![\"Oddball,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2025\/12\/ROMY2011_a22_Donald_Sutherland.jpg\")
<\/a>An unexpected story about the late actor Donald Sutherland showed up \u2014 unexpectedly \u2014 in my in-box yesterday, and I thought that I would share it with you:<\/p>\n
In 1968, Sutherland was thirty-three, having experienced a career breakthrough in The Dirty Dozen<\/em> just the year before. \u00a0He went to Yugoslavia to film a World War Two comedy titled Kelly\u2019s Heroes<\/em>, with Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, and Carroll O\u2019Connor. \u00a0(I haven\u2019t seen the film since roughly about the time that it first came out in 1970, when I had just arrived at BYU. \u00a0Truth be told, I had largely forgotten about Kelly\u2019s Heroes<\/em> until seeing this story, but now I want to see it again because I remember laughing uproariously throughout the movie.)<\/p>\n Anyway, Sutherland was to play a tank commander nicknamed \u201cOddball,\u201d and his scripted involvement was only going to require a few days on the set.\u00a0Somewhere along the Danube River, though, he had picked up the Pneumococcus bacteria, which ultimately left him in a coma.<\/p>\n Yugoslavia had been chosen as the location because it was one of the few countries in 1968 whose army still operated actual World War II equipment, such as authentic Sherman tanks and genuine Second World War weapons. \u00a0Unfortunately, medical care in Soviet-bloc Communist Yugoslavia was also<\/em> \u201cvintage\u201d; the hospital didn\u2019t have the antibiotics that he needed and his odds of survival were low. \u00a0He developed spinal meningitis, which attacked the protective membranes surrounding his brain and spinal cord. \u00a0For six weeks, he hovered somewhere between life and death. \u00a0Nancy O\u2019Connor, the wife of costar Carroll O\u2019Connor, visited him in the hospital, only to turn and run from the room, crying.<\/p>\n Curiously, this wasn\u2019t his first encounter with serious illness. \u00a0Beginning in his childhood, he had experienced polio and rheumatic fever and hepatitis and pneumonia and scarlet fever. \u00a0And now he was facing bacterial meningitis.<\/p>\n Afterwards, Sutherland commented that he could hear everything while he was comatose. \u00a0Every sound. \u00a0Every conversation. \u00a0He would later advise people, when they visited patients in a coma, to talk to them. \u00a0Sing to them. \u00a0They\u2019re listening, he said. \u00a0At least, he<\/em> had been.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not all he said. \u00a0Over the next decades, repeatedly, he gave the same account. \u00a0He would evidently tell the story with wonder in his voice, with the sense that he had caught a glimpse of something fundamentally important: \u00a0\u201cI saw the blue tunnel,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I started going down it. I saw the white light.\u201d<\/p>\n This was, recall, 1968 \u2014 which was seven years before Raymond Moody coined the term near-death experience<\/em> in his bestselling book Life after Life<\/em> and had reported a \u201ctunnel\u201d as a common feature of many NDEs.<\/p>\n Sutherland recalled that he knew he was dying, and that it felt very peaceful. \u00a0\u201cSuch a tempting journey,\u201d he apparently later told Smithsonian Magazine<\/em>. \u00a0(I need to track this interview down. \u00a0It may date to 2015.) \u201cSo serene. No barking Cerberus to wake me. Everything was going to be all right.\u201d \u00a0\u201cI didn\u2019t want to go,\u201d he admitted, \u201cbut it was incredibly tempting. You just go, \u2018Aw, shit man, why not?'\u201d \u00a0\u201cAnd then,\u201d he said, \u201cjust as I was seconds away from succumbing to the seductions of that matte white light glowing purely at what appeared to be the bottom of it, some primal force fiercely grabbed my feet and compelled them to dig my heels in.\u201d<\/p>\n He eventually began to recover \u2014 MGM flew him from Yugoslavia to Charing Cross Hospital in London,give him better facilities, better antibiotics, and a better chance \u2014 but the long-term effects of severe bacterial meningitis stayed with him through filming Kelly\u2019s Heroes<\/em> and beyond. \u00a0Also in 1970, he appeared in M*A*S*H<\/em>. \u00a0In 1971, he starred with Jane Fonda in Klute<\/em>. \u00a0Later, he played in Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/em>, Animal House<\/em>, Ordinary People<\/em>, Oliver Stone\u2019s JFK<\/em>, and, eventually, as President Snow, in the Hunger Games franchise. \u00a0He died at age 88 in June 2024, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease<\/p>\n Since 2014,\u00a0Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em> has published an invited essay every year both on Good Friday and on the Friday closest to (but not after) Christmas Day. \u00a0We\u2019ve allowed writers wide latitude on these. \u00a0Some have been short; some have been fairly lengthy. \u00a0They can be academically oriented or they can be personal and devotional, as the author chooses.