Peace Out: On Some Quakers in Popular Culture

Quaker Founder George Fox (1624-1691) was born 400 years ago this year;Pennsylvania Founder William Penn (1644-1718) was born 20 years later, on this day.

I am descended from Quakers on both sides of my family. Religious toleration in Rhode Island allowed Quakers (persecuted in both England and Puritan Massachusetts) to become the dominant political and cultural force there from the 1670s through the Revolution, though many had arrived there earlier than that. (Meanwhile by the late 17th century, the Crown had forced Massachusetts to be more tolerant as well, allowing Quakers to move there, which is why Moby Dick has those Quaker shipowner characters in New Bedford and Nantucket). On my southern side, both of my paternal great grandmothers were descended from families of Welsh Quakers who’d settled in Pennsylvania in the late 17th century and made their way to the Tennessee hills across several generations, whereupon they were converted to other denominations.

Quakers have never been a numerous sect, and I find them hard to get a bead on. They sort of fall between the earlier wave of religious Dissenters that included Puritans and Separatists, and the charismatic First Great Awakening of the early 18th century, which launched Methodism among other things. They’re best known for their ethic of pacificism, on account of the controversary it always stirs up in wartime. Quakers are also groundbreaking in their philosophy of egalitarianism. In the early days especially they promoted the notion of a universal ministry, in which every congregant or “Friend” was a minister (including women). And the Quakers never lied, nor would they ever swear an oath. Traditionally they simplified their creed to the acronym STEP: Simplicity, Truth, Equality, Peace. In more recent times, it has been altered to SPICE: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equity, Stewardship. Sometimes it has been expanded to SPICES, with the somewhat redundant Service added.

While there are certainly Quakers in Ohio, the Quaker Oats Company, which was founded in the Akron area in the mid 19th century, was never connected with the sect in any way. The name was just selected to imply an association with the Friends’ virtuous reputation. There is a spartan simplicity to an oatmeal breakfast. The design of the company’s mascot The Quaker Man was originally modeled on images of William Penn, but nowadays the company’s lawyers disavow any connection or association whatever. Sure, sure, whatever you say, man! Anyway, actual Quakers tend to get understandably miffed about this product. Everytime they meet someone and introduce themselves, they have to leap over a hurdle of talking about breakfast cereal before talking about The Inner Light. (Surely they can’t be as irate as the late Quaker Oats spokesman Wilford Brimley appeared to be in those commercials. “It’s the right thing to do!”)

Prominent American Quakers (and straying Quakers) have included Richard Nixon,Walt Whitman, R.H. Macy, Howard Pyle, DeWolf Hopper, Edward R. Murrow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Susan B. Anthony, Herbert Hoover, Benjamin West, Ezra Cornell, and Johns Hopkins. Over the centuries this relatively small sect has broken into even tinier ones. There were Abolitionist Quakers and slave owning Quakers. Feminist Quakers, and ones invested in the patriarchy. Today there are arch-conservative Quakers and ultra liberal hippie ones.Joan Baezand other activists represent the latter wing.

Another quirk of the Quakers (as opposed to quake of the quirkers) was their inclination toward retaining archaic pronouns after they had gone out of use in the wider English-speaking community. They were still saying and writing “thee”, “thou”, and “thine” well into the 19th century. I once wrote a play featuring Quaker characters who did this, and got an understandably quizzical phone call from playwright Lenora Champagne who seemed interested in the question of whether that was indeed historically accurate (I can’t remember how my play tumbled into her possession, she must have been on a vetting committee at some theatre or contest or festival I had submitted it to, possibly the Ohio, which her husband Robert Lyon ran).

There aren’t tons of movies with Quakerism as a central theme, but here are a few worth noting. With the exception of the first, they’re all pretty much westerns.

Penn of Pennsylvania a.k.a. The Courage Mr. Penn (1942)

This bio-pic (the only one about Penn I know of) was cooked up by British producers in order to enlist American sympathy for the British side in World War Two (prior to America’s entry). Somewhat ironic, given the Quakers’ devotion to pacifism. Instead the film focused on Penn’s desire for religious freedom, his founding of Pennsylvania, and his kindly treatment of the Native Americans. Welsh actor Clifford Evans played Penn. Deborah Kerr, ultimately the much bigger star, had a much smaller role as his wife. The unexciting film did not fare well either critically or at the box office.

The Lady from Cheyenne (1941)

Today that line on the poster “Frank Lloyd tops all his mighty screen triumphs” is apt to provoke laughs, but in his day the director had achieved many hits including such things as Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Wells Fargo (1937), extending all the way back to the early silent days. It would be a stretch to claim, however, that The Lady from Cheyenne tops all the others. Loretta Young is the film’s Quaker heroine, who moves to Wyoming to open a school house. An unscrupulous villain played by Edward Arnold tries to force her out so he can get the water rights to the land the school is on. Robert Preston is Young’s patronizing suitor, though ultimately (in a refreshing Hollywood rarity) Young takes charge of her own fate by starting a suffrage movement. (And lest ye scoff, Wyoming was indeed the first U.S. state to make women’s suffrage the law of the land, in 1869).

Angel and the Bad Man (1947)

A Republic picture, much better than that studio’s usual fare, because it was produced by and starred John Wayne, who had by now outgrown B pictures. The plot anticipates the better known High Noon, with its tension between Quaker pacifism and Western style justice with a gun, a conflict brought to the fore because the gunslinger hero loves a Quaker woman. In this story, Wayne plays Quirt Evans, a former deputy of Wyatt Earp and now somewhat-fringe-character, who collapses, gunshot, on the property of a family of Quakers on their Arizona farm. They nurse him back to health for several weeks, with help of cynical and atheistical but good-hearted doctor. The completely foxy Quaker daughter (Gail Russell) falls in love with him, despite the fact that he talks about other women in his sleep. (Quirt is no squirt).

Then a quartet of bad guys, led by one “Laredo”  comes looking for Quirt. A stand off. He sells his claim to them. Quirt stays on at the ranch at the instigation of the girl. He convinces a mean neighbor to release the water he’s been withholding. When the mean neighbor meets the Quakers (who heal his boil and give him pie) he becomes nice. This influences Quirt. Two inciting incidents then cause him to backpeddle and flee. When he goes to Quaker Meeting with the family, he meets a rival suitor who is just the sort of milktoast he doesn’t want to become. Also, his old buddy has shown up with a proposal to foil Laredo in a cattle rustling. This they do, then go to a saloon, get in a big brawl and cavort with chippies. But this strikes him wrong, too. He goes back to the Quaker farm. He proposes to the girl, and stops carrying a gun. Of course the gang comes after him then and chases him and the girl on a wagon, and drive them over a cliff into the river far below. The girl seems to be dying of pneumonia. Quirt goes to kill the gang in the center of town. At the last second, the Quakers drive up in their wagon, with the girl very much alive. He puts down his gun. The bad guys are about to shoot him anyway—then out of nowhere, the marshall shoots them. Quirt will now be a farmer. For the time being.

High Noon (1952)

Surely, the best known film on this list. Taut and thoughtful. A tad gimmicky but manages to transcend the stuntier aspects through excellent acting and storytelling. The whole thing is told in real time. Gary Cooper, the outgoing marshall in a small town, has just married Grace Kelly, a lovely Quaker. They are about to leave town for good. Just as this happens, they learn that some bad guys have just gotten out of jail and are looking to get their revenge on Cooper. Cooper is advised to leave. After all, he has just gotten married and is no longer marshall. The new marshall will soon be on his way. Cooper starts to leave, but turns the wagon around. His pride or something won’t let him go. When he gets back to town, however, he learns that for various reasons no one will help him. His worthless deputy (Lloyd Bridges) is mad about being passed over for Cooper’s position. He’ll only help on condition he gets the position, which Cooper can’t in all conscience endorse. Harry Morgan, Cooper’s best friend actually hides out in his house. Many regard it as a stupid fight; it doesn’t have to happen at all, so why abet it? One of the guys is willing to do it if there’s a full posse but not if its just him and Cooper. Even Cooper’s wife abandons him. She is, after all, a Quaker and he has was supposed to have abandoned his guns. Meanwhile the clock is ticking. It is getting closer and closer to the shootout at High Noon. In the end, Cooper faces the men alone, and gets most of them. When it looks like he is going to buy it at the end, Grace Kelly comes out of nowhere and blows away the villain.

The Big Trees (1952)

Well, it’s a shame that this movie has such a silly name because of course I care about the fate of the giant redwoods and am sorrowful that so many were chopped down. But “The Big Trees”! I mean, come on! I guess…put it on a triple bill with The Big Lift and The Big Store? In this one Kirk Douglas is a timber baron initially at odds with the local Quaker community who want to protect Gods’s forest. When one of his falling trees (someone forgot to yell “timber”) kills Elder Bixby (Charles Meredith), Douglas has a change of heart and joins the local Quakers in fighting his rival timber killers. Like ya do. Kirk Douglas: tree hugger. Has a nice ring to it! In our next episode, watch Kirk take on Paul Bunyon and his Blue Ox Babe!

Friendly Persuasion (1956)

I first became aware of this film when Sally Field presented it on TCM a number of years back, probably as part of the p.r. roll-out of Abraham Lincoln. I was less touched by its effectiveness as a movie than interested in the obscure little pocket of American history it depicts. Given all the talent involved in this motion picture I’m sure that it’s this very obscuity that has prevented it from being better known, though it did well enough at the box office in its own time. Did you know that there were Quakers in Indiana? And furthermore did you know that there were Civil War battles in Indiana? Well, there were and they did. (Some Quakers moved west to Indiana from North Carolina and Virginia over the issue of slavery. And there was one battle in Indiana in 1863 during Morgan’s Raid, an attempt by the Confederates to frighten the North which made it all the way to Northern Ohio). Okay, that’s not so interesting to some, I suppose, but in both cases the knowledge expands our understand of the subjects just a little.

In Freindly Persuasion, Gary Cooper is the patriarch of a family of Quaker farmers. His wife, played by Dorothy McGuire, is a minister. Anthony Perkins, in his second screen appearance, is their son, who is of fighting age. The dilemma in the film, an age old one, is how do you behave when your ideals are put to the test? When pacificism isn’t just theoretical. It’s one thing to refrain from going off to enlist in an army someplace. That’s easy. It’s another thing not to defend yourself and your loved ones when you are attacked. As is usual in such stories, it’s the female character who stays true to her beliefs, and the young man who is hot-headed, and the older man who reluctantly has to fight to save those he loves. It was directed by William Wyler, who knew a thing or two about getting right into the heat of a battle without firing a shot.

I am particularly amused by how they tried to market this thoughtful movie about the practical applications of religious and moral philosophy. The poster above offers the pornographic promise of being “pleasured in a hundred different ways”. The one below makes it sound like a rollicking Walt Disney comedy:

Quakers were prominent in the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements, so it is interesting to me that Hollywood backed away from telling their stories just as they were once again becoming particularly relevant in the 1960s. Perhaps the studios didn’t want to look too sympathic to causes deemed “subversive” by American law enforcement. Or perhaps they took a look at that list of films and realized that as a subgenre it didn’t necessarily add up to a box office bonanza!

Alright, I’ve spoken my piece. Peace be unto thee, brothers and sisters!