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THE  RESTLESS  FLAME,  DANIEL  LORD,  S.J.

Thinking Big in a Parochial World


Chapter 27    Chapter 29


EXTRA   MATERIAL

Chapter Twenty-eight - 1951-1953
Inventing Lip Sync?

Digestion curdles?

    Head feels rummy?

The doctor knows

    What soothes the tummy.


Sophisticates,

    Careful or spenders,

Know they have found

    The Best of Blenders.

Daniel Lord, suggested jingle lyric for Seven Up


A Story Told by Daniel Lord

They Sound Alike

Next to the celebrated archbishop sat a rather flustered young priest.  The dinner progressed smoothly, but the embarrassment of the young man continued—in fact as he found the conversation dying from time to time, his embarrassment grew more and more pronounced.

Finally to make conversation, he passed the gravy bowl to the archbishop.  At last he could venture a comment on his own.

Will you, he said, solicitously, have some grace, Your Gravy?1

Books of 1951

Bruce Publishing brought out Lord’s His Passion Forever which sold well and was picked up by the Catholic book-of-the-month club.2  This book comes right out of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius where one imagines scenes from the gospels.  Lord asks the reader to imagine the passion as a stage production from the perspectives of Mary, Pontius Pilate, the Roman Centurion, the apostles, Mary Magdalene, Judas, and the mob.  This book might make great reading on a retreat.

Lord describes the final scene:

Another horrifying flash of lightning, the brightest of the storm, and every detail of the figure stands out in sharp, outline, vivid white.  In that blaze I see clearly and with sick terror the identity of this new figure that appears belatedly but does appear for the death of God’s son.  His features are two horribly clear.  Every line of his figure is too, too familiar.

For the newcomer is—myself.

I am walking upon the stage of Calvary.

I had not seen my name on the program of the passion, but cleverly I had written it in.

Over me is flung the red shadow of the cross and its burden.  The red sky of Good Friday tints me as with the stain of Good Friday’s blood.

It is I, Lord.

There into the tragedy of Calvary I have walked to play my part.

I have come for the kill.  I am there for the final curtain, which is slowly being rung down upon the death of my God.3

A year later it was released as Christ in Me: Prayer Book for Communion Mass by Bruce Publishing as a hand-held prayer book, 4 in. wide and 6 in. tall.  Less than an inch thick, it runs to 300 pages.

Singing At the SSCA

The SSCA conventions always included sing-alongs led by Daniel Lord.  Joseph McGloin described Lord at the piano:

The music stopped again, and, after a moment of silence, a great loud chord crashed through the hall, and a man’s voice began to sing, loud and brassy and confident, the piano beating out the rhythm as he sang.

Casey would waltz with the strawberry blonde, the voice rang out and then, with the tinkle of a random handful of keys, the man at the piano shouted to the room, Come on, are you afraid to sing or what?  Let’s go.  Again the voice began The Band Played On, and the others gradually joined in until the singing was almost deafening.  In a few minutes, they were in a circle around the piano, singing their lungs out, but the man’s voice could still be heard over the rest of them as he switched from one tune to another without warning, from K-K-K-Katy to Clementine to The Yellow Rose of Texas.

There was a glint of pleasure in his blue eyes as he hit the keys and sang and grinned into the eyes of the singing boys and girls around the piano.  His kindly face seemed carved into a smile for each boy and girl, and he didn’t seem to care that a lock of his gray hair had fallen down on his forehead.  He looked big and strong and alive, and nobody would have said he was getting old, gray hair and all, because he seemed the youngest and liveliest and loudest one in the room.4

And of course they sang An Army of Youth.


Attention Godparents! describes the sacrament of baptism and the role of the godparents as Lord writes as the ‘The Great American Catholic Catechist.’


