What brings this post on is a viewing of Awakenings sandwiched
between yesterday's football games. Do you recall the moments after the
Williams character is turned down for funding by the hospital head (John
Heard)? The rank-and-file staffers immediately drop by and selflessly surrender their paychecks. And then a few moments later the patrons open up their checkbooks. Mr. Williams is quite warmed by these generosities and both his expression and Randy Newman's tender scoring...well, they get me in the gut every time.

Another example is when The Stranger offers Judah a drink of water in Ben-Hur. Mr. Rozsa effectively underscored this moment with a gentle theme and a gentle electric organ. Contrast this way of scoring with the scene in Sullivan's Travels when the title character (played by Joel McCrea) hands out $5 bills to the homeless/hungry. The music is unflinching in its drama and overall grandiose coloration.

Contrast this last example even more to a scene in Places In The Heart. Mrs. Spalding (Sally Field) asks Moze (Danny Glover) if the just-arrived cotton pickers have had any breakfast. Moze replies, "I reckon not". The shot cuts and then the screen is filled with a sumptuous shot of golden cornbread, which was meant for the household, being passed to the impoverished workers instead. No dialogue, no point-of-view reactions, no scoring...plenty of power. A beautiful moment right in keeping with the film's title.

There must be many more instances of these acts of kindness. Why, It's A Wonderful Life is chock full of 'em, mostly unscored but that ending--lavishly underscored by source music (carolers) on- as well as off-camera. Yeah, there must be more.

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You mentioned Sullivan's Travels, a film referenced in GRAND CANYON...there is a scene in that, where Kevin Kline's character reminisces about being saved from walking into traffic by a stranger, and never being able to thank her for her kindness....this is underscored by James Newton Howard with a goosebump-inducing breeze of strings and chorus, playing a lovely low melody.

I hope someone else can come up with other moments, since my brain is shooting blanks here!

"Everything is shaped for you to root for the resurrections, and then nothing much happens. Even the flapper salaciousness that a little old woman in the book had preserved from the twenties is gone. The humanism is so pallid that the awakened patients don't seem very different from the way they were in their comatose states. Though the movie medium would make it possible for a series of awakenings over days and weeks to be edited together so that we could have a short spell alone with each of the film's roughly fifteen patients, and a chance to respond to the rhythmic variations of how they come to speak and move, the moviemakers chose to falsify what happened and have the whole troupe awakening at the same time. They're a blur, with famous performers, such as Anne Meara and Judith Malina and Dexter Gordon, turning up like special guest sleepers."

"In Sacks' account, the torpid patients are aware in dreamlike ways, and their symptoms reflect what's happening to them in the hospital. The movie is less interested in the interior life of the 'frozen' patients than in setting up a symmetrical plot pattern: the awakened patients may regress to a stuporous despair, but Dr. Sayer awakens---i.e., he loses his fear of human contact. Could anyone think there was an equivalence here?"

"Of course, we're affected by people coming to active life after decades of stillness---how could we not be? But this forced banalizing of our emotions is show-business shtick. The patients don't exist except as fodder for pathos."

Another that comes to my mind is one of my absolute favorite films, which I freely admit has "sappy" written all over it. There is one particular scene in White Fang that occurs shortly after Jack has adopted the wolf (which was an act of kindness in itself). Jack (Ethan Hawke) is trying to befriend White Fang after the wolf has been trained to hate and mistrust people, and responds to most approaches by snapping. Jack comes outside (where the wolf is tied up) with a handful of food, luring White Fang closer by placing little morsels on the ground closer and closer to his position. Basil Poledouris is scoring at this point, but it's very subtle... a little bit of White Fang's theme on a solo (synthesized) flute. But then the wolf gets closer and starts eating out of Jack's hand and even allowing himself to be pet, and Basil lets loose with what I believe is the first full orchestral presentation of White Fang's theme in all its glory. It's an absolutely beautiful moment, just one of the many points in the film where I always get choked up.

Hey Sean--that indeed is a great flashback. She was wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates cap, too. You can read Kline's lips as he gave her an earnest Thank you. I'm going to put on Newton-Howard's terrific score in a short. Thanks. Oh, and perhaps you already know but Sullivan's Travels is also from where O Brother, Where Art Thou? got its title. That's the name of a flick Sully refuses to direct!

