"In Elf Land Disporting": Sister Carrie in Hollywood

"IN ELF LAND DISPORTING": SISTER CARRIE IN HOLLYWOOD Robert E. Morsbebgeb In the early 1950s, Hollywood showed a sudden interest in filming Dreiser. Paramount made an impressive 1951 movie from An American Tragedy, modernized , greatly shortened, and retitled A Place in the Sun. In the same year, Universal produced Dreiser's short story, "The Prince Who Was a Thief," as an Arabian Nights extravaganza with Tony Curtis in his first starring role. Meanwhile, Sister Carrie was in production at Paramount. William Wyler was to direct the screenplay by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, who had recently adapted Henry James's Washington Square into The Heiress, a successful stage play even more effective as a 1949 Academy Award-winning film directed by Wyler. For Sister Carrie, Wyler persuaded Laurence Olivier, whom he had directed twelve years before in the celebrated movie of Wuthering Heights, to come from Britain to play Hurstwood. The film was released in 1952 as Carrie, presumably because audiences would be puzzled by "Sister" and perhaps think it was about a nun. Olivier gave a brilliant performance; and Jennifer Jones as Carrie, Eddie Albert as Drouet, and Miriam Hopkins as Mrs. Hurstwood were effective. With such a combination of talent, the film should have been great or at least distinguished. It was superior to run-ofthe -mill movie fare; but despite some memorable scenes, it fell far short of greatness and not only lost much of the impact of Dreiser's relentless story but turned a grimly naturalistic novel into a romantic soap opera. An examination of how this happened is revealing both as a study of Dreiser and of Hollywood. The basic flaw is in the scenario, and it seems to be the joint responsibility of the Goetzes and of William Wyler. The movie keeps Dreiser's basic story intact, but a number of minor yet significant alterations throughout, plus a falsification of the ending, results in a crucial distortion. This distortion is particularly interesting because the second draft of the scenario is much closer to Dreiser's original. This draft makes some small but radical departures from the book, but the last third of the final version departs even farther from the details as well as from the spirit of Dreiser's naturalism. Essentially, the screenplay, combined with Wyler's direction and the presence of gushy background music drenching many key scenes, romanticizes the story throughout, ennobling both Hurstwood and Carrie and inserting extenuating circumstances for both of them. Wyler's previous credits included such competently slick and genteel movies as Mrs. Miniver (1942) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); later he was to direct Roman Holiday, Friendly Persuasion, Ben-Hitr, and Funny Girl. Perhaps the success of their 219 220RMMLA BulletinDecember 1973 recent bittersweet Victorian film, The Heiress, prompted him to team up again with the Goetzes to find another period piece among American literary classics. But Dreiser's world is poles apart from Henry James's, and Carrie is no Catherine Sloper or Isabel Archer. Even in The Heiress, the Goetzes had made one double-barreled concession to romantic melodrama. Whereas in Washington Square Morris simply fades out of Catherine's life, in the adaptation he arranges to elope with her and then fails to appear, leaving her waiting in increasingly hopeless suspense for the carriage that does not come. In the novel, Morris reappears twenty years later, fat, bald, and bearded; Catherine simply sends him away. The Goetzes altered this to have the jilted Catherine develop into a striking, forceful woman. Morris returns after only a few years; she permits him to woo her again, embraces him passionately, and arranges for another elopement. This time, she gets her revenge by leaving him outside, pounding in vain on her locked door. These two changes are effective theatre, but the conclusion distorts the character of Catherine, who in James's treatment is incapable of revenge or theatrics and who simply adheres to her stubbornly won integrity. Despite a highly literate script, this sort of romantic melodrama falsifies much of the movie Carrie. The second draft is prefaced by the Foreword: "Here is a story of two people. One fell from eminence and safety to...