Word: nun
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...presented a fraudulent bill on a city firm, was promptly caught and hanged. His 19-year-old sister lost her mind at the news. For the next 25 years, until her death, she called at the bank daily to inquire for her brother. In legend, she became the "bank nun." Until 1924, the bank occupied a low, fortress-like pile dominating London's City, was known as The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. (Despite its ponderous look, a workman once found his way from the street through building cracks and into the bullion room.) It withstood the bombs...
...good child," recalls Anita, who has always adored her father. The statement only mildly suggests her upbringing, and the terrifying crisis for which it prepared her. Expected by both her Catholic parents to behave as nearly as possible like a saint, she tried only too hard to oblige. A nun who taught and befriended her in grammar school remembers her as "a beautiful dreamer...
They looked so cold-were they comfortable? Nun ja, it was not nice. Too much noise in the hut. And the soup was too thin. But surely the camp authorities would arrange better quarters...
...hours and 17 minutes of unassailable if rather pedestrian sincerity, The Keys of the Kingdom never grows tedious. Toward the end it produces two very moving scenes of farewell-one, beautifully and quietly acted, between the priest and a nun (Rosa Stradner), the other, the priest's simple and eloquent farewell to his congregation and to the whole of his remote, triumphant life...
There are many good performances in The Keys-notably the sharply etched ecclesiastical portraits of Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price and Edmund Gwenn, and the disciplined, powerful performance of Austrian Rosa Stradner, a screen newcomer, as the nun. But the picture's biggest, toughest role is remarkably handled by 28-year-old Gregory Peck. He combines a bearing and demeanor that a matinee idol might envy (rather suggesting a sandpapered Lincoln) with a dominant naturalness. It is not surprising that he has no theatrical ancestry-his father is a San Diego druggist...