Page 31 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

20 I Shakespeare in the Movies

Even the play, however, was less than pure Shakespeare. In the
most embarrassing screen credit of all time, the sound version listed
"additional dialogue by director-adapter Sam Taylor," which explains
why, during the first meeting of the loving antagonists, things go
something like this:
PETRUCHIO: Howdy, Kate.
KATE: Katherine to you, mug.
Although Charlie Chaplin (who founded U.A. with friends Fair-
banks, Pickford, and D. W. Griffith) is not credited, it's easy to
believe he lent a helping hand in creating tone, atmosphere, and
comedic sensibility. Most of Shakespeare's dialogue is replaced with
knockabout comedy of the Sennett-Chaplin variety. Actors whack
each other regularly, whereas the Bard's intention had been to pur-
posefully cut back on physical abuse found in earlier shrew plays.
Such physical-comedy sparring holds up on its own vulgar level and
is preferable to the overwrought dialogue. Pickford and Fairbanks,
like most silent-screen stars, were ill suited to sound, owing to their
reliance on an exaggerated mimelike approach that had compensated
for the lack of speaking voices. Sadly, they continued acting in that
manner after sound was added.
At least Fairbanks, with his athletic agility, seemed right, in terms
of physicality and star persona, for Petruchio. Not so Pickford, who
patented an early-Hollywood, late-Victorian vision of extreme sweet-
ness combined with quiet strength. If the public in the Roaring Twen-
ties was ready for more complicated screen women, they did not want
the "Girl With the Curl" to play such roles. Mary was anything but a
shrew; playing one, she worked against the grain of her natural gifts.
The more restrained Bianca (Dorothy Jordan) subplot was allowed
only one early scene, then unceremoniously dumped, paring away
any hope of a complex comedy. Finally, the film appeared to sud-
denly stop rather than truly end when all the main characters
enjoyed a round of drinks, following Petruchio's demand, "Kiss me,
Kate!" In its time, this Shrew was accepted as an end-of-decade
retrowarning; Kate's decision to domesticate, while swearing alle-
giance ,to her male as master, implied it was time for aging flappers,
having enjoyed their decade-long fling, to do much the same thing.
After all, the Great Depression had put an end to wild, wanton
living. The pendulum had swung, and America turned socially con-
servative once more. So did Hollywood, as evidenced by this film's
interpretation of Shakespeare's immortal play.