NATALIE WOOD: WEB SITE: THE BLUE VEIL (1951)

THE BLUE VEIL, screen play by Norman Corwin, from a story by Francois Campaux; directed by Curtis Bernhardt; produced by Jerry Wald and Norman Krasna and released by R. K. O. Radio Pictures.
Louise Mason . . . . . Jane Wyman
Fred Begley . . . . . Charles Laughton
Annie Rawlins . . . . . Joan Blondell
Gerald Kean . . . . . Richard Carlson
Dr. Robert Palfrey . . . . . Don Taylor
Frank Hutchins . . . . . Cyril Cusack
Charles Hall . . . . . Henry Morgan
Helen Williams . . . . . Audrey Totter
District Attorney . . . . . Everett Sloane
Stephanie Rawlins . . . . . Natalie Wood
Alicia . . . . . Vivian Vance

Awards and nominations

Jane Wyman won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress –
Jane Wyman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Joan Blondell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Get out the bath towels for The Blue Veil. Jane Wyman will have you weeping before this film is halfway through.

Set over a 40 year period Jane Wyman gradually ages throughout the film, a tribute to the subtle yet effective makeup job done on her. When we first meet her she's a recent young widow who has just suffered a double tragedy. She lost her young baby in infancy and now has to survive. To fill a true ache in her heart Wyman takes the first of many jobs as nurse/ governess to the children of others. Sad to say though she sometimes lets the boundary lines erase between an employee and an actual parent.

One such time was with young Natalie Wood when she raises her literally in the absence of Wood's actress mother Joan Blondell. In this case Wyman recognizes the problem and voluntarily moves on.

This happens again, but the situation is truly forced upon her. When World War II starts, Audrey Totter follows her English husband back overseas and does war work there. She and husband Dan O'Herlihy leave their son Dee Pollock in Wyman's care. O'Herlihy is killed flying for the RAF and Totter is in service there. Eventually she marries Harry Morgan, but all that takes a number of years. Meanwhile Wyman is back on this side of the pond raising Pollock and who could blame her for thinking of him as her own.

District Attorney Everett Sloane does not want to prosecute Wyman either, but he works a way out to keep her out of jail for kidnapping. Still she has to give Pollock up. It's a gut wrenching scene.

Which sets up my favorite scene in the film. She takes a job as a cleaning lady in a public school and she tries to mother young Jimmy Hunt. The kid is suspicious, we know her motives, but he runs from her, leaving her with yet another ache.

Wyman was nominated deservedly for Best Actress losing to Vivien Leigh for Streetcar Named Desire. Joan Blondell got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress but she lost to Kim Hunter for again Streetcar Named Desire. In a fine cast that RKO and director Curtis Bernhardt assembled, Wyman really dominates this film.

Charles Laughton is in this film as well in a strangely brief role for an actor of his stature. He plays the widower father who first hires Wyman. It's a kindly role for Laughton with very little to work with to make him noticed. Cyril Cusack plays an iconoclastic owner of a toy and novelty shop who has a thing for Wyman, but Jane just wants to take care of children and fulfill her needs. He waits for years for her.

The Blue Veil is such a moving film that it will be impossible to view without a sense of poignancy. Some argue that this is even a better role for Jane Wyman than her Oscar winning Johnny Belinda and they may be right.

CRITICA EN EL PERIODICO "ABC DE MADRID" (19-2-1952)

No estoy Sola, titulo español dado a la película "The blue Veil" "El velo Azul" estrenada ayer en el Palacio de la Música, es la historia de una "nurse". Traía la fama de que se necesitan tres pañuelos en lo que dura la proyección para enjugarse las lagrimas, que fluyen sin parar, provocadas por la sucesión de escenas que van aumentando hasta el culmen, su intensidad emotiva. Y es cierto que al menos las mujeres, por tradición más propias al llanto, llorarán a gusto y de lo lindo y a la postre se sentirían confortadas y satisfechas con el consolador desenlacen. El argumento está compuesto por diversos episodios, de los que el personaje central, una mujer a la que encontramos joven y llena de gran encanto al comienzo, y la despedimos anciana, en la apoteosis íntima, que para ella supone la entrega a sus solicitos cuidados de los hijos de uno de aquellos niños a los que ella fue consagrando su existencia plena, y sus maternales desvelos. Así el papel tiene bastante concomitancia con el de Robert Donat en "Good bey mr Chips", que obtuvo el premio de interpretación correspondiente a 1939, porque contemplamos el desenvolvimiento de un ser humano celoso de su deber a lo largo de casi toda su vida. Y aquí la del tipo femenino que asume Jane Wyman es de sacrificio a la infancia con absoluto renunciamiento a las oportunidades que se van presentando como incentivos para la propia felicidad. Los distintos episodios que van encadenándose en el transcurso del film, son folletinescos, algunos dentro de un procedimiento escénico sobrio y directo, y algunos otros con concesiones, acaso demasiado generosas, a los recursos sensibleros. Puede ser que el mejor logrado de todos sea el de la actriz frívola y su hija, y el que peque de morosidad, el de la madre que abandona por unos años a su retoño. Pero en la cinta, llevada con sabiduría "sabiduría efectiva" por su director Curtis Bernhardt, lo que resulta verdaderamente encomiable es la interpretación; en primer termino la de Jane Wyman, consumada primera figura del "cine" universal, y la del resto del reparto formado por nombres cimeros. Intervienen fugazmente, en cometidos episódicos, y llevan a término magistrales actuaciones; Charles Laughton, en un papel de viudo bondadoso, que se desvive por su chiquillo y desea una madre para él: Joan Blondell, Richard Carlson, Agner Moorehead, Don Taylor, Audrey Totter, Cirel Cusack, Everett Sloane, Natalie Wood, etc, pero como ya he apuntado, el máximo aplauso lo merece Jane Wyman. DONALD