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14. People Will Talk
- University Press of Mississippi
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225 C H a p t e r 1 4 People Will Talk wHen swanson walKed off tHe set of QUEEN KELLY in JanUary 1929, she had already spent more than $600,000 on Stroheim’s vertiginous vision of a convent girl’s coming of age. Swanson, however, was not a schoolgirl but a veteran performer and producer with almost fifteen years’ experience in the business. She shut down an expensive picture because, finally, she trusted her own judgment. She knew the film would be unacceptable to the censors and her fans, and she was unwilling to spend more time and money on a project she herself found objectionable. QueenKelly would ultimately be an important chapter in the real-world education of its star. After Gloria’s distress call, Joe Kennedy engaged a consultant to review the footage. Eugene Walter’s assessment was lengthy and scalding: “In an attempt to be bizarre and unusual . . . the director has been vulgar, gross, and fantastically impossible . . . He has utterly lost every element of human, natural characterizations.” There were serious problems with story construction throughout: the plot was clumsy, implausible, and “deadly monotonous.” Walter found nothing to like in any of the main characters, and as a star vehicle it was unacceptable. Swanson’s character was “negative, retreating, passive and at no time does one single, solitary thing which would show any evidence of strength, or individuality, of charm . . . Any third class leading woman could play the part.” Stroheim had made Kelly “either the most exasperating sap or a potential prostitute .” Then, too, “the ethics of a convent girl . . . living off the earnings of prostitutes and running a house of ill fame, are at least questionable.”1 Then Walter saw the African scenes: Here language fails me. Outside of the clumsiest and most unbelievable expedients for telling the story, we have this revolting spectacle p e o p l e w i l l ta l K 226 of the Madam of [the] whore-house on her deathbed . . . being given the last rites by a shiny, sweating nigger priest. . . . [It] is revolting and smacks of sacrilege. When this ceremony is over . . . a mouthing, tobacco-spitting, indescribably repulsive character . . . induce[s] the colored priest to marry the unwilling [Kelly] to him. I am a non-Catholic, but I have never been so shocked, so revolted at anything I have seen in years. . . . It was in execrable taste. Following this the picture shows the repulsive, repugnant man entering the bride’s chamber for his first liaison, while he beckons to a crowd of thirty or forty prostitutes of the bawdy-house to take a peek while he accomplishes his end.2 It might be possible to “disinfect” the African scenes, Walter concluded, but “the picture as it is now is not coherent, believable, in good taste, human, or acceptable from any possible angle.” For Stroheim’s gorgeous sets and lighting effects he spared one sentence: “The production is magnificent [but it is] gilding the manure pile.”3 How had QueenKelly gotten so far out of hand? Not surprisingly, accounts differ. Some blame Swanson and Kennedy, who should have kept a closer eye on Stroheim. The director needed one strong producer, not several absentee associates. Furthermore, the script should have been cut to size before production began. Stroheim reliably presented certain challenges: as Swanson noted, “It could cost $2,000 just to get a close-up of an ashtray.”4 These challenges could—at least in theory—have been managed more adroitly. Yet Stroheim’s determination to put his own vision on screen led to what Richard Koszarski calls “truly flagrant abuses ” of the understanding he had with his leading lady and producer.5 Combine this with Kennedy’s longing for a prestige production to raise his own profile in the industry and Swanson’s desire to rely utterly on her lover’s judgment. Add the uncertainty attendant on the coming of sound, and in QueenKelly you have the makings of a perfect storm. Swanson worried and waited for Kennedy to arrive: “My brain twirled. I walked floors, I tossed in bed. How do we save it? Does one cut the first third of the picture and still save the story? My imagination went wild—it had full rein.”6 Derr advised Kennedy that Stroheim was in “flagrant violation” of his contract and urged him to stop the director’s paycheck immediately. Kennedy proposed instead that Stroheim finish the silent picture for European distribution...