That Hamilton Girl

A dozen years before the lovely British production That Hamilton Woman, Warner Bros. made a silent covering much the same material called The Divine Lady. Having been made at Warner Bros., it is unsurprisingly available on DVD from the Warner Archive.

For those of you who remember That Hamilton Woman, you know what the movie is about. For those who don't, Emma, Lady Hamilton (played here by Corinne Griffith) was a British beauty of the late 18th century would would marry Lord Hamilton (played here by H.B. Warner), who at the time was the British ambassador to Naples, what with Italy still being 75 years or so away from being united. It's the 1790s, and the French revolution is leading up to Napoleon's rise to power, so British naval officer Horatio Nelson (Victor Varconi) stops in Naples to talk to the British ambassador. He meets Lady Hamilton, and the two start a doomed love affair: both of them were already married. Oh, and you know what would happen to Lord Nelson at Trafalgar.

With that history out of the way, it's time to look at the things that are a bit more speculative. The movie starts off introducing a real historical figure, Charles Greville (Ian Keith), a minor member of the British nobility. Here, her mother (Marie Dressler in a bit part) is to be Greville's new cook, but the real story is more sordid. Greville is in parlous financial straits, so in the movie he concocts a plan to send Emma off to Naples to be the mistress Hamilton, who was Greville's uncle. Hamilton won't marry this common girl and this will die unmarried, and Greville will inherit the estate, solving Greville's monetary problems. When Emma discovers the truth, Hamilton marries her because what else is there for the two of them to do.

One other big difference between this movie and That Hamilton Woman is that the latter movie shows some of Lady Hamilton's downfall after Nelson's death. (Lord Hamilton died two years before Trafalgar, and in real life Lady Hamilton did go into serious debt.) The Divine Lady concludes with Trafalgar.

But is The Divine Lady good? I think fans of silents will really enjoy it. I'm a bit less of a fan of silents, and find some of the dramas can be tougher going. The Divine Lady is one I found a bit slow at times, but there's really nothing particularly wrong with it. It's more that if I were going to introduce people to silents, I'd start with the comedies and then the adventure movies, and save dramas and melodramas for later.