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Persuasions #11, 1989 Page 140-143 Pride
and Prejudice: An
Informal History of the Garson-Olivier Motion Picture KENNETH TURAN That Pride and
Prejudice, the 1940 Hollywood movie, is not Pride and Prejudice,
the
Jane Austen novel, is another one of those truths that must be
universally
acknowledged. Yet the film clearly
has considerable charms of its own, as well as a rather curious and in
many ways
unexpected history, all of which I discovered by dint of wading through
both
MGM’s and the Motion Picture Academy’s files on the subject, as well as
the
personal scrapbook of the film’s director, Robert Z. Leonard. The most unexpected
thing I discovered, a rather startling bit of information, was that
Harpo Marx,
of all people, was instrumental in getting this film off the ground. On October 28, 1935, he attended a
Philadelphia preview of a
Broadway-bound dramatization of Pride and Prejudice written by
an
Australian named Helen Jerome and subtitled, “a sentimental comedy in
three
acts.” The very next day, Harpo sent the following telegram to Irving Thalberg in Hollywood: “Just saw Pride and Prejudice. Stop. Swell show. Stop. Would be wonderful for Norma. Stop.” Now Irving Thalberg, the model for sensitive mogul Monroe Shahr in Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, was at the time head of production for MGM and Louis B. Mayer’s right-hand man. Norma was his wife, actress Norma Shearer, who had just been nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and who in fact did see in Pride and Prejudice a chance to repeat that success. So, in January of 1936, MGM dutifully
bought the
rights to the play for $50,000.
Why
buy the rights to the theatrical version of a novel that was long in
the public
domain? Thalberg reasoned that the
publicity generated both by the play and by the sale would help sell
this rather
obscure property to the American moviegoing public. Confident as only
the wife of a studio production chief can be, Norma Shearer did not
leap at once
into the role of Elizabeth Bennet; she took off for six months in
Europe instead
and left the hard work of the project to those perennial drudges of
Hollywood,
the screenwriters. Thalberg
assigned a husband and wife team of Victor Heerman and Sarah Y. Mason,
who had
previously won an Oscar for their collaboration on Little Women,
to the Pride
and Prejudice script. And, on
September 2 of 1939, with Shearer safely back from Europe, MGM
dutifully
announced that Pride and Prejudice would be filmed with her
and, believe
it or not, Clark Gable as the snobbish Mr. Darcy. Production was to
begin around the end of October, but just two weeks after that
announcement,
Irving Thalberg took ill and suddenly died.
His death took Pride and Prejudice off the front burner,
and
perhaps saved the world from having to hear Mr. Darcy say. “Frankly,
Elizabeth, I don’t give a damn,” but
the project itself never entirely expired.
Actors ranging from Melvyn Douglas to Robert Donat and Robert
Taylor were
considered for the Darcy role, and nine other writers, including Zoe
Atkins, who
had written the screenplay for Camille, tried their hands at
the script.
This logjam was
broken after Laurence Olivier became a hot
screen property courtesy of his performances in Wuthering Heights
and Rebecca.
MGM liked the idea of putting him in Pride and Prejudice
and he,
having recently begun a torrid affair with Vivien Leigh, liked the idea
of
having her star opposite him as Elizabeth.
The director both Olivier and Leigh favoured was the very able
George
Cukor, best known for directing many of the best Spencer
Tracy/Katherine Hepburn
vehicles. The studio, however,
had other ideas. Louis B. Mayer,
convinced by his son-in-law David O. Selznick that putting Olivier and
Leigh in
the same movie was chancy commercially because it risked a moral
backlash if
their affair became public, put Leigh in Waterloo Bridge
instead.
Her replacement, newly arrived from England,. was Greer Garson,
who was
hardly a stranger to Olivier. As
producer/director of a 1935 London play called Goldon Arrow, he
had been
Garson’s mentor, giving her one of her first breaks and in fact
predicting in
a curtain speech that she would become a star. For a director, MGM
now turned to Robert Z. Leonard, nicknamed “Pop,” who was one of the
most
reliable of the studio’s contract directors and, in point of service,
the most
senior, having begun in the movie business in 1907 by getting paid
$7.50 for
riding a horse up a steep hill. A
director for 25 years, Leonard had directed Garbo and Gable in Susan
Lenox,
Her Fall and Rise; Gable and Crawford in Dancing Lady, and
also did
one of the blockbusters of the 1930s, the 1936 Oscar-winning The
Great Ziegfield.
