Man, Woman and Sin – the final silent film starring Jeanne Eagels, and her only Hollywood production – enjoyed a rare big-screen outing during the Labour Day weekend, as part of the 59th Cinecon Classic Film Festival at the historic Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo, California.
At 37, Jeanne was the toast of Broadway. MGM courted her as a possible rival to Greta Garbo, even casting the Swedish siren’s fiancé, John Gilbert, as Eagels’ leading man. However, the studio system of filmmaking was a far cry from Jeanne’s past experience with East Coast pioneers like Edwin Thanhouser. For their part, MGM found her behaviour so erratic that when husband Ted Coy swept Jeanne away to New York, they finished the picture without her. However, Monta Bell would direct Eagels again in her only surviving ‘talkie,’ The Letter, shot on Paramount’s Astoria lot in 1929.
Author and film historian Mary Mallory reviewed the torrid melodrama for the LA Daily Mirror blog.
Dashing John Gilbert and an ethereal Jeanne Eagels demonstrated a sharp chemistry and timing in the 1927 MGM feature ‘Man, Woman, and Sin.’ Young Gilbert takes a series of odd jobs from childhood through early adulthood to help support his strong but struggling mother Gladys Brockwell. After landing a job at a big city newspaper, Gilbert finds himself working for the society column, where he unexpectedly accompanies lovely society editor Eagels to a ball featuring President Calvin Coolidge when her married lover, editor Marc McDermott, demurs. Finding herself attracted to the head over heels young man, she returns his affections, leading to possible tragedy for all. The film features nice behind-the-scenes shots of newspaper production. Performances are all first rate, with Eagels demonstrating a wistful, understated quality which jumps off the screen, leaving one hungering for more. Tragic she died only a few years later to addiction.
Among Cinecon’s other highlights was a little-known movie adaptation of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge. Set in an Italian-American neighbourhood, the play originated from an idea Miller had first explored in 1951, when he first visited Hollywood with director Elia Kazan. They hoped to produce The Hook, Miller’s screenplay about racketeering on the New York docks.
Kazan was dating a pre-stardom Marilyn Monroe, and she accompanied them to a meeting with Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, posing as their secretary. Cohn had fired her in 1948, after she allegedly spurned his advances. When he recognised her, Cohn was furious; and he denounced Miller’s play as pro-Communist. Kazan would later direct his own take on the subject, the Oscar-winning On the Waterfront (1954) – though some judged it as self-serving propaganda, as the director had ‘named names’ to the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952.
Miller wrote A View From the Bridge as a one-act play during the summer of 1955, as his own romance with Marilyn began. She met his parents on opening night, September 29, at the Coronet Theatre in New York. The play was not a success, although Eileen Heckart, who played matriarch Beatrice, would appear in Marilyn’s next movie, Bus Stop (1956.)
While applying to renew his passport in the spring, Miller was subpoenaed by HUAC. Unlike Kazan, Miller refused to ‘name names,’ and a two-year legal battle ensued. Miller was ultimately acquitted, but he and Marilyn, whom he married in July 1956, were placed under surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover, the draconian head of the FBI.
In July 1956, Miller joined his new bride in England while she filmed The Prince and the Showgirl, and worked on a revised, two-act version of A View From the Bridge. Once again, the play ran into controversy – not because of Miller’s treatment of labour relations, but the sexually charged conflict between two male characters.
To circumvent censorship, A View From the Bridge was staged at the ‘members-only’ New Watergate Club (later renamed as the Comedy Theatre, and now known as the Harold Pinter Theatre.) This time, the play was well-received – although on the opening night in October, the crowd outside seemed more interested in Marilyn’s strapless red gown.
By January 1962, when A View From the Bridge came to the big screen, Miller and Marilyn were divorced. Raf Vallone, an ex-football star turned actor in Italian neo-realist movies like Bitter Rice (1949) and Two Women (1960) – and a dedicated anti-fascist – took the leading role of Eddie Carbone. Marilyn’s close friend and Miller’s college buddy, Norman Rosten, co-wrote the screenplay; Maureen Stapleton, who had performed a scene from Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie at the Actors Studio with Marilyn in 1956, played Beatrice; while Morris Carnovsky, one of Marilyn’s first teachers at the LA Actors Lab – and a past victim of the blacklist – was given a supporting role.
A French-Italian production, the movie’s exteriors were shot on location on the New York docks, while the studio scenes were filmed in Paris. Released in English and French versions, it also had the distinction of featuring one of the first on-screen kisses between two men shown in America, although it was depicted as an accusation rather than a tender moment.
Like so much of Miller’s later work, A View From the Bridge was given a warmer welcome in Europe than in his home country. In recent years, however, the play has been revived on Broadway to greater success, and is now considered among his finest work.
And finally, Mary Mallory also attended this rare screening at Cinecon…
For a change of pace, the Festival turned serious, showing a moving but intense ‘A View From the Bridge,’ adapted by Arthur Miller from his stage play. Directed by the young Sidney Lumet, the film featured strong performances from cast members Maureen Stapleton, Raymond Pellegrin, Morris Carnovsky, Raf Vallone, and newcomer Carol Lawrence, as an Italian American family is torn apart by a stepuncle’s growing passion for his attractive young ward. Following the film, a vibrant Lawrence regaled the crowd with stories of her career and the making of the film, just three days before her 92nd birthday.
