A visit to Turner Classic Movies last night, just in time to see One Foot in Heaven, an enjoyable story of the ministry and tribulations of a Methodist minister in the first half of the last century. Fredric March is very fine as Rev. William Spence and Martha Scott brings subtlety and strength to the part of his wife.



Fredric March is far better known, of course, but Martha Scott also had a long and interesting career and at various times played the wife and the sister of Charlton Heston and, both in The Ten Commandments and in Ben-Hur, his mother. Only nine years Heston's senior, Miss Scott seems not to have known vanity when a good part was offered.



One of the interesting things about the film last night was the strong presence of the hymn The Church's One Foundation, as a motif woven repeatedly into the score and as the concluding anthem, rendered with full chorus and carillon. A wonderful hymn, rich in instruction and beauty, a standard in most Christian churches, words and music lingering long in the mind. The music is Aurelia, composed by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the natural son of Charles Wesley's son Samuel.



The movie is based on a memoir of his father by the writer Hartzell Spence, named by his parents in honor of Joseph Crane Hartzell, missionary bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Hartzell Spence, founder and executive editor of Yank magazine during World War II, died at 93 in 2001.



One Foot in Heaven was among the ten films nominated for Best Picture in 1941, a year of stiff competition. The award that year went to How Green Was My Valley.



There is no fence or hedge around time that has gone. You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough. --- Richard Llewellyn