The Miracle Worker (film)

• Release Date: 1962
• Director(s): Arthur Penn
• Writer(s): William Gibson
• Principal Actors and Roles: Anne Bancroft (Annie Sullivan); Patty Duke (Helen Keller ); Victor Jory (Captain Arthur Keller); Inga Swenson (Kate Keller)
• Book / Story Film Based On: The Miracle Worker by William Gibson

The Miracle Worker, a dramatic film with biographical elements, is based on a 1960 Tony-award-winning play recounting a key period in the childhood of Helen Keller. Keller had won fame for her personal story of triumph over disability. As a young child, she became deaf and blind as a result of a childhood illness. At age six, she was joined by Annie Sullivan, herself half-blind and educated at the Perkins Institute for the Blind. Sullivan taught Keller to read in Braille and, eventually, to speak. Keller went on to become a lecturer and also an activist for various causes, including improved treatment of those with disabilities. Sullivan and Keller’s first weeks together, culminating in the dramatic breakthrough when Keller finally learned how to communicate with finger signs, form the core of the play and movie. The movie starred the actresses who had performed the leading roles on Broadway, Anne Bancroft as Sullivan and Patty Duke as Keller.

Playwright and screenwriter William Gibson penned his first version of the story for the television anthology Playhouse 90. Directed by Arthur Penn, the drama was broadcast in 1957 and had a positive response—including offers to develop the vehicle further as a play or a movie. After working together on Broadway in 1958 in Two for the Seesaw—which also starred Bancroft—Penn and Gibson teamed up the following year to mount a full-length play version of The Miracle Worker. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson praised the work, writing, "One small but blinding ray of light has penetrated the frightening darkness" (Associated Press, para. 4). Audiences were impressed, and the play ran for more than two years.

Executives at United Artists wanted to film the play but wanted more star power. They offered $500,000 to bankroll the movie if Bancroft starred and $5 million if Elizabeth Taylor were cast instead. Gibson and Penn insisted on keeping their star, and Duke was signed as well.

Plot

Set in the Keller home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, in 1887, the film opens with a doctor informing the Kellers that infant Helen has survived a near fatal illness. The parents quickly realize, however, that the disease has left Helen blind.

In the next scene, the six-year-old Helen is wandering around the family grounds, uncontrolled and aggressive. When Kate Keller, the girl’s mother, insists that the child not be sent to an asylum, her husband agrees to try one more medical professional. Twenty-year-old Sullivan—recovering from eye surgery that has partially restored her vision—is chosen as Helen’s teacher.

At the Keller home, Sullivan tries to teach finger signs for words to Helen, but the girl becomes angry and locks her teacher in the woman’s own bedroom. Later, at lunch, Helen patrols the family table, grabbing food from each family member’s plate with her hands. Sullivan stops Helen from raiding her own plate, and the family protests. While wrestling Helen, Sullivan insists the girl must be taught self-control. Left alone with her for hours, the woman teaches Helen some table manners.

Though an angry Captain Keller wants to dismiss Sullivan, his wife, now hopeful, pleads to let the teacher stay. Insisting that Helen is out of control because the Kellers overindulge her, Sullivan convinces the couple to give her two weeks alone with Helen in a small cottage they own. Angrily resistant at first to Sullivan’s efforts, Helen gives in, and the woman makes great progress in teaching the girl self-care and manners.

When they return to the Kellers, however, Helen’s behavior regresses. In another mealtime confrontation, she tosses water from a pitcher onto Sullivan. The woman pulls Helen outside to the water pump, where she pumps water with one hand and signs the word water into Helen’s palm with the other. Helen says "Wah . . . wah" and finger-spells the word. Realizing that the finger signs connect to real objects, the girl excitedly takes Sullivan around the yard, learning the names of several other objects. As the Kellers embrace their daughter, Sullivan spells mother and father for them and then teacher for herself. The movie ends later that night, when Helen goes to Sullivan’s room and falls asleep in the woman’s arms.