There’s Money in Gambling illustrates the breadth of Daniel Lord’s interests and knowledge.  He shows an understanding of how gambling and horse racing work; and how insurance companies operate.  His main point is that one can’t make money in gambling.  I have never talked with a professional gambler who didn’t think that betting was a sucker’s game. . . .There’s money in gambling, lots of money.  But it is made by the people who collect the bets, not by those who make the bets.5

Lord notes that The laws of chance . . . The very name sounds like a contradiction.6  He also tosses in a bit of trivia The term ‘getting one’s goat’ came from the old trick of stealing the animal companion away from the horse on the night before a race— to the fraying of the nervous horse’s nerves.7

Lord quotes Damon Runyon Horse players always die poor,8 and notes that even jockeys when betting are as likely chumps as the amateurs.9  Lord also notes how hard gamblers work at gambling.  And Lord talks about addiction: Gambling has however another vicious aspect aside from the strictly moral issues: it can become, like drinking, a sort of habitual dope.10

Lord says small-stakes gambling for entertainment with his friends is fine.  He gives fifteen principles, including:

6. To bet for fun and with money that one can afford to lose is not wrong.

11. No gambling systems are successful systems.

12. The man who collects the bets, not the man who makes the bets, has a chance to win.

15. If you find that you have begun to gamble with anything that you can’t afford to lose, stop gambling entirely.

Full Fifty Years

Lord wrote Full Fifty Years.  Leo Wobido, S.J. on Lord’s staff produced it, although he had difficulties with the production, such as underestimating the costs—a common problem in theater.  This ninety minute show with a cast of 300 took place on November 5, 1951.  The show honored John Mark Gannon who had become a priest in 1901 and Bishop of Erie, Pennsylvania in 1920.  The show included parish groups and school choruses.  Four thousand attended: five hundred of whom had to stand.


Synopsis

The allegorical figures of CITY and DIOCESE narrate the story.  Gannon’s father had been a drummer in the Civil War and later married an Irish girl.  In typical fashion, Lord uses these details for a Civil War scene and an Irish Dance scene.  Gannon’s ordination, with a chorus singing Panis Angelicus, is followed by a street scene in Erie with the song A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.

As a young priest Gannon studied in Europe and so a German Dance and Italian Dance follow.  When Gannon becomes bishop a newsboy announces: John Mark Gannon chosen Bishop of Erie!  Home town boy makes good.

A scene of Gannon dedicating a rural church sets up a Square Dance.  The show includes scenes of the CYO, the Girl Scouts, and several ethnic dances.  Another scene covers Gannon’s effort to establish a seminary in Mexico after the Revolution.  The show ends with a procession with a representative from each parish and school in Erie.

Miscellaneous of 1951

In 1951 United Artists released the movie The First Legion starring Charles Boyer, a story of several Jesuits priests who have their faith restored after several miracles happen.  Lord told this story.

The producers wanted to know exactly what a Jesuit house would look like.  So they sent their scene supervisors on a tour of important Jesuit houses.  They searched for a typical Jesuit recreation room, library, chapel, and private room.  After much rubbing of chins and flashing of bulbs and comparing of notes, the scouts reported that none of the Jesuit houses were sufficiently Jesuitical.  . . .
So Hollywood tore up the snaps that had been made and drew up designs for their own sets.  These turned out to be a cross between Grand Central Station, a Benedictine chapter room, the main room of the First National Bank, tessellated overtones of Metro-Gothic-Mayer.11

In November of 1951 the Seraphic Chronicle published an article by Lord Why Foreigners Go Mad at Times: An Incidental Look at Idiom.  In this playful piece Lord describes all the ways people talk about the concept of time and how confusing it can be.  (George Carlin would do a great job on this topic much later.)12

A number of titles for Lord pamphlets that were never published includid The Broadway Angel and the Wolf, The Death of a Kidder, Don’t Die till 2000,  Gene Tunney Won’t Let Himself Forget, God Wants You, But Don’t Get Scared, Requiem For a Gangster, Sneaks That Aren’t!, and Through the Hoops.  At one point Lord even wrote the text for a comic book version of Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur.