<\/p>\n Our most recent Christmas essay appeared just this past Friday. \u00a0It was written by Shirley Smith Ricks: https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/journal\/christmas-stars-inviting-us-to-come-to-christ<\/a><\/p>\n Here are links to some of the other Christmas essays that we\u2019ve published thus far; I intend to post links to the remaining Christmas essays in a future post::<\/p>\n Elder Spencer J. Condie provided the 2018 Christmas piece:\u00a0 https:\/\/journal.interpreterfoundation.org\/christmas-in-transition-from-figgy-pudding-to-the-bread-of-life<\/a><\/u>\/<\/p>\n The Christmas essay for 2019 came from Kristine Wardle Frederickson:\u00a0https:\/\/journal.interpreterfoundation.org\/musings-on-the-birth-of-the-savior-jesus-christ\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n Cherry Bushman Silver contributed the 2020 Christmas essay:\u00a0 https:\/\/journal.interpreterfoundation.org\/christmas-as-devotional-a-time-of-commitment\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n Unfortunately, Daniel C. Peterson furnished the 2021 Christmas article (as a last-minute substitution): https:\/\/journal.interpreterfoundation.org\/christmas-and-a-condescending-god\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n David F. Holland authored our 2022 Christmas piece: \u00a0https:\/\/journal.interpreterfoundation.org\/puritans-pagans-and-imperfect-christmas-gifts\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n Kent P. Jackson contributed the essay for Christmas 2023: https:\/\/journal.interpreterfoundation.org\/glory-to-god-in-the-highest\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n Don Bradley provided our 2024 Christmas offering: https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/journal\/ring-in-the-christ-that-is-to-be-fulfilling-the-pattern-of-his-life<\/a><\/p>\n Holiday traditions vary from culture to culture, country to country, and family to family. \u00a0Today, on the last Sabbath day before Christmas, my Mini-Stalker felt moved to celebrate the season of good will by posting an image of me to which he\u2019s attached a made-up quotation that\u2019s intended to make me look bad. \u00a0And, after all, why not? \u00a0What could possibly be more appropriate to the spirit of Christmas than publicly maligning another person?<\/p>\n My chosen piece of Christmas music for today is \u201cO Holy Night,\u201d which was originally created in mid-nineteenth-century France by Placide Cappeau and Adolphe Adam. \u00a0Here is a powerful English-language performance of the song by The King\u2019s Singers<\/a>, backed by the Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NU2TlwcH3h4<\/a><\/p>\n I have always found one particular passage from John Sullivan Dwight\u2019s canonical English version of \u201cO Holy Night\u201d \u2014 strictly speaking, it\u2019s not a translation but a recreation \u2014 to be specially stirring:<\/p>\n Truly He taught us to love one another; May it soon be so.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 An unexpected story about the late actor Donald Sutherland showed up \u2014 unexpectedly \u2014 in my in-box yesterday, and I thought that I would share it with you: In 1968, Sutherland was thirty-three, having experienced a career breakthrough in The Dirty Dozen just the year before. \u00a0He went to Yugoslavia to film a World […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":114126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39498,1104,39492,39495,38242,39501],"class_list":["post-114123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-clint-eastwood","tag-death","tag-donald-sutherland","tag-kellys-heroes","tag-o-holy-night","tag-telly-savalas"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/a>
Wikimedia Commons public domain image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\nHis law is Love and His gospel is Peace;
\nChains shall he break, for the slave is our brother,
\nAnd in his name all oppression shall cease.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n