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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “HOW’S THAT FOR HIGH?”: FAULKNER AND REPUTATIONS) IN THE EARLY 1930S

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

Douglas Matthew Ramsey, M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 2002

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Linda Mizejewski, Adviser

Professor James Phelan Adviser Professor Jared Gardner English Graduate Program

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT

This dissertation addresses the slippery intersection of the popular and canonical

William Faulkner: the Faulkner associated not only with Modernist “masterpieces,” but

also film scenarios, mass magazine publications, and the more disreputable films adapted

from his works. The examination of Faulkner’s various, often contradictory, reputations

during the years 1931-33 queers Faulkner’s texts and reputations (in several senses), by

applying a cultural studies approach to the fiction, films and biographical details.

Attending to Faulkner’s pop culture dimensions complicates the traditional narrative of

Faulkner’s career and works by recontextualizing them, while also illuminating the

process that is being reversed.

The Faulkner of the early 1930s is characterized by multiple reputations—author

of the notorious (yet critically acclaimed) Sanctuary, frequent contributor to popular

magazines, Hollywood screenwriter, and author whose works were being adapted for

Hollywood. During this particularly telling time in Faulkner’s career, the boundaries

between high and low and artist and hack were much less defined than most critics allow

for. This dissertation explores the forgotten contexts of the production and reception of

texts associated with Faulkner by focusing on three texts: The short story “Turnabout”

{The Saturday Evening Post, 1932); the MGM film adapted from that story (by Faulkner

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and others) in 1933, Today We Live , directed by Howard Hawks and starring Joan

Crawford and Gary Cooper; and the 1933 Paramount version of Sanctuary, The Story o f

Temple Drake, notorious for its censorship battles, as well as efforts to tap into the

mystique of its bisexual star, Miriam Hopkins.

Examining the criticism (or lack thereof) surrounding these texts demonstrates

how an unburdening of Faulkner’s literary reputation opens up Faulkner’s high and low

texts to further exploration and raises questions about the nature of adaptation theory

and the value of interrogating the hierarchical relationship between source and

adaptation. I suggest that the perceived linear motion—from book to film—is ultimately

misleading and reductive, and that source and adaptation are more interrelated and

connected than is usually recognized. Literature and film both operate, I argue, as part of

a larger cultural context and the relation between them is dynamic; they share common

components even as they are shaped by their individual mediums and economies of

production and ultimately they illuminate each other and the culture from which they

emerge. I bring insights gleaned from film theory (in particular, the status of the author

and his/her operation as a “star”), cultural studies (the incorporation of “thick

description”-advertising and publicity materials for the films, popular and academic

criticism, as well as other cultural “artifacts” from the time period), and queer and gender

theory (the use of rumor, gossip, and innuendo to explore biographical details largely

unexamined in Faulkner biographies). Faulkner’s works—’’popular” and “literary”—offer

compelling insights into early 1930s American culture, and illustrate the value of using

cultural studies and queer theory to re-examine a canonical figure such as Faulkner.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dedicated to my father for his always-vocal support,

and to my mother for her quieter encouragement

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my adviser, Linda Mizejewski, for her belief, support,

encouragement, and for making me believe I could actually find something new (and

interesting) to say about Faulkner. I also want to express my gratitude for her patience

and for always telling me I could do it.

I am more than grateful to my dearest friend Susan Swinford, without whom this

most definitely would not have been possible. I owe you big.

My thanks to Jim Phelan, for always taking the time out of his ridiculously busy

schedule to encourage me, to look at drafts, to promptly reply to panicky e-mails, and

for more generally just being one of the good ones.

I thank my dear friends and colleagues D. Scot Hinson and Jason Payne, who

always (fruitlessly) offered to read my work, and who kept me sane, and Tom Williams,

for many great discussions about Faulkner and memorable pilgrimages to Oxford,

Mississippi. Thanks also to Jared Gardner for being so kind as to jump on board so late,

and Debra Moddelmog for all her feedback and inspiration.

Thanks especially go out to my family, including Cliff, Lessie, Walter, Bo, Betty,

Lana, Howard, Amy, Joy, and Bob. To the Whistle Pigs, well, thanks, I guess.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. VITA

November 24, 1964 ...... Bom - Cincinnati, Ohio

1988 ...... B.A. English, Purdue University

1991...... M.A. English, The Ohio State University

1991 - present...... Graduate Teaching Assistant, Lecturer, The Ohio State University; Visiting Instructor, Wittenberg University

PUBLICATIONS

‘“Lifting the Fog’: Faulkners, Reputations and The Story o f Temple Drake .” The Faulkner Journal 16 (2000/2001): 7-33.

“‘Turnabout’ is Fair(y) Play: Faulkner’s Queer War Story.” The Faulkner Journal 15 (1999/2000): 61-81.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: English

Areas of study: 20lh-century American literature, Film, Cultural Studies, American Studies, Critical Theory

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page Abstract...... ii

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgments ...... v

Vita...... vi

List of Figures ...... viii

Chapters:

1. Introduction ...... 1

2. “Turnabout” is Fairy Play: Faulkner’s Queer War Story ...... 33

3. Fighting the Good Fight: Authorial Control and Today We Live ...... 102

4. “Lifting the Fog”: Faulkner(s), Reputations and The Story o f Temple Drake 169

