John Ford | Mary of Scotland / 1936

queen, woman, and wife

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dudley Nichols (screenplay, based on the play by Maxwell Anderson), John Ford (director) Mary of Scotland / 1936

 

The 1936 costume drama, Mary of Scotland, has not been treated well by most critics, particularly since its first showings in theaters. Pauline Kael listed it among her very worst movies. But frankly, I feel about it very much like the Tom Milne writes in the Time Out Film Guide:

 

“A better film than its reputation would suggest, marvelously shot by Joe August, and with Ford making striking use of the imposing RKO sets even while remaining strangled by the arty ambitions of Maxwell Anderson’s play (which contrives to reduce history to a novelette chronicling the jealous rivalry that drove Elizabeth Tudor to destroy Mary Stuart). One electric sequence—a hellfire sermon delivered by Moroni Olsen as John Knox—shows the extent to which Ford remained uninvolved elsewhere by the polite conversation of historical costume drama, but the performances are fascinating in the careful, slightly stilted way, and it looks terrific.”

     Yet there are a number of other serious problems. First of all, Katharine Hepburn, playing Mary, is somewhat miscast. She should have played Elizabeth, a role awarded instead to actor Fredric March’s wife, Florence Eldridge. She does a credible job as the virgin queen, tough, hard, and manly, determined to keep Mary for attempting to usurp her crown, although as the heir of James V and granddaughter of Margaret Tudor (daughter of Henry VII of England) she was thought to have a more legitimate claim to the crown throughout Europe than Elizabeth, given that Her claim was through her mother Anne Boleyn, whose marriage was annulled by Henry VIII. While Elizabeth has scrambled and fought her way to the top, Mary’s roles of queen of both France and Scotland simply have fallen into her lap.

       Returning from France, where she had been married to the young Francis, the Dauphin of France, a sickly young 15-year old married Mary, 16. She suddenly became now queen of France. But her husband died early of an ear and brain infection. Having spent now most of her life in France, Mary had no experience in the religious and rough factional struggles of the different clans in Scotland. Yet, in the film she returns almost as a kind of feminist, a forceful woman who despite her refusal to give up her Catholicism, appears ready to bring a new openness to Scottish religious rights. As critic Leigh Wakefield, writing in on her blog, observes:

 

“At first glance, Hepburn’s Mary looked promising. Returning to Scotland after 13 years in France, Mary of Scotland opens with a badass queen, who puts the ambitious Scottish Lords in their place and defies their domineering influence. Here was a woman who was not afraid to put her foot down and establish her queenly authority! Rather refreshingly, Mary wants to do things on her own terms, without the manipulation and intimidation of the men who resented her return to power. When confronted by her Scottish Lords about her single status, Mary cries: “I am going to live my own life; do as I say. I refuse to marry. I love no one and I shall marry no one. I’m going to begin to be myself, Mary Stuart!.”

   But the Privy Council are determined to keep the independent Mary in line. Although there is no lost love between them, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell (March), continues to support her, however, despite the fact that he is Protestant and she a Catholic. But she is soon pressured to find an appropriate husband to produce an heir. And particularly after pressure brough to bare by her dear friend and secretary, the Italian David Rizzio (John Carradine) she decides upon Henry Stuart, Lord Darnely (Douglas Walton). Darnely was actually a logical choice since he was also the primary heir to the British throne after Elizabeth’s death. By marrying him, she not only assured her possible rise to that position but made yet another claim for her son, with whom she is now pregnant.

     Outwardly, the historical Darnely, whom Elizabeth described as a tall lad—he was over 6 feet tall—was an excellent hunter, horseman, and skilled with weapons. But he was also, evidently bisexual, and had been having what appeared to be sexual relations with Rizzio even before his marriage to Mary. Commentators of the day reported often seeing the two lying in the same bed. Same sex relationships were not as sharply observed and it was not even considered that unusual in the 16th century for basically heterosexual men to also engage in same-sex activities. But Darnely’s friendship with Rizzio was noted by court observers and even passed on as information to Queen Elizabeth.

    Despite the censorship restrictions of presenting no homosexuality on the screen, Ford’s film makes it quite apparent that their Darnely is a fop and even an outright queer. Dressed in a hanging glass earring and behaving quite effeminately, Walton’s performance makes it clear, particularly compared with the macho performance of March, the Darnely is what will be later in history labeled as homosexual or queer. Several commentaries have suggested the work is highly “coded,” but if this represents “code” then the actual coded films that followed have to be described as purposely obfuscatory. I think even my parents, who like so many heterosexuals of their generation, could not even imagine homosexual characters when they witnessed them would have recognized Walton’s performance as being queer.

