Tonight, for no useful purpose whatever, I’m going to tell you about a movie I saw almost half a century ago—once. It’s lingered in my mind ever since, and I have no idea what it was called or who acted in it. Maybe you can help.
I must have seen it before 1960, when I was ten years old, because I’m sure I saw it at my grandparents’ old (big) house, rather than their later (smaller) house. I had the idea at the time that it was quite an old film, perhaps an early “talky,” but I could be mistaken. It was a long time ago, and I’m keenly aware how faulty my memories can be. The summary of the plot I’m about to give you is probably wrong in several places. But this is how I remember it.
The movie opens a few years before the Civil War, somewhere in the American Midwest. Very likely Illinois, for reasons that come up later. The hero of the story is first seen as a boy, living on a farm with his loving mother and his legalistic, sadistic preacher father (a character Hollywood would find it convenient to clone and recycle countless times in the years to come). The boy dreams of becoming a doctor, and gets his hands on a collection of medical journals. He keeps them hidden from his father, though, because his father considers them things of the devil. (I’m not sure why. I don’t know of any Christian church that considered medicine evil in those days. Perhaps the old man just disapproved of all printed matter that wasn’t the Bible.)
The father discovers the journals (in the barn, I think), and gives the boy a vicious whipping (in the barn, I’m certain). The violence of the whipping so panics the family’s horse (a white one to which the boy is deeply attached) that it injures itself in its stall. Because of this it gets a noticeable scar on its flank.
Eventually the boy runs away from home (with or without the horse, I’m not sure, though boy and horse part company at some point) and goes to medical school. When the Civil War begins, he becomes a surgeon in the Union Army.
After a particular battle, a general is brought in to the hospital with a horribly injured arm. Informed that the arm will have to be amputated, he begs them to try to save it. He promises a great reward to any doctor who can save his arm.
Our hero notices the general’s white horse, and sees the old familiar scar. It’s his old family horse. So he goes to the general and asks if he can have the horse if he saves the arm. The general agrees, so he goes to work with all his skill, and somehow works a miracle. The arm is saved and he gets the horse.
Later he (along with the horse, I have no doubt) performs an act of conspicuous gallantry, and he wins the Congressional Medal of Honor. He’s sent to Washington, DC to be decorated by President Lincoln, and the president makes time (because the young man is from Illinois, if I remember correctly) to talk with him a while. When Lincoln learns that the young man has not been home since he ran away, he chastises him for neglecting his mother. In his capacity as Commander in Chief, he gives the young man leave and orders him to go home.
After that I can’t remember anything.
Anybody know this movie?
Update: OK, a little more Yahooing turned the film up. It’s called “Of Human Hearts,” and was made in 1938. It starred Walter Huston as the preacher father, and James Stewart as the son, once he’d grown up. Beulah Bondi played Stewart’s mother, the first of several times she did that.
From the synopsis, the film appears to have been a little more sympathetic to the father’s situation than my memory recalls, but all in all my reminiscences don’t seem to be too far off track.
You can stop hunting now.
Update to Update: Thanks to reader Paul Stieg, who e-mailed me with the correct answer at about precisely the time I found it myself. He says that, alas, it’s not yet available on DVD.
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