Hester Prynne is dead!

Lillian Gish goes to the scaffold once more in an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

Thomas Bowdler's legacy

You might have noticed some cosmetic changes here at Dead 2 Rights lately. Allow me to explain them, as they represent some not-insignificant alterations to the site's content as well. First of all, this blog's flirtatious previous mascot, late pinup model Fran Gerard (aka Miss March 1967), has been replaced by the stern, unsmiling visage of one Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), an English physician best known for producing The Family Shakespeare.

Bowdler's infamous tome, first published in 1807, was a volume containing expurgated -- which is to say "cleaned-up" -- versions of William Shakespeare's plays. "Nothing is added to the text," proclaimed an 1819 advertisement, "but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family." So Lady Macbeth's "Out, damned spot!" became "Out, crimson spot!" Because of The Family Shakespeare, Bowdler's name became forever synonymous with censorship. To bowdlerize something is, in essence, to remove the naughty bits.

Thomas Bowdler's intentions were not altogether -- or even chiefly -- evil. He lived in a more prudish time than ours and simply wanted a version of the Bard that he could share with his wife and children. Because of Bowdler and his book (or, rather, series of books, for The Family Shakespeare was a franchise), the teaching of Shakespeare to younger children became more acceptable.

Other editors had gone much further than Bowdler, actually tacking on happy endings to some of Shakespeare's tragedies. Bowdler's work was meant to counteract that sort of desecration. But no matter: Thomas Bowdler was rendered a villain by history, a sour-faced scold who dared to censor the greatest writer in history. Tough luck, Tommy.

Nearly two centuries after Bowdler's death, writers and artists must still contend with the prevailing moral attitudes of their time. This blog, for instance, has been created on the Blogger platform. Blogger, in turn, is owned by Google. And Google has, I can assure you, an absolute horror of sex. They're not alone. Lots of people have a horror of sex. It disturbs them to a greater extent than any act of violence ever could. For many of these people, nudity and sex are synonymous. The image of a bared female breast is, for these people, a source of great discomfort. That's just a reality. It's how people think.

So what does this mean for me? Well, for the last few months, it has meant that my blog has had a "Content Warning" screen that readers had to click through before they could read whatever I'd just written. I opted to put one on there myself so that Google wouldn't do it for me. That would have been far too embarrassing. To be honest, though, I hated that warning, even though it was self-inflicted. I cringed every time it popped up on my own screen. Yes, even I had to click through it to reach my own blog. Even though I have never profited one dime from Dead 2 Rights, that warning made me feel like a pornographer. Like Hester Prynne, I was wearing a badge of sexual shame. Hers was red, mine was orange.

So this week, I did what I felt I had to do: I bowdlerized the holy hell out of Dead 2 Rights. In essence, I performed an exorcism on this blog... or, perhaps more accurately, a sexorcism. As far as I can remember, not a word of the text has been altered, though some links have been removed, as have some embedded videos.

Most crucially, over 50 images have been voluntarily altered rather than excised. Exposed breasts, vaginas, penises, and even asses have been dutifully blacked out. As you might imagine, this almost exclusively affects the Ed Wood Wednesdays series. I'm very proud of the work I have done on those articles, and I want them to remain easily available and accessible. If that means putting black rectangles over some boobies, so be it.

Thanks for understanding,

Joe

Mill Creek comedy classics #16: "His Double Life" (1933)

Former silent movie star Lilian Gish has something to say to Roland Young in His Double Life.

The flick: His Double Life (Paramount release of an Eddie Dowling Pictures production, 1933) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.2

Director: Arthur Hopkins (a few scattered film and TV credits; mostly known as a Broadway director, producer, and playwright from 1912 to 1948; his play Burlesque was performed three times on TV and ran twice on Broadway.)

Actors of note:

• Lilian Gish (The Night of the Hunter, The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, a 75-year film career)

• Roland Young (The Philadelphia Story, played the title role Topper and Topper Returns)

• Montagu Love (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Gunga Din)

• Lumsden Hare (at least three Hitchcock films: Rebecca, Suspicion, and The Paradine Case)

• Lucy Beaumont (The Crowd, The Devil-Doll)

• Roland Hogue (Broadway actor from 1917 to 1943)

The gist of it: Extremely reclusive artist Priam Farrel (Young) is England's greatest living painter, but no one knows what he looks like, not even his own cousin Duncan (Love). Trying to dodge a woman who wants to marry him, Farrel hides out in an obscure address with his valet, Henry Leek (Hogue), who quickly takes ill and dies. The attending physician assumes Leek is Farrel, and soon the news of the great artist's death spreads around the world. No one believes the real Farrel's story, and he becomes a penniless outcast, mocked wherever he goes.

