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Francis Ford Coppola was warned that he might never walk again after he contracted polio as a child.
The 85-year-old director recalled feeling ‘frightened’ for the other kids on the hospital ward, only to realise his own situation was worse than he initially thought.
There was no clear course of treatment for the Megalopolis director and he was warned he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life – but his father pushed for Francis to do physical therapy, at a time when immobile therapy was widely used.
‘The idea was that if you were immobile, you wouldn’t further damage muscles,’ Francis told Deadline, recalling his experience.
‘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,’ he said:
Francis remembered seeing the kids in ‘iron lungs’ who were all crying for their parents, and explained: ‘I remember being more frightened for those kids, and not myself, because I was not in one of those things.’
He added: ‘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.’
A French doctor then told Francis he would be able to live a long life, remain active and do ‘everything’ he wanted – but from a wheelchair.
Francis had Chinese food that afternoon, and he remembered crying through the meal.
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’s father Carmine went to the charity March of Dimes – which helped children with polio – and they recommended the methods of Australian nurse Sister Kenny.
He then underwent four days a week of mild exercise under the direction of a ‘wonderful lady’ called Ms Wilson, and eventually after four or five months he could move his left arm.
Francis credited his ability to walk today to Sister Kenny’s method, which was a ‘revolutionary thought’ at the time.
There have been no confirmed cases of paralysis due to polio caught in the UK since 1984 thanks to the vaccination programme.
Although some poliovirus has been found in sewage from London recently, the risk of getting it remains extremely low, according to the NHS.
While Francis is widely considered one of the best directors of all time, his comeback film Megalopolis – a Roman-inspired epic set in an imagined modern America – was met with excruciating reviews when it premiered at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.
While the film – starring Adam Driver – was dubbed the ‘worst film of 2024’, Francis is behind some true classics including The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The Rainmaker.
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