The Billy Graham Team (as they are described in the credits) ran a slick operation in the 1950s that could (and probably did) teach Sterling Cooper a thing or two. This glossy colour feature from their filmmaking arm World Wide Pictures boasts the considerable marquee value of blues legend Ethel Waters, who is also seen drawing the punters to Madison Square Garden as a warm up act for the Reverend Graham himself.
The 1950s is today viewed as a deeply conservative era, but is described by Billy Graham in this film as "a wicked and a perverse generation", against which he advocates embracing Jesus as a act of rebellion (a line he was still pursuing when I heard him speak in Sheffield in 1985).
The target in this film is rising young executive Hal Foster (John Milford), subjected to the relentless pester power of his pretty wife Joan (Georgia Lee) who, fresh from having just seen Billy perform, reduces a party of important business associates (including Batman's Aunt Harriet, Madge Blake, who even has a husband she keeps referring to by name called Alfred!) to embarrassed silence by suddenly (and at great length) going all religious on them. With God on Joan's side she eventually wears Hal down; and the Creator shows his usual ruthlessness when he smells a potential convert by strategically manipulating the chronic illness of their cute little son in Mysterious Ways to break Hal's resistance when both father and son are at their most vulnerable.
The 1950s is today viewed as a deeply conservative era, but is described by Billy Graham in this film as "a wicked and a perverse generation", against which he advocates embracing Jesus as a act of rebellion (a line he was still pursuing when I heard him speak in Sheffield in 1985).
The target in this film is rising young executive Hal Foster (John Milford), subjected to the relentless pester power of his pretty wife Joan (Georgia Lee) who, fresh from having just seen Billy perform, reduces a party of important business associates (including Batman's Aunt Harriet, Madge Blake, who even has a husband she keeps referring to by name called Alfred!) to embarrassed silence by suddenly (and at great length) going all religious on them. With God on Joan's side she eventually wears Hal down; and the Creator shows his usual ruthlessness when he smells a potential convert by strategically manipulating the chronic illness of their cute little son in Mysterious Ways to break Hal's resistance when both father and son are at their most vulnerable.