One of my most favorite memories from growing up was watching The Thorn BirdsW with my mother on TV over a period of nights the first time when I was a young girl. I was infatuated with the movie immediately.
Set in Australia, the story covers 42 years in the life of Ralph de Bricassart (played by Richard Chamberlain), a Roman Catholic priest engaged in a constant struggle between his calling and his carnal desires for a young woman named Meghan, or Meggie, Cleary. He practically raises her in many ways from a child of nine, and becomes infatuated with her as she grows older. He is called to the Vatican and they don’t see each other for years, she marries a sheep farmer, and then Ralph comes back into her life. They consummate their relationship, with the results damaging all of them.
The little actress that plays the young Meggie Cleary is just absolutely adorable, as is Rachel Ward’s teenaged Meghan later in the series. The story is grand in scale and rich in texture.
This is from the first two-hour episode, and a poignant scene occurs at 5:28 into this clip:
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The book’s title refers to a mythical bird that searches for thorn trees from the day it is hatched. When it finds the perfect thorn, it impales itself and, singing the most beautiful song ever heard as it dies. The story is told by Chamberlain’s character thusly:
Ralph de Bricassart: [telling the legend of the thorn bird to Meggie] There’s a story… a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree… and never rests until it’s found one. And then it sings… more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.
Young Meggie Cleary: What does it mean, Father?
Ralph de Bricassart: That the best… is bought only at the cost of great pain.
I still tune up and cry at that scene.
A few years later, after Father Ralph had been gone for some time, he returns for a ball, and is stunned when he sees a grown-up Meghan coming down the stairs. Meggie’s Theme (Henry Mancini) is the music playing when she descends the stairs, and is a tune that plays in my head quite often – I have it on my iPod, in fact.
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The show is airing this week on The Lifetime Network. I’m DVR’ing it since I’ll be out of town later this week. But it was so cool to randomly see it being broadcast tonight as I was flipping channels. It brought back some wonderful memories! 
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
This has always been one of my favorite novels, too. The movie was a great adaptation. So tragic.
Okay, you wanna hear a weird one? I was in college when it originally aired and a bunch of us guys got together -no girls- to watch every episode. I think we all had nasty fantasies about Rachel Ward. Looking back it’s always struck me as strange that a group of straight college guys watched this very girly miniseries together.
Gillette, interestingly enough, Colleen McCullough didn’t care for the screen adaptation of it. She’d wanted a theatrical movie for the story.
Scott, I think that is cool, actually. Even if the intent was prurient.
I’d never heard of it (or maybe taken notice of it) but I just saw that it was playing on tv. Of course it’s just my luck that it would be part 3, i’ll have to catch the whole thing some time.
I too watched The Thorn Birds mini-series as a kid and had a huge crush on Rachel Ward…..still do….
Post also made me think how Richard Chamberlain made a career of being a ladies man but was always in the closet. Makes me feel good for guys like Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, How I Met Your Mother) who can play ladies-man characters and be out of the closet.