1933 film
Ann Vickers is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic drama directed by John Cromwell and starring Irene Dunne and Walter Huston. It is based on the novel of the same name by Sinclair Lewis.
Plot
After a military officer (Bruce Cabot) gets Ann Vickers (Irene Dunne) pregnant and leaves her, she and friend Malvina Wormser (Edna May Oliver) go to Havana, where she gets an abortion. Feeling conflicted and regretful, Ann devotes herself to social work, taking a job in a women's prison. However, when she tries to improve the conditions there, she loses her job. She instead writes a book about the harsh realities of the prison and begins a romance with a married judge, Barney Dolphin (Walter Huston). Though progressive in his views, Dolphin is caught taking bribes and is sentenced to prison. Ann, once again pregnant, supports herself by writing until Dolphin is released a few years later. Finally, Ann, Dolphin, and their child are reunited.
Cast
Controversy
In the novel, Ann Vickers is a birth control advocate and reformer who has two extramarital affairs, each time becoming pregnant though unwed. The original screenplay, following Sinclair Lewis's novel, had her obtaining an abortion, but the story was changed so that she gives birth to a child who dies. The screenplay for the 1933 film was approved by the Production Code only when RKO Radio Pictures also agreed to make Vickers an unmarried woman at the time of her affairs, thus eliminating the issue of adultery.[1]
The reaction of leading American Roman Catholics to the content in this film and The Sign of the Cross led to the formation in 1934 of the Catholic Legion of Decency, an organization dedicated to identifying and combating what it viewed as objectionable content in films, usually by threatening a boycott.[2]
- ^ Hopwood, IMDb: “He made his name with Ann Vickers (1933) in 1933...based on [the] novel by the preeminent writer Sinclair Lewis [and] the film ran into censorship trouble. Lewis' "Ann Vickers" featured Irene Dunne as a reformer and birth control advocate who has a torrid extramarital affair. The novel had been condemned by the Catholic Church, and the proposed movie adaptation proved controversial. The Studio Relations Committee, headed by James Wingate (whose deputy was future Production Code Administration head Joseph Breen, a Roman Catholic intellectual) condemned the script as "vulgarly offensive" before production began. The SRC, which oversaw the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association's Production Code, refused to approve the script without major modifications, but RKO production chief Merian C. Cooper balked over its excessive demands. Though studio head B.B. Kahane protested the SRC's actions to MPPDA President Will Hays, the studio agreed to make "Ann Vickers" an unmarried woman at the time of her affair, thus eliminating adultery as an issue, and the film received a Seal of Approval. The battle over "Ann Vickers" was one of the reasons the more powerful PCA was created in 1934 to take the place of the SRC.
- ^ Black, Gregory D. (1996). Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. Cambridge University Press. pp. 162–164. ISBN 0-521-56592-8.
References
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