signaling a story that can’t be told
by
Douglas Messerli
Michael
Arlen and Bess Meredyth (screenplay, based of Arlen’s novel The Green Hat),
Clarence Brown (director) A Woman of Affairs / 1928
The 1928 film adaptation of Michael
Arlen’s 1924 fiction The Green Hat met up with the recent 1927 code that
movie executives had already created before the actual Hays Code of 1929. The
film script written by Arlen and Bess Meredyth was not permitted to state the
original book’s explanation why one of the major figures in the film, David Furness (Johnny Mack Brown), suddenly jumps to his
death soon after marrying Diana Merrick Furness (Greta Garbo), nor why her
brother and David’s dearest friend Jeffry Merrick (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) is
so excitable regarding everything about David and refuses after his death to
even see his sister. Nor could the script explain why Diana suddenly becomes so
ill that she nearly dies soon after having a one-night affair with her former
lover, Neville “Nevs” Holderness (John Gilbert). With all this censoring going
on, in fact, it’s a wonder that Clarence Brown’s film is still so very
watchable, forcing us to conclude that in its storyline this film is a
melodrama while perhaps visually it is one of the most interesting of the coded LGBTQ
movies of the period.
The film holds back its answer to
David’s death almost until the end, and the other two questions are simply left
in mid-air. Jeffry simply admires and would emulate David we are left to assume
on the narrative level, and his death naturally turns him even more into the
alcoholic he was becoming in the first scenes of the film. He won’t see his
sister because he presumes her lack of love for David had a great deal to do
with his friend’s death.
Diana’s own illness is expressed in the
story simply in response to having lost out in her lifelong love of “Nevs” to
his new bride Constance (Dorothy Sebastian) and his father Sir Morton
Holderness’ (Hobart Bosworth) long hatred of her because of her freer and open
attitudes toward living.
The beloved, much-admired, and seemingly
exemplary David Furness, it turns out—get ready for this!—was an embezzler,
about to be taken away to prison when he jumped out their bridal suite window
to his death.
No one with even the slightest ability
at age 10 to question whether or not there’s really a tooth fairy believes any
of this narrative nonsense, and if they did they certainly don’t deserve to
watch Brown’s intelligently directed film. For Brown and his significant actors
make it quite apparent through his images and their acting what is really
happening, while letting the plot go on its own merry way. They clearly signal
to us what the story is not allowed to say.
From the very first scenes, the young
Fairbank character, in a surprisingly intelligent performance, sits out long
periods of intense drinking with an almost manic exuberance any time his friend
David is around. He admires his “decency”—a word which the censors also
demanded instead of the word used in the original, “purity”—his honestly, and
nearly everything about him, especially his looks. He can hardly keep his hands
off him.
As Jeffry states it plainly: “There are
few chaps in the world as fine as you, David. I’m just a Merrick—all our men
die drunkards.” But when a moment later, David expresses his concern for his
friend: “I don’t like to see you drowning in alcohol,” Jeff immediately throws
his full glass into the hearth, without drinking for the rest of the evening.
And Jeff is furious when his sister Diana arrives late, having kept her
date David waiting for so long. She’s been out with Neville, the man she loves
which Gilbert plays so reservedly that we sometimes wonder if he’s all there.
It is certainly not the same man who so intensely embraced Garbo in Brown’s Flesh
and the Devil only two years earlier, a man who incidentally ended up in
love with his best friend. But then Gilbert’s character here is basically a
passive cypher.
Jeff doesn’t seem to mind if David might
marry Diana, sharing the same kind of attitude that Lew Ayres seems to take in
a similar film about a wealthy family, George Cukor’s Holiday of a
decade later, who is happy to see Cary Grant marry his sister just to keep him
near him—as long it’s the right sister, Linda (Hepburn) not the spoiled and
selfish Julia (Doris Nolan) to whom Grant’s character is engaged. Yet in
Brown’s A Woman of Affairs we also sense Jeff’s jealousy and resentment
in Diana’s treatment of his beloved David, along with his conviction that their
marriage will never take place.
