Lillian Gish Gene Gauntier Lenore Coffee June Mathis Dorothy Farnum LILLIAN GISH THURSDAY, AUGUST 31 8:00 pm (ET)/5:00 pm (PT) THE SCARLET LETTER (1926) - world television premiere of the restoration - restored by TCM - original score by Lisa Miller and Mark Northam Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter, is set in Puritan New England and tells the story of Hester Prynne, a married, but abandoned seamstress whose love for the community’s minister results in an illegitimate child. Forced to wear the red "A" for adulteress and exiled from the community with her daughter, she refuses to let Rev. Dimmesdale confess to his part, for fear of undermining his spiritual leadership. After her triumph in La Boheme, directed by King Vidor, Lillian Gish wanted her next film to be The Scarlet Letter. Yet the novel had been put on a list of unacceptable stories by the Hays Office; only when Gish appealed personally to the church and women's groups that had insisted on the ban, did they give their permission, and then only if she would be "personally responsible" for the film. Irving Thalberg assigned the script to three staff writers, but the results were uninspiring; they proposed elaborate back stories and happy endings. (One went so far as to suggest they use another, "less offensive" letter than an A.) MGM was paying Lillian Gish $5,000 a week to work, not to wait for a script, so Thalberg called Frances Marion, who had successfully adapted books such as Stella Maris and The Winning of Barbara Worth for the screen for producer Sam Goldwyn. Marion returned with a script faithful to the book while making Hester Prynne a modern heroine. Her script is complete with camera angles, orchestral sound effects and instructions for set designs. Directed by Victor Seastrom and co-starring Lars Hanson, The Scarlet Letter was a huge success for MGM, and Thalberg immediately assigned the director, costars and screenwriter to reunite for The Wind. Pauline Kael wrote in 1965 of Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter: "Her Hester Prynne is one of the most beautifully sustained performances in screen history--mercurial, delicate, passionate. There isn't an actress on the screen today, and perhaps there never was another, who can move like Lillian Gish: it's as if no bones, no physical barriers stood between her intuitive understanding of the role and her expression of it." The Scarlet Letter has been missing at least 20 minutes of film for the last 40 years and has just been restored to its original length by Turner Classic Movies, with an original score by Lisa Miller and Mark Northam. Written by: Laura Drazin Boyes, Film Curator, North Carolina Museum of Art References: Without Lying Down, by Cari Beauchamp Lillian Gish: The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, by Lillian Gish and Ann Pinchot Victor Sjostrom: His Life and Work, by Bengt Forslund. back to top GENE GAUNTIER THURSDAY, AUGUST 31 10:10 pm (ET)/7:00 pm (PT) FROM THE MANGER TO THE CROSS (1912) — U.S. television premiere of the film One of the first feature-length films made by an American company, this five-reel life of Christ story has antecedents in the European early cinema, but is unique for having been filmed on actual sites described in the Biblical accounts. To make it, the Kalem Company sent its team to Egypt and Palestine in 1912, where director Sidney Olcott focused his eye for striking photography on the streets of Old Jerusalem and across the timeless desert. His compositions recreated the celebrated New Testament paintings of the French artist James Tissot, who was then considered the authority on authentic detail. Gene Gauntier, the film’s scenarist and leading lady, plays the Virgin Mary, her narrative stresses "Jesus the Man," omitting the Resurrection. Written by: Herbert Reynolds Anita Loos & Jane Murfin THURSDAY, AUGUST 31 11:30 pm (ET)/8:30 pm (PT) THE WOMEN (1939) Anita Loos and Jane Murfin adapted the script for The Women from the Broadway play by Claire Boothe Luce. The Women is about Park Avenue ladies dependent upon the social status conferred to them by their husbands. Mary Haines' (Norma Shearer) "paradise" is rocked when her spouse is hijacked by a perfume counter Mata Hari (Joan Crawford). The Women presents a world in which perpetual scheming and gossip dominate, and even a virtuous wife must eventually stain her nails "jungle red." Much of the original language was deemed unacceptable, and Loos was required to be on the set to make any last- minute changes. For instance, Loos used "frozen asset" to replace the word virgin. The all-star