Shakespeare References in Classics Of The Silent Screen

I remember thinking it strange when I first heard that there were silent film adaptations of Shakespeare’s work. After all, isn’t language the main draw? In the Elizabethan times, people said they were going to hear a play, not see a play. But I’ve since watched several silent Shakespeare films and enjoyed them. This book by Joe Franklin does not focus on any of those films, but does mention a few of them. The section describing The Birth of a Nation begins with these words: “Writing a few paragraphs on The Birth of a Nation and hoping to do it some kind of justice is like trying to condense the Bible, or all the plays of Shakespeare, into a short synopsis” (p. 16). On the pages about Theda Bara, Franklin writes that she “was Juliet to Harry Hilliard’s Romeo in Romeo and Juliet” (p. 125). On the pages regarding Francis X. Bushman, another silent version of Romeo And Juliet is mentioned: “One of his earliest successes was as the most muscular of all Romeos, in 1915’s Romeo and Juliet. Juliet was Beverly Bayne, Bushman’s wife off-screen, a fact very much hushed up at the time, since it was feared that a married, and thus ‘unattainable,’ hero would lose much of his romantic appeal” (p. 140).

In the section on William S. Hart, Franklin writes: “But stardom in westerns came comparatively late; he spent twenty years first on the Broadway stage as a Shakespearean actor. It was from this period that the erroneous supposition grow that the ‘S’ in his name stood for Shakespeare; actually his middle name was Surrey. Even in his Shakespearean period however, Hart went in for a number of rugged roles, ranging from Messala in Ben Hur to The Squaw Man and The Virginian” (p. 177). (And yes, in the book “grow” is there, when it should be “grew.”) The pages on Sessue Hayakawa also mention Shakespeare: “Sessue, who is married to lovely Japanese star Tsuri Aoki (likewise a veteran of the silent screen), chose to be a Shakespearean actor after being educated for a Naval career, but made his greatest screen successes in roles anything but Shakespearean” (p. 179). Then on the pages about Emil Jannings, Joe Franklin writes, “In other words, Jannings was always Jannings – whether he was playing Henry VIII or Othello or a jealous suburban husband” (p. 180). And on the page about Norma Shearer, Franklin writes, “Thanks mainly to such spectacular sound films as Marie Antoinette and Romeo and Juliet, Norma Shearer is regarded primarily as a talkie star” (p. 220). And then: “It’s also usually forgotten that she also played Juliet before the 1936 film version, the previous occasion being for a sequence in M-G-M’s early sound extravaganza, The Hollywood Review of 1929 – in which she enacted one of Juliet’s love scenes to a Romeo played by John Gilbert” (p. 220). And once more: “Whatever it was, it paid off well, and continued to pay off, bolstered, of course, by acting refinements gathered during the years, in films as late as 1936’s Romeo and Juliet” (P. 220). At the end of the book, Joe Franklin answers questions that he had received in letters. One of the questions is, “Did Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks ever make a picture together?” His answer: “Two. They co-starred in a lively adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, which came out in both silent and sound versions. And Mary made a sort of ‘guest’ appearance in Doug’s The Gaucho” (p. 248).

Classics Of The Silent Screen was published in 1959.