Nuns in the Movies

Always thinking big, Lord envisioned a time when sisters would be out in public and involved in the world around them.  He believed they should wear more practical and functional habits.  He even wanted nuns as actresses in movies:

Someday soon, I would like to see nuns in full-length movies taking the part for example of the Blessed Mother or the part of a sister in the classroom or on the missions.  That day hasn’t arrived.13

In subsequent years a number of movies would portray nuns, but of course they included no sister actresses: The Nun’s Story (1959 with Audrey Hepburn), The Singing Nun (1966 with Debbie Reynolds), Lilies of the Field (1963 with Lilia Skala), The Sound of Music (1965 with Julie Andrews), The Trouble with Angels, (1966 with Rosalind Russell14), Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows!, (1968 with Rosalind Russell and Stella Stevens) and Change of Habit (1969 with Mary Tyler Moore as Sister Michelle conflicted over her love for Jesus and her love for Dr. John Carpenter, played by Elvis.)

At one talk Lord stated:

You sisters may be asked to help with the motion pictures of the future.  In fact most of us would be delighted, I know, to see you sisters in shorts.15

The audience of sisters roared at his careless phrasing.

A Review of City of Freedom

Malcolm W. Bingay, a Detroit reporter described the show:

It is hard to imagine more unadulterated joy in co-operative effort—all inspired by the dazzling personality of Father Daniel Lord who directs what at first glance looks like chaos into channels of efficiency that would make the Ringling Bros. experts envious.

His eminence Edward Cardinal Mooney was at the show.  I asked him how he liked it. I think, he smiled, That Father Lord has learned a lot about life that he did not get from his theological studies.16

The Queen’s Work,

Lord continued with two articles in each issue.  Titles for the monthly Father Lord’s Letter to His Friends included What About That Vocabulary? Don’t Play at Love, Temper Plays Nasty Tricks, Don’t be Misled (about sex), Boy, Are We Cultured!, On Working After School, What?  No Enthusiasm!, and Yippee, We Passed!  The magazine also included articles not written by Lord on deep-sea fishing, and duck hunting.  The next year the magazine picked its baseball All-Star Catholic Team which included: Manager—Eddie Stanky, First Base—Gil Hodges, Second Base—Al Red Schoendienst, Shortstop—Phil Rizutto, Third Base—Johnny Pesky, Right Field—Carl Furillo, Center Field—Dom DiMaggio, Left Field—Stan Musial, and Catcher—Yogi Berra.  Interestingly, Stanky, Schoendienst, and Musial played for the St. Louis Cardinals and Yogi Berra was born in St. Louis in the Italian neighborhood known as The Hill.  The following year the list included Joe Garagiola, also born on The Hill.

Miscellaneous of 1952, 1953

On January 11, 1952 Lord wrote: Off for a meeting in the Pentagon.  What daya know?  They are calling 100 to talk morale and morals, I guess. . and the armed forces.  I imagine I shall be subjected to a shower of eloquence for some days.17


In the spring of 1952 Lord received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Detroit.


In late 1952 Lord submitted an article to Pastoral Life: It’s Easy, What Did You Like? about how priests should interact with young people.  Lord’s straightforward advice was that priests should treat young people the way they wanted to be treated as young men.  However he added, Though why Philosophy shouldn’t be gay and why Theology isn’t enough to inspire us to song, I can quite figure.18


Around this time Lord told the story of talking to two High School girls at a Sodality convention.

They were interested in meeting me, and I responded with a decided internal glow.  We know you, they chorused, We’ve read your writings.  The glow grew warmer and more consoling.  Oh yes, they said, whenever we misbehave in class, or teacher makes us sit in the back row of the class and read your writings.19

In May of 1953 Lord wrote a short piece Prizefights in the living room: TV gives us—and our children—ringside seats.

