Tonight I watched a strange little movie called "The Next Voice You Hear" (1950), starring James Whitmore and Nancy Davis, who of course later became First Lady of The United States. The director was William Wellman, a Hollywood legend whose film "Wings" won the first Best Picture Oscar. Given his inpressive filmography, you wouldn't think he'd make an unusual picture about God and faith, but that is exactly what we have here.
James Whitmore plays "Joe Smith", an average middle-class American. He has a wife and son, a small but tidy house in Culver City, and a job at a nearby aircraft manufacturing plant. But he is barely making ends meet. He can't afford to by his kid a bike, and now Nancy is pregnant with a second child. Whitmore drives an old clunker that won't start half the time, and when it does and he peels out of his driveway to avoid being late for work, there is a sadistic motorcycle cop who hides just around the corner, waiting to give him another speeding ticket to add to his woes.
So much for the American Dream of the 1950s, though to be fair, the decade was just getting underway. Maybe the booming postwar economy hadn't yet kicked in, or maybe the aviation industry wasn't unionized, I dunno. For whatever reason, Whitmore is busting his butt, but is broke.
No wonder he is a grouch who is always snapping at his tolerant wife and the son who idolises him. Whitmore, usually seen in supporting roles, was a fine actor and he is perfect in this role. He never overplays his frustration. Whenever he loses his cool, he always rebounds to give wife Nancy a kiss, or to give his son a ride to a ballgame. This is an All-American story about wholesome values, and it makes you (or at least me) wish you had lived in the mythical version of the 50s. There was never a time quite like it.
One night, after a trying day at work, Whitmore is sitting in the living room trying to unwind. He's got the radio on (television hasn't really kicked in yet), and his boy will pop in at any moment to ask if Dad wants to listen to their favorite program, a detective serial. But Dad is sullen tonight and just wants to sit by himself. He doesn't know it, but his life is about to change, as are the lives of every human being on the planet Earth.
This is because The Voice Of God comes on the radio, overpowering the broadcast of the regularly scheduled show and cancelling it out. God has a message for all human beings, and as Whitmore rushes into the kitchen to tell his wife what he has just heard, we can see that he is very shaken up.
The next day at work, everyone on the crew is talking about it. Later that evening on the news, it is reported that the God broadcast apparently happened all over the world, in every known language. In fact, if a Frenchman and an Egyptian happened to be listening in the same place, they each heard it in their own tongue.
God has freaked everyone out by coming over the radio, and as crazy as it sounds, this concept is played in a very solemn manner. At first, Whitmore thinks it's a hoax, like Orson Welles' infamous Halloween broadcast of Martians landing on the East Coast. Nancy agrees, though in real life she was pretty far out. She had astrologers in the White House and probably knew all about all the Area 51 stuff, haha. She and Ronnie were ultra-right wing for their day, but compared to Trump they seem like liberal Democrats. At least the Reagans were nice people.
Well, in the movie, things are getting even weirder, because God makes a second broadcast on the next night, at exactly the same time. An FCC official is interviewed and he states that it cannot be a hoax, because they have technology in place that could identify a rogue broadcaster with the megawattage to send a signal round the world. They haven't been able to find such an operator, nor a hidden station, and so they are as much at a loss as is everyone else.
Is it really God on the radio? Some people say yes, some say no, but most folks are growing nervous. The more fanatical are freaking out, saying that The End Is Nigh.
James Whitmore has a more immediate concern, his wife's pregnancy. She is having "false labor" pains, causing them to run to the hospital again and again, and to make matters worse, his fundamentalist Aunt has come to stay. She is totally freaked by the God broadcasts, and now she is voicing her own superstition about the "dangers of a second pregnancy". In the movie, women are said to be at the greatest risk when giving birth to their second child. So now Aunt Ethel has James Whitmore even more on edge. She's got him convinced Nancy will die giving birth.
Meanwhile, God is about to make a third broadcast the next night, providing further instructions to those who believe.
He wants His people to see the good all around them, to take all He has provided, especially the human capacity to love, so that they can make their own Miracles. He says they must do this first. Then, if he is satisfied they have changed their ways, he will bring them the Godlike Miracles they've been awaiting.
Whitmore's life is changed by this revelation, and I don't want to reveal any more to avoid spoilers, but I do want you to see this film. For one thing, it was filmed on the side streets right across from the MGM lot, one street over from where I used to park for my job at Metrocolor. So you get great black and white Culver City footage from 1950 as a bonus. But really, you've never seen a movie that has this combination of deep spirituality and a tinge of sci-fi paranoia.
I thought : "This is almost like a David Lynch movie, if he were a conventional director".
"The Next Voice You Hear" gets Two Big Thumbs Up from me. You couldn't get a movie like this made now even if you had the biggest stars in the business as leads, because society is too cynical, and if they did make such a picture, it still would not possess the unfeigned sincerity that actually existed in the world 70 years ago. You cannot fake or recreate 1950s atmosphere. So this movie exists in a weird little time warp of it's own, but it's a good place to be stuck in, and I recommend seeing it with my highest praise. ////
Elizabeth, if you are reading I wanted to mention that those were beautiful photographs of the park in Quebec. My favorites were the one with the canoe and also the picture of the cabin. Maybe that is where the Ranger lives. Can you imagine living in such an enormous wilderness? :)
I am glad you had the chance to do some outdoor traveling, and especially the opportunity to take some pix, just like the old days. I hope you get to do more this Summer, and if you do, keep posting 'em!
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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