Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

21. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

21 Th~ Trail of th~ Lon~som~ Pin~ Produced by the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company for Paramount release. Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Scenario by Jeanie Macpherson, from the novel by John Fox Jr. and the play by Eugene Walter (additional, uncredited writing by Cecil B. DeMille). Art director: Wilfred Buckland. Photography: Alvin Wyckoff Picture started: December 28, I9 I5. Picture finished: January 20, 191 6. Length: 4,613 feet (five reels). Cost: $22,249.12. Released: February 14, 1916. Gross: $77,944.00 Cast: Charlotte Walker Gune Tolliver), Thomas Meighan Gack Hale), Theodore Roberts ("Devil" Judd Tolliver), Earle Foxe (Dave Tolliver), Milton Brown, and Hosea Steelman (Tolliver men) Cecil B. DeMille's production of The Trail ofthe Lonesome Pine was the first version of John Fox's famous story to reach the screen, but it was not the first film version made of the novel. In early 1914 the Broadway Picture Producing Company started production on The Trail ofthe Lonesome Pine with Dixie Compton in the lead. The film was to have been the second Broadway Picture release. That same year the California Motion Picture Corporation asked Frank Paret to negotiate for film rights to the play with theatrical managers Klaw and Erlanger, who controlled Eugene Walter's play based on the novel. Paret found that a film version of the story was already in production. On May 15, 1914, he wrote to the general manager of the California Motion Picture Corporation: "Mr. David Young, President of Broadway Picture Producing Co., said three-fourths of the picture 'Trail of the Lonesome Pine' has been completed in the woods of New Jersey and he had already been in receipt of offers for Eastern State rights. He would not dispose of his interest for any amount of money that could reasonably be offered him. [However] The Western States territorial rights are still open."l Little more than a month later, Paret reported, "I understand the Broadway Picture Producing Co. has been or will be enjoined by Klaw & Erlanger from marketing 'Trail of the Lonesome Pine' film.... Even if Klaw & Erlanger do not win out, a lot of money 76 The Trail of the Lonesome Pine / 77 will be tied up meanwhile, and I am glad negotiations for this play have been abandoned."2 Although the Broadway Picture Producing Company's version of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine seems to have been produced in good faith with permission of the publisher of the novel, theatrical entrepreneurs Klaw and Erlanger felt that this film version infringed on their dramatic rights, leaving the screen rights available for acquisition by the Lasky Company. As in The Golden Chance, Macpherson and DeMille's adaptation of The Trail ofthe Lonesome Pine treats the romantic element in a grim and pessimistic manner. "I love him more than home, more than my people, more than God," declares June Tolliver in one of the film's more florid subtitles. Whether penned by John Fox Jr., playwright Eugene Walter, or Macpherson herself, this line is the clearest statement of a theme that runs through much ofher work with DeMille. The willingness to destroy one's world for the sake oflove is a melodramatic plot convention that predates DeMille by several centuries, but it is usually handled in a romantic manner as in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, where the heroine kills herself to be with her lover in death. DeMille and Macpherson, however, emphasize the devastation caused by a great love, not its transcendent joys. In The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, June Tolliver sees her cousin killed, her family's livelihood (albeit an illegal one) wiped out, and her once-powerful father reduced to ineffectual madness all for the sake of love. In the end only a vague hope of some future happiness remains. The film does not end with a lovers' kiss; instead, Jack Hale leaves the Blue Ridge Mountains with only a promise that he will return to make June Tolliver his wife. DeMille and Macpherson are said to have had a longstanding affair, and this decidedly negative approach to romantic subjects may have been a reflection of their own emotional states.3 Perhaps because she now had more experience acting for the camera, Charlotte Walker gives a stronger performance in The Trail ofthe Lonesome Pine than in Kindling. Walker originated the role of June Tolliver on stage, which may also account for the strength she brought to the part. Certainly after The Cheat and The...