Speranza
Faulkner’s story was turned into a clumsy screenplay by Edith Fitzgerald and
Dwight Taylor, and critics dismissed it as a monotonous World War I
melodrama—hardly the stirring story Faulkner penned!
In a 1956 interview in The
Paris Review, Faulkner discussed his Hollywood experiences.
Q: Can working for the movies hurt your own writing? [Mutatis mutandis, opera libretto]
FAULKNER:
Nothing can injure a man’s writing if he’s a first-rate writer.
If a man is not
a first-rate writer, there’s not anything can help it much.
The problem does not
apply if he is not first-rate because he has already sold his soul for a
swimming pool.
Q: Does a writer compromise in writing for the movies? [or the stage as in a melodrama]
WF:
Always, because a moving picture is by its nature a collaboration, and any
collaboration is a compromise because that is what the word means—to give and to
take.
Q: How do you get the best results in working for the movies?
WF:
The moving-picture of my own which seemed best to me was done by the actors and
the writer throwing the script away and inventing the scene in actual rehearsal
just before the camera turned on.
If I didn’t take, or feel I was capable of
taking, motion-picture work seriously, out of simple honesty to motion pictures
and to myself too, I would not have tried. But I know now that I will never be a
good motion-picture writer.
It’s ironic that Faulkner considered himself a
failure as a motion picture writer just six years after receiving the 1950 Nobel
Prize for Literature.
Not only did the Hollywood experience deplete Faulkner’s
confidence, it also diluted the original voice and style with which he imbued
his writing.
By the time "The Story of Temple Drake" was realeased in
1933, only seven or so months of cinematic freewheeling morality remained until
the Production Code Administration clamped down on the uncontrollable
consumption of martinis, co-habiting unmarried couples, and see-through evening
gowns on the silver screen.
As the arbiter of positive Hollywood morality, the
PCA regulated the industry through 1954.
Indeed, by the time "The Story of
Temple Drake" made it to theatres in small cities and outlying regions in late
1933, it was heavily censored, but its prurient nature could not be totally
erased.
This actual editing of “unacceptable” footage out of prints may have
contributed to the early demise of copies in the marketplace, as well as
less-than-favorable reviews.
In MoMA’s collection there are 480 feet of
black-and-white 35mm nitrate picture and track negative for The Story of Temple
Drake labeled “Philadelphia Censor Cuts-Trims”—direct testimony to the long
reach of the PCA under the direction of Philadelphia’s own Joseph I.
Breen.
In his remarks at the High Museum, Dr. McHaney noted:
“I have
never seen this film because the common story during my academic career was than
no copies existed.”
One exasperated blogger on the Turner Classic Movies site
even begged Universal Pictures (which many incorrectly presume to be the film’s
current studio) to let it be seen already!
While viewing copies of The Story of
Temple Drake may have been scarce and possibly even unavailable, the film was
never lost.
The legend was sensational and the rumors were juicy, but for more
than 35 years a copy existed in the MoMA nitrate vaults.
Since 1974, when
Twentieth Century-Fox donated the original 35mm nitrate picture and track
negative to MoMA, the film archive world knew exactly where Temple Drake could
be found.
Additionally, The UCLA Film and Television Archive holds Fox’s studio
print, as well as fine-grain master materials made in the 1960s.
One possible
reason for the scarcity of viewing prints has to do with the rudimentary
censorship editing that occurred from town to town, in keeping with the PCA
requirements.
Snip a few frames out in Kansas City and some more in Mobile, not
to mention the ones removed in Philadelphia, and you have a very compromised
35mm print with splices, handling marks, and other imperfections throughout,
easily subject to breaking down and being tossed away. (In 1933 the awareness of
film preservation was minimal to totally nonexistent.
The MoMA Film Library was
not founded until 1935.)
Also, the reviews were ambivalent, with "The New York Times"
film critic Mordaunt Hall writing on May 6, 1933,
“There are loopholes in the
story as it comes to the screen, but the adroitly sustained suspense atones for
such shortcomings.”
And let’s not dwell on the fact that lead actress Miriam
Hopkins, at a mature 31 years old, was playing a dewy girl of 19.
Wink,
wink.
McHaney concluded his introductory remarks by stating:
“The
film was further sensationalized by being banned in many cities, so that
Paramount pulled it from circulation and never reissued it in any form, as far
as I know, though a student once gave me a mysterious source to which one could
send money and receive some kind of VHS copy.
I never gave it a try.”
In 1961
Twentieth Century-Fox released Sanctuary, directed by Tony Richardson and
starring Lee Remick as Temple Drake.
This modern adaption seemed more faithful
to the book and less reliant on the sordid sensationalism of the 1933
production.
Nevertheless, the film was not a tremendous success, and may have
ultimately suffered from the lingering bias towards the earlier
version.
It contains too much from "Requiem", too, rather!
Turner Classic Movies, who generously assisted in partially funding
the film preservation of The Story of Temple Drake, screened this long-unseen
potboiler at their 2010 film festival in Los Angeles.
Friday, June 6, 2014
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