Month: July 2019

Sister Alice Montgomery

Alice was the youngest in a family that boasted three religious sisters, two of whom were Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, and Alice, a Sister of Mercy.  The sisters were very different.  If you were to ask any of the “Oranges” they would speak in reverential tones about Mother Felix who was their Superior General for years.  The reverence would go out of their voices when they mentioned Sister Ignatius.

And then there was Alice, the youngest of this large family.  I would imagine Alice came to us because she wanted to nurse.  And she was a good one.  She initiated a program at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix that was unique.  It was a special manner of bonding of mother and child right after birth.  Someone who knows more about it than I do would have to speak about this. I do remember that this program got written up in Time magazine.

Until the past couple of years Alice was someone feared by many, even avoided by some.  Alice didn’t try to win a popularity contest.  Even in her fiercest years she was an initiator.  I remember being at St. Hilary’s when I was a very young nun.  Alice organized square dancing!  I can’t remember her exactly dancing, but she was there directing it. 

I don’t know how long the practice continued, but I do remember at least one year when we had “White Pine” for a week during the summer at the Motherhouse.  White Pine was intended for a community when it first moved into a site that sisters had not previously occupied.  Then there was much work to be done and rules were relaxed.  Alice thought it would be a good idea to have this at the Motherhouse just for one summer week.  Alice felt that we should have special breakfasts.  She asked people what they could do to contribute to making it different.  I believe her contribution was French Toast.  Little Sister M. Rosarii volunteered to help.  Her addition was to heat the prunes!  I don’t remember anything extraordinary about those breakfasts, but it was a break from the ordinary.

It was Sister Alice and another hospital sister who decided to make a film about religious life to promote vocations.  They figured Mel Cranky from X-ray at St. Mary’s could do the filming.  I was to do the sound track.  That meant that they would close off St. Mary’s chapel for an evening and I would improvise music to the scenes of the novices looking holy or the novices looking playful.  The outcome was miserable.  The “other sister” dropped me but Alice stuck by me through the failure.  I always liked her after that. 

When my sister, Sister Mary Louise, was at Kaiser Hospital as a patient Alice came to visit.  In about five minutes that hospital room was transformed.  Alice knew what should be there.  What WASN’T there got there pretty soon!  After this visit the nurses asked if “that sister” would be coming back – and when.

These past couple of years as Alice has been at Mercy Retirement and Care Center visitors have sometimes encountered a different Alice.   One could not be sure which Alice would be in that room – the original Alice or the Alice who bestowed little kisses on one’s arm. Well, now she can be whoever she wants.  So we say to Christ Jesus, “Receive her soul and present her to God the Most High.”

000

Adventures in Stardom

by Sister Suzanne Toolan, RSM

An event occurred in our novitiate that could have reeled us into stardom.   It happened about the same time that “The Nun’s Story” hit the box office.  Who knows, maybe our adventure could have brought such fame and maybe such monetary rewards as “The Nun’s Story.” Well, maybe not.

Sisters M. Noreen Ryan and Alice Montgomery decided that our lives in religion should be recorded on the silver screen.  They had just the person to film it, a man who had vast experience with film:  Mel Cranky from the X-ray Department at St. Mary’s Hospital!  After all, he spent his life with film.

Featured in this movie that was to bring hoards of “lovely girls” to the Sisters of Mercy were none other than the sisters who were preparing for First Profession in the winter of 1953.  Now that was the group that happened to be my group.

The big day arrived.  We must have put on our best habits and veils.  The movie was to give the eager public a view of what happens on an ordinary day.  It would include sightings of our pious faces in prayer, at work and at play.

Now all the good looking sisters were featured:  Sister M. Magdalen Hoey was seen carefully placing altar breads in a ciborium.  (If she did it at the pace she did it for the movie, it would have taken up her whole day.  It certainly took up a lot of time in the film.) 

Other pretty sisters were featured.  Certainly Sisters M. Paulina Simms and Dorothy Menicucci were in it.  Sister Barbara Moran came toward the end of the movie.  There she was seen receiving the ring at Final Profession.  This scene was done so many times that Barbara’s ring finger must have been a little thinner at the end of the day.  Also in this scene was a priest whose name I can’t recall.  Of course he was from St. Mary’s.

Sister Sharon Krenn was seen up a tree picking fruit and deftly throwing oranges down to another pretty sister.  (We would never have been allowed to climb a tree but then, art does not always imitate life.)

Speaking of pretty sisters, Sister Marguerite Buchanan and I were in the film but the directors thought it best if we were seen only with our backs to the camera.  Oh well.  Looks are not everything!

The next part of the story came when the two directors decided to finish off the production at St. Mary’s Hospital.  I was to create a sound track, and it was done (they thought) in an ingenious way.  They closed off the chapel for the evening.  I was at the organ console in the gallery.  The film was projected on a screen in the body of the chapel.  I was to watch the film and improvise a sound track on the organ.

Well, can you imagine what this sounded like?  Pius music for Sister M. Magdalen, happy, carefree music for Sister Sharon, playful music for the basketball game filmed in St. Joseph’s field, etc. etc.  I was a complete failure! 

Now this vocation film is around someplace.  It might have even been sent to our archives in Belmont, North Carolina.  If you find it, don’t listen.

Another Event

I was not new to the silver screen.  My family had moved to Hollywood in 1944.  Don’t think that I am going to tell you about my “breaking into the film industry.”  No, but I happened to be in a choir that was called upon to sing in a few movies that called for women’s voices singing in religious scenes.  One of them I remember, was “How Green Was My Valley” (starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, and Barry Fitzgerald). The one I want to tell you about was “Vespers in Vienna.”  The title must have sounded too tame because when they converted this book to a movie, they renamed it “The Red Danube.” Walter Pidgeon, Ethel Barrymore, Peter Lawford, Angela Lansbury and Janet Leigh starred in it, but we never saw them on the set.

We had mixed feelings about these movie opportunities.  We were paid   union wages, and we liked that.  The part we didn’t like was that we had to rehearse the music to death waiting all day until the movie’s director came in and gave his approval.  In this particular scene we were supposed to be nuns singing at Vespers.  We had it down so perfectly that these nuns should have been canonized. 

Well, the director arrived and we had to spend the next hour messing our singing up.  He said, “No nuns sound like that!  There is always some aggressive nun or two dominating.”  So much for him and so much for our film career.  At least we got those union wages.