A Cracked Head

 The Flying Nun 107 Polly Wants A Cracked Head

The Flying Nun is an American fantasy sitcom television series about a community of nuns which included one who could fly when the wind caught her cornette. It was produced by Screen Gems for ABC based on the 1965 book The Fifteenth Pelican, written by Tere Rios. Sally Field starred as the title character, Sister Bertrille.

The series originally ran on ABC from September 7, 1967, to April 3, 1970, producing 82 episodes, including a one-hour pilot episode.

Overview[edit]

Main article: List of The Flying Nun episodes

Developed by Bernard Slade, the series centered on the adventures of a community of nuns in the Convent San Tanco in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The series focuses on Sister Bertrille, a young, idealistic novice nun who discovers she can fly, whose order teaches largely underprivileged and orphaned children and assists the poor of a diverse Hispanic community (a rare setting for American network TV in the era).

In the hour-long series pilot, Chicago native Elsie Ethrington arrives in San Juan from New York City after her arrest for having been involved in a free speech protest; she then adopts the name of Sister Bertrille. It is also later learned (in the episode "My Sister, The Sister") that Sister Bertrille comes from a family of physicians, and that she is the only member of that family who did not follow in their footsteps. She instead became a nun, joining the Convent San Tanco, after being impressed by the missionary work of her aunt, and broke up with her toy salesman boyfriend of eight months.

Sister Bertrille could be relied upon to solve any problem that came her way by her ability to catch a passing breeze and fly. This was generally attributed to her weighing under 90 pounds (41 kg), high winds at the Convent high on the ocean bluffs, and the large, heavily starched cornette that was the headpiece for her habit (The cornette was based on one worn until the middle 1960s by the Daughters of Charity, although Sister Bertrille was never said to belong to that order.^[1] Indeed, the order which included the Convent San Tanco was never actually specified in the series.). Her flying talents could cause as many problems as they solved, per the sitcom format, but she most often used her gift to help people, or at least with good intentions.

She explains her ability to fly by stating, "When lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, anything can fly." In one episode, she tries to gain weight so she could stay grounded, but the attempt fails. Additionally, in the first-season episode "Young Man with a Cornette," she specifically tells a young boy who intended to use her cornette to fly that there were many factors other than her weight (which was distributed differently from that of the boy) that made her flying possible. She was unable to take off when heavy rains caused her starched cornette to lose its shape, when she had to wear something that would keep her grounded at all times, or, on one occasion in the episode titled "The Flying Dodo", when an inner ear infection caused her to lose her balance.

For a series often accused of being outlandish (often by its title rather than its true content), The Flying Nun treated Sister Bertrille's gift of flight more realistically than other fantasy comedies of the era. Usually on fantasy series of the 1960s, there were frantic and elaborate attempts to hide and keep secret the special powers, a constant dilemma on Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie and My Favorite Martian. In most cases, The Flying Nun dealt with its premise more logically. Quite often, Sister Bertrille and the nuns freely admitted her ability to fly, asking for discretion in hopes that it would not draw attention to the needs and efforts of the convent. Secrecy was only necessary (and occasionally humorously so) for any characters who would not understand, or might make the situation exploitative, widely public, subject to ridicule, or otherwise disruptive.

One especially memorable episode (without a laugh track) featured just two actors, Sally Field and actor/director Henry Jaglom, trapped in a cave, in an often-bitter exchange. Upon learning she could fly so she could rescue them, he began to consider, not in an absurdly miraculous but believable way, to reconsider his shattered perspective on life.^[2]