Jenny Angel

At the beginning of the month, TCM aired a double feature (maybe more; I didn't look at the schedule that closely) of Mercedes McCambridge movies. I had intended to put them on the DVR but forgot to, so I watched a pair of movies off of Watch TCM, where I think they're available until the end of the month. So you're going to get a pair of McCambridge's movies in relatively quick succession this month. The first post is on a movie called Angel Baby.

Jennifer Angel (listed in the credits as "Introducing Miss Salomé Jens) is a naïve young woman from the south who somehow lost her ability to speak as a child. So, as one of the reviews I read joked, she literally couldn't say no when boys would come on to her. Her alcoholic father catching her in one of those trysts led to a beating and her mom taking her to a faith-healing revival led by Brother Paul Strand (George Hamilton).

Somehow, Paul's faith in Jesus cures Jenny's inability to speak, and she's able to say the word "God". With practice, she's going to be able to learn a lot more, as she starts traveling with Brother Paul's road show, which includes his much older wife Sister Sarah (Mercedes McCambridge) and another couple, Mollie (Joan Blondell) and Ben (Henry Jones) Hays. Jenny shows a deft ability at delivering the Lord's message, so she becomes a part of the show. She's also grateful enough to Paul that she begins to fall in love with him, even though Mollie warns her about this since Paul is of course married to Sarah, creepy as that sounds. (In fact, that creepiness becomes a part of the plot.)

Jenny is also quite fetching, so that there are a lot of young men out there who do know of her "sinful" past and still lust after her. One of them, Hoke Adams (Burt Reynolds), basically tries to rape her, so when she screams for help, Brother Paul comes running and gets into a fight that results in Hoke ripping off Paul's shirt. This enrages Sarah, who thinks Paul is filled with lust and that Jenny is still sinful. So Sarah casts Jenny out because Sarah thinks she's the only pure one left. Mollie and Ben Hays go with Jenny and start their own road show.

The show isn't particularly successful. Never mind the extent to which such shows are scams, Jenny's show barely brings in enough "donations" for the three of them to afford to eat much more than canned sardines. That is, until a businessman who makes patent medicines, Sam Wilcox (Roger Clark), sees the show and decides that what the two need is a business partnership. He'll sponsor the show and in exchange he gets to use Jenny's name and likeness for his medicines. He is, after all -- or so he claims -- interested in doing the Lord's work. But of course it's going to take more to do the Lord's work than that, so he rigs things by paying off a shill to be "healed" by Jenny, leading to a bunch of gullible dupes crashing the next show thinking they'll really get cured. Mollie and Ben saw Wilcox paying off the shill, so they know it's a fraud, but how can they stop it? This brings in Paul and Sarah for the climax....

Angel Baby is an odd little movie, but one that's compelling despite its flaws. I think it's down in part to all of the evangelist characters being portrayed as sincere, with the exception of McCambridge's character. This gives her an opportunity to give a thoroughly over-the-top performance as she goes off the deep end for the finale; she's also increasingly controlling. The black-and-white cinematography, from a young Haskell Wexler, is also quite striking. So while it's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, Angel Baby is definitely worth watching.