Great responses. Let me add the scene from As Good As It Gets when Helen Hunt comes home to find the doctor and then realizes her son will finally get better. Now we know her rascally benefactor was only interested in getting his waitress back to the restaurant but an unexpected act of kindness is an act of kindness, unwitting or otherwise. Can't recall if Mr. Zimmer's music accompanied those moments but I'll take Ms. Hunt's tearful joy and lovely smile scored or unscored any time .

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First, the scene when the rabbi (wasn't it him) gives up his gold tooth to make the ring for Schindler. While slightly comical, it is a very moving moment for me -- and no music to tell me that I should laugh because it's a light scene or feel the generosity.

Oh my, and after that CD came a soundtrack whose entire film was devoted to an act of kindness; and for "James", it's literally a soundtrack with Jerry's name written all over it.

Just finished listening to A Patch Of Blue. Marvelous.

PS
Schindler's List is a good example...

Right on. Good detailing.

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CENTURION: "You! I said no water for him!"

This entire scene from Gone With The Wind is underscored with one of Max Steiner's loveliest themes in a score loaded with themes. And in his customary fashion, he, like Melanie, dignifies one who would normally not be considered worthy of such dignity, but one whose actions in times of trouble bespeak a kind heart all the same. As such, it is a heart that commands acknowledgement.

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Hard Times, a Helping Hand
By TED GUP

IN the weeks just before Christmas of 1933 — 75 years ago — a mysterious offer appeared in The Repository, the daily newspaper here. It was addressed to all who were suffering in that other winter of discontent known as the Great Depression. The bleakest of holiday seasons was upon them, and the offer promised modest relief to those willing to write in and speak of their struggles. In return, the donor, a “Mr. B. Virdot,” pledged to provide a check to the neediest to tide them over the holidays.

Not surprisingly, hundreds of letters for Mr. B. Virdot poured into general delivery in Canton — even though there was no person of that name in the city of 105,000. A week later, checks, most for as little as $5, started to arrive at homes around Canton. They were signed by “B. Virdot.”

The gift made The Repository’s front page on Dec. 18, 1933. The headline read: “Man Who Felt Depression’s Sting to Help 75 Unfortunate Families: Anonymous Giver, Known Only as ‘B. Virdot,’ Posts $750 to Spread Christmas Cheer.” The story said the faceless donor was “a Canton man who was toppled from a large fortune to practically nothing” but who had returned to prosperity and now wanted to give a Christmas present to “75 deserving fellow townsmen.” The gifts were to go to men and women who might otherwise “hesitate to knock at charity’s door for aid.”

Whether the paper spoke to Mr. B. Virdot directly or through an intermediary or whether it received something in writing from him is not known.

Down through the decades, the identity of the benefactor remained a mystery. Three prosperous generations later, the whole affair was consigned to a footnote in Canton’s history. But to me, the story had always served as an example of how selfless Americans reach out to one another in hard times. I can’t even remember the first time I heard about Mr. B. Virdot, but I knew the tale well.

Then, this past summer, my mother handed me a battered old black suitcase that had been gathering dust in her attic. I flipped open the twin latches and found a mass of letters, all dated December 1933. There were also 150 canceled checks signed by “B. Virdot,” and a tiny black bank book with $760 in deposits.

My mother, Virginia, had always known the secret: the donor was her father, Samuel J. Stone. The fictitious moniker was a blend of his daughters’ names — Barbara, Virginia and Dorothy. But Mother had never told me, and when she handed me the suitcase she had no idea what was in it — “some old papers,” she said. The suitcase had passed into her possession shortly after the death of my grandmother Minna in 2005.

I took the suitcase with me to our log cabin in the woods of Maine, and there, one night, began to read letter after letter. They had come from all over Canton, from out-of-work upholsterers, painters, bricklayers, day laborers, insurance salesmen and, yes, former executives — some of whom, I later learned, my grandfather had known personally.

One, written Dec. 19, 1933, begins, “I hate to write this letter ... it seems too much like begging. Anyway, here goes. I will be honest, my husband doesn’t know I’m writing this letter... . He is working but not making enough to hardly feed his family. We are going to do everything in our power to hold on to our house.” Three years behind in taxes and out of credit at the grocery store, the writer closed with, “Even if you don’t think we’re worthy of help, I hope you receive a great blessing for your kindness.”

