The Crowning Experience

Although the film's credits include a 1960 copyright statement for Moral Re-Armament, the film was not registered for copyright at the time of its release. After the opening credits, the film begins with the following written statement: "This story is inspired by the life of Mary McLeod Bethune, who was born of slave parents and rose to become adviser to the President." According to information in the Moral Re-Armament, Inc. Collection at the Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Moral Re-Armament (MRA) was organized in 1938 in London. A precursor organization, the Oxford Group, began in the early 1920s. MRA's leader was Frank Buchman, originally a Lutheran minister from Pennsylvania, who also has been said to have inspired Alcoholics Anonymous. The group did not align itself with any specific religious denomination, preferring an ecumenical approach and including among its adherents peoples of many faiths.
       Buchman achieved success in converting people to the group's ideas and goals through emotional group confessional techniques. MRA's four core teachings were absolute honesty, purity, love and unselfishness. In 1939, the group advocated efforts to prevent war, and following World War II, it initiated a campaign to offer an alternative to international Communism, concentrating its work in Europe, Japan, Africa, Asia and South America. Critics of the organization have associated it with appeasement in regard to its attitude towards Nazi Germany, and pro-fascism. MRA attracted a number of world leaders, such as Mahatma Gandhi and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
       In a souvenir booklet published by Random House for the film's New York premiere, Gandhi is quoted as saying, "Moral Re-Armament is the best thing that ever came from the West to the East." According to the Motion Picture Daily review of the film, the goal of MRA was to "put right what is wrong in the world" by starting with the individual. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma, stated MRA's philosophy: "Human nature can be changed-that is the root of the answer. National economies can be changed-that is the fruit of the answer. World history can be changed-that is the destiny of our age."
       As noted in the written prologue, the character of "Emma C. Tremaine" in The Crowning Experience was based on the African-American educator and presidential adviser Mary McLeod Bethune. According to the souvenir booklet, Bethune was born to former slaves in July 1875 in Mayesville, SC, the youngest of seventeen children. She was the founder and president of Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona, FL; advised Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt; founded the National Council of Negro Women; and was the vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
       According to an unpublished biography of Buchman by MRA's director Ray Foote Purdy, in the Moral Re-Armament, Inc. Collection, after Bethune visited an MRA Assembly, she "lost her passionate protagonism of race and felt she must carry in her heart as a forgiven sinner the compassion for all men everywhere that God imposed upon her." Before she died in 1955, Bethune requested that the following inscription, from a statement she made at an MRA Assembly in Caux, Switzerland, be placed on her tombstone at Bethune-Cookman College: "Moral Re-Armament. To be a part of this great uniting force of our age is the crowning experience of my life."
       The first film produced by MRA was the 1957 film Freedom, produced in Africa (see below). MRA was responsible for the "Up with People" musical programs of the 1960s. Buchman died in 1961, and by 1975, MRA was being phased out as an active organization. According to the Purdy biography, in 1958, African-American actress and singer Muriel Smith (who previously appeared in Carmen Jones and The King and I on Broadway) visited MRA's Assembly at Mackinac Island, MI, where assemblies had been held since 1942, in 1958 and became involved with the group.
       In the souvenir booklet, Smith wrote, "The historical past of my people and their emergence from the bonds of slavery are in the records of history as one of the great miracles of this age. We are equipped to understand the meaning of slavery. We know what is the real meaning of victory through peace. We have been prepared by history for the supreme part in this our nation's task in setting the whole world free." Smith urged that a play based on Bethune's life be written.
       The play, starring Smith and Ann Buckles, who also had become involved with MRA and who acts in the film, was presented at Christmas, 1958 in Detroit, and then for four months in Atlanta and seven weeks at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. During the Atlanta run, according to the Purdy biography, Smith received a number of offers from Samuel Goldwyn to star in the film version of Porgy and Bess (see below). Although she acted in The Crowning Experience for no salary, she refused the Goldwyn offer and challenged him instead to make a film version of the play.
       According to the Filmfacts review and the Purdy biography, most of the film was shot on Mackinac Island, with some scenes filmed at the home of Mrs. Francis Crosby on the California coast, south of San Francisco. Film Daily stated that the film was produced with Screen Gems facilities. Joel McCrea narrated a special prologue to the film, which was recorded at Mackinac Island. Sources disagree concerning the film's director. While no director is listed in the onscreen credits, a number of sources, including ads for the film, the Purdy biography and the souvenir booklet, state that Rickard Tegström (who received an onscreen "Photographed by" credit and also worked on Freedom, "directed and filmed" the picture; Marion Clayton Anderson is credited as director in some reviews; and Harold Schuster is listed as director in the Los Angeles Mirror review. Publicity for the film noted that Tegström, a Swedish documentarist, had made films for Walt Disney.
       Most of the film's cast were non-professionals. Louis Byles, who played "Charlie Winter," was a Jamaican attorney who helped draft the constitution of the West Indies Federation, according to the souvenir booklet. Internationally known MRA adherents appearing in the film included Rajmohan Gandhi, South African revolutionary leader William Nkomo, Chancellor Adenauer, Chief Walking Buffalo of the Stoney (Sioux) Indians, and missile expert Dr. S. Douglas Connell. The film was exhibited for three nights in Hollywood beginning February 1, 1960, but had its "official" world premiere in New York on October 21, 1960; delegates from over sixty United Nations countries attended, according to Hollywood Reporter.
       After New York, the film played in Los Angeles, South Africa, the Congo, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland and other European countries, according to Hollywood Reporter. Twentieth Century-Fox began negotiations with MRA prior to the New York premiere to handle the worldwide distribution, but the deal did not materialize because Fox insisted that its De Luxe Laboratories get the contract for making prints, and MRA previously had contracted with Technicolor. According to Daily Variety, an MRA executive commented, "After all, how would it look if we broke a contract."
       The film was banned from the San Francisco Film Festival because it "embarrasses the Russians," according to Limelight. The National Catholic Legion of Decency issued a statement that the film should be viewed by Catholics with certain reservations, as it "relies too heavily upon emotional argument and because the religious expression which it gives to personal reform is theologically ambiguous," according to Variety. In its review, Variety commented, "As well-meaning as it is, [this] film is a tepid drama-with-songs, episodic in structure...full of endorsements for the product (MRA), and of the need for it, but which never defines the product except in the most general terms." Variety did praise Smith, however, noting, "What vitality the film has comes almost entirely from Miss Smith's warm and dignified performance and in her delivery of about six of the picture's 11 original songs." Variety concluded that the film "does provide a pretty (if not profound) picture of the U.S., especially its race relations. Thus it could prove to be of value overseas in the west-east information war."