The moment that
David wins the rowing competition for Cambridge the very next day, Jeffry leaps
down a substantial distance—almost as Fairbanks’ athletic father might have—from
the high banked viewing cabana where he has been watching the race with others in order to be at the river spot where David shores
his boat, the first to greet and congratulate him.
If this isn’t love, pure homosexual
desire—not youthful idolatry as the script would have it—I might never trust my
“gaydar” again. But I can fully trust Brown’s coding and strangely Fairbanks’
compliant acting. Jeffry loves David so deeply that when the latter jumps to
his death, Jeffry immediately retires to a room in order to drink himself to
death. The film allows no other logical explanation. In short, Jeffry is a
homosexual in love with David, whether or not they have ever engaged in sex.
Diana’s difficulties are more complex,
but they shout class snobbery on the part of Sir Holderness and his passive son
Neville, who allows his father to send him off to Egypt. Diana sees through the
plot immediately, that Neville has been sent away in order to keep him from
marrying her, the two having been “playful” lovers from childhood on, she,
however, having grown up to take it seriously even if Nevs has not.
Neville’s momentary rebellion ends the
moment his father sits him down for a talk, the son giving in almost before his
pater has opened his mouth with his well-stocked British platitudes about the
pride of familial generations (“I know you will do what is right. Ten
generations are watching you.”) No wonder Gilbert appears throughout unable to
“act,” not only act as a character but to even act out his
character; there is nothing there for him to embody.
Poor Diana is left alone at their kissing-tree for Neville’s father to
break the news, she, with her own pride, making a “gentlemanly” agreement that
she will not interfere with Neville’s future decisions.
In Nevs’ long absence, Diana seemingly
gives into the patient courting of David Furness, but apparently will still not
give into his sexual needs, loving Neville even for having lost him. The scene
they have together is a rather odd one, soon after their marriage, he still
having rice in his pocket.
Garbo lies in the middle of her bridal
bed, the light brightly shining behind her, with the groom outside of two
large, closed doors, apparently afraid of entering or, at least, fervently
debating whether to enter. Finally, he taps gently on the door, she inviting
him in. He goes to her, kisses her forehead and tells her he loves her, pausing
to complain that she has never once told him that she loves him. Her answer
evades the question: “You are fine and honorable David. I want to make you
happy.” At that moment there is a knock on the outer door, and David creeps
away from the bridal bed to be greeted by two strange men.
David drops the rice in his hand almost
as if it were a magic talisman, the two men entering the Hotel de Deauville
suite. Back in the bedroom, we watch Diana pull the light switch off and then
on again, on and off, on and off, as if were madly signaling for help, a boat
about to crash on an unseen shore or shoal.
One of the men produces a large metal object that at first glance looks
almost like a claw or a huge ring rather than being what we eventually perceive
it to be, one of a pair of manacles. Getting out of the bed, Diana enters the
living space. For a moment David seems sick, but suddenly rushes over to the
window, opens it, and leaps out to his death.
No one can believe that David would have any reason to have committed
suicide, to have willingly jumped from the window, and Diana allows that belief
to remain until Jeffry arrives insisting on the only other interpretation, that
she has been the cause of his death, that her inability to truly love him has
led him to take his own life. All the others accept milder views in accordance
with that prescription. And, accordingly, she has no choice after but to live
the lie they have imagined and created for her, taking on lover after lover
throughout Europe, a catalogue of men later nicely collaged for us through a
reporter’s leafing through his newspapers’ files as background work for Diana’s
return to England upon discovering of her brother’s severe alcoholic illness.
Before we move forward in the plot,
however, let us quickly think back over the events that happened that fateful
night of David Furness’ death. What if, as the plot later argues, he had
been an embezzler and, desiring to do the decent thing, had told his wife. She
stands by him, but cannot truly love him, obviously, and does not wish sex,
although what sex has to do with it at this point is not quite clear. The
detectives show up with handcuffs ready to cart him off to jail, and he, unable
to face those who have believed him to be so decent, jumps to his death. It
almost makes sense.