cast was directed by George Cukor, who had just been fired as director of Gone With The Wind. Many of the women in the cast had screen-tested to play Scarlet O’Hara - Paueltte Goddard, Norma Shearer and Joan Fontaine, included. Shearer and Crawford were rumored to be long-time rivals at MGM, and their on-screen face-off in a fitting room bubbles with plenty of venom. Rosalind Russell was encouraged to rachet up her performance as the conniving Sylvia to match her over-the-top wardrobe. She made a splash with her first comic part and her brawl with Paulette Goddard is a highlight. Fontaine's restraint as young wife Peggy led to her being cast as another timid young wife in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. Mary Boland nearly steals the show as the much -married and divorced- Countess de Lave, who philosophizes wistfully, "l'amour, toujours l'amour." While much of the dialogue of the women pertains to men, only women are seen on the screen. Written by: Laura Drazin Boyes, Film Curator, North Carolina Museum of Art References: Biographies of Crawford, Shearer, Cukor, in your research (no authors). back to top LENORE COFFEE THURSDAY, AUGUST 31 2:00 am (ET)/11:00 pm (PT) FOUR DAUGHTERS (1938) Lenore Coffee joined writer Julius Epstein and Warner Brothers top production team (who were also responsible for Casablanca) on Four Daughters, a film version of Fannie Hurst's novel Sister Act. Four Daughters is a soap opera about a widower (played by Claude Raines in his benevolent mode) and his children, the real-life Lane sisters, Pricilla, Rosemary and Lola, plus Gale Page. The father is a musician who has taught his daughters to play instruments, a metaphor for family harmony. But men and sex will soon disrupt the calm. Some suitors are more acceptable than others, but none is more unacceptable than sullen composer Mickey Borden (John Garfield ). Garfield’s performance earned him an Academy Award® nomination for Four Daughters, his first film. The film Four Daughters was followed by Four Wives, which begat Four Mothers. The first film is about courtship, the second about babies and the third about what comes after. Written by: Laura Drazin Boyes, Film Curator, North Carolina Museum of Art References: A Woman's View, by Janine Basinger The Film Encyclopedia, by Ephraim Katz mdb listing for Four Daughters back to top JUNE MATHIS THURSDAY, AUGUST 31 3:45 am (ET)/12:45 am (PT) THE CONQUERING POWER (1921) Innovative director Rex Ingram, sharp and intuitive writer June Mathis, cinematographer John Seitz and actors Rudolph Valentino and Alice Terry (who made The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) were the team behind The Conquering Power. Mathis adapted Honore de Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet with considerable leeway. The film tells the story of two brothers and their children - one a Parisian bourgeois whose son is a decadent fashion plate, the other the village miser of Noyant, with a devoted and beautiful daughter. The cousins fall in love and are separated, then reunited only after Eugenie's bitter father is destroyed by his own greed. The Conquering Power's intimate and moody atmosphere lends itself to the delicate underplaying of the cast. This film is less Valentino's film and more Terry's; she and director Ingram were by then engaged and her role took prominence. Written by: Laura Drazin Boyes, Film Curator, North Carolina Museum of Art References: Rex Ingram: Master of the Silent Cinema, by Liam O'Leary Variety, July 8, 1921 Rudolph Valentino, by Alexander Walker back to top DOROTHY FARNUM THURSDAY, AUGUST 31 5:30 am (ET)/2:30 am (PT) THE TORRENT ( 1925) This romantic drama set in Spain, and adapted by Dorothy Farnum from a novel by Vincente Blasco-Ibanez was Greta Garbo’s first American film. The Torrent is the story of two children who have grown to adulthood loving one another. Rafael is an aristocratic mama's boy; Leonora is poor but beautiful and devoted. Rafael is unable to defy his mother's decree that he marry another, and Leonora sadly leaves the village to become a Parisian prima dona. They meet again, and their passions are rekindled in the aftermath of a furious storm. When the film’s original star, Alma Rubens, was unable to work, director Monta Bell lobbied to cast Garbo in the starring role. Her mentor, director Mauritz Stiller, rehearsed her each night. Written by: Laura Drazin Boyes, Film Curator,North Carolina Museum of Art References: Merchant of Dreams, by Charles Higham The Great Garbo, by Robert Payne Garbo, by Norman Zierold Greta Garbo, by Karen Swenson back to top