5. Conclusion ...... 250

Works Cited ...... 266

vii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

2.1 “Greetings from New York.” Postcard ...... 58

2.2 Paul Cadmus, Distinguished Air...... 61

2.3 Charles Demuth,Two Sailors...... 62

2.4 Marsden Hartley, Portrait o f a German Officer ...... 64

2.5 “Little Accident.” Cartoon ...... 66

2.6 “Pickled Corned Beef.” Cartoon ...... 67

2.7 Paul Cadmus, The Fleet's In! ...... 68

2.8 “Boys of the Bulldog Breed!” Postcard ...... 69

2.9 William Faulkner, Fish, Flesh, Fowl. Drawing ...... 71

2.10 Albin Henning, illustration for “Turn About” ...... 72

2.11 Charles Demuth,On “That" Street ...... 73

2.12 Cover of March 5, 1932 Saturday Evening Post ...... 75

2.13 J.C. Leyendecker’s Arrow Collar advertisement ...... 77

2.14 Leyendecker Kuppenheimer advertisement ...... 78

2.15 Leyendecker cover for The Literary Digest...... 79

2.16 Leyendecker cover for Aug 9, 1924 Saturday Evening Post ...... 80

2.17 Cover of Oct. 24, 1921 Collier’s...... 81

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.18 Cover of Aug. 25, 1923 Saturday Evening Post ...... 82

2.19 Norman Rockwell cover of Jan. 18, 1919 Saturday Evening Post ...... 84

3.1 Publicity still of Franchot Tone, Joan Crawford and Robert Young ...... 119

3 .2 Cigarette card and lobby card for Today We Live ...... 122

3.3 Publicity still of Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford ...... 123

3.4 Newspaper advertisements for Today We Live ...... 139

3.5 Newspaper advertisement ...... 140

3.6 Magazine advertisement, with Joan Crawford and Leo ...... 143

3.7 Newspaper advertisement ...... 146

3.8 Newspaper advertisement ...... 147

3.9 Window card ...... 148

3.10 Publicity still, Ann’s first dress (pointed collar) ...... 150

3.11 Fashion still, Ann’s second outfit ...... 151

3.12 Fashion still, Ann’s third outfit ...... 152

3.13 Fashion still, Ann’s bike-riding outfit ...... 153

3.14 Fashion still, Ann’s nurse’s outfit ...... 154

3.15 “Joan Crawford-Mannequin” ...... 156

4.1 “New Reputations,” Vanity Fair ...... 173

4.2 “Lifting the Fog,” Vanity Fair ...... 181

4.3 Will Hays ...... 193

4.4 Newspaper advertisement for The Story o f Temple Drake...... 195

4.5 Temple in the com crib. Publicity still ...... 199

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.6 Newspaper advertisement ...... 203

4.7 Newspaper advertisement ...... 204

4.8 Newspaper advertisement from pressbook ...... 206

4.9 Newspaper advertisement ...... 207

4.10 Herald ...... 208

4.11 Newspaper advertisement ...... 209

4.12 Cigarette cards of Miriam Hopkins ...... 213

4.13 Lobby card for These Three ...... 215

4.14 Publicity still for These Three ...... 216

4.15 Masquerading Miriam. Lobby card for She Loves Me Not...... 217

4.16 Publicity still for She Loves Me Not...... 218

4.17 Publicity stills for Becky Sharp...... 219

4.18 Screen Book Magazine cover of Miriam Hopkins ...... 223

4.19 Modem Screen cover ...... 224

4.20 Photoplay and Silver Screen covers ...... 227

4.21 Motion Picture cover ...... 228

4.22 Publicity still and cigarette card for She Loves Me Not...... 229

4.23 Screen capture from The Story o f Temple Drake...... 232

4.24 Publicity still ...... 235

4.25 Lobby card ...... 236

4.26 Publicity still ...... 237

4.27 Publicity still ...... 238

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.28 Publicity still ...... 239

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The trouble with Faulkner's early readers, it is easy for us now to say, is that they did not know how to read him. The trouble with current readers is more likely to be that they do know how to read him-that, armed with the weapons that Faulkner criticism and academic instruction have made standard issue, they can move right along towards a satisfactory “reading" o f Faulkner, without having to confront the difficulties (beauties, too), often quite alien to what criticism describes, o f Faulkner’s texts themselves. Richard Brodhead “Introduction” (3)

Recent efforts o f literary scholars to explode the canon o f great authors and works, or to declare the death o f the author, seem not to have slowed the elevation o f William Faulkner into what Michael Kreyling has called “our Shakespeare "-the “Divine Mr. F. " This white southern male, whose life was marked by incorrigible womanizing, alcoholism, and mixed feelings toward blacks, and whose fictional characters exhibit all manner o f misogynist and racist behavior, has so far survived an era o f fastidious political correctness that has laid waste to canonicalfigures with lesser flaws. Don Doyle, “The World That Created William Faulkner” (616)

The “Faulkner Industry.” There is the yearly conference, a bi-annual journal,

newsletters, the “Faux Faulkner” contest (devoted to the best written parody), t-shirts,

bookstores, a museum, coffee mugs, posters, and the dozens and dozens of articles and

books published each year. There are no fewer than seven major “comprehensive”

bibliographies, including the recent four-volume set William Faulkner: Critical

Assessments and William Faulkner: Six Decades o f Criticism. And yet most of my

students have no idea who he is, or why they should be reading his work. They will give

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. me a puzzled look, say something like, “I think we read something by him in high

school,” and only when I have thrown out a few possibilities will there be that moment

of clarity. The work they usually remember is one of the oft-anthologized short

stories-“A Rose for Emily,” “Bam Burning,” maybe “Dry September” or “That Evening

Sun Go Down.” If it is a novel, it is typically a text they found particularly

inaccessible-even with theC liff’s jVo/es-usually As I Lay Dying or The Sound and the

Fury. When I asked the forty-five brave students (mostly sophomores and juniors) who

signed up for my Faulkner and Film class if they had heard of him, twelve answered

affirmatively. Three thought they could name a work by Faulkner. (One, however,

ventured a tentative ’’The Great GatsbyV)

