Trivia / The Song of Bernadette

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Bernadette never spoke the words in the page quote: they were written by Franz Werfel for his book. In fact, Bernadette while a nun at Nevers did ask for water from the Lourdes Spring and drank it to cure a life-threatening attack of asthma. She never had another one.
• California Doubling: While shooting on backlots in California was absolutely standard procedure for Hollywood in the 1940s, they had a really good excuse not to film in France in 1943.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Twenty-four-year-old Jennifer Jones as Bernadette, aged fourteen for nearly all of the movie - though she's outdone by fellow adult Ermadean Walters playing her younger sister Marie (whose age is not given, but would have been six or seven historically).
  • Bernadette described her lady as close to her own size (4'7")^note Jennifer Jones was a foot taller! and age (14)^note Werfel's novel conformed to conventional iconography by making the lady "16 or 17" as Mary is said to have been when she had Jesus; clerical authorities of Bernadette's time were unfortunately responsible for the Age Lift, but twenty-year-old, 5'4" Linda Darnell was cast. Minus the crown, this mosaic in the Rosary Basilica◊ may be a lot closer to what Bernadette saw.
  • Contrary to rumors, Darnell wasn't pregnant. That was a hateful rumor spread by Loretta Young, then thirty, who was furious not to be cast as Bernadette or her lady. She was the one who brought up Darnell's sexpot reputation, accusing her of being pregnant by Darryl F Zanuck. Franz Werfel received some racy, semi-nude publicity photos of Darnell and threatened to take his name off the picture and denounce it, which is why Darnell's name isn't in the credits and why you can't see her very well^note However, in the last few seconds of the film, it's very clear it's her. That smile is unmistakeable. She was having an affair with Zanuck, but she was infertile. She later adopted a daughter, Lola.
    • Jennifer Jones (real name Phyllis Isley) was married to actor Robert Walker, but having an affair with David O Selznick.
    • And in the trifecta of Hollywood Gossip, Loretta Young, despite her Incorruptible Pure Pureness reputation, had had a wild affair with Clark Gable and gave birth to a daughter, Judy, whom she passed off as an adopted orphan, later confessing to her: "Yes, you are my sin." Yeesh!
• Star-Making Role: For Jennifer Jones, who won an Oscar for her performance.
• What Could Have Been: The music you hear is by Alfred Newman, but Igor Stravinsky was the first choice. He had the music for the first apparition planned before seeing a screening of the film, and when Perlberg and King asked him to change some of it Stravinsky refused and was released from his contract. Now, put on his "Symphony in Three Movements," second movement, and cue up your DVD to where Bernadette, Marie and Jeanne are running over the hills to collect wood near Massabielle. That's what you should have heard. It's more evocative of a bizarre yet tenderly sacred mood than what the New York Times reviewer called Newman's "soaring violins, choral voices and chimes".
• Mme. Léontine Bruat (Tala Birell) was real; as in the film, she was the wife (actually the widow — he died at sea of cholera in 1855, three years before the visitations) of Admiral Armand Bruat and the governess for His Highness the Prince Imperial. There's a sequence where she brings a jug of then-illegal spring water to the Empress Eugénie for "Loulou" when he's sick, and he recovers. Eugénie subsequently informs her husband that he's either an atheist or an arrogant jerk for not opening the grotto. This whole episode was probably dreamed up by novelist Werfel. However, it is a recorded fact that a) the grotto was closed by local authorities; b) Mme. Bruat did come to Lourdes, with two of her daughters and a nun friend, defying authorities and crossing the barriers to pray at the Grotto and take water^note with some assistance from police officer Callet, who believed in the apparitions but had to follow orders; c) this and other visits from well-known believers brought Lourdes onto the national stage, and d) led to the grotto being re-opened in October 1858 by order of Emperor Louis Napoleon III.
• This insightful review points out that The Song of Bernadette actually uses horror movie themes and tropes, specifically the concept that the person who knows the truth and must convince The Authorities is the one nobody takes seriously. They specifically mention that among her adversaries is her own internalized sense of unworthiness, in the very last seconds of the film; "The bravery she has shown throughout this film is not enough: She needs rescue. Unlike the 'Final Girl,' she can’t triumph alone; unlike the 'final girl,' she doesn’t have to."

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