Marie Antoinette (1938)

Cast:

Norma Shearer ... Marie Antoinette
Tyrone Power ... Count Axel de Fersen
John Barrymore ... King Louis XV
Robert Morley ... King Louis XVI
Anita Louise ... Princesse de Lamballe
Joseph Schildkraut ... Duke d'Orléans
Gladys George ... Mme. du Barry
Henry Stephenson ... Count de Mercey
Cora Witherspoon ... Countess de Noailles
Barnett Parker ... Prince de Rohan
Reginald Gardiner ... Comte d'Artois
Henry Daniell ... La Motte
Leonard Penn ... Toulan
Albert Dekker ... Comte de Provence (as Albert Van Dekker)
Alma Kruger ... Empress Maria Theresa

Directed by W.S. Van Dyke & Julien Duvivier.
Produced by Hunt Stromberg & Irving Thalberg.
Based on the book by Stefan Zweig.
Screenplay by Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart, & Ernest Vajda.
Original Music by Herbert Stothart.
Cinematography by William H. Daniels.
Film Editing by Robert Kern.
Art Direction by Cedric Gibbons.
Costume Design by Arian & Gile Steele.
Make-Up Design by Jack Dawn.
Sound Recording by Douglas Shearer.
Special Effects by Slavko Vorkapich.
Camera and Electrical Effects by Louis Kolb.

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Picture.
Los Angeles Premiere on July 8, 1938.
Released August 26, 1938.

Box Office Information:
Cost of Production: $2,926,000.
Domestic Gross: $1,633,000.
Foreign Gross: $1,323,000.
Total Gross: $2,956,000.
Loss: $767,000.

Background:
Marie Antoinette…the colossal Metro Goldwyn Mayer epic made to top all of its past successes. The mightiest studio in Hollywood had succeeded---for more than fourteen years---at providing quality entertainment for the masses with solid production value. The average MGM film was equivalent to that of another major studio output, and its roster of stars topped all popularity polls throughout the 1930s.

Of its top stars, Norma Shearer was undoubtedly the biggest. To some, that popularity had been given to her by her late husband. But to the ones who were in contact with reality knew better, as the lavishness Marie Antoinette would showcase.

While vacationing in Europe with Irving Thalberg after his heart attack at the MGM Christmas Party for 1932, Norma Shearer stumbled across a copy of Stefan Zweig’s biography on Marie Antoinette, the doomed Queen of France amidst the uprising of the French Revolution. In Gavin Lambert’s Norma Shearer: A Life, the biographer writes about Shearer’s identification with Antoinette as more than just a good movie.

As Lambert writes…

“The parallels between Norma Shearer Thalberg and Zweig’s portrait of Marie explain why the book held a deep personal meaning for her. Zweig’s account of Marie when she became Queen of France---‘surrounded by the incense-fumes of extravagance idolization' and the center of a 'circle of planetary admiration’---reads like a paraphrase of Norma as Queen of the Lot, and he might have been describing her at a premiere when he wrote, ‘Whenever she appeared in the streets, the populace, thronging to see her, shouted acclamations.'"

Norma’s personal identification with the life of Marie Antoinette made the project all the more important for her, and Irving’s own enthusiasm for the production was heightened by MGM’s belief that Marie Antoinette could be popular enough to bring in prestige and profit for the studio. But conception of a final script became difficult. Because of the production code, Marie’s scandalous court life had to be toned down for the screen, her affair with Count Axel de Fersen all but implied. Not only this, but more than twenty years of drama had to be cut into no more than three hours of film.

By the time the final script was completed, something still seemed to be missing. To many, this the reason why Marie Antoinette did not become a Gone with the Wind(1939) or Cleopatra (1963). The final film carried on with Marie’s implied love affair with Fersen, giving us glimpses of excellence---in both writing and acting---of such moments as the storming of Versailles and Marie’s imprisonment. Had the affair been cut from the movie, with more drama and action thrown in, perhaps Marie Antoinette could have been twice as successful, but whether or not this is definite we will never know.