Yet questions remain. Why is he so
fearful of simply entering her room for marital sex if he has been honest with
her and she has still accepted him in marriage? How can she possibly describe
him as still being “honorable” if he is an embezzler? Although the signal that
danger is ahead may arise from her fear of his arrestment, who is she
signaling? Herself? And why did the prop man choose such an absurdly large pair
of manacles that look more like claws than police detective handcuffs.
I suggest that the director is telling
us that what we later are hear about this series of events is mistaken.
Everything is wrong with this picture. A thief cannot be honorable. A woman
does not signal to herself of an upcoming threat. The police do not play with
props that exaggerate the circumstances of the character’s crime. An everyday
thief is simply arrested and jailed. Perhaps even the leap from the window
seems in excess. The entire scene does not fit the melodramatic circumstances,
but seems to be something out of a noir of a few years later. One might
accuse the usually precise director Brown, in this case, of pure exaggeration.
For the scene does truly shock us, and we seek an answer to these events even
when we are told the full story near the end of the work, accepting it like a
key that doesn’t quite fit.
Neville, meanwhile, is engaged to the family-approved Constance. She is
the kind of perfect young wife that money is always able to sniff out: truly
innocent, fresh, beautiful, and what some might say, almost mindless except for
the fact that we soon discover her to be a rather intelligent sleuth. Even as
we first encounter her and Neville at a quiet family dinner with their and the
Merricks’ mutual friend Dr. Hugh Trevelyan, she knows something is amiss as
Diana herself—the woman who after her husband’s death is unwelcome back in
Britain—brings a message to the doctor asking him to come immediately to help
save Jeffry’s life.
Jeffry, as we know, cannot be saved. Even
in 1928 Hollywood had already established the precedent that gay men must die.
(See my comments on The Barefoot Boy of 1914). And this film is not even
on Vito Russo’s list of all the queers Hollywood killed off over the years.
The occasion of Diana’s visit, however, leads to Neville’s realization,
just three days before his wedding, that he is still in love with Diana. And
even as Diana speeds away with the good doctor, Constance perceives that she
has to get to know more about this legendary woman, particularly since, she
soon realizes, the “huntress” still controls her husband’s heart.
Neville and Diana link up again
immediately after Diana takes the doctor to her brother, leading to a one-night
affair in which the film shows them not even having removed their formal
clothes—their encounter symbolized only by the fact that Diana, after kissing
him, retreats to the bedroom—before the doctor shows up in their room
announcing Jeffry’s death. Diana becomes pregnant and later suffers a
miscarriage, while the always obedient Nevs returns to his Cons, attempting to
live happily ever after.
Nevs knows nothing about Diana’s
pregnancy or the miscarriage, and, for that matter, neither do we.
Superficially all we both know is that Diana now lies sick in a Paris hospital.
Once again Doctor Trevelyan serves as the go-between, visiting Neville and his
bride to beg him to visit Diana in the hospital where she keeps repeating his
name.
Constance now knows enough to demand he
go, and is ready to pack his bags, but he, pretending to be the honorable man
for once, insists his wife join him. He meets up with the woman now in a
feverish semi-coma, not even able to recognize him. But when he leaves her
room, Diana gets up out of bed to find the flowers which the doctor has just
removed. Finding them on the nurses’ desk she holds them in one arm that can
suggest only two things: that she has just won a beauty contest or that she is
embracing a baby, of which obviously only the latter applies. So Brown tells us
the truth, we realize what she has kept from Neville and which the writers have
been forced to keep from us. Her desire to see Neville now makes sense, and his
return comforts her, bringing her back to reality.
But in that reality she now spots Constance
and once more is forced to do the “decent” or the “pure” thing, denying their
love for the wife’s sake, even if this seemingly innocent child has by now
recognized that she will never again fully have the love of her husband.