Two boys were getting their brains scrambled to advertise one of civilization’s minor conveniences, while Americans yelled for blood and other Americans sipped their coffee and drank their cokes in comfortable chairs and callously saw two fighters try to beat each other unconscious.209

Diet Can Be Fun

Lord published six pamphlets in 1952:


Diet Can Be Fun

Do You Love Your Children?

Don’t Marry a Catholic, against religiously mixed marriages

The Man of Your Choice

Shall We Let Christ Save His World?

Bright Christmas Star


Diet Can Be Fun describes Lord’s own history of gaining and losing weight.  His common sense advice starts with the words of his novice master: Always arise from the table a little hungry,21  At one point Lord tried fasting, but he just got cranky.  For, during those fifteen days, I had reduced the circle of my waist and the circle of my friends.22  Under the subtitle: God’s Foods and Chef’s Food he notes that natural foods have few calories; chefs add them in food such as French Fries: Five minutes in the grease; ten minutes on your plate; on your hips for the rest of your life.23

He considers Push-Ups vs. Push-Aways [from the table] concluding, And the best of all exercise for a person reducing is the vigorous shaking of the head back and forth as one says ‘no’ to food.24  However Lord liked food.  I have always regarded the late Lord Sandwich as one of humanity’s greatest benefactors.25  He quotes Dr. Munsch on the problem that Women are dying of starvation all the time from extreme dieting.26

Light Up the Land

In 1952 Lord returned to Detroit for his next show Light Up the Land.  Ford Motor Company provided camera equipment to film two of the shows and produce a movie version.  The film, Light Up the Land, can be watched on the website of the University of Detroit’s library Special Collections.27  It is the only recording of a Daniel Lord show and also the only film of Daniel Lord who introduces and narrates the show.  Lord’s Jesuit friend Frank Quinn described the show as a combination of Quo Vadis, The 10 Commandments, and the World’s Fair.28

A reporter described rehearsals:

On the stage that he loves and without the cassock that he loves even more, Father Daniel A. Lord, S.J. resembles Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cecil B. DeMille and even a little of Fred Astaire—and all at their energetic best.  At rehearsal sessions Fr. Lord often was a wonderful one-man show in himself; a vibrant conductor, an efficacious actor, a surprisingly nimble dancer.

...Then there’s a little song that goes like this.  Fr. Lord interrupts his acting instruction to turn pianist and, for a moment, singing coach.

Put a wallop in it, Fr. Lord shouts as he reads a part.

Feel it!  Feel it!  Think what you’re saying!  Think what it means!29

Synopsis

The show opens with a cheerleader ballet.  Betty enters with her boy friend Bill insisting I wanna get married.  Bill has not finished college.  When they take a trip to the recreated historical site: Greenfield Village, they get locked in and meet a Professor who takes them back in history to teach them the importance of education.

However, first people need law, so a Ten Commandments scene follows.  A scene portraying Solomon and his wisdom is followed by a ballet showing the wickedness of Solomon’s pagan wives.

A scene of Greeks founding democracy is followed by King Louis IX and the Crusades, followed by the founding of the Sorbonne in Paris.  The show jumps to the approval of the American Constitution with the Founding Fathers issuing a stern warning to the dancing crowds in the streets: We want an educated democracy rather than a mob.

In the next scene the town builds a Little Old Red School House.  A hoe-down follows.  A modern political scene follows with political slogans such as Don’t let those rascals Graft.  Put us in!, Our Candidate: True American: His Father: Polish; His Mother, Italian; His Grandparent, Jewish; All His Relatives: Irish!, and No War!  Plenty of War Production!  One Candidate states:

I’ll cut your taxes till they’re thin as ham in a baseball park sandwich; but I guarantee pensions for everybody.  . . . I believe we ought to encourage our foreign trade and exports; but don’t let none of them there foreigners come into our country. . . . We got to have representative government, which means all the offices held by members of my party.  [This parody dialogue seems eerily familiar today.]

