Unsophisticated Lady: The Vicissitudes of the Maternal Melodrama in Hollywood

During the transition to sound in Hollywood, several articles in the film industry trade press suggested that audiences were no longer interested in "sophisticated" fare and that the new technology had occasioned the resurrection of "10–20–30 style melodrama" or "old tear-jerking hits."¹ Most of the films to which the journalists referred were adaptations of well-known stage plays—Madame X, East Lynne, Common Clay—that fell under the generic rubric of what present-day critics have called the maternal melodrama. This essay investigates the reception of such films across the course of the 1920s and early 1930s in order to shed light upon what was considered "old fashioned melodrama" in the period, and to explain shifts in critical attitudes toward the genre.

The maternal melodrama derives from several late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth-century theatrical proto-types. Although there are many narrative variants, the basic plot concerns a mother who is suspected of adultery and expelled from her home, thereby becoming separated from her children. She suffers degradation, sometimes becoming a drug addict or a prostitute. After a long period of separation, she again encounters her children who do not recognize her. In East Lynne, a perennially popular stage melodrama based upon Ellen Price Wood's best-selling novel of 1861, the mother returns to her former home in disguise and takes a position under her husband's new wife, acting as nursemaid to her own children. She nurses her son during an illness and dies of grief after his death (in the 1925 film version, by Fox, the boy lives as a result of her care and only the mother dies; in the 1931 film version, also by Fox, the boy is not ill and his mother goes blind before dying). In Madame X, from Alexandre Brisson's play of 1908, the mother stands accused of murder and is defended by her son, now grown and a lawyer, who does not realize her connection to him.

The genre has been discussed by film scholars from several perspectives. Christian Viviani first coined the term "maternal melodrama" in a special issue of Les Cahiers de la Cinémathèque devoted to film melodrama as such.² Less concerned with questions of genre, feminist scholars have interrogated the maternal melodrama's representation of motherhood, and the appeal of stories of maternal suffering and self-sacrifice for women spectators.³ While there are good reasons for using the genre to pose theoretical questions about the structure of female fantasy, this approach does not give us a good handle on the historical problem of reception. In the 1920s, these films were not primarily understood as "women's pictures." Rather, within the film industry trade press, the films were discussed in terms of long-standing oppositions between rural and urban theaters, and naïve and sophisticated taste. An awareness of these oppositions is crucial for understanding the cultural status of the maternal melodrama as well as the variation in its reception over time.

Take the example of William Fox's Over the Hill to the Poorhouse, directed by Harry Millarde, a successful 1920 release based upon poems by Will Carleton published in his Farm Ballads in 1873.⁴ Although a print apparently survives at the Archives françaises du film du Centre National de la Cinématographie in Paris, copies are not widely available. The following summary was submitted by Fox to the Library of Congress for copyright purposes in October 1920:

Where is the mother that has ever given a thought to the sacrifices made for her children? Ma Benton slaved for hers and has seen them drift away one by one, with the exception of John, the harum-scarum, who cannot marry Isabella Strong because he cannot support her; and Charles, whose desire to become an artist has kept marriage from his mind. To his brothers and sisters, John is a standing reproach. Particularly does he irritate his oldest brother, Isaac, a pillar of the church. Only his parents and sweetheart have faith in him.

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