The extended production for the film was also caused by the research done by MGM’s research department and their chief costume designer, Adrian. Thousands were spent on antique furniture, filming of the Palace of Versailles, and on fine fabrics for Adrian’s creations for Norma and the entire cast. The added bonus of Technicolor made the detail all the more important.

As with sound, Metro Goldwyn Mayer was sluggish with the Technicolor technology. Two-strip Technicolor had been all the rage with films like The Toll of the Sea (1923), The Black Pirate (1926), and The Vagabond King (1930), among dozens of all singing, all dancing, all taking musicals of the early talking years. MGM had only used it in a hand-full of films, most notably in Ben-Hur (1925) and The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), which Norma appeared---in a color sequence---as Juliet to John Gilbert’s Romeo.

By the time Marie Antoinette had been announced as MGM’s first color film, the three-strip process had been used notably only once, for the finale of The Cat and the Fiddle (1934), which starred Ramon Novarro and Jeanette MacDonald.

Some of Norma’s furs had been shipped across the country to be dyed a blue which would bring out the color of her eyes. Cedric Gibbons designed a Palace of Versailles twice the size of the real thing, but the project came to a halt when Irving Thalberg died suddenly of pneumonia on September 14, 1936, only two weeks after Romeo and Juliet (1937) premiered to critical acclaim.

During Norma’s mourning, she nearly died of pneumonia herself, and by the time she was prepared to work again, she was not sure if she had the ambition to. Her protection at the studio was gone, and now she had to deal with battling the higher-ups herself, and she did just fine, enduring a legal fight with Louis B. Mayer for control of Irving’s estate. She won control of Irving’s percentage of profits from the studio, which kept the star a wealthy woman the rest of her life.

When she was approached about completing Marie Antoinette, Norma agreed to make the film, but was pressured into signing a six picture contract with the studio which would pay her $150,000 a movie. With their doomed Queen of France officially cast, MGM decided to carry onward.

Charles Laughton had impressed Norma and Irving both professionally and privately with The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934). He was the natural choice for Louis XVI, but his busy schedule made him unavailable. Peter Lorre was tested to no success.

The next “chosen” Louis XVI was Spencer Tracy. But, as Lambert wrote, “[Sidney Franklin, the director] united Norma and [Hunt] Stromberg in disagreement.” A wide variety of others made tests: Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Richardson, Conrad Veidt, Maurice Evans, Roger Livesey, and Emlyn Williams. When Norma viewed all of the tests, it was a newcomer from London who caught her attention. Making her final decision, Norma announced that Robert Morley would be her Louis XVI, and threw a welcoming party to honor his American arrival.

Party guests included Jeanette MacDonald, Carole Lombard, Ruth Chatterton, Fred Astaire, and Janet Gaynor. At one point during that evening, Morley turned to Norma and asked, “How did you become a movie star?” Shearer flashed her charming smile and assured him with “I wanted to!”

It was at such dinners where Norma began rehearsing for her performance by bringing guests to the MGM wardrobe department where she modeled Adrian’s creations for her. Learning how to walk in gowns four to six feet in width, by the time filming began Norma moved smoother than even the most graceful ballerina.

Back at the studio, the casting of Fersen was the next task. Once again, MGM asked her if there was anyone on their roster whom she thought would fit the bill as her onscreen lover, particularly Robert Montgomery, Robert Taylor, or Franchot Tone. Norma disagreed with all the of the suggested MGM leads, and insisted on the casting of Tyrone Power, whom she had come to admire greatly in Lloyds of London (1936).

Under contract to 20th Century-Fox, Power was only twenty-four to Norma’s thirty-six, and Marie Antoinette would mark the first and last time the actor would be loaned out from his home studio.

When the MGM executives began finalizing the pre-production plans with Sidney Franklin, they became worried that the sluggish director would not succeed with such a prestigious movie. Franklin wanted some of Adrian’s designs redone, insisting they were too exaggerated, and wanted a shooting schedule of ninety days. It was then Louis B. Mayer and Hunt Stromberg decided to replace him.