     When Darnley first encounters Mary’s ladies-in-waiting, the four Marys, he comments: “Ah, the four pretty wenches,” their response makes it quite apparent what their attitude is: “Five, my lord, now that you’re here.”

      Obviously, given the restrictions of the code, Ford dared not attempt to portray the relationship between Darnely and Rizzio, although it is certainly intimated by his strong argument that Mary agree to make Darnely her King consort. And later productions of the story do strongly engage with the full story.

      By this time, moreover, Darnely has fallen by this time out of favor, and along with his often drunken bouts, had lost any credibility with the queen and court. Enemies of the queen where able to convince him that her child may have been the offspring of Rizzio. Whether or not he believed them he was convinced that his own lover had betrayed him, and in frustration for his loss of court power as the King consort he permitted others entry to stab Rizzio 57 times, one of the knives used being his own.

      If he had thoughts that this might mend his relationship with Mary, he was highly mistaken, Mary cutting him entirely out of her daily life..

    Once again, Wakefield summarizes the shifts:

 

“It is Bothwell who is the hero. It is he who saves Mary, and it is he who keeps Mary’s reign afloat during times of hardship—not Mary. Not only did the film give Bothwell all the credit and undermine Mary’s abilities; it also ignored the real Mary’s claims that Bothwell assaulted her, and forced her to marry him against her will. Audiences are encouraged to champion Bothwell and adore him as much as Mary does, rather than see him as the horrific brute he truly was. Thus, Mary of Scotland is a Disneyfied celebration of traditional gender roles, such as dominating males and submissive females, rather than the hard-hitting reality of a toxic relationship. By falsifying (or at best, ignoring) a woman’s traumatic experience in favour of entertainment, in my eyes Mary of Scotland did the real Queen’s memory a huge disservice. The love scenes between the two of them were so gooey, that even Ford asked Hepburn, who whom he was having affair, to self-direct them. She did herself no justice, becoming just a now normative heterosexual female instead of an imperious queen.”

    A year after Mary gives birth to a boy, James, a still discontented Darnley threatens to disown his son as his legitimate heir. Before he is able to carry out his plan, however, Darnley is burned alive in his private refuge, which is destroyed by planted explosives. As Knox damns Bothwell as Darnley's murderer, the earl "kidnaps" Mary and, in defiance of the council, secretly marries her. Twenty days later, Moray abducts baby James, and the rebel lords attack Holyrod Castle. Outnumbered by Moray's troops, Bothwell finally agrees to leave Scotland if Mary is allowed to remain queen. In spite of his promises, Moray forces Mary to abdicate and, after imprisoning her, makes himself regent.

    Bothwell is forced to escape to Denmark for his life, while attempting to assure that Mary will remain queen. He himself, in this now condensed version of events, jailed where, promising to still save Mary, dies.

     She now forced to escape Scotland, is assured safe passage to England by Elizabeth, only to be locked away upon her arrival. In reality she was imprisoned for more than 18 years, but permitted her own staff of more 16 individuals and her full wardrobe. Eventually accused for treason, she was called in for a full inquisition and found guilty, a decision even she recognized had been decided beforehand.

     She never did meet with Elizabeth, although almost every drama and opera concerning their history cannot resist their imaginary meeting. In this case, it is Elizabeth who is strong and quite forthright, while Mary still sounds like woman smitten with traditional heterosexual love, which the movie prioritizes as if she, being more a true woman than Elizabeth, she has actually aced her rival. She argues, accurately, that no matter what happens, she has won; she has loved and fulfilled her woman desires, and James I will eventually become King. Elizabeth attempts yet again to find a compromise, to discover some way out of having to kill her rival, but Mary will not renounce her position and gives no way but for Elizabeth to move ahead with the execution.

    In the final frames of what has now become a truly disappointing movie, Mary climbs the seemingly endless stairs to her execution as lighting crackles through the sky, a truly hokey and un-Ford-like ending to a rather otherwise complex movie.

     James I reigned in Scotland, Ireland, and England, after Elizabeth’s death, the last Tudor Queen, for 22 years, also becoming the strongest of the Scottish Kings. Although he married Anne of Denmark, and with her fathered three children, James tended to prefer the company of men and some of his biographers suggest that he had love affairs with Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox; Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset; and George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. In most cases they were seen sharing beds and others claimed knowledge of their illegal acts of sodomy.

 

Los Angeles, September 24, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (September 2026).