“Faulkner” to the majority of my students is a blank, an “Other” they have no

desire to meet. For them, Faulkner’s reputation, if they are aware of one at all, is one of

difficulty, confusion and troubling ambiguity. As they so often point out to me, it almost

seems as if there is an ad campaign out there determined to make Faulkner as

inaccessible and unattractive as possible. In our bookstores Faulkner is definitely

“literature,” not “fiction,” and in most there might be copies of three or four of the more

canonical works, but the texts less often studied in the university are absent. (Those

Vintage edition covers and the blurbs on the back are not, my students report,

particularly enticing either.) We also as a culture seem to perpetuate an attitude of fear

towards Faulkner’s texts that is more pronounced than fears of any other author I can

think of.1 And as high school and college teachers clamor to show the latest

Hollywoodizations of Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, and even other “tough” authors

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. such as Virginia Woolf and Henry James, in order to get their students to “engage,” very

few educators seem to be doing the same for Faulkner. Further, one is unlikely to

encounter any Faulkner-related movies in college film courses beyond, possibly, The Big

Sleep or To Have and Have Not. Despite the occasional mention on Jeopardy and at

least one The Simpsons reference, the author many consider America’s greatest novelist

languishes in popular obscurity, more so than I think we like to admit.2

A survey of recent criticism reveals that we, those who write about Faulkner,

keep trying, every couple of years, to “rescue” him, to validate his works, to excuse his

weaknesses, to make him matter, or at least to reaffirm definitively our conviction that

he matters. And in a way, that was the goal I set out to accomplish in this study.

Thanks in no small measure to a great group of students who would not simply take my

word for it that what we were doing was “valuable,” teaching the Faulkner and Film

class forced me to think about Faulkner in different ways than I had been taught, in ways

that had not been dealt with in the criticism I had read. As I was attempting to balance

the “literary” Faulkner and the Hollywood Faulkner (both his work completed while

there and the films adapted from his stories), I kept running up against the problem of

the works’ reception. It was pretty clear that most Faulkner critics hate the films he

worked on, or downplay or ignore the importance of his contributions to this particular

medium. They also, of course, deride the movies adapted from his fiction (with a few

telling exceptions, such as the black-and-white, very gritty, very Southern, very un-

Hollywood Tomorrow (1972)). In each case, there is little in-depth analysis. The few

critiques devoted to Faulkner and film feel incomplete, overly formalistic, and too caught

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. up in the myth of “William Faulkner, American Author.” These critiques also suggest

that adaptation-fiction to film—is a one-way street, without considering the larger

cultural contexts the literature and film texts are, ultimately, sharing.

It is these myths-of Faulkner The American Author and of the hierarchical

relationship of literary and filmic texts-that I felt I needed to crawl out from under in

order to make sense of Faulkner’s relationship to popular culture, to see what he

contributed, and what he gained. So my aim in this project was not just to look at

neglected texts (the movies) but to look at the neglected cultural background of the

author before his reputation as difficult Modernist and the Southern novelist was fully

formed, to put into play the contending and contributing discourses surrounding

“Faulkner.” By taking a cultural studies approach to Faulkner, I work to recover a less

elitist (and ultimately less homophobic) American literary history, seeking the

“unofficial” narratives and thinking about what “Faulkner” has meant to different

audiences in different times and circumstances. Of course, what such an approach entails

is paying serious attention to the author’s various biographies (including what sort of

contexts he was working within, the discourses he was exposed to, and what details

might have been left out), the criticism (and the social and political currents which helped

shape these responses to Faulkner), the literary and filmic texts and the cultural

significance of their initial and subsequent reception (including “star power” and

Hollywood storytelling), and other neglected texts which might help pierce the

“American Author” facade (often less “respected” forms of discourse Gerald Graff has

identified as the “unofficial interpretive culture,” such as publicity, advertising, rumor,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. gossip, and innuendo).

Throughout this project, what I am investigating is the concept of authorship and

the impact that reputation might have on the ways Faulkner’s works were produced and

received. I originally planned to go by decade-Faulkner in the 30s, in the 40s and in the

50s, and to trace the ways his reputation (and his cultural and critical “capital”) was

transformed. What I quickly discovered was that a cultural studies approach requires a

careful analysis of a wide-ranging number of contextual texts, and that if I wanted to do

this project right, I would have to narrow my primary focus significantly. I decided to

focus on one particularly telling “moment” in Faulkner’s career and the formation of his

literary and public reputations-the years 1931 to 1933, when the respected but

somewhat obscure author of The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying was more

famous (or infamous) for Sanctuary and his associations with Hollywood. This was

before his “resurrection” by Malcolm Cowley in the late 1940s. Before the Nobel Prize.

Before he became “William Faulkner: American Author.”

The Faulkner of the early 1930s is characterized by multiple reputations—author

of the notorious (yet critically acclaimed) Sanctuary, frequent contributor to popular

magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Scribners, and Hollywood

screenwriter and author whose works were being adapted for Hollywood. During this

particularly telling time in Faulkner’s career, the boundaries between high and low and

artist and hack were much less defined than most critics allow for. This dissertation

explores the forgotten contexts of the production and reception of texts associated with

Faulkner by focusing on three texts (and their related paratexts): The short story

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “Turnabout” (The Saturday Evening Post, 1932); the MGM film adapted from that story

(by Faulkner and others) in 1933, Today We Live, directed by Howard Hawks and

starring Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper; and the 1933 Paramount version of Sanctuary,

The Story o f Temple Drake, notorious for its censorship battles, and notable for its

efforts to tap into the mystique of its bisexual star, Miriam Hopkins.