Luckily, Henry Leek had been corresponding through a matrimonial service with sweet, uncomplicated Alice (Gish), who takes an immediate liking to Farrel and doesn't care who he is. Priam and Alice begin a cozy and blissful life together, but trouble arises when the artist goes back to painting in order to supplement the couple's modest income and his new canvases fall into the hands of a knowledgeable art dealer (Hare). Soon, our publicity-shy hero finds himself at the center of a very public trial over his identity.

Lovely Lillian Gish

My take: Initially, His Double Life has a problem similar to the one that plagued Lost Honeymoon. Specifically, it's another extremely contrived and unlikely romantic comedy with the tragic death of a perfectly nice person at its center. Nobody in this movie, not even long-time employer Priam or romantic pen pal Alice, thinks to mourn the real Henry Leek, an extremely dedicated servant who is still thinking of his boss's needs as he dies horribly from double pneumonia.

It should be some consolation that Leek is buried in Westminster Abbey, but this fact drives Priam mad with frustration and misplaced envy. He attends his own funeral and breaks down weeping -- not for Leek but for himself! Later in the film, an awful woman (Beaumont) and her idiotic twin sons, both curates, show up at Alice and Priam's cottage claiming to be Henry's long-abandoned family. But they're greedy opportunists trying to claim a reward, and they misidentify Priam as their paterfamilias. Luckily, in probably the movie's funniest scene, sensible Alice is able to frighten them away with a completely farcical story about her husband being insane, abusive, and worst of all, broke.

A silent star in only her second talkie, Lillian Gish is easily the best thing about His Double Life. Her character, Alice, is completely unflappable and keeps her wits even when Priam is panicking. She's not stoic or serious; she just accepts life as it comes and doesn't waste her energy worrying about things beyond her control. These qualities make her an excellent role model for men and women alike. Frankly, Priam is lucky to have her. Without her, the artist is just kind of a selfish, unlikable jerk.

Incidentally, apart from an obscure silent film in 1919, this was Arthur Hopkins' one big venture into movies. Truthfully, it's not bad from a directing standpoint. The opening shot, in fact, is rather tricky by 1933 standards. The film begins at an exhibition of Priam's paintings, and in one long, unbroken take, the camera crosses the room and catches fragments of various conversations as attendees gossip and speculate about the AWOL artist. Alice herself attends this event, and it's one of the movie's better running gags that she's the only one unimpressed by Priam's work. From what we see of his paintings, they're nothing special, just some slightly blurry landscapes. We have to take it on faith that he's a genius.

Is it funny: Not at first, no. In the early scenes, I didn't find Priam as endearing as I think he's intended to be, and the sight of poor Henry Leek on his deathbed -- a bit too convincingly played -- did not inspire great fits of laughter from me. Also, the film's gimmicky, high-concept plot requires a large leap of faith on the part of the viewer. But once Priam and Alice meet, the film lightens up considerably and becomes much more enjoyable. Most of my amusement came from Lillian Gish's utter nonchalance at the incredible circumstances in which she finds herself. She alone seems to realize that this is all a very trivial matter that could be easily sorted out.

Apart from Gish's scenes, much of the humor in His Double Life is of the bone-dry, oh-so-reserved British variety. A lot of the gags revolve around characters simply repeating phrases over and over like mindless automatons, such as a scene in which the jury at Priam's trial keep saying, "I see, I see" in perfect unison. This kind of joke is mildly amusing at best, and it certainly loses its charm over the course of an entire motion picture.

Other attempts at humor must not translate terribly well from 1930s England to 2010s America, like a moment when Priam imagines that all the people in the courtroom are wearing identical white masks. Monty Python fans, though, are likely to perk up for the appearance of some traditional English bobbies, wearing those high-crowned helmets and saying, "What's all this?" just the way they're supposed to.

My grade: B

P.S. - Nothing even close to a negative racial stereotype here. But we're not out of the woods yet, folks. There are still 84 movies left to go.