Aired Recently on HBO

This has always been one of my TOP FIVE FAVORITE FILMS! And after 40 years of NOT BEING SHOWN.... I've caught it twice in the last month or so on HBO ... albeit at 6AM Eastern time (US).

I first saw this wonderful love story in June 1968 when a station in Washington, DC aired it late in the night or early morning while waiting for news on the condition of Robert Kennedy who had been shot in LA hours before.

I remembered it throughout the years as one of the best "tear-jerkers" of all time. My sister and I cried from the middle of the movie until it's miraculous ending. I watched it this morning and SOBBED continually from the same point until the credits rolled. Forty years later and still this movie hit me like a ton of bricks.

I was a teenager in 1968 and had recently lost a number of close friends in the Viet Nam War and felt a kindred spirit with Ruth, although my grieve for friends could not compare to her grief for Art. Forty years later I watched it as a widow (or should say sobbed through it) and KNEW EXACTLY how she felt for I have walked a mile in her shoes.

And like Ruth, whenever I'm in NYC the first place I go is to St. Patrick's Cathedral to light a candle at the altar of St. Andrew.