American film director John Cassavetes (1929-1989) is known for his improvisational, cinéma vérité style. In his best-known movies — “Faces,” “Opening Night,” “Woman Under the Influence” — everyone talks at once: above, over, and through one another. For many, he’s an acquired taste; for many others, he’s a maverick hero.
He was married to actress Gena Rowlands, who appeared in many of his films, and he clashed frequently with the studio system.
That happened in one of his earlier films, an unusual and under-known production called “A Child Is Waiting” (1963). Burt Lancaster plays the psychiatrist director of Crawthorne, a state institution for children with mental and emotional disabilities, and Judy Garland is a new teacher who challenges his methods.
Dr. Clark is a commanding presence who brooks no nonsense in either his employees or his charges. Miss Hansen (Garland) is in her 30s and unmarried, a graduate of Juilliard who can’t find a job. She’s looking for meaning, she’s a bit lost, and she’s a perfect candidate to bond — over-bond in fact — with Reuben Widdicombe, the heart of the film.
Reuben, an 11-year-old boy, arrives at the institution in a little overcoat, blond hair neatly combed. Along the way, we learn his backstory: The child is “defective,” the doctor has told Reuben’s father, an architect who, appalled and ashamed, is willing to pay to keep the kid out of sight and at one point wishes him dead.
In the fallout from committing Reuben to an institution, the parents divorce. Reuben’s mother — who has remarried and has a little daughter at home — loves him desperately but has stopped visiting because she fears the inevitable partings will emotionally harm him further.
Like Bartleby in Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Reuben would “prefer not to”: not to speak, not to participate, not to respond, not to work, not to grow.
That’s how Dr. Clark sees the situation anyhow. The good doctor goes about the classroom, encouraging individual children, helping them form vowel sounds, coaching them in the primary colors, admiring a woven basket. When he asks Reuben to draw, at first he refuses, then picks up his crayon like a spear and mindlessly jabs the paper. “Leave the room, Reuben,” Clark commands. “Leave the room!”
Hansen is shocked, and we’re shocked with her. Come on already, doctor, the kid’s traumatized. He’s lonely!
The doctor is far from coldhearted. He’s fiercely dedicated. He realizes he may never be able to do one thing for Reuben, but is willing to go to the ends of the earth to preserve his integrity and worth.
“The rules apply even here?” pleads softhearted Hansen.
“Especially here!” thunders Clark.
When the state board comes to the institution, Clark strongly advocates for more money. He wants to house and support 500 more of these kids. He wants workshops. The board wants to disburse its funds to excellent kids, ones who will grow up to be leaders.
This is a film that would never get made today. The only professional child actor was Bruce Ritchey, the boy who played Reuben. All the others — from what was then the Pacific State Hospital in Pomona, California, had actual disabilities.
Today the word “retarded” would never be uttered. Children with autism wouldn’t be grouped with children with Down syndrome, and they wouldn’t be grouped with children with psychiatric disorders.
Never would the scene have been allowed of a trip to the second floor that takes place later in the film, when Clark shows Hansen the mentally challenged adults who were coddled as children and now sit in a day room, drooling, nodding, and trying to eat their toys.
In fact, the children give the film a groundedness and a dignity that would have been impossible to achieve otherwise.
Lancaster shines. Ritchey is perfect as Reuben. Garland was apparently undergoing personal troubles at the time, and also considered Cassavetes too green to direct her. With her false eyelashes, high heels, and slightly smeared lipstick, she’s an unlikely but ultimately sympathetic teacher.
Producer Stanley Kramer commandeered the editing of what was ostensibly a public service film. Cassavetes believed passionately that kids with disabilities should be incorporated into their families and communities, not isolated in “homes,” and felt the finished film was too sentimental.
Whatever their creative differences, together they made a movie that poses several important questions: What is a human life? Who determines its value? How is a human being best formed to live out his or her life fully?
They also made a film that touches the abandoned child in each of us.
“What purpose does Reuben have?” his father asks Goodman, a Crawthorne administrator.
“He might be able to wash dishes, or tie strings around packages.”
“Is that the most he could accomplish?” the father despairs.
Observes Goodman quietly: “I often wonder how much the rest of us accomplish.”