By recovering a Faulkner shaped by both his literary productions and his popular

culture works, I suggest that the critical and missing element in Faulkner criticism

continues to be a productive exploration of his associations with popular culture, the

interrelated areas of gender and sexuality, and the ways audiences at the time made sense

of these texts. All three body chapters venture into “forbidden” territory. I try to

present a Faulkner who was very much in tune with gay subcultures, who had several

gay friends and acquaintances, and who was clearly intrigued (albeit sometimes

problematically) by gay and lesbian desire. I argue that Faulkner’s work on the

screenplay of Today We Live might very well have proved productive for his ongoing

struggles to write female desire. And my final case study suggests that Faulkner’s early

1930s reputation and that of Sanctuary have been misrepresented, and that The Story o f

Temple Drake offers us evidence of how audiences might have reacted to Faulkner’s

controversial novel, and what their expectations for the filmed version might be. 1 end

up arguing that its star Miriam Hopkins had a reputation that fed into the production,

advertising and reception of the film, and that the reputation of Hopkins, and the film’s

battles with the Hays Office, became part of the context in whichSanctuary was

interpreted (publicly and critically). This further suggests how both texts, produced a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mere two years apart, are more interrelated in the ways they deal with Depression-era

anxieties about boundaries (social, sexual, racial) than most adaptation approaches

recognize. Films based on Faulkner’s works are particularly prone to attack from an

overly formalistic, fidelity-model brand of adaptation studies. My dissertation seeks to

complicate the notion that adaptation runs only one way-from literary text to screenplay

to film. Typically, in this conception of adaptation each subsequent version is viewed as

moving farther from the “authentic” text and is thus devalued. Because of the canonical

status of Faulkner and his literary reputation, this condemnation of works adapted from

his writing is widespread (even of those adaptations he helped write). I argue that these

texts are all part of one mosaic, and that they often reflect complementary attitudes

towards cultural crises in early 1930s American culture. Removing the literary works

from this greater context limits our understanding of their functions and dimensions, and

the blurring of boundaries they enact-high/Iow, queer/straight, source/adaptation.

William Faulkner occupies a singular place within American literary and popular

culture, and within the discourse surrounding the fate of the “literary” writer in

Hollywood. His liminal position between high literary figure and low “hack” magazine

and screen writer is unlike any other famous American author. Unlike F. Scott

Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck, his literary reputation was not secure when he began his

Hollywood career in 1932, and remained in flux for several years. While in Hollywood,

he was producing seemingly Modernist works such as Light in August and Absalom,

Absalom! as well as seemingly mainstream stories written expressly for The Saturday

Evening Post and Cosmopolitan. He was famous for Sanctuary, which blurred the lines

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. between high and low culture (and continues to do so). And for whatever reason, he

kept coming back to Hollywood while securing a more “dignified” reputation as a man

of letters. Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner working on 1955’s Land o f the

Pharaohs ?

But the years 1931-1933 in particular present a uniquely complex period in

Faulkner’s career, and looking at his reputation, writings and the cultural context reveals

how intriguing American culture was in this era. Sound had very recently come to the

cinema, and Hollywood needed writers, preferably those who could provide

sophisticated, biting dialogue. The screenwriter did not yet have to necessarily deal with

the stigma of being a “hack”-many of the best and brightest were coming to Hollywood

to try their hand at the screenplay form, and studios boasted about the number and

quality of their writers. As the country dealt with the debilitating economic conditions

brought on by the Great Depression, high/low distinctions were particularly blurry. Age-

old certainties about America’s place in the world, class divisions, proper sexual roles,

and the function of literature and literary study were under fire. The “blockbuster” (film

or fiction) was not necessarily condemned for appealing to the lowest common

denominator. Literary critics such as Malcolm Cowley and Edmund Wilson sought to

make literature more relevant, and “palatable,” for the masses (usually in the cause of

social justice). Big-budget Hollywood productions often enjoyed the cachet of cultural

legitimacy, particularly from socialist critics.

In the midst of this cultural milieu steps William Faulkner-Modemist with poetic

aspirations, Southerner, regionalist, screenwriter, short story writer, novelist, father of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the “Cult of Cruelty” school, troubled alcoholic, hack. In the main, Faulkner criticism

has chosen a select few of these identities, and ignored the rest. The ever-diminishing

gap between high and low culture in academic discourse and curricula makes a more

nuanced study of Faulkner’s films and less “legitimate” work vital if we are to break

down the rigid “literary” reputation Faulkner has and investigate what that reputation we

are so familiar with might actually be hiding. Such a study illuminates certain aspects of

the era in American culture that might otherwise go unnoticed, such as the intersection

between the Depression, homosexuality, American Modernism, and Hollywood film.

The Faulkner I seek to recover is not a static and unchanging one, or even “one”

for that matter. Popular culture is characterized by the process of re-consumption-it

keeps changing, keeps re-imagining itself. Faulkner criticism keeps reevaluating itself,

but the effects have not made their way into popular thinking. Some of this is a function

not just of the “Faulkner Industry” but also of the concept of “Great Literature” more

generally and the way it is perceived by the general public. It involves the “trickle-

down” (or failure to trickle down) effect found in high school teaching, in which high

school teachers, if they use any criticism at all, understandably rely on well-known, fairly

dated analyses which fall back on the “American Writer” myth, because that is what they

probably learned about Faulkner. The increasing use of difficult, post-structuralist

terminology cannot help but be off-putting for many high school and college teachers

alike when this subject is not their primary area of study or practice. And of course,

there is the critics’ and teachers’ own investment in Faulkner-for some, Faulkner’s

reputation as a difficult, complex, sometimes inaccessible Modernist is somehow

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. comforting. It makes the scholar/teacher’s intervention valuable and necessary, and films

are still often regarded by many as unworthy of serious study. Further, as more

experienced readers, we love the complexity of Faulkner’s works. After all, I am writing

this dissertation because I do think Faulkner is (often) a great writer and a fascinating

figure, and I want my students to find a way to enjoy and learn from his works (including

his films). I personally have a fair amount invested in a whole set of ideas-some

implicitly held, some more deliberately arrived at-about literature, popular culture, film

and criticism that shape my own understandings, as is presumably the case with all critics

and Faulkner scholars.