A Schoolteacher enters to make the people see the truth.

A Sports Ballet of croquet, baseball, tennis, and basketball is followed by a football song:


Onward the ambulances fill,
And give the docs a thrill,
And cripples.
Red is for blood shed for good old U.
Fling high your colors: Black and Blue.

In the end Betty and Bill agree to postpone marriage until they both graduate and receive A.C. degrees: American Citizens.  A Graduation scene follows with the University of Detroit song.  The Voice of God speaks as Bill and Betty climb the Golden Stairs into the future.

A Detroit reporter noted:

Few men are blessed with the genius of the always modest Father Lord.  Strangely enough few men know more about the theater.  He not only stages these pageants, he writes the play, directs the dazzling ballet, and writes the songs and composes the music.


Here this deeply devout man is a rival to the theatrical professionals, such as Gene Buck, George M. Cohan and Noel Coward.30

The show ran for eleven performances in November.  Although the performances were great, attendance was not: 70,000, less than the attendance of the previous show.  Lord was despondent that the show lost money and blamed himself.

Father Steiner wrote to him:

You were disappointed in many persons and things.  More than once you spoke of living and dying with regrets.  I am not surprised nor disappointed about anything or with anyone.  I am absolutely convinced that Light up the Land was the best investment that I ever made here at the University of Detroit. . .

The event taught the university the value of going after corporate financial support.

The Song of the Rosary

In 1953 Lord published The Song of the Rosary: A Rhythm on the Fifteen Mysteries of Mary’s Rosary with Illustrations by Lee G. Hines.31  Lord wrote a series of poetic mediations on the mysteries of the rosaries.  The book runs almost 400 pages with typically 22-28 pages for each mystery.

Here is a sample:


The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery
Mary Follows Her Son
As He Carries His Cross

Each Step

Across

Her Heart

The King upon His shoulders bore His throne.

A world suddenly all upside down:

Life of the world had been condemned to death;

Mercy could find no mercy.

Wildest were the shouts of joy

That hailed a hero’s death.

The way to God became a way

To God’s own death;

Israel leagues with Rome,

Pilate with Herod,

And bitter foes find friendship in their plot

To slay man’s dearest Friend.

Religion’s representatives have sworn to end

Religion’s highest purpose

And, by ending Him,

To end the reason of their offices and power.

A governor, a king, the Temple’s chief

Make league against the universal Emperor,

Thus to insure power for the petty prince

Who called himself the emperor of Rome.

So was their chaos in the killing of the Christ.

The sentence passed by guilty on the Guiltless

Condemns the Sinless One to bitter death

And wins the sinful, life.

But with the sentence passed,

The criminal safe in the greedy hands

Of executioners,

The judges turned themselves to other things,

To explanations

And apologias.

Herod, half-witted with the glut of sin,

Murmurs to her on his incestuous throne,

“The man’s a fool, my dear, a very stupid fool,

As you were first to see.

Let’s feast again tonight.

Perhaps Salome, if you ask—here is a ring worth.

Oh, a giddy sum; ask her if it’s enough—

Might dance for us.

Ask her . . . yes ask her . . .”32

Joy For the World

Synopsis

Act I

Scene 1 is a modern Christmas with Santa Claus, and the song Christmas, Now That’s For Me.  Scene 2 opens on GABRIEL: I am the Angel Gabriel who came to find a maiden and begin an age.33  The ADVERSARY enters with six girl dancers in black and white: I am the Adversary, born of hate, hatred of God, hatred of all mankind.34  As scenes unfold, GABRIEL and the ADVERSARY comment on the struggle of light against darkness.

Women slaves in chains dance to open Scene 3 as Gladiators fight and Romans sings Conquerors of the World.  In Scene 4 the ADVERSARY taunts Joy to the Strong; and to the rest, the lash.  GABRIEL: Nine out of ten were slaves, and tyrants strode.35  GOD’s VOICE tells GABRIEL to make his announcement to Mary as the Ave Maria (Lord’s composition) is heard.

