By
Hank Reineke
I wouldn’t have fared well in Puritan America of
1642. A title overlay inscription on the
front end of Robert G. Vignola’s The
Scarlet Letter (1934) offers, “Though to us, the customs seem grim and the
punishments hard, they were necessary in the formation of the U.S.
destiny.” With the benefit of hindsight,
I might argue this opinion otherwise, but it is what it is… or, rather, was
what it was. Puritan America seemed a
bit too inhospitable to my taste: everybody at one time or another was being
publically humiliated or punished for terribly mild transgressions.
In 1642 you could find yourself in the stock for laughing
on the Sabbath, or publically gagged and propped for gossiping, or aggressively
poked with a long stick if caught dozing off during a long and ponderous sermon. And that’s not to mention having the Towne
Crier ordering you to extinguish your lights for a pre-ordained bedtime set by the
whims of a council of elders. Of course
all of this, I suppose, is all still far preferable to being trussed to a pole and
stoned by your “righteous” and “pious” neighbors for accusations of adultery
and other crimes.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel of 1850, The Scarlet Letter, is widely regarded as a masterwork of early
American literature. The novel’s
storyline is set in Puritan American of 1642, beleaguered seamstress Hester
Prynne forced to wear a scarlet “A”
on her clothing, a mark identifying her as an adulteress. With her physician husband missing from the
village for two years and presumed lost at sea, Prynne gives out-of-wedlock birth
to a daughter, Pearl. Though castigated and
ostracized by the community, Prynne refuses to name the father of the child,
thereby preserving his unsoiled reputation. Despite the travails, Prynne manages to live her life with a sense of dignity
and compassion – and a measure of moral clarity not exemplified by the
religious zealots who continue to harass and condemn both mother and child.
There had been several film adaptations of The Scarlet Letter, preceding this 1934
effort directed by Vignola, though all previous were released as silents. The first adaptation was a 1908 adaptation
directed by Sydney Olcott, a film short now presumed lost. Interestingly, Olcott was still alive and
kicking when the Vignola film went into production. In June of 1934, the Los Angeles Post-Record reported, “One visitor to the set was
Sydney Olcott who directed the one-reel 1908 version of The Scarlet Letter in one day. Olcott was still proud of his effort, telling actor Henry B. Walthall, “We didn’t do so bad in 1908, Henry. We
didn’t have cranes, microphones and we didn’t use big crowds. We had a solitary cameraman and he helped
with the props […] Them was the days.”
Olcott’s film may have been the first cinematic
adaptation, but certainly not last. Between 1911 and 1926, the film was re-made as at least on five
occasions. Some of these versions –
varying as one to nine reelers in their release – are also presumed lost or suffer
missing reels. The most famous of these silent
era cinematic adaptations have survived: Victor Seastrom’s 1926 version for Metro Goldwin Mayer featuring Lillian
Gish and Henry B. Walthall.
But producer Larry Darmour, the founder and president of
Majestic Pictures, was determined to bring The
Scarlet Letter to the big screen for the title’s first sound version. A wartime cameraman and newsreel editor,
Darmour was interested in creating Hollywood productions, ultimately scoring
his earliest success with a series of Mickey Rooney Mickey McGuire comedy shorts. Then - riding on the coattails of Universal’s successful Dracula and Frankenstein pictures – Darmour served as an uncredited executive
producer for Frank R. Strayer’s The
Vampire Bat (1933), a fine Golden Age chiller featuring Lionel Atwill and
Fay Wray.
It was gossip columnist Louella Parsons who broke the big
news in March of 1934: “The Scarlet
Letter, the picture that MGM would just as soon forget, is to be brought
back to life. But this time it will be
made without the airy, fairy Lillian Gish and in a different mood. I don’t know how it can be made different,
but Larry Darmour […] says they will bring a little humor into it. Hope Nathaniel Hawthorne won’t turn in his
grave if they put too much humor into his famous novel.” Parsons would also
report that Leonard Fields and David Silverstein had been hired to script from
Hawthorne’s novel.
It is true that Darmour made the odd decision to bring in
episodes of light-comedy relief to this otherwise somber and dramatic
enterprise. Actors Alan Hale
(“Bartholomew Hockings”) and William Kent (“Sampson Goodfellow”) are written
into the storyline – neither character appears in the original novel – and the
pair’s misadventures as offered are completely irrelevant to the film’s
storyline and disturb the scenario’s sense of dramatic tension. Variety
certainly noted this scripting failure in their review of September 25, 1934,
noting this “venerated classic [goes] wrecked on the rocks of comedy relief. Hawthorne’s
tense plot is lightened with a John Alden-Miles Standish development that
recurs with mathematical precision about every so often to spoil whatever
tension the players have been able to create.”