W.S. Van Dyke, “One-take Woody,” would be the best choice, Mayer and Stromberg decided. He had proved his ability to makes a quality costume epic with Naughty Marietta (1935), the first teaming of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, which had emerged as one of MGM’s most profitable movies of that season. He was slated, much to Norma’s dismay.

A few years earlier, Ruth Chatterton, then the “First Lady of the Screen,” became enraged when Warner Brothers forced her to work with director William Wellman in two pictures. The flamboyant leading lady and the brutish director eventually became good friends. Such was the relationship of Norma and Van Dyke. On the first day of shooting, Van Dyke gave his instructions to Norma, who listened inventively. As she got up to walk onto the set, she tripped over a cable and fell right on her backside in front of cast a crew. A deadly silence followed, until Norma threw her legs up in the air and burst into laughter, bringing a laughter and applause from cast and crew. It was from then on Van Dyke decided Norma was the “swellest woman in Hollywood!”

Cameras officially started rolling December 30, 1937 at Culver City, shutting down for two weeks in Mid March to edit already filmed scenes and prepare for new ones. Completed on May, 25, 1938, Marie Antoinette had its Los Angeles premiere on July 8, 1938.

“The splendors of the French monarchy," wrote a critic for the New York Times, "in its dying days have been not simply equaled, they have been surpassed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s film biography, Marie Antoinette, which is now in imperial, two-a-day residence at the Astor Theatre. And as far as Metro has surpassed her surroundings, Norma Shearer has surpassed the Queen herself, whose tragic and ineffectual figure was probably not nearly so much the dramatic center of all stages…”

Marie Antoinette proved to be a record breaker in both production value and box office. By the time it completed its theatrical run, the film had come to gross $3 million, making it one of the most popular films MGM had ever produced. On the box office lists that year, Marie Antoinette came in sixth in terms of popularity. In August of 1937, months before filming actually began, Jacques Tourneur was given information from MGM’s Research Department and allowed to film a brief documentary, which would be distributed as a short, to generate interest in the doomed Queen of France. Others expenses on clever movie posters, radio ads, and tours also helped popularize the film.

After Norma Shearer's retirement in 1942, Marie Antoinette faded in screen history, and was written off as a cheesy MGM drama starring the fading wife of the demised Irving Thalberg. These critics, most of whom condemned the movie without ever viewing it, were quick to blame the film’s problems on Norma, as if she had conceived and produced the entire thing herself.

With viewings of the film on Turner Classic Movies, a VHS release in 1991, and a DVD release in 2006, Marie Antoinette has come to be highly praised for its direction, prestige, and performances, especially that of Norma Shearer’s, which can easily be argued as the best she ever gave.



Vintage Reviews:

What is related on the screen is a brilliant, historic tragedy, the crushing of the French monarchy by revolution and terror. Stefan Zweig's biography of Marie Antoinette is the source from which the screenwriters have drawn most of their material.

First part is concerned with the vicious intrigues of the Versailles court and the power exerted by Mme du Barry and the traitorous Orleans. The ensembles, arranged by Albertina Rasch, suggest beautiful paintings. Second portion opens with the expose of the fraudulent sale of a diamond necklace, which precipitated the enmity of the nobility. With an aroused nation and the queen as the point of attack, the action moves swiftly to the pillage of the castle, the royal arrest, the unsuccessful escape to the border, the trials and execution of the rulers.

Norma Shearer's performance is lifted by skillful portrayal of physical and mental transitions through the period of a score of years. Her moments of ardor with Ferson (Tyrone Power) are tender and believable.

Outstanding in the acting, however, is Robert Morley, who plays the vacillating King Louis XVI. He creates sympathy and understanding for the kingly character, a dullard and human misfit.

John Barrymore as the aged Louis XV leaves a deep impress. Joseph Schildkraut is the conniving Duc d'Orleans and scores as a fastidious and scheming menace. Gladys George makes much from a few opportunities as Mme du Barry.

When illness prevented Sidney Franklin from assuming the direction of the film after arduous preparation, W.S. Van Dyke was assigned the task.