When Diana finally returns again to
England, smuggled in, as she puts it, by Trevelyn, Neville meets up with her,
this time insisting that they marry after his divorce from the woman who he has
now made to suffer. A final showdown with Sir Holderness, who in his last stand
attempts once more to prevent their love, even calls up her relationship with
David Furness, which finally brings forth the “truth” the cinema has supposedly
been withholding, Neville revealing—over Diana’s protests that “it is the one
thing that must never be told”—that her husband was an embezzler. “He killed
himself because he was going to prison. Diana paid his thefts and kept his name
clean—that’s decency!” But even here, so Diana claims, Neville has stolen one
last time from her, in this instance, as she puts it, “You’ve taken from me the
only gracious thing I’ve ever done.”
She rushes off in her auto, crashing
into the kissing-tree where she is killed.
Once more, we feel like we are in one
room observing characters acting in a manner that suggests something of the
greatest gravity, while being told a story about a liar and a mere thief whose
robberies Diana has attempted to cover up. Something is still wrong with this
story, signaled, just as Garbo previously did, by the director’s visual
presentation.
We’re encouraged, in this respect, to
further question the information the plot has put upon the table. From whom,
for example, did David, who appears to have been a Cambridge student, embezzle
thousands of dollars? The story doesn’t even suggest he is employed. For what
purpose has he stolen all this money, surely not to live a richer lifestyle
since he seems to be living a rather ordinary existence, despite his
well-tailored tuxedo which every young man wore in those days? And why is his
having stolen money something “that never can be told,” words that reverberate
with Oscar Wilde’s statement about loving one’s own sex. Within the movie
itself there are no answers, but many in the audience of the day would have
read Arlen’s notorious book, and would have known that David’s real “dilemma”
was not a crime but a condition, that he had been infected with syphilis. The
signal that Garbo in her wedding bed was signally was not herself, but to her
audiences. Pay attention to what is about to happen; it isn’t what it looks
like—or for that matter what we will be later told it was.
According to the notions of the day,
when venereal disease was the equivalent of AIDS, literature and cinema would
have pointed to only two relevant sources of such a disease: 1.) a heterosexual
involvement with servants (as in Ibsen’s Ghosts) or regular encounters
with female prostitutes; 2.) if one were engaged in “perverted” sexual
activities such as homosexuality. We have no evidence at all of David being a
heterosexual cad, particularly if we recall that Jeffry thinks him to be “pure”;
but we have even reason to suspect that he might have been gay, having sexual
encounters with Diana’s brother, which may also account for his own drinking
and early death.
If he was gay, it was still
understandable why he may have wanted to marry; there was no way in 1928 to be
openly gay and be perceived as a “decent” fellow, let alone a “pure” one, with
which the original fiction aligns him. Like the boy in Tennessee Williams’ A
Streetcar Named Desire who married Blanche Dubois, his homosexuality, one
can presume, made it difficult to consummate the marriage.
As an honorable man, a decent man, the
person everyone knew David to be, he would surely have told his wife of his
situation, and his vacillation to even enter her room on their wedding night
suddenly makes perfect sense, as well, unfortunately, as does his sudden leap
out the window; while the visitation of the detectives makes little sense, as
if they were a manifestation of some dream-like fear, signified by the outsized
handcuffs. We now can comprehend why for Diana the truth “cannot be told.”
Even Brown’s film could not tell that
truth, despite the director’s and his actor’s endless signaling of it. The
tragedy of this story suddenly redeems Brown’s seemingly overstated
melodramatic gestures.
Brown, it is often noted in film
commentaries, was Garbo’s favorite director; but so too was he a favorite of
Joan Crawford, Lionel Barrymore, John Gilbert, and Clark Gable. In this film,
as well as the earlier Flesh and the Devil, Garbo is revealed as a woman
who enters a room, sits on a couch, or stares into space unlike any female
US-born actor of the day. And in this early film we meet a Douglas Fairbanks,
Jr. who bears little resemblance to his more common role as an acrobatic
womanizer.
This MGM movie is still very much available;
but studio censors, not the Hays Code people, almost made this film a lost one
hiding in plain sight.
Los
Angeles, June 29, 2022
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (June 2022).
