Word: veronicas
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When this sort of thing was offered to U.S. moviegoers in the first film version (1942) of Graham Greene's thriller, This Gun for Hire, many of them were deeply impressed. It was felt that Hollywood had passed a milestone and that He (Alan Ladd) and She (Veronica Lake) were the latest and the greatest. In the interval, however, most customers have learned, from Hollywood's mistakes, the difference between the touchingly insane and the pathetically inane, and this remake is less apt to frazzle nerves than to tickle funny bones...
Last year Mother Veronica's little girls, well-drilled in their ABCs and one-two-threes, scored far better on the state elementary exams than Superintendent Montanari's Freinetized pupils. This June Montanari vengefully flunked half of the conventtrained girls. The trick fooled no one. Parents suddenly realized that Montanari was not teaching their children to read, write or add. Said the wife of one leading party member: "After two years my daughter Paola could not count up to ten. When I asked her, she just gave me a pained look...
Panicking, the government last month ordered Mother Veronica to close her school. For one long, sleepless night she wrestled with the spirit of defiance. By 6 a.m. Mass, defiance had won. "I won't abandon my girls to illiteracy," said she. "They won't get my little girls unless they overrun me by brute force...
Cookies & Assurance. Mother Veronica's stand was cheered through all of San Marino (pop. 13,000). Parents climbed up to the grey stone convent atop a 900-ft. cliff to pledge support through the double iron grille in the visitors' room, received in turn a whispered assurance, plus the traditional cookies and convent-made bubbly white wine. Firm backing for Mother Veronica's defiant ways came from her bishop, who specifically ordered her to keep the school open, exhorted all Catholics to "support the sisters in their struggle...
...face of such an uprising, Progressivite Montanari hustled abroad, left Party-lining Foreign Minister Gino Giacomini to cope with mutinous parents, including many loyal Communists. Said Giacomini soothingly: "We don't want to persecute anyone, certainly not dear Mother Veronica." At week's end, the closing order remained in effect, but parents were still entrusting their daughters to Mother Veronica's medieval-minded ways. Explained the wife of Communist Party Secretary General Gildo Gasperoni: "Her school is better than the others...