The reception of Barton Fink (Coen, 1991), a film that was perhaps the most

interesting thing to happen to “Faulkner” in the last decade or so at least, illustrates what

happens when our investment in Faulkner complicates or precludes the process of

reconsidering his reputation and role in American culture. The film-in the characters of

Barton Fink and William P. Mayhew-reimagines Faulkner’s career in Hollywood, and

asks us to think about him in different ways, to think about the false separation between

“writing for the pictures” and “the life of the mind.” Yet most Faulkner critics felt

threatened by the film, and felt the characterizations were “unfair.” Faulkner, they felt,

was presented as a drunk, and a fraud, and a failure. (Ironically, the latter seems not to

present problems as long as it is a failure in Hollywood-the suggestion that Mayhew’s

mistress wrote some of his novels strikes a particularly sensitive nerve for many

Faulknerians.) Faulkner criticism by and large has an image of a Faulkner that a film

such asBarton Fink does not speak to, one inherited from Malcolm Cowley, Joseph

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Blotner, and six decades of criticism. I have come to believe, in the process of this

dissertation, that it is vitally important to relinquish these more static conceptions of

Faulkner. Only by allowing him and his work to be recontextualized, reinterpreted,

reworked-kept in motion-can they remain alive, and hopefully vital, for students and

scholars.

The first step in this process is recognizing the shape of the narrative that has

become so cemented in critical and popular mythology. Over a decade ago, Frederick

Crews wrote what became a controversial piece on Faulkner for The New York Review

o f Books-" The Strange Fate of William Faulkner.” The piece was controversial because

Crews, in his review of several book-length works on Faulkner,3 set out in part to

dismantle the Faulkner mythology-his obscure reputation, his resurrection by Malcolm

Cowley, his agrarian concerns, and the “universal,” “mythological” and “unified” nature

of his works. Crews begins by summarizing the standard critical and biographical

narrative:

Once upon a time, a great American novelist-indeed, the greatest of his century-was languishing in public neglect, critical disdain, and near poverty, reduced to splicing and patching the scripts of other Hollywood screenwriters (“schmucks with typewriters,” as one of their employers famously defined them) to make ends meet. Those who knew the writer’s novels, all but one of which were out of print, saw in him only a minor regionalist, an obscurantist, and a macabre sensationalist. One day, however, a discerning critic, awakening to the music of the writer’s language and the profundity of his insight, volunteered to assemble a generous sampler that would guide new readers through his admittedly intricate fictional world-a world he had been constructing in stoic isolation for twenty years. And so it came to pass that a major injustice was rectified. Thanks to the critic’s efforts, everyone soon perceived the artist in his real stature-a titan of modernism, a Balzacian chronicler of the life and history of his birthplace, and a tragic, compassionate ironist

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. who had affirmed the values of family and community by showing what happens when those values are weakened by callous outsiders.

Any Faulkner scholar is familiar with this narrative. (This is certainly how Faulkner was

taught to me in college.) But Crews quickly problematizes the mythic tale he has just

laid out:

A fairy tale, this, as flattering to the magic savior as to the secret prince whom everyone had taken for a lackey. All is classically one-dimensional here. The writer’s greatness looms as a palpable, indivisible thing that will dazzle all eyes as soon as they are bidden to look on it, and the critic’s motive is as unclouded as a mountain spring: aesthetic power must be given its due. Only a child, one supposes, could mistake the story for a narrative of real events. But when the names William Faulkner, Malcolm Cowley, and The Portable Faulkner are filled in, most people who know those names at all, even forty years and more after the fabled deeds, would have to be counted as believers. The legend has appealed to them not just because some of its constituent parts are factual but, more bindingly, precisely because of its mythic reverberation. (47)

What Crews identifies is the fantasy element involved in this narrative, and the ways it

fulfills certain critical desires. We buy into it because we want to buy into it. Who

would want to break the spell?

Crews questions the validity of the common critical myth that Cowley, the

“magic savior,” was almost solely responsible for resurrecting Faulkner’s career. But

even more scandalously, he goes on to question and complicate our understanding of

Cowley’s motives, suggesting that it was not so much the “quality” of Faulkner’s work

which drew in Cowley, but rather the political “use” that could be made of Faulkner’s

Yoknapatawpha saga.4 Crews also ponders the future of Faulkner studies-what is there

left to say? Crews’ unspoken but implicit question: Has Faulkner studies reached a

meta-critical point where the only thing worth discussing is the criticism itself?

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. It is little wonder that views such as Crews’ are both invigorating and

threatening-and that his basic premise of a Faulkner mythology shaped by circumstance

and the needs of various contributors has been picked up numerous times by critics

before and after Crews. Yet this more nuanced understanding of Faulkner’s status and

various reputations has not fully been absorbed into the general understanding of

“Faulkner.” Lawrence H. Schwartz’s well-received Creating Faulkner's Reputation:

The Politics o f Modern Literary Criticism (1988) argues:

Faulkner’s reputation in this country was created by academics and literary critics who integrated him into the modernist tradition, who found in his vast, complex, and difficult work the kind of demanding literature that they had been trained to explicate, and who operated in a closed community of enforced conformity where dissent was suppressed and oppositionist literature and criticism were displaced. (202)

In her 1991 article/review “Faulkner and His Critics: Moving into the 90s,” Deborah

Clarke covers similar ground as she identifies the Faulkner critic’s dilemma:

The role of the critic increasingly resembles T.S. Eliot’s in ‘The Waste Land’: to defamiliarize what people have come to take for granted. While throwing Faulkner back into question is . .. one of the best services we can perform, much of the defamiliarization seems to depend on jargon and ideology rather than Faulkner. Yet surely some of this can be not only excused, but welcomed, in a critical situation where such basic knowledge can be assumed. After all, at this point, just about any close analysis of a Faulkner novel duplicates someone’s argument. Why waste time covering ground again when there are new directions still to explore? (118)

