Moving Picture World (Jan-Feb 1927)

January 8, 1927 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 101 Why Picture Scripts W hat I he Author ROM a valued correspondent comes an odd complaint that the picture producers are taking unwarrantable liberties with the standard drama. The writer like many others has back of his picture theatre experience a long and honorable career on the dramatic stage. He points out, for example, that in one presentation of “Ten Nights in a Barroom” Joe Morgan, who in the original play was an English mill hand, is transformed into a lumberman. It does not seem right to the actor, but we imagine that the manager realized a larger income from the play with the picturesque lumber background than he would have received had “Ten Nights” been presented in its original locale. That seems to be the answer to the entire problem. In making the play, the producers reduced it to pictures. They sought the production that would be most pictorially effective, and we do not believe that the dramatic value of the story suffered in the translation. Perhaps the thousands who are familiar with the small-town presentations of this time-honored play feel some strangeness with the lumberman hero, but these are comparatively few, and against these are the many to whom this once standard play may not even be a familiar title. To these, the scenic value of the lumber district was far more appealing than the foreign atmosphere of the English mill town. Joe Morgan, of Yorkshire, would have been far less an appealing figure than the Joe Morgan they saw. Perhaps a few were disappointed, but a vastly larger number were pleased, and primarily the pictures are to please if they are to be profitable. The correspondent further points out that the published stills of the forthcoming Universal production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin present the hero as a much younger man than the Tom who is known to the stage. There is no definite information obtainable from Universal on this release, but stills are not always typical of the finished product, but why not a younger Uncle Tom than the venerable figure of the stage? “Uncle” as applied to the negro, does not necessarily indicate advanced age. To show a younger man would be more in keeping with the probabilities. Simon Legree was buying ablebodied slave labor. His purchase of Tom would By Epes W. Sargent The late Rodolph Valentino as he appeared in “The Four Horsemen.” A scene from De Mille’s “Feet of Clay” which never was written in the book. be more understandable where Tom a younger and therefore a better worker. For more than fifty years the character has always been shown as a grey haired old negro not because the first player of the part adopted such a make-up. As we recall the book (somewhat hazily, we admit), there is nothing to show that Tom was in the last stages of decrepitude. If a younger Tom will yield a more interesting picture, why not? After all is said — and much indeed has been said — the first service of the picture to its patrons is to present pictures, and if a change makes for the betterment of the picture, it were idle to argue that the pictorial should be slighted in the interest of fiction accuracy. Take “Feet of Clay” for a concrete example. The author has recently written for the Saturday Evening Post of her reactions to the picture version of her novel. In the original, the hero lost his foot in the war. De Mille decided that war stuff was out. To avoid tedious battle sequences, he had the hero bitten by a shark. This not only avoided the battle stuff, but it gave an added thrill of its own, and in addition substituted a gay regatta colorful and diverting, in exchange for a series of gruesome cut-ins from some library of war pictures. The compelling scenes across the bridge to the gates of the hereafter were wholly De Mille’s, and the author admits that pictorially De Mille was right. The essence of the story was untouched, but since the story was to be related in action instead of words, the director sought to increase the value of the action to compensate for the loss of language. Compare the De Mille product with the novel; estimate their relative values to the box office as a picture product. Inevitably the decision must be arrived at that De Mille was right. Played as written, “Feet of Clay” might never have reached the screen. Realized in amplified picture, it was a financial and popular success. We think that any manager will admit that from the box office angle he would prefer the De Mille version to one that would] strictly parallel the action of the novel as originally written. We have picked “Feet of Clay” not because it is an exception, but because it was an outstanding picture that will be remembered by everyone. That again drives home the point. The strictly book version would not have lingered in many memories. Few stage plays made from novels follow (Continued on page 145)