The Trouble With Elinor Glyn: Hollywood, Three Weeks And The British Board Of Film Censors

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements Thanks are due to the British Academy for financial support; and to the National Archives, the Doheny Library at the University of Southern California, the University of Reading and the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine for access to archival documents. Notes Notes 1 Elinor Glyn, Four Complete Novels (London, George Newnes Ltd, 1931), 41. The book was first published in 1907 by Duckworth & Co. 2 Ibid., 67. 3 Ibid., 49. 4 Ibid., 57. 5 Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1977). 6 Eric Thompson, Elinor Glyn, in: George M. Johnson (ed.) Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 153 (Detroit, MI, Gale Research Inc., 1995), 94, 96. 7 The Great Moment (Famous Players–Lasky, 1920); Beyond the Rocks (Famous Players-Lasky, 1921); Six Hours (MGM, 1923); Three Weeks (MGM, 1923); His Hour (MGM, 1924); Man and Maid (MGM, 1925); Love's Blindness (MGM, 1925); The Only Thing (MGM, 1926); Ritzy (Paramount, 1927); It (Paramount, 1928); Red Hair (Paramount, 1928). 8 Alice M Williamson, Alice in Movieland (London, A M Philpot Ltd, 1927), 239; Film Weekly, 7 October 1929, p. 3. 9 Anne Morey, Elinor Glyn as Hollywood labourer, Film History, 18(2) (2006), 110–118. 10 Meredith Etherington-Smith and Jeremy Pilcher, The ‘It’ Girls (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1986), 239; Williamson, Alice in Movieland, 232. 11 Anthony Glyn, Elinor Glyn: a biography (London, Hutchinson, 1955), 280. 12 Made by the Reliable Feature Film Corporation, under the direction of Perry N Vekroff, and released in 1915. 13 Descriptions of the film are based on the continuity screenplay by Carey Wilson, dated 15 August 1923, Elinor Glyn Archive (MS4059), Box 9A, University of Reading (hereafter EG Archive). This and other versions of Wilson's screenplay are also lodged in the MGM collection in the Doheny Library, University of Southern California (hereafter USC/MGM). To date, it has not been possible to locate a print of the film. The record suggests that the screenplay was ghosted by Carey Wilson, though Glyn seems to have received sole screen credit. 14 Christian Metz, Story/discourse (a note on two kinds of voyeurism), in: Psychoanalysis and Cinema: the imaginary signifier (London, MacMillan, 1982). 15 Variety, 2 April 1924. 16 Carey Wilson, Three Weeks, continuity screenplay, 15 August 1923, EG Archive. 17 The records of Glyn's agent indicate that the picture had gone into profit by 1925: EG Archive, Box 32. 18 Annette Kuhn, British Board of Film Censors/Classification, in: Derek Jones (ed.) Censorship: a world encyclopedia (London, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001). 19 Home Office HO158/23, National Archives, London (hereafter NA/HO): The Censorship of Cinematograph Films, 6 July 1923. 20 British Board of Film Censors, Annual Report, 1923, 9. 21 NA/HO45/11382, Home Office memo, 24 May 1923. 22 Ibid., minute by S. W. Harris, 27 June 1923. 23 Stopes mounted a vigorous press campaign and also wrote to the Cinematograph Exhibitors’ Association and to cinema licensing authorities, threatening legal action if her name were to be removed from publicity. Contemporary Medical Archives Centre, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London: PP/MCS/F.12 Film: Married Love/Maisie's Marriage. 24 NA/HO45/20045, Three Weeks, 1924, Home Office memo, 12 February 1924. 25 Ibid., BBFC letter to Home Office, 20 March 1924. 26 Ibid., Home Office minute, 27 March 1924. 27 In the USA, the film was passed by the National Board of Review: USC/MGM, Final title sheets for Three Weeks, 1924. 28 Marie Stopes, Married Love (11th edn, 1923), 130. 29 Ibid., 85. 30 David Robinson, Hollywood in the Twenties (London, Zwemmer, 1968), 36.