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Philadelphia Inquirer, November 8, 1979
NBC rewrites the Bible in story of the Virgin Mary And Joseph
by Lee Winfrey
On television
The television industry, which has falsified the lives of so many famous people in the past, has now decided to make up new biographies for the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph.
If you don’t recognize the parents of Jesus when you see them portrayed in "Mary and Joseph: A Story of Love," scheduled to air Dec. 9 on NBC (Channel 3), don’t blame yourself. The network made up most of this yarn without any Biblical basis.
Here is how NBC describes the plot in a press release:
"Mary, a youg woman of humble background, meets Joseph, a nobleman who rescues her from an assault by a Roman soldier. After the Romans murdered his family and burned their lands, Joseph began a new life as an apprentice to his Uncle Matthew, a carpenter, who was a follower of Judah, a rebel Zealot.
"As Mary grieves for her father, Joachim, who was hanged for treason, she hears the voice of Gabriel, who tells her she will bear the Messiah, the holy Son of God. When she somewhat tearfully bares her soul to the townspeople of Nazareth and they learn that she is indeed pregnant without a husband, Mary is judged an adulteress and is sentenced to death by stoning.
"Though Joseph does not believe that God is the creator of her unborn child, he again comes to her rescue by falsely admitting the paternity of her child. As a result of his admission, he endures flogging. The beginning of a closer relationship is established, a bond that culminates on the night when Mary goes into labor and the Christ child is born."
Nowhere in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John is there any mention that Joseph met Mary when he rescued her from rape, that the Romans murdered Joseph’s family, that Mary’s father was hanged for treason, that Mary was sentenced to death for adultery, or that Joseph was flogged. All of these embellishments are the creation of scriptwriter Carmen Culver.
Mary is played in this TV special by Blanche Baker, the daughter of actress Carroll Baker. Joseph is portrayed by Jeff East, who played the teen-aged Clark Kent in the recent movie "Superman." While admitting that most of the story is false, they still think it’s all right.
"I think most of it is fictional," said Miss Baker. "It’s not really a documentary about what the Bible really says."
Although the ages of Jesus’ parents are not mentioned in the gospels, it has been traditionally believed that Joseph was much older than Mary. In the "Mary and Joseph" special, however, they are both teenagers.
"What I think the producers and writers are trying to do is make this a more attractive story, put in a Romeo-and-Juliet element instead of having him an older man," East said.
Miss Baker argues that at least the background for this tale is correct, even though the special "is not even pretending to be the story in the Bible. They take things from the time and make those things accurate, like how they baked bread.
"As actors," Miss Baker enthused, "what you see is a great part. You think, oh-ho, a classic part and I’m so young."
Despite all the defenses of "Mary and Joseph" offered by the two principals and by NBC, I think this is appalling. Chances are good that millions of children, and probably several thousand adults as well, will assume that this fanciful special represents what the Bible really says.
What possible purpose is served by slapping together a pack of lies about the parents of Jesus and airing it during the Christmas season? What should we expect next? Old Moses rejuvenated into a young John Travolta, disco dancing down Mount Sinai with an armful of stone tablets?
Surely there must be a few historical characters whose stature is sufficient to place them above video misrepresentation. Until I heard about "Mary and Joseph," I thought the parents of Jesus were among them.
Mr. Winfrey was ahead of the curve in his mention of Moses. The 1993 movie ...And God Spoke (the making of...) was a humourous depiction of producers who want to make a movie based on the Bible, but who haven’t read the Book, and are too lazy to do so. They show Moses, played by Soupy Sales, walking down Mount Sinai carrying a six-pack of cans of a certain drink, using the unsubtle product placement to help finance their film.
Here is Mr. Winfrey’s review of Mary and Joseph when he finally got to see it:
Philadelphia Inquirer, December 6, 1979
‘Mary and Joseph’ on NBC: Poor by Any Artistic Standard
by Lee Winfrey
About halfway through a television special called "Mary and Joseph: A Story of Faith," Joseph is wondering how his wife, the Virgin Mary, got pregnant.
"Who did this?" he asks her. "What am I supposed to believe? That God made you pregnant? Who was it, Mary? I suppose if was your gypsy, the one who can make you laugh."
Mary’s claim that the child she is carrying is the son of God gets her in trouble with the local authorities. She is sentenced to be stoned to death. Joseph asks mercy for her on the grounds that maybe she’s a little bit loony.
"She’s young and irresponsible," he tells the judge. "I’m sure when we’re married, these claims will stop."
Swayed by Joseph’s plea, the judge decides to be merciful. The stones remain uncast. Joseph is flogged.
This unique tableau, unmentioned in the Bible, is a brainstorm from the fertile imagination of Carmen Culver, the scriptwriter for "Mary and Joseph." Miss Culver’s free-wheeling adaptation of the courtship and marriage of Jesus’ parents will air this coming Sunday night on NBC (Channel 3).
It all turns out all right in the end. In line with the Biblical account, Joseph accepts that Mary’s child is divine after the angel Gabriel speaks to him while he is sleeping. It’s a little disconcerting to hear Gabriel speaking in a British accent, sounding a great deal like a BBC radio announcer, but at least here Miss Culver didn’t make up any dialogue.
"Mary and Joseph" reels and stumbles along like this for three hours, mixing the old narratives of Matthew and Luke with modern yarns the old apostles never mentioned. Mary’s father, Joachim, is crucified on this show, for example, as a plot device to set this extravaganza into motion. Hitherto, Joachim has escaped such painful fate, but here it’s just considered good show biz to nail him up.
About the only good thing to be said about this show, which I saw in preview here Tuesday, is that it has been toned down to try to meet some of the protests that have been made about it since the first announcement of it last month.
For example, in the original version, Mary was to have been convicted of adultery. Now, it has been left ambiguous as to whether she is sentenced to die for adultery or blasphemy. You can decide for yourself whether that’s an improvement.
Aside from the question of whether it is wise or necessary to hype up such an old and much-beloved story as that of Mary and Joseph, the result here is a poor television show by any aesthetic standard. As movie critic Judith Crist observes in the Dec. 8 issue of TV Guide, this show is "pedestrian and pretentious...it attempts to ‘humanize’ biblical characters and events and vulgarizes them instead."
Blanche baker portrays Mary with no particular distinction. But Jeff East as Joseph is far worse. He makes the father of Jesus look like a wimp. East is not shocking or obnoxious. He just makes you want to look away from him, and wish that Joseph had been portrayed with more character and strength.
Too often, NBC’s attempt to "humanize" Mary and Joseph just winds up making them look sophomoric. On their way to Bethlehem, Joseph frets, "I should never have taken you. I’m such an idiot." "I’ve known it all along," Mary giggles in reply.
To justify this farrago, three principal arguments have been advanced by defenders of this show.
NBC has developed a theory it calls "writing to silence." In general, this theory holds that if you are doing a show about historical figures, and you come to a place where history is mute, it’s all right to fill in the blanks with newly conceived action sequences like Mary’s trial and Joseph’s flogging.
I remain uncomfortable with this carefree conception. It leaves the door wide open to mischief, misunderstanding and misrepresentation. It is a hunting license with no limit on hipshooting.
Another theory, advanced recently in the Philadelphia Bulletin by TV critic Rex Polier, suggests that TV shows like "Mary and Joseph" are no worse than the old biblical movies produced by the late Cecil B. DeMille.
I think this is unfair to DeMille. His best-known religious movies, such as "The King of Kings," "The Ten Commandments," and "Samson and Delilah," stuck to stories where the Bible contained a great deal of narrative material. The first mistake made with "Mary and Joseph" was to try to make a three-hour show out of the few scarce sentences recorded about them. Inevitably, fresh fables must be forced into service to fill the time.
A third theory is that of Thomas M. Battista, vice president and general manager of KYW, commenting against the backdrop of 5,000 letters of protest his station has received about this show.
"It certainly is a fictionalized version of the biblical story," he conceded. "I wish it were a better show, quite frankly."
But Battista concluded: "It is not a documentary. I am not offended by it. I accept it as a movie, nothing more than that."
One of the problems with TV is that, too often, it plays fast and loose with material like this. One of the reasons this dubious tradition continues is the attitude of TV executives who believe that the show they put on is only "a movie, nothing more than that."
According to Carl McIntire ("A Filthy Christmas Film," Christian Beacon, December 13, 1979, pp. 1, 3), who equated Mary and Joseph with the earlier blasphemous made-for-television movie Jesus of Nazareth:
...Both of these films bear the same stamp of unbelief. In the demonstration [on December 10 in front of KYW-TV] in Philadelphia only about 100 persons came. Only three Roman Catholics held up their hands. The visit of the Pope has so mesmerized them that they did not have either the time or discernment, the inclination or the will to waste any time over Mary’s being presented to the nation as a sinful woman.
Where were the Fundamentalists?
These two films registered the spiritual temperature of the nation, which is very low. Christianity is dying in the hearts of the people...
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