The Blue Veil is a 1951 American drama film directed by Curtis Bernhardt

Curtis Bernhardt

Curtis Bernhardt was a German film director born in Worms, Germany, under the name Kurt Bernhardt. Some of his American films were called "woman's films" including the Joan Crawford film Possessed . Bernhardt trained as an actor in Germany, and performed on the stage, before starting as a film...

. The screenplay by Norman Corwin

Norman Corwin

Norman Lewis Corwin was an American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing...

 is based on a story by François Campaux, which was adapted for the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 film Le Voile bleu in 1942.

Plot

Following the death of her newborn baby, war widow LouLou Mason accepts a temporary two-week assignment as nursemaid to the infant son of corset manufacturer Frederick K. Begley, who lost his wife in childbirth. She ingratiates herself with the family and eventually becomes a permanent fixture. When she declines Frederick's proposal, he marries his secretary Alicia Torgersen, who fires LouLou following her honeymoon.

LouLou finds employment with wealthy Henry and Fleur Palfrey and begins to care for baby Robbie. Older son Harrison is expelled from boarding school due to poor grades and bad behavior and returns home with his tutor, Jerry Kean. When Jerry is offered a job in Beirut

Beirut

Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...

, he impulsively proposes to LouLou, who accepts. While waiting for his fiancée to pack, Jerry speaks to Fleur, who warns him about marrying a woman he barely knows. Having second thoughts, he suggests he and LouLou wait a few months before marrying, and she remains with the Palfreys.

Years pass, and LouLou is nursemaid to Stephanie, the twelve-year-old daughter of fading musical actress Annie Rawlins. When Annie is delayed at an audition and misses Stephanie's confirmation, the girl tells her friends LouLou is her mother. Realizing the girl has become too attached to her, Loulou decides to find work elsewhere.

Just prior to the start of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, LouLou accepts a job with Helen and Hugh Williams. Hugh joins the military and is injured in battle, prompting his wife to join him in England. Two years pass, and the widowed Helen, who still has not returned home, stops sending money to support her son Tony. LouLou accepts responsibility for the boy and raises him as her own. Years later, when Helen notifies her she is returning with her new husband, LouLou flees to Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 with Tony, but is arrested and charged with kidnapping

Kidnapping

In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...

. Although he is sympathetic to LouLou's situation, the district attorney is compelled by law to return Tony to Helen.

Now too old to be entrusted with the care of a baby, LouLou accepts a janitorial job in an elementary school in order to be close to children. When she visits an ophthalmologist, she discovers he is Robbie Palfrey, the now adult son of her former employees. Robbie invites her to his home for dinner the following week and arranges for all the children for whom she cared to be there with their spouses. As LouLou catches up with her former charges, Robbie announces he wants her to be the nanny for his own children.

Cast

• Jane Wyman
  Jane Wyman
  Jane Wyman was an American singer, dancer, and character actress of film and television. She began her film career in the 1930s, and was a prolific performer for two decades...
  
   ..... LouLou Mason
• Charles Laughton
  Charles Laughton
  Charles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.-Early life and career:...
  
   ..... Frederick K. Begley
• Joan Blondell
  Joan Blondell
  Rose Joan Blondell was an American actress who performed in movies and on television for five decades as Joan Blondell.After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career...
  
   ..... Annie Rawlins
• Richard Carlson ..... Jerry Kean
• Agnes Moorehead
  Agnes Moorehead
  Agnes Robertson Moorehead was an American actress. Although she began with the Mercury Theatre, appeared in more than seventy films beginning with Citizen Kane and on dozens of television shows during a career that spanned more than thirty years, Moorehead is most widely known to modern audiences...
  
   ..... Fleur Palfrey
• Carleton G. Young
  Carleton G. Young
  Carleton G. Young From January 10, 1942 until August, 1943, he had the title role on The Adventures of Ellery Queen, and from 1943 to 1952, he had the role of Edmond Dantes in Mutual's The Count of Monte Cristo. In 1951, he played the leading character on NBC's The Whisperer...
  
   ..... Henry Palfrey
• Audrey Totter
  Audrey Totter
  Audrey Mary Totter is an American actress and former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract star of Austrian-Slovene and Swedish descent...
  
   ..... Helen Williams
• Cyril Cusack
  Cyril Cusack
  Cyril James Cusack was an Irish actor, who appeared in more than 90 films.-Early life:Cusack was born in Durban, Natal, South Africa, the son of Alice Violet , an actress, and James Walter Cusack, a sergeant in the Natal mounted police. His parents separated when he was young and his mother took...
  
   ..... Frank Hutchins
• Natalie Wood
  Natalie Wood
  Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
  
   ..... Stephanie Rawlins
• Vivian Vance
  Vivian Vance
  Vivian Roberta Jones was an American television and theater actress and singer. Often referred to as “TV’s most beloved second banana,” she is best known for her role as Ethel Mertz, sidekick to Lucille Ball on the American television sitcom I Love Lucy, and as Vivian Bagley on The Lucy...
  
   ..... Alicia Torgersen
• Dan O'Herlihy
  Dan O'Herlihy
  Daniel O'Herlihy was an Oscar nominated Irish film actor.-Early life:O'Herlihy was born in Wexford, Ireland in 1919. His family moved to Dublin at a young age...
  
   ..... Hugh Williams
• Don Taylor
  Don Taylor (actor)
  Don Taylor was an American movie actor and director best known for his performances in 1950s classics like Stalag 17 and Father of the Bride and the 1948 film noir The Naked City...
  
   ..... Dr. Robert Palfrey
• Everett Sloane
  Everett Sloane
  Everett Sloane was an American stage, film and television actor, songwriter, and theatre director.-Early life:...
  
   ..... District Attorney

Critical reception

Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

 of the New York Times called the film "a whoppingly banal tear-jerker [that] will lure multitudes of moviegoers who like nothing better than a good cry." He added, "Mr. Corwin's scenario, under Curtis Bernhardt's soupy direction, stretches Miss Wyman's situation . . . into a series of parchedly sunlit episodes, contrived to squeeze the heart and present this lady as a quivering-lipped saint. There is little in the way of wit, grit or, for that matter, real substance . . . Miss Wyman . . . has little to do herself except to age daintily. She exercises reasonable restraint but persevering sweetness with an iron halo in a grating two-hour gamut. And since Miss Wyman, like the rest of The Blue Veil, is so far removed from flesh and blood, we can only leave her and it to heaven."

Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

noted, "Curtis Bernhardt's direction handles the drama surely, if at times a bit measured, and never strives for dramatic tricks beyond the level of the simple, warm story being told."

Awards and nominations

Jane Wyman won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama but lost the Academy Award for Best Actress

Academy Award for Best Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...

 to Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...

 in A Streetcar Named Desire. Joan Blondell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

 but lost to Kim Hunter

Kim Hunter

Kim Hunter was an American film, theatre, and television actress. She won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, each as Best Supporting Actress, for her performance as Stella Kowalski in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire...

in Streetcar.