The letter of color

Quite some time back, TCM ran a night of the films of Colleen Moore, who is best known for her silent films but did make a few sound movies before retiring. The last of those movies was an adaptation of the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel The Scarlet Letter.

I'll assume most people know the basic story. I'd already seen the Lillian Gish silent version but have never actually read the book before, so I can't say precisely how faithful any of the films are to the details of the book, but the basic story is there. This version starts off with a bit of humor, as we see the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1642. A couple of people other than Hester Prynne (that's Colleen Moore, of course) have committed offenses against the Puritan ideals, a gossip and a man who laughed on the Sabbath, and both are punished for comic effect.

We then meet Hester, who already has her baby Pearl in her arms. Hester is married, but her husband is presumed dead, so we know that Hester couldn't have gotten knocked up by her husband. Because of that, she's on trial, put up on the sort of platform that in movies set in a later era would have a hangman's noose and a trap door. But they're not hanging people for getting pregnant out of wedlock; not even the Production Code would be that mean. Instead, the colonial governor, Bellingham (William Farnum) and the minister to the congregation, Arthur Dimmesdale (Hardie Albright), implore Hester to identify the father so that he too may repent. She refuses to do so, so she's punished by being forced to wear a giant A on her bosom. (Too bad for her the Atlanta Braves and the University of Alabama didn't exist yet.)

In the very next scene, a bearded man shows up from out of nowhere, and registers with the authorities as Doctor Roger Pr.... (Henry B. Walthall). He then stops himself, and refers to himself as Roger Chillingworth, looking for a place to stay. Rev. Dimmesdale takes him to a lodging house where Hester works as a seamstress. The doctor shows up to tend to Hester, and apparently he's been away long enough that nobody but Hester recognizes him. Roger feels that both he and Hester have been wronged, but Roger feels that he really wants some sort of vengeance against the father. That, and he doesn't want anybody to know that he's Mr. Prynne, largely because in their society dishonor follows the husband of the faithless wife as well.

Of course, we know that Rev. Dimmesdale is actually the father. But he's a pillar of the community. So how is everybody going to find out the truth?

This version of The Scarlet Letter was made by Majestic Pictures, one of the Poverty Row studios, and it certainly has the look of a Poverty Row film. It doesn't help either, that the dialogue sounds all wrong coming from many of the cast members, and that it feels terribly talky.