The role of beleaguered Hester Prynne was given to the
acclaimed silent-film actress Colleen Moore, just coming off her early sound role
as “Sarah” in J. Walter Ruben’s gun-less and pretty pedestrian crime-drama Success at any Price (1934). In the words of an overly critical journalist
from the Evening Vanguard (Venice,
CA), Moore’s assumption of the Prynne role might “atone somewhat” for the
failures of Success. Moore was already disillusioned with
Hollywood’s new way of doing things, this ingénue of the silent screen
uncomfortable with both microphones and sound recording. Moore’s appearance in The Scarlet Letter would in fact prove to be her final big screen
credit.
The actor Henry B. Walthall more easily made the
transition to sound pictures. He had been
knocking around movie sets since 1908 and would continue working until his
death in 1936. Walthall was cast to
reprise his role as Prynne’s surprisingly-retuned-from-sea husband Roger
Chillingworth: who now lives only to bitterly exact revenge on the unnamed father
of young Pearl and bring public “dishonor” upon Hester as a “faithless woman.” Hardie
Albright rounds out the cast’s major players, taking on the role of preacher
“Arthur Dimmesdale,” a fallen Man-of-God tortured by a secret that has eaten
away at his soul.
In May of 1934, the Los
Angeles Times reported this first sound version of The Scarlet Letter was to go before cameras on or about May 23rd. The film was shot primarily at Culver City’s
Pathe Studios and at RKO’s forty-acre desert Pathe Ranch location. The latter area suffered no shortage of
rattlesnakes crawling about. Film producer-distributor Sam Sherman suggests on
a commentary that a cruel joke played on snake-fearing actress Moore by members
of the film crew actually led to the actresses’ hospitalization for a nervous
breakdown.
There were some journalist-train spotters who seemed
dismissive of the project from its onset, carping on the smallest of details of
Majestic’s economically-budgeted feature. Again, from an on-set report in June of 1934 courtesy of the Evening Vanguard: “An anachronistic note occurs in the
churchyard. The dates on the tombstones
are of the nineteenth century. On a
major lot, such a state of affairs would not be tolerated for a moment.” The filmmakers protested such eagle-eyed nonsense,
noting – accurately – that such graves would only be seen “from a distance” in
the final print.
By 2 July 1934, production was already completed, Variety reporting that Darmour was in
process of producing no fewer than thirteen features for Majestic, with The Scarlet Letter and Ralph Cedar’s She Had to Choose (with Buster Crabbe
and Isabel Jewell) already in the can. There was a preview screening of The
Scarlet Letter held at Pasadena’s Colorado Theatre held in July of 1934. Billboard allowed the film was a “sincere
effort, singling out Moore’s performance as “the only redeeming thing about the
whole business, [but] the balance of the cast are mere shadows.” The review also thought the film demonstrated
a “slow development and uneven tempo.” The critic mused the script might have
benefited with modern dialogue, as the cast was (…) “to speak the silly lither
of year’s gone past.”
The critic from Variety
was in agreement that Moore’s performance was “informed by gentle humility
which gives the part dignity and appeal.” And though the scenarists were given credit for a mostly “well done”
script, the writers were chided for not digging “below the surface” to reflect
the “real soul-tragedy” of this man/woman relationship, choosing instead to only
amplify the “community’s cruelty to the transgressor.” Though the Boston Globe thought the film a worthwhile effort, this critic too made
plain The Scarlet Letter was not a
“first-rank picture.” Post-dated tombstones aside, it was the reviewer’s belief
the film offered, “Too much attention to realism of detail, and not enough of
virtue of emotion in drama.”
But ultimately the harshest critic of Vignola’s The Scarlet Letter was the powerful Archbishop
John T. McNicholas of The Catholic League of Decency who found the age-old
subject matter of adultery and babies born out of wedlock to be contemporaneously
dangerous and abhorrent. The League put
the film on its banned list as a “Class C” film, a rating deeming such films as
“indecent and immoral and unfit for public entertainment." This was problematic for the producer Darmour
as many Americans accepted the judgement of the clergy as holy writ to be wholeheartedly
obeyed.
Hoping to change the mind of the “Decency” League ruling
– while arguing for the right of free expression in America – Darmour would
telegram McNicholas in September of 1934. The ruling, he protested, was unfair. After all, the producer argued, 95% of U.S. schools offered Hawthorne’s book
as “compulsory reading” in their curriculum of American literature studies. Darmour also sent a copy of his telegram to
newspapers. It read:
We
were moved to produce The Scarlet Letter because of its widespread use in
schools, logically feeling that a faithful screen adaptation should be
acceptable to educators. We have adhered
faithfully to the basic theme related in Hawthorne’s great work.
If
the campaign you are waging for decency is carried to its logical end, why,
then, are not attempts made to bar the book in schools and public
libraries? Since the film version is a
faithful adaptation of the book, your ban on the film appears as agitation
against one medium and not another. One
is forced to admit this is discrimination and wholly undemocratic.”
Sadly, it appears as though this telegram, with minor
changes in the particulars, could be sent to administrators of certain U.S.
States in 2023. The more things change,
the more they stay the same, huh?