Significance

The Miracle Worker, which premiered in May 1962 in New York City, was a critical and moderate commercial success. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther lauded the two female leads for their "absolutely tremendous and unforgettable display of physically powerful acting" (para. 1) and praised Penn’s direction. Variety praised Penn and cinematographer Ernesto Caparrós for their "artful, indelible strokes of visual storytelling and mood-molding" and "the measured dissolves, focal shifts and lighting and filtering [that] enrich the production considerably" (para. 3). The movie garnered several awards. Bancroft won the Best Actress Academy Award, and Duke won the Best Supporting Actress prize. In addition, Penn and Gibson were nominated for direction and adapted screenplay, and Ruth Morley was nominated for costume design in a black-and-white film. Duke also won a Golden Globe award for most promising female newcomer, and both actresses and Penn were also nominated for Golden Globes. The movie has become an enduring classic, enjoying high user ratings on Internet sites.

The Miracle Worker was Penn’s second major film effort, following The Left Handed Gun (1964). He went on to direct several other acclaimed movies, most notably Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Little Big Man (1970). Bancroft had a distinguished career, with her most famous role that of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1969). She said that Penn had more impact on her career than anyone else, but after working together with him and Gibson on Two for the Seesaw and in the stage and screen versions of The Miracle Worker, the trio was not reunited again until 1978. In that year, she starred on Broadway in Gibson’s biographical Golda, a drama about the former Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir. That work was also directed by Penn, and Bancroft received a Tony nomination for best actress. Duke starred in a television sitcom called The Patty Duke Show that began the year after The Miracle Worker’s release; the series ran for three seasons. She remained active, mainly in television, into the second decade of the twenty-first century. In 1979, Duke took the role of Annie Sullivan in a made-for-television remake of The Miracle Worker. Disney released another made-for-television version of the film in 2000, and the play remains a staple of regional and local theater groups across the country. The play was revived on Broadway in 2010.

Awards and nominations

Won

• Academy Award (1962) Best Actress: Anne Bancroft
• Academy Award (1962) Best Supporting Actress: Patty Duke

Nominated

• Academy Award (1962) Best Director: Arthur Penn
• Academy Award (1962) Best Screenplay (Adapted): William Gibson
• Academy Award (1962) Best Costume Design (Black-and-White): Ruth Morley
• Golden Globe (1962) Best Motion Picture (Drama)

Bibliography

Associated Press (AP). "William Gibson Obituary." Legacy.com. Legacy.com, 2015. Web. 23. Nov. 2015. <http://www.legacy.com/ns/william-gibson-obituary/120733822>.

Brustein, Robert. "Two for the Miracle." The New Republic 9 Nov. 1959. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=93de89d8-b587-40ea-bd5b-a63cb056560e%40sessionmgr4001&vid=0&hid=4114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=14418800&db=aph>.

Carr, David. "William Gibson, Playwright, Dies at 94." New York Times. The New York Times Company, 27 Nov. 2008. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/theater/28gibs.html>.

Crowther, Bosley. "The Miracle Worker (1962)." New York Times. The New York Times Company, 24 May 1962. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B04E6D91038E63ABC4C51DFB3668389679EDE>.

Herrmann, Dorothy. Helen Keller. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999. Print.

Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Dover, 1996. Print.

Keller, Helen. The World I Live In and Optimism: A Collection of Essays. New York: Dover, 2009. Print.

Nielsen, Kim E. Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010. Print.

"The Miracle Worker (1962)." Internet Movie Database. Amazon, 2015. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056241/?ref‗=nv‗sr‗1>.

"The Miracle Worker (1962)." Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Turner Entertainment Networks, 2015. Web. 3 Nov. 2015. <http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/19300/The-Miracle-Worker/>.

Helen Keller in Her Story. Dir. Nancy Hamilton. Perf. Katharine Cornell, Helen Keller. Amazon Digital Service, 2007. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.amazon.com/Helen-Keller-Her-Story/dp/B007PL9INW/ref=sr‗1‗8?ie=UTF8&qid=1448635311&sr=8-8&keywords=helen+keller>.

Variety staff. "Review: ‘The Miracle Worker.’" Variety. Variety Media LLC, 31 Dec. 1961. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://variety.com/1961/film/reviews/the-miracle-worker-2-1200420067/>.