent de Paul has been largely put out of business by the modern charity developments.

3. Our retreats have the negative—let’s get them over the habit of sin—seldom the positive—Now go out and start to live like Catholics.

4. Even in our own school, we expect a sort of minimum of the boys—with the Sodality much more effective in non S.J. schools.  I shudder when I think of the energy we have expended trying to get even the Missa Recitata in our chapels.  Athletics, yes; religious action....

5. The parish interest in men is at a minimum and that is what is showing up in the army and navy right now.  The CYO’s are athletic with a very faint tinge of religion sometimes.

I am getting letter after letter (as a result of the Bombshell) insisting that there must be an immediate acceptance of the need for a central training group, a central educational project on graduate level for the training of real social experts.  All else seems to be secondary in the minds of those who write. . ..and I’m afraid I have to agree with them.  This cannot be a job for the amateur.  We need experts.  We haven’t got them.¹³

Thomas Gavin noted:

This despair of getting men actively interested in apostolic work, despite his relative success with them, grew on Father Lord as time went on until he almost despaired of them.  As he often said, Men are apparently interested in two things — love and war.  When there is no war, they substitute athletics.  Most of the national magazines have given up on men and make their major appeal to women readers.¹⁴

However not all of these Catholic activities for men would not remain as moribund as Lord describes.  In the growth years after the World War II, many of the activities, such as the Knights of Columbus, in some places they would find new life, new energy, and new members.  However, in many a parish the CYO or CYC did little beyond running a sports program.

Mary! Mary!

In 1944 Lord created Mary! Mary! (Quite Contrary) with an original book and music score.  This clever and fun show was performed by St. Francis Xavier High School and other schools.

Synopsis

Thomas Gavin described the plot:

The story is straight comedy and satire: Mary! Mary! (Quite Contrary) lives in her lovely garden with Minerva, her Quiz Kid Sister, her Pretty Maids, and the Flowers with the Gardeners who tend them, while her enemies are A. Total Blight and the Roadbuilders; Judge A. Case finally decides in favor of Mary and her garden instead of the Roadbuilders.¹⁵

The show opens with the songs Wake Up, Mr. Sun and Pretty Maids All in a Row.  MARY! MARY! describes her father: Well he thought he was a self-made man, though mother made a few improvements and alterations.¹⁶  In the song Just Try to Name the Flowers, MINVERA sings a chorus that starts: Asperula, Coleus, and Grandiforium; Nicotiana, Mimulus, Lupin, Delphinium.

In his song I Am A. Total Blight, he introduces himself: Nasty soul with a measly goal, and a purpose pursuin’.  I’ll mar and mess you best success, and I’ll leave your hope in ruin.

The ROADBUILDERS sing The Super De Luxe Highway.

MARY!  Mary!: What’s this ridiculous highway for anyhow?

STONE: So that we can travel faster from where we don’t want to stay to where we don’t want to go along a road so built that we can’t see where we are going while we’re going there.  Actually we are providing a place for more Burma Shave signs.¹⁷

The song I’m a Judge with JUDGE A. CASE follows, then comes Cement, Cement:

Cement, cement,
I’ll rest content
When the forest and meadow and vale,
Quite defaced are firm embraced
In mile after mile of monotonous concrete cement.

Cement with bumpers bent,
Let buses and motor cars reel.
Like ham and eggs, and safes and yeggs,
Go concrete and automobile.

The show includes the Song of Hay Fever with a conga line dance with sneezes.  Other songs are The Vegetable Blues, Say it With Flowers, and The Poppy Polka.

Cinderella Sings

In 1945 Lord wrote and produced the musical Cinderella Sings for Saint Francis Xavier High School, a satire on in-laws and the ‘man shortage’ during the Second World War.¹⁸  The surviving program contained an ad for:

Baby Beef

Sandwich Shop

The Optimistic Scotchman

Hamburgers from Happy Heifers

Steak as Tender as a Mother’s Love

4 N Grand    624 N. Kingshighway¹⁹

Synopsis

Lord dipped into his love for Fairy Tales to give the Cinderella story a modern twist.  Prince Charming, now married to Cinderella, says to the Stepmother as he goes off to war: When the war gets almost more that I can bear, and the enemy is horrible and fierce.  I shall think of you and it will seem easy.²⁰

Lord wrote songs for the show including But the Bride Couldn’t Cook.  The show had a Dance of Mechanical Dolls and Toys.  In 1945 Lord could get away with a Lisping Gretchen:

One goose is one goose; two gooses are geese.  One moose is a moose, but two mooses aren’t a meece.  One knot may be loose, but two looses aren’t leece.  And if two mouses are mice, why aren’t two houses hice and two blouses blice.  I give it up.²¹

The Step Mother complains that they were served domestic duck.  She had wanted wild duck.

CHEF: We had no wild duck, Madame. CINDERELLA: We could have got a tame one and irritated it for you.²²

Regarding the lack of men, when an Old Pilgrim shows up the girl Verabella comments, He looks seventy.  I’ll trade him for two thirties and a ten.²³

This show is cute and somewhat humorous however it could not be presented today without reworking.  If time travel were possible it would be great to listen to the audience reaction in 1945 and see how this show went over.

FOOTNOTES

•   ¹ That Made Me Smile, 13-14.
•   ² McGloin, 39.
•   ³ Lord, Let Me Lead My Own Life: (QW, 1944), 6-7.
•   ⁴ Lord, Success Through Personality v(QW, 1944), 3.
•   ⁵ Ibid., 15.
•   ⁶ Ibid., 21.
•   ⁷ Lord, She Was A Heroine (QW, 1945), 12.
•   ⁸ Ibid., 15.
•   ⁹ Lord, Catholic Education is a Waste (QW, 1947), 17.
• ¹⁰ Gavin, 147-48.
• ¹¹ Ibid., 146.
• ¹² Ibid., 146, quoting Lord letter to the Very Revered Joseph P. Zuercher, S. J., in 1944.
• ¹³ Gavin, 138-39.
• ¹⁴ Ibid., 139.
• ¹⁵ Ibid., 214.
• ¹⁶ Lord, Mary! Mary!, (QW, 1947), 5.
• ¹⁷ Ibid., 27.
• ¹⁸ Gavin, 214.
• ¹⁹ “Cinderella Sings” Program in Jesuit Archives.
• ²⁰ Lord, “Cinderella Sings,” 14 in Jesuit Archives.
• ²¹ Ibid., 5.
• ²² Ibid., 7.
• ²³ Ibid., 15.

Chapter 23    Chapter 25

Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner