Movie review: ‘Miracle in the Rain’ a vivid romance (1956)
The Huntsville Times (Huntsville, Alabama) November 18, 1956
The story of two lonesome people who find love
“Miracle In The Rain,” a classic love story, has been made into a motion picture…
Jane Wyman and Van Johnson star in the roles of the two lonesome people who meet in a small building-doorway during a dismal New York downpour, and build a love that remains forever.
The oft-honored Miss Wyman returns to her home studio where she won an Academy Award for “Johnny Belinda.” Her last assignment was in Edna Ferber’s “So Big.”
Since that time, she has been active elsewhere, and has won an-other Academy Award nomination — her third — for “Magnificent Obsession.”
Van Johnson considers this co-starring enterprise with Jane Wyman as his first Warner film.
“Miracle In The Rain” was filmed in many of the actual locales called for by the Ben Hecht tale. Cameras, booms and lights were strewn over large portions of Central Park for scenes between Van Johnson and Miss Wyman.
Special “florist” trucks with “one-way” windows were used to hide the cameras in order to film spectacular scenes of the two stars walking amidst the busy throngs of unaware New Yorkers. Scenes showing Fifth Avenue, Broadway, 43rd Street and Madison Avenue are seen.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral in all her sacred beauty makes her film debut in “Miracle In The Rain.”
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Miracle in the Rain movie clip/trailer
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Movie brief: Miracle in the Rain
Family Circle – April 1956
“Miracle in the Rain” is a sad anecdote stretched to 110 minutes of old-fashioned storytelling by Ben Hecht, whose forte is not sentimentality.
This photoplay has top-notch names attached to it, but the miracle they pass is no “Marty,” and the story fails to burn with the pure flame of the candles that Jane Wyman, its heroine, lights to Saint Andrew.
Miss Wyman plays a New York office worker who finds love in the rain with Van Johnson, an Army private on leave. Sorrow eventually dampens their impending union — and then the “miracle” occurs.
The truest trouping among many Manhattan “types” is by the stage’s Eileen Heckart as plain-Jane’s plainer friend. (Warner Bros)
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