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Present at the funeral were the Archbishop of Philadelphia, the Governor of Pennsylvania, twelve mayors, the village idiot, a boy choir from New York, "a great baritone" from the Met (he sang Schubert's Ave Maria) and, as pallbearers, the stars of Casablanca, Algiers, It Happened One Night, For Whom the Bell Tolls and Mutiny on the Bounty. No wonder that the producer of her film, who had decided there was no point in releasing a movie whose unknown star was already dead, changed his mind and staged an opening at Radio City Music Hall.
The lessons of The Miracle (in the words of its hero) are 1) that "even . . . Almighty God [can] do with a good press-agent," 2) that there's nothing like a religious revival to make business hum. "For this, thank God," concludes Author Janney, "is America." A few more books like this and it won't be.
Though The Miracle is 61-year-old Russell Janney's first novel, he is an old hand at inspirational writing. Son of an Ohio schoolteacher, he used to write copy for glamor-girl Theda Bara, co-authored the popular operetta The Vagabond King. He also wrote short stories for H.L. Mencken's Smart Set and was a contributor to the first Ziegfeld Follies.