Another letter came from a 38-year-old steel worker, out of a job and stricken with tuberculosis, who wrote of his inability to pay the hospital bills for his son, whose skull had been fractured after he was struck by a car.

One man wrote: “For one like me who for a lifetime has earned a fine living, charity by force of distressed circumstances is an abomination and a headache. However, your offer carries with it a spirit so far removed from those who offer help for their own glorification, you remove so much of the sting and pain of forced charity that I venture to tell you my story.”

The writer, once a prominent businessman, was now 65 and destitute, his life insurance policy cashed in and gone, his furniture “mortgaged,” his clothes threadbare, his hope of paying the electric and gas bills pinned to the intervention of his children.

A mother of four wrote, “My husband hasn’t had steady work in four years ... . The people who are lucky enough to have no worry where the next meal is coming from don’t realize how it is to be like we are and a lot of others... . I only wish I could do what you are doing.”

Another letter was from the wife of an out-of-work bricklayer. “Mr. Virdot, we are in desperate circumstances,” she wrote. They had taken in her husband’s mother and father and a 10-year-old boy. Now the landlord had given them three days to pay up. “It is awful,” she wrote. “No one knows, only those who go through it. It does seem so much like begging. ”

Children, too, wrote in. The youngest was 12-year-old Mary Uebing. “There are six in our family,” she wrote, “and my father is dead ... my baby sister is sick. Last Christmas our dinner was slim and this Christmas it will be slimmer... . Any way you could help us would be appreciated in this fatherless and worrisome home.”

The wife of an out-of-work insurance salesman added a postscript to her letter, one not intended for her husband’s eyes: She had just pawned her engagement ring for $5.

Also in the suitcase were thank-you letters from people who had received Mr. Virdot’s checks. A father wrote: “It was put to good use paying for two pairs of shoes for my girls and other little necessities. I hope some day I have the pleasure of knowing to whom we are indebted for this very generous gift.”

That was from George W. Monnot, who had once owned a successful Ford dealership but whose reluctance to lay off his salesmen hastened his own financial collapse, his granddaughter told me.

Of course, the checks could not reverse the fortunes of an entire family, much less a community. A few months after one man, Roy Teis, wrote to B. Virdot, his family splintered apart. His eight children, including a 4-year-old daughter, were scattered among nearly as many foster homes, and there they remained for years to come.

So why had my grandfather done this? Because he had known what it was to be down and out. In 1902, when he was 15, he and his family had fled Romania, where they had been persecuted and stripped of the right to work because they were Jews. They settled into an immigrant ghetto in Pittsburgh. His father forced him to roll cigars with his six other siblings in the attic, hiding his shoes so he could not go to school.

My grandfather later worked on a barge and in a coal mine, swabbed out dirty soda bottles until the acid ate at his fingers and was even duped into being a strike breaker, an episode that left him bloodied by nightsticks. He had been robbed at night and swindled in daylight. Midlife, he had been driven to the brink of bankruptcy, almost losing his clothing store and his home.

By the time the Depression hit, he had worked his way out of poverty, owning a small chain of clothing stores and living in comfort. But his good fortune carried with it a weight when so many around him had so little.

His yuletide gift was not to be his only such gesture. In the same black suitcase were receipts hinting at other anonymous acts of kindness. The year before the United States entered World War II, for instance, he sent hundreds of wool overcoats to British soldiers. In the pocket of each was a handwritten note, unsigned, urging them not to give in to despair and expressing America’s support.

Like many in his generation, my grandfather believed in hard work, and disdained handouts. In 1981, at age 93, he died driving himself to the office, crashing while trying to beat a rising drawbridge. But he could never ignore the brutal reality of times when work was simply not to be had and self-reliance reached its limits. He sought no credit for acts of conscience. He saw them as the debt we owe one another and ourselves.

For many Americans, this Christmas will be grim. Here, in Ohio, food banks and shelters are trying to cope with the fallout from plant closings, layoffs, foreclosures and bankruptcies. The family across the street lost their home. From our breakfast table, we look out on their house, dark and vacant. Multibillion-dollar bailouts to banks and Wall Street have yet to bring relief to those humbled by need and overwhelmed by debt. Already, the B. Virdot in me — in each of us — can hear the words of our neighbors.

Ted Gup, a professor of journalism at Case Western Reserve University, is the author of “Nation of Secrets.”