Modern Screen (Dec 1949 - Nov 1950)

\e faith my mother taught me lontinued from page 51) their work of sting my legs to see if I still had the use them, that I might be paralyzed for life, .t it came fleetingly. I tried to think lat I would do if I could never walk Bin, but I just couldn't think. Then I prayed. I prayed that I wouldn't paralyzed. I prayed for strength to .derstand why I had been hurt. And if vere to be kept in bed or out of pictures e a long time, I prayed for strength to ar that After four days of tests, the doctors told 3 that some day I could walk again. aanwhile, there were weeks and months pain. I was in a cast for three months, a steel brace for ten months. I kept on aying. My mother prayed with me and me. After I had been in the steel brace for : months, the doctors advised me to 7 to swim again, and I did. How wonrful that first swim was, and how ter>ly difficult! Never before had I appreited the wonderful gift God had given i in giving me the power to walk, to im! Knowing how easily that gift ght have been taken away from me by 7 accident made me all the more gratei to be able to walk across a room ain. When I had to put on my steel ace again, I didn't mind the prison of at brace nearly as much. ,hen suddenly, while I was still weak and incapacitated, my mother fell serisly ill and had to be taken away to a spitaL If it had not been for the faith = taught me, I do not know how I would ve been able to bear the blow. All her s she had worked hard so that I might .ain a certain position that I wanted, st at the time when she could have joyed seeing the fruits of her labors, = became ill. At first I was bewildered d confused. I asked, as so many people •oughout the world have asked when 3se close to them were hit by tragedy, 7hy does this have to be? Why does a :nian who has been so wonderful all her 5 have to suffer pain?" rier faith in God never lessened. She .d, as she had always said, "Whatever ppens is for the best." [ found the answer to my own questions d fears through faith and prayer. I ayed to be able to understand why this d to be. [ know that she's far happier now. She's ppy in heaven, and maybe — who knows? she's seeing me do my work. I try my st to live and work in a way that iuld make her proud of me. £ver since I was a little girl I have =n brought up in the Roman Catholic igion It was my mother who first ight me about the faith that meant so ich to her. She was a tiny woman with 1 auburn hair and dancing hazel eyes, e taught me to believe in God. My conception of heaven is as St. Paul scribed it, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear ard, neither have entered into the heart man, the things which God hath pre:ed for them that love him." So heaven ist be pretty wonderful. I suppose iryone has his own picture of heaven, nink of hearing only the most beautiful isic, maybe because I love music so ich. believe that if something is good for a and to your advantage, it will happen, rnetimes when illness or tragedy strikes, 3 hard to understand how that can pos -y turn out for the best. That is where th in prayer will help to see you ough. , -i i. i t t i n i 1 x T 3 been so badly injured in the tobogganning accident, just after I had achieved some measure of success in my first real dramatic role in Mildred Pierce. But God has His own plan for things. Perhaps I was too impatient. At 15 or 16, I sometimes grew impatient over trifles. When I tried to get a job in radio or modeling and found I had missed it by just half an hour, I would be downright impatient and fret over it. My mother used to tell me that when the things you have set your heart on don't happen, it is usually for the best, but at first that was hard to believe. Perhaps my year of being forced to remain away from pictures was a test. I know that as a result of it, I learned to be more patient, more understanding of people in every respect. I gained a great appreciation of many things. If everything ran along smoothly for us, if there weren't a few bumps along the way, we wouldn't grow. That year was not lost. I know it was marked on God's calendar. I made up my mind that even though I had to remain at home, I would continue with my starry-eyed elizabeth taylor on the november cover of modern screen on sale October 10 high school studies, and I did. Of course it was more difficult to study at home with only the aid of my teacher, Mrs. Hoene, and my mother than it might have been in a classroom full of happy schoolmates, but tie trials and tribulations of that year did help me mature. I was lucky enough to be able to join my classmates at their graduation exercises. Because I had been confined to my apartment for so long, that event meant far more to me than it would have otherwise. Before I injured my back, the chance to go out for an afternoon and play golf would have been something I would have taken for granted. But when the doctor first told me, months after my accident, that I would eventually be able to play golf, my heart sang with happiness. Throughout the world, there are people who wonder, as I did, when I was injured and when my mother became ill, "Why do these things have to be?" When tragedy strikes — whether in the form of illness or the loss of a loved one or in the form of a disaster of some kind — you ask, "Why should a merciful God permit this?" I believe God created the world to be a happy place. He didn't want it to be filled with destruction and war. He gave us l-l: A T_ „,4VU U„-,„+if,,1 fi^'Ms the limitless mountains, the fruits of the earth. He made man a little lower than the angels. There is a line which Ethel Barrymore speaks in the picture, The Red Danube. She says, "God has not failed man. Man has failed God." When people are so adverse to God and everything He taught us, as patient and understanding as He is, He has to show us by some sign of His displeasure. It may be by an earthquake, the eruption of a volcano, a devastating flood, a great plague. These things are in His power. Essentially, though, human beings are responsible for war. It is we who destroy each other and ourselves by turning away from His teachings. The only way the world can ever be at complete peace is if that world is at peace with God. However, I believe that one great thing in the world is our progress toward good. Even out of evil, some good comes. There hasn't been a war out of which something good has not come. Out of the last war came great advances in medicine. The terrible sufferings of men wounded on battlefields forced humanity to take protective steps, and brought such wonder drugs as penicillin, streptomycin and others into the world. We were pushed into finding these protective drugs by the so-called evil that prevails. It is my belief that in the long run good is more powerful than evil. Sometimes it takes a long time for good to triumph, and sometimes it triumphs in strange ways, but I think it eventually does triumph. Remember how there were times during the last war when people felt that the armies of Hitler and his allies were unconquerable? And remember how in the end S. S. troopers were surrendering by the thousands, and the armies that had once been so proud were defeated and humiliated? Those who had dared to abandon God and worship Hitler as a god learned their mistake. On a smaller scale, in everyday life, we see good prevailing over evil many, many times. I remember a story that Father Keller told me. He knew of a young woman who, when she first began teaching school was an inspired teacher. As time went on, she began to grow dissatisfied with her position. She came to believe that her job, which was so poorly paid, was also unimportant, and she decided to resign. Before resigning, she talked to Father Keller. He reminded her that for a long time subversive elements have been trying to work their way into jobs where they can influence public opinion, particularly that of young people. Naturally, when they can get them, they welcome jobs in the teaching profession. If she left her job, Father Keller pointed out, someone might be appointed who might tear down everything she had been building up, spiritually and in other ways. After she had listened to him for some time, she said, her face radiant, "I can see now that my job is not unimportant after all." Thus reassured, she went back to inspired teaching. In this case the conflict between good and evil is not melodramatic, yet it exists. In various parts of our country there are some who are filled with hatred for our institutions. They are adverse to God and therefore ruthless and cunning. But dangerous though they are, I am sure they will never triumph. For in the long run, good will always overcome eviL As Tennyson once wrote: "Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill." Ttj-f TT.TJTV