Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

39. Forbidden Fruit

39 Forbidd~n Fruit A Famous Players-Lasky Super Production. A Paramount-Artcraft Picture. A Cecil B. DeMille Production. Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Original story and scenario by jeanie Macpherson. Art director: Wilfred Buckland. Photography: Alvin Wyckoff and Karl Struss. Production manager: Howard Higgin. Costumes : Claire West (department head), Mitchell Leisen, and Natasha Rambova Picture started: july 13, 1920. Picture completed: October 2, 1920. Cost: $339,752.00. Length: 7,941 feet (eight reels). Released: February 13, 1921. Gross: $848, I21.87 Cast: Agnes Ayres (Mary Maddock), Clarence Burton (Steve Maddock), Forrest Stanley (Nelson Rogers), Theodore Roberts (Mr. Mallory), Kathlyn Williams (Mrs. Mallory), Theodore Kosloff (Giuseppe, the butler), Winter Hall (the bishop), Shannon Day (Nadia Craig), Bertram johns Uohn Craig), and julia Faye (maid) Famous Players-Lasky was reluctant to give DeMille the green light on a big picture and anxious to break up the director's winning team of leading players. Gloria Swanson and Bebe Daniels demonstrated enough box-office appeal to be handed over to less-expensive directors, and the studio felt that the market for historical spectacles was still unpredictable . Searching for his next picture in this atmosphere, DeMille returned to one of his earlier successes. While Forbidden Fruit has many virtues, it lacks the intensity and simplicity of its predecessor, The Golden Chance. Jeanie Macpherson's basic scenario remains intact, but there are significant alterations: A fantasy sequence added by DeMille and Macpherson points up the parallels to Cinderella and pares down the wretched details of the heroine's home life. The hard-edged original was further embellished with a happy ending designed to meet audience expectations and downplay the moral ambiguity of the tale. These changes contribute little, although the Cinderella sequences (scattered throughout the picture rather than isolated in a single flashback episode) are extraordinary in design. Forbidden Fruit demonstrates DeMille's use ofvisual motifs to con158 Forbidden Fruit / 159 vey character. The meddling Mrs. Mallory is seen manipulating tiny paper-doll cutouts of a dinner-party seating planner-she manipulates people's lives as well. Mary Maddock's predicament is visualized by the wedding ring that traps her in a frustrating relationship and a wild orchid offered by her new love. Mary also owns a caged bird that only wants to sing, but her husband tries to silence its song. These illustrative metaphors are far from subtle, but they are used with effect. The standout sequence in Forbidden Fruit is Maddock's burglary of the Mallory home. Unaware that his wife is a weekend houseguest, Maddock enters a bedroom in the middle of the night to steal Mrs. Mallory's jewels. In the dim glow ofhis flashlight, Maddock approaches the bed. Just as he realizes he is about to rape his own wife, Mary wakes up to see Maddock's half-lit face hovering inches above her head. The scene at the bed in The Golden Chance is dramatic and disturbing, but it is mostly played in a single shot that takes in all the action. In Forbidden Fruit DeMille pulled out all the stops, carefully building a sequence of shots that blend suspense, sexual voyeurism, and terror in a cinematic tour de force. DeMille also managed to make a sly and biting comment on Prohibition . With the nation preoccupied by World War I and under pressure from the Anti-Saloon League, the Women's ChristianTemperance Union, and other special interest groups, Congress voted to submit a constitutional amendment to the states in December 1917. The amendment read: "After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited ." With the approval offorty-six of the forty-eight states, Prohibition became the law of the land on January 16, 1920. Contempt for the law was not universal, but it was immediately apparent the nation's elected representatives had voted with their campaign contributors rather than with the majority view on the issue. The muddle-headed amendment failed to prohibit the purchase or consumption of alcohol, and it also ignored basic human nature. With Prohibition came increased desire for the new forbidden fruit, and a bootleg industry in rum-running and bathtub gin sprang up to supply the demand.! Surprisingly, Hollywood paid Prohibition little attention, either ignoring the subject entirely or picturing it as a mere inconvenience. Booze was glorified on...