The Annunciation leads into Scene 5, with Nestorius and Cyril of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus in 451.  Nestorius, a heretic, denies that Mary was the mother of God.  CYRIL brings forth a woman and child to illustrate his teaching and convince the crowds who chant, Theotokos!  Mother of God

CYRIL: It was the Word of God who came to earth.  Christ is the Word Incarnate, God and man: two natures but one person, that Divine.36

A candle procession to the Lourde’s Hymn ends the scene.

In Scene 6 the ADVERSARY taunts Mary: I hate her that she gave the world a Child enriching in a single Child the brats of men.  Damn Christian Motherhood, Damn Virgins, Damn the bread of little sons of God.  I hate them all.37

For comic relief a YOKEL struggles with a live donkey.  Mary appears in four dance vignettes each time played by a different ethnic actress.

The ADVERSARY and GABRIEL lead the audience to Scene 7 in Assisi, Italy in the 13th century.  The artist Cimabue shows his painting of the Madonna.  St. Francis creates a living nativity scene and the ADVERSARY enters with his Court of Misrule.

In Scene 8, the Wedding of Cana, the bride and groom dance.  Bridesmaids stand by greenish gray like water stone jars.  They rotate the jars to the deep clear burgundy side and they flip their capes which are also burgundy.

Scene 9 shifts to modern immigrants leaving Ireland singing: We’ll Carry Mary to the World, Macushla!  (‘Macushla’ means ‘darling.’)

ACT II

Scene 1 opens on Herod’s Court where Oriental Dancers entice.  ADVERSARY: Herod, my partner and my gracious friend.  The Slaughter of the Innocents follows: Circles of light hit individual soldiers . . . the cries of the mothers, the wailing of the babies, and the blows of the villains.38  Mary and Joseph escape.  Robbers with scimitars threaten them; but they see the child and fall back and rush out.  The Holy Family arrives in Egypt in time for the Dance of Egyptian Priestesses and procession of priests as semi-animal gods.

GABRIEL makes the transition to Scene 2, England in the 1400s.  Catholic King Henry V speaks: When was a time that England did not love Mary, the Mother, Virgin, lovely Queen?39  A Maypole dance becomes a folk dance which becomes a May Crowing processional.  Then a boy sings The English Love Song to the girl who was the May Queen.

Scene 3 returns to the Holy Family in Nazareth.  A comic scene follows with a complaining village woman and her hen-pecked husband.

GABRIEL leads the audience to Scene 4 in Medieval Paris.  Jugglers and Tumblers appear who then become monks.  One juggles before a Mary statue.  When he sinks to his knees sweating, the statue comes down to wipe his face.

Scene 5 is the Crucifixion where the ADVERSARY taunts Mary to hate those who crucify her son.


Now hate them, woman, for this bloody deed.
Hate them for the scourge laid upon His back.
Hate them for weaving a crown of thorns.
Hate them for mockery and blasphemy, their cry,
We have no King but Caesar!  Hate them
who hanged Him on the vile and criminal cross.40


Scene 7 shifts to Don Juan of Austria facing threats from a Muslim Ambassador in 1571.  The Battle of Lepanto follows where the Muslims are defeated.  The ADVERSARY says he is not done and he will send another Red Army! (Communism)  He runs out through the audience.

The Resurrection is Scene 8 with a Flower Dance.  The Finale, Scene 9, follows with the song To Christ Through Mary.  The shows closes with a processional of local people from all walks of life.


Daniel Lord Pamphlet: The Girl Worth Choosing     Daniel Lord Pamphlet: There's Money In Gambling     Daniel Lord Pamphlet: Do You Love Your Children     Daniel Lord Pamphlet: Shall We Let Christ Save World


NOTES



Chapter 27    Chapter 29

  

Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner