Pt 5 - Helen Keller in Her Story - 1954

Helen Keller stars in this documentary about her life. Her companion Polly Thomson also appears in the film. Transcript: "But perhaps those to whom Helen gives her time most gladly are those who like herself are both deaf and blind. There are perhaps 25,000 of them in this country. In the fifty years since Helen graduated from Radcliff, there's only one other who has achieved a college degree. Robert Smithdas of St. Johns, Brooklyn. But they enjoy life and work, like the rest of us. Their fortitude should perhaps make us recall with respect to our own small difficulties, a truth spoken long ago " I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet". The newly handicapped, the once whole young men who have come back from Korea disabled, these command as much attention from Helen as did their brothers in the second world war. Then as now, she and Polly tramped the endless corridors of our military hospitals. Bringing hope to the amputees, the blind and the disabled. Meeting Helen, seeing what she has made of her life gives them more courage to re-shape their own. For her services she was cited at the close of world war two. Then the leader of our armies, later the leader of our nation, Dwight D. Eisenhower, welcomed her to the White House and thanked her himself. Helen Keller asked the president if she might have the privilege of seeing him. Afterwards, of his face she said " I felt the courage and thought carried him through such great years of the world's history. From a life lived mostly for others, Helen manages to save some part for herself. There are the necessary things like shopping. The excitement of the city, the vibrations under her feet, she loves. She enjoys the labor of choosing and buying. She and Polly must shop with economy. Because they know it is part of Helen's job to look well in public, they must also shop with a great deal of care. And Helen's hats back through the decades are a minor footnote on the history of our times. Like her hats, the artists she's encountered also summarize an era. Joe Jefferson when he played Rip Van Winkle. Caruso at the height of his fame. Ethel Barrymore when she was in "Declasse". Melchior Siegfried. Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall. Years ago the young Heifetz played for her. Years later Gladys Swarthout sings for her. Helen speaking..."That is beautiful, it's like my daily prayer". Helen has been to Martha Graham's recitals. But this is the first time she has been to a company rehearsal in the studio. Polly must spell the action into Helen's hand. But she is aware of the rhythm and the movement of the dancers through the vibrations in the floor. As Martha Graham realizes, Helen's hands need not even touch the drums to feel intensely their vibrations. Though Helen has been to their performances in the theater, it is only in a rehearsal room like this that she is able to discover with her hands the line of body and limb that is the living pattern of the dance. Once Helen wanted to feel a lion. Annie Sullivan informed the zoo. A lion was fed. Helen entered the cage and felt the lion from it's head to it's tail. Obviously, Helen's sense of the world, it's shape, its texture its form comes to her through here sense of touch. But her knowledge of the world comes to her through books. And for books she is indebted, as are all the sightless to a blind Frenchman, Louis Braille. By who's invention the blind of all nations can read. It was to honor his memory, the Helen, in 1952 went to France. At the Paris office of the Foundation for the Blind, she writes in French the address she is to give on the 100th anniversary of his death. "In our way, we the blind are as indebted to Louis Braille as mankind is to Gutenberg." Helen's speech is only part of the world's tribute to a great man.Today one hundred years after his death he is being taken from the little village where he lived, to lie for the rest of time in the Pantheon. The burial place of France's great. Behind his coffin march the blind of France. The blind of France come to hear her thoughts. French is one of the several foreign languages that Helen knows. And it's vowels and accents seem easier for her to pronounce than English. Helen speaking French..."Without the Braille system how chaotic and incomplete would be our education. The dark portals of frustration would have forever separated us from the priceless treasure of literature, philosophy and science." In a lifetime lived to the continuous beat of applause. No moment has meant so much to Miss Keller. Afterwards, Helen Keller, Louis Braille's great disciple is made "Chevalier of the Legion of Honor".