Francis Ford Coppola was told he'd never walk again
Francis Ford Coppola was warned he'd never walk again after contracting polio as a child.
Francis Ford Coppola was warned he'd never walk again after contracting polio.
The 85-year-old director was stricken by the virus as a child and recalled feeling "frightened" for the other kids on the hospital ward, only to realise his own situation was worse than he initially thought.
He told Deadline: "I was feverish and they took me to a hospital ward. It was so crammed with kids that there were gurneys piled up three and four high in the hallways because there were so many more kids than there were beds in the hospital.
“I remember the kids in the iron lungs who you could see their faces on mirrors, and they were all crying for their parents.
They didn’t understand why they were suddenly in these steel cabinets. And I remember being more frightened for those kids, and not myself, because I was not in one of those things...
“I was looking around, and then when I tried to get out of bed, I fell on the floor and I realised I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t get up. And I stayed in that ward for about 10 days before, finally, my parents were able to take me home.”
There was no clear course of treatment for the 'Megalopolis' director and he was then warned he wouldn't be able to walk.
He said: “It was only clear when they took me to one doctor, a French doctor. I remember who said that I should be a soldier and that I would be able to live a long life and be very active and do everything I wanted. But then he added, but always in a wheelchair.
"And that’s when I realised what I was up against. And we all went to have Chinese food that afternoon, and I was crying even though this was my favourite kind of food because he had told me I would always be in a wheelchair.”
But Francis' father, Carmine Coppola, refused to "trust" what the doctor said and pushed for further treatment, which eventually gave his son full movement back.
The 'Apocalypse Now' filmmaker said: “That was a strong opinion that the cure, or the therapy, was to pin you in your bed and make you immovable. It didn’t sound logical to him. So my father went to what was called in those days, the March of Dimes. It was the charity that helped kids with polio. And they told him there was a second way to possibly deal with it, which came from the Australian nurse Sister Kenny.
“Her method was sort of mild exercise. And my father, thank God, thought that was more sensible to take a paralysed person than make them immobile. The idea was that if you were immobile, you wouldn’t further damage to muscles.
"They sent to me this wonderful lady, I remember her name, Ms. Wilson. She was an elderly lady with white hair. And she would come to see me four days a week and do these very gentle exercises where she’d lift the limbs and what have you. And that lady, over four or five months, gradually brought back my ability to move my left arm.
"And I’m totally grateful and know the fact that I even can walk today is due to the Sister Kenny system, which was a revolutionary thought at the time. Everyone believed in the immobile theory."