And Philip Cohen’s 1996 review of the proceedings from the “Faulkner and Ideology”

conference, “Faulkner Studies and Ideology Critique in the 1990s,” notes of the

collection of essays, all informed by recent critical theory and sophisticated language, a

certain blind spot:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Almost none of the contributors address the issue of developing a sociology of general readers that would enable us to gauge even roughly the efficacy of the cultural and ideological work such as constructing and supervising subjects that writing, publishing, and reading novels perform. To do so would probably require combining the relatively recent interdisciplinary methodology known as the history of the book, which treats literary works and the material documents that convey them from a variety of perspectives including the economic and sociological, with reader-response theory and other methodologies in order to situate literary works within their publishing, distribution, and reception networks. (652-53)

These critics raise several issues related to my own project. I too am interested

in tracing the formation of Faulkner’s various reputations, but unlike Schwartz, I think

we need to open up such an investigation beyond the realm of literary criticism.

Schwartz’s study of how Faulkner’s reputation was established in the 1950s and 1960s is

invaluable, and now it is time to build upon his framework. Little along these same lines

has been done in the intervening decade. But Schwartz largely ignores the literature in

lieu of a focus on critical discursive practices, and fails to acknowledge the ways

Faulkner’s works might have been influenced by the critical reputations being formed-

common complaints about his book-but he also neglects Faulkner’s pop culture texts

and the possible reputations he might have had outside of the realm of literary criticism.

Gerald Graff s student-centered approach to the contextualization of works

offers a productive means of addressing this oversight. Graff suggests that we need to

pay more attention, particularly in our teaching, to the “extra-textual” materials that

might help (or hinder) our students’ ability to “get a handle” on literary texts (and, I

would add, film texts). Graff argues that teachers often forget how foreign critical

discourses seem to many of our students, and that the students often turn to “unofficial”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. texts in order to make sense of these bewildering works:

Students know the importance of dust jackets, expected as students are to demonstrate comprehension of texts at short notice in an atmosphere which discourages them from admitting that they do not understand a book. Outside of Cliffs Notes, there is nowhere else to go for help when a student cannot infer from the book itself what it is her or she is supposed to say about the book in a paper or class discussion. Dust jackets provide a clue not just to the meanings of a single work, but, much more important, to the type of thing that a meaning can be (its intrinsic genre) and the type of talk it is possible to construct about it. (6- 7).

Graff goes on to argue that “interpretive-style book talk” feels natural to teachers and

scholars, but that it is often more strange and confusing to students than we credit. Like

Graff, I believe that we should not only acknowledge-without guilt or shame-the

unofficial interpretive culture (blurbs, reviews, internet sources, rumor, gossip, etc.), but

we should encourage our students, and other scholars, to make use of these cultural

materials in order to contextualize and thus get a handle on texts. This unofficial

interpretive culture is, in a very real sense, popular culture, and needs to be made a part

of what is generally considered the study of literature and “high” culture.

Applying recent critical insights to Faulkner’s texts is useful, compelling, even, I

would argue, crucial. But it all feels very piecemeal when we reference or interject pop

cultural analysis selectively. We take a few isolated texts and “connect the dots,”

pushing what is “Faulknerian” about the texts, rarely calling into question the

presumptions we and our students have about Faulkner, about what counts as “serious”

study, as well as the “value” of popular culture. We seem to be replacing one isolated

type of hermeneutics with another (substituting aesthetics with a more political/social

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. interpretive paradigm). As Crews notes, it is surely very easy to set up “straw men”

within the criticism and then proceed to tear them down.5 What needs to be

acknowledged is the political investment in such practice, and a wholly more self-

conscious approach to criticism (in part, to acknowledge that all criticism is political). I

think we need to look at the “bigger” picture, to investigate why a “piecemeal” (and

inherently reactionary), approach to understanding “Faulkner” is ultimately self-

defeating. Popular culture is not a sidenote, but, rather, a larger context from which,

thus far, we seem to have been content to pluck the elements needed to construct

Faulkner’s literary or high culture reputation. In this dissertation I make of point of

explaining that what critical shortfalls I might identify are understandable given the kinds

of texts these critics had access to, as well as the critical attitudes of the day.

Nevertheless, we need to start pursuing an understanding of the history of the aesthetics

and culture that lie behind whatever it is “Faulkner” means, and to take seriously the

unofficial, the lost, the marginalized texts that were at one time or another attached to

that overdetermined name.

The work of critics such as Schwartz, Clarke and Cohen is surely valuable within

the world of Faulkner criticism. They attempt to pierce that “American Writer” facade

created by Cowley and associates in the 1940s and look at the more controversial and

sometimes critically unpopular issues involving Faulkner and mass culture, including, by

extension, gender trouble. Indeed, Faulkner studies has obviously been enriched, despite

some complaints to the contrary, by insights gained from current critical trends such as

feminism, race theory, post-structuralism, gay/lesbian and cultural studies. All of these

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. critics, however, notably keep their discussion firmly in the world of “literature.”

By considering the aesthetics of Faulkner and the larger context of his life and

career during this very short time period in the 1930s, we can find a way to engage a

wider audience, not by simplistically devaluing the canonical and valorizing the “popular”

culture texts related to the name “Faulkner,” but by undertaking a greater understanding

of all of Faulkner’s work as interconnected and mutually illuminating. In doing so, we

can begin to see how Faulkner’s changing reputations have affected, and continue to

affect, public and institutional responses to his works and American literature as a whole.