A very capable craftsman, Leonard could be counted on to get the
job
efficiently done. Meanwhile, work on
the script continued. MGM turned
first to Jane Murfin, a veteran screenwriter who’d written Alice
Adams
and was also known for having introduced the first movie dog, Strongheart, to
eager audiences in the 1920s. Always
happy to bring a little quality to their projects, the studio
approached Aldous
Huxley, the famed novelist, who was then living in Los Angeles and
offered him
$1,500 a week to collaborate with Murfin on the Pride and Prejudice
script. Huxley signed his contract on August 30, 1939. Within a few days World War II had broken out, which made Huxley reluctant to go on. He phoned his best Hollywood buddy, writer Anita Loos, and according to her reminiscence, the following exchange took place: “ ‘I simply
cannot accept all that money to work in a studio while my family and
friends are
starving and being bombed in England,’ Huxley said. “ ‘But
Aldous,’
I asked, ‘Why can’t you accept that fifteen hundred and send the larger
part
of it to England.’ “ ‘There was a
long silence at the other end of the line, and then Maria, Huxley’s
wife,
spoke up. “ ‘Anita,’ she
said, ‘what would we ever do without you.’ ” Huxley worked
manfully at the script, but never seemed to be delighted with the task.
In a letter to a friend he called it “an odd, crossword puzzle
job.
One tries to do one’s best for Jane Austen, but actually the
very fact
of transforming the book into a picture must necessarily alter its
whole quality
in a profound way.” Once production
started, on February 1, 1940, it was Olivier’s turn to be less than
enthralled. Still miffed at not
being able to work with Vivien Leigh, he apparently spent all his time
between
shots planning a stage production of Romeo and Juliet starring
the two of
them which he was to direct. He did
not see fit to mention the film in his autobiography, though he did
deal with it
in a book called On Acting, in which he said he thought "the
best
points in the book were missed, although apparently no one else did.
I’m still signing autographs over Darcy’s large left lapel.
MGM always got its costumes right.” Actually, as I’m
sure this audience doesn’t need to be told, Olivier was wrong about the
costumes. In its infinite wisdom the
studio felt that the actual
fashions of the early nineteenth century, what one writer who knows
more about
such things than I do called “the more restrained, classical lines of
the
Directoire and Empire styles,” were not very much fun.
So Adrian, the legendary MGM costume director, gave everyone the
more
swaggering clothes of three or four decades later. Olivier was also
wrong about how successful the film would be.
Though there were some carpers, like the Los Angeles Herald
Express
which called it “decorous, bloodless entertainment which will find an
appreciative audience among women,” almost all the reviews were
excellent.
Bosley Crowther, the influential New York Times
reviewer, called
it “deliciously pert, the most crisp and crackling satire in costume
that this
corner can remember ever having seen on the screen,”
The New Yorker noted that “Jane Austen, in her
day, was as brittle as Huxley, Noel Coward and a whole package of
Saltines
together.” And the critic for the
Los Angeles Herald had kind words for each of our guests tonight.
Ann Rutherford was “a vivacious and alluring Lydia,” Marsha
Hunt,
“the surprise of the group, her character is a gem,”
and as for Karen Morley as Charlotte Lucas, “it makes us wonder
why we
don’t see her in more pictures.” And, even more
important in Hollywood circles, box office receipts were strong as well.
Helped, presumably, by an ad campaign that announced “Bachelors
Beware!
Five Gorgeous Beauties are on a Madcap Manhunt,” the film drew the
largest
weekly August audience in Radio City Music Hall’s history and inspired Variety
to note that its success in Cleveland “overcame all local prejudices
against
costume drama.” Pride
and Prejudice,
the movie, did other good works as well. For
one thing, it caused MGM to launch its greatest book promotion in
years, with no
less than five popular-priced editions of the book getting into print
as a
result of the film, including three from Grosset & Dunlap and an
inexpensive
25-cent paperback from Pocket books. By
1948, a mere eight years later, that edition alone had
gone through twenty-one printings. And the
film also
did the kind of good deeds that film doesn’t seem to do any more.
While looking through director Robert Z. Leonard’s scrapbooks in
the
Motion Picture Academy library, I noticed a tiny envelope tucked
between the
last page and the back cover. It
was addressed to Robert Z. Leonard, Director of Films, Hollywood,
California
U.S.A. Dated February 10, 1941, it
came from one Betty Howard, who wrote the following from Southampton,
England: “My
husband is a
Naval Officer and a few days ago he had one of his rare afternoons in
port and a
chance to visit the cinema. We went
to see your film made from the book we know and love so well and to our
delight
were carried away for two whole hours of perfect enjoyment.
Only once was I reminded of our war – when in a candle-lit room
there
was an uncurtained window and my husband whispered humorously,
‘Look – they’re not blacked out.’ “You may
perhaps
know that this city has suffered badly from air raids but we still have
some
cinemas left, and to see a packed audience enjoying Pride and
Prejudice
so much was most heartening. “I do
thank you
very much as well as all the actors and actresses for your share in
what has
given so much pleasure to us.” I think
you’ll
agree that any film that can elicit that kind of response is well worth
enjoying
again and again, and I hope you all enjoy it again tonight. Thank you. |