Traditionally, Faulkner’s pop culture works came to be seen as neither popular nor

relevant, and his more privileged works gained their status by relinquishing their claims

to be entertaining. Adaptations of his works have been dismissed because to critics they

fail to capture what is “Faulknerian” about their sources, be it formal innovation,

complicated notions of subjectivity and perspective, or the difficulties of the Modernist

text. Such an emphasis on “fidelity” fails to engage with the more interesting questions

about a shared cultural context and the reciprocal nature of source/adaptation. Perhaps

the key to making Faulkner “relevant” (and understanding precisely what that means in

the first place) lies in figuring out how we got to these largely artificial conflicts and

reductive distinctions in the first place. Through my work on this project, I’ve come to

understand that Faulkner’s films are necessary as a subject of study precisely because we

can wonder about their “importance” in the first place. Faulkner’s work and reputation

are so irrevocably intertwined with twentieth century American literary and critical

history that grappling with the text we know as “Faulkner,” in all its permutations, is

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. essential to understanding where we have been and how we got to where we are now.

Influences and Methodology

This project has been greatly influenced by the work of my dissertation director

Linda Mizejewski. I am indebted to her cultural studies investigation-in Divine

Decadence: Fascism, Female Spectacle, and the Makings o f Sally Bowles- of the many

versions, the “constructions,” of the character of Sally Bowles, and the ways each

construction “reveals that she is in fact the locus of multiple and contradictory desires

positioned in both historical and psychological anxieties” (36). In particular, the

emphasis Mizejewski places on bringing the high and low together in dialogue in order to

make sense of culture more generally was invaluable for my own investigation of

Faulkner’s reputation and its connection to (or disconnect from) popular culture. At first

I naively thought investigating Faulkner’s films might be an “unacceptable” or

unproductive thing to be doing in an American literature dissertation, but her own work

(and advice) quickly proved me wrong.

Equally valuable has been the continuing work on Ernest Hemingway by Debra

Moddelmog, particularly in her book Reading Desire: In Pursuit o f Ernest Hemingway.

Although the cultural and critical contexts for Faulkner and Hemingway differ greatly,

her work to unburden the overdetermined (Modernist) Author figure and to make such a

figure more pedagogically viable has clearly influenced my own work. Her arguments

about Barthes’ “death of the author” and Foucault’s author-function reveal how these

post-structuralist concepts are on many levels valuable tools, but on a practical level they

often lead to a closing down of interpretations rather than an opening up. In a sense, her

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. work has allowed me to take as given that while we should be aware of Barthesian and

Foucauldian concepts of authorship (among others), we also need to acknowledge how

the author’s reputations do help shape the interpretive process, and how the critical

responses to the works certainly had an influence on the subsequent writing.

Moddelmog suggests how little this particular post-structuralist notion has actually

entered Hemingway criticism:

Hemingway criticism exhibits few signs of the controversy over the author’s death, even though one might have expected Hemingway, as a “Master Author” of American literature, to be one of the first to threaten to slip out of sight. Rarely, however, have critics approached Hemingway’s identity as “the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.” (14)

The situation with Faulkner is quite similar. Although Faulkner studies has gone through

its post-structuralist/deconstructionist phases-most notably in the work of John

Matthews-the author rarely disappears when it comes to analyses of a Faulkner text.

But this situation is not limited to dead white male Modernists. As M. Thomas Inge has

argued in a recent issue of PM LA, although it is “commonplace now to understand that

all texts produced by authors are not the products of individual creators” and that “they

[the texts] are the result of any number of discourses that take place among the writer,

the political and social environments in which the writing occurs,” the traditional figure

of the Author holds sway in criticism to this day: “Yet we continue to maintain the

traditional image of the author as an individualist up against the materialistic world,

trying to create something pure and unsullied by the rank commercialism of society”

(623). Inge does not make a plea for a return to deconstruction, or a removal of the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. author. Rather, he maintains that we should take more seriously the collaborative nature

of textual production and reception. This dissertation assumes Moddelmog’s and Inge’s

representation of the attitude literary criticism takes authorship as a starting point, and I

agree with both that we need not (nor should we wish to) kill the author. Rather, we

need to resurrect the authors who have been erased by the critical and more mainstream

discourses which have created seemingly impregnable personas which tend to close

down interpretations.

Moddelmog’s work differs from mine in the ways she traces the reader’s (and

thus her own) desires in reading Hemingway’s texts, and in reading critics reading

Hemingway. Her explicit focus is gender and sexuality, and as she navigates the spaces

between Hemingway’s biography and criticism, she shows how Hemingway’s persona

has closed off more “troubling” aspects of his writing, in particular the

homoerotic/homosocial/homosexual elements. Although she does bring in popular

culture, her argument does not focus on Hemingway’s various reputations and his own

engagement with pop culture.

My investigation into Faulkner’s associations with popular culture has led me, by

a different route, into questions of transgressive sexuality and gender constructions, and

Mizejewski’s and Moddelmog’s works have been important in my own project’s

development for the ways they use queer and gender theories to locate anxieties and

desires in cultural representations. Although at times it might seem so, I did not set out

to “out” William Faulkner in this dissertation. But I did set out to “queer” him. The

difference is important. I am not concerned if William Faulkner was homosexual, or

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. bisexual, or heterosexual. How, after all, does one go about proving that? As Maijorie

Garber has argued, even if one were equipped with a hidden video camera in an author’s

bedroom, what would that prove? What interests me is to investigate the unknown,

under-reported contexts which might have been involved in his writing and the

production of the films based on his works. As Alexander Doty argues, “Queer readings

aren’t ’alternative’ readings, wishful or willful misreadings, or ’reading too much into

things’ readings. They result from the recognition and articulation of the complex range

of queemess that has been in popular culture texts and their audiences all along” (84).

This project seeks to make Faulkner and his texts strange , to highlight the kinds of

readings that do not fit the grand narrative of Faulkner’s career and reputation. So in

this sense, I do get into issues involving gay and lesbian theory, argot, and history, since

what I am looking at are alternative (my apologies to Doty) histories and alternative

stories that have not been told about Faulkner.

The existing critical silence, or refutation, is due in no small measure to the more

general disavowal of his relationship to popular culture. Given the texts I have chosen to

study and the time period in which they were produced, emphasis on gender and

sexuality is to some degree inevitable. Depression-era anxieties about social and sexual

transgressions are a major feature in these texts. Although many critics emphasize the

class issues involved in such transgressions, my own focus is on sexual transgression and

impossibility of strict sexual/gender categorization. The primary texts under

consideration do not really address the issues of race and class to the extent many of

Faulkner’s other works do. “Turnabout” and Today We Live are exclusively all-white,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. upper-to-middle class affairs. Sanctuary and The Story o f Temple Drake include some

nominal African-American characters, and raise interesting class issues, but my particular

focus on the character of Temple Drake makes gender and sexuality the primary areas of

emphasis. Lawrence F. Hanley argues that Sanctuary ultimately enacts the Depression-

era “failure to contain and to manage agents of class difference” and notes the class

differences between upper-class, rural, genteel Temple and her tormentor, criminal,

urban, and immigrant Popeye Vitelli (243). But Hanley fails to address the many levels

of sexual transgression also present in the novel, and how that might be related to the

“pop” nature of the novel (which he does acknowledge).

Another reason for the emphasis on gender could be because of the nature of pop

culture itself. As Colin McCabe suggests, “To analyze the functioning and history of

popular culture is inevitably to engage in the complex functioning and history of gender

and sexuality. Our very notions of masculinity and femininity are heavily dependent on

their figuration in the forms and audiences of popular culture” (ix). My dissertation

attempts to complicate the ways we see masculinity and femininity in these popular and

literary texts, the ways high and low culture texts deal with gender, and to look at the

ways these texts enrich each other. In short, to see how Faulkner’s “forays” into popular

culture as well as his “literary” texts helped shape his ideas about gender and sexuality.

As I researched this dissertation, blind spots concerning Faulkner’s relationship

to homosexuality (in his works, among his friends and colleagues, in the texts which

inspired him) kept coming up, something Chapter 2 explores in detail. Queer readings

figure in the other chapters as well, which suggests something about the nature of the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “grand narratives” I am attempting to demystify throughout the dissertation. Faulkner’s

works, particularly those in the nascent years of his career, are loaded with gay and

lesbian characters, moments, and anxieties. But there is scant work done in this area.

(In 2002, a search in the MLA bibliography on “Faulkner” and “lesbianism” got exactly

one hit.) Queer theory has certainly helped me develop a more nuanced, complex

approach to Faulkner’s reputation, and to trace the trajectory that has written sexuality

out of Faulkner and taken him from the “Corncob Man” to “American Writer.” I am

indebted to the work of Richard Dyer, Robin Wood, Alexander Doty, Andrea Weiss, and

John Duvall, the latter of whom is one of the few critics who have really tried to bring

queer theory into Faulkner criticism. These critics have helped me formulate ways to

consider the value of oppositional readings and to allow for contradictions in order to

widen the framework of interpretation. One reason queer theory is so valuable for my

project is not only because I believe that the “taint” of homosexuality was in a sense

“written out” of Faulkner’s reputation(s) and works, but because queer theory

emphasizes the relationship between authorship and reception, and the ways criticism

tends to use the “author” as a way of closing down interpretations. Opening up Faulkner

to queer readings also allows for many of my students (gay and straight) to find a way in

to Faulkner’s works.

Also particularly useful to me in my consideration of authorship and reputation

has been Richard Dyer’s works, including Stars, and his article “Believing in Fairies: The

Author and the Homosexual,’’where he argues:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the interpretation of texts, the author was used as a means of fixing and giving weight to particular interpretations, rather than acknowledging the multiplicity of means and affects that readers generate from texts. In short, the author was an authority concept, anti-democratic in its triumphant individualism, a support of existing social divisions, hostile to public discourses, and resistant to the creativity of the reader. (186)

Queer theory has helped me “unburden” Faulkner from his “American Writer” persona,

to seek the unwritten, the unexplored, in his works and his life.

Further works on “star power” in cinema which are not grounded in queer

theory, such as John Ellis’ “Stars and a Cinematic Phenomenon” and Richard

deCordova’s Picture Personalities: The Emergence o f the Star System in America, have

led me to other interesting connections to Faulkner. They have helped me to recognize

the importance of Miriam Hopkins and Joan Crawford in the films they appear in. These

critics have also prompted me to consider how an author might also operate as a “star

figure,” and thus function as the locus of multiple, often contradictory discourses which

are more fluid, and more tied to questions of commodification and consumption, than

most literary theories of authorship allow for.

Film theory’s emphasis on questions of authorship (including auteur theory),

reception and spectatorship have also proven invaluable for my own work. Film studies

has foregrounded the collaborative nature of authorship in ways literary studies has yet

to attempt, or at least to fully embrace. My project seeks to make such considerations

unavoidable-one cannot adequately discuss Today We Live without considering the

collaborative nature of filmmaking, and such an investigation leads, I hope, to a new way

of thinking about the effects of authorial reputation on these other texts as well.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Although some critics maintain that auteur theory-generally defined as the

identification of certain stylistic or thematic practices found throughout a body of

works-has by now been disavowed, that clearly is not the case. Comparing the ways

Howard Hawks and Faulkner are discussed in critical work on Today We Live is

enlightening. The film is not, apparently, “Hawksian” or “Faulknerian.” History blames

Joan Crawford and MGM. In Chapter 3 I try to complicate that assessment and to

suggest something about the disjoint between much critical activity and the recognition

of different levels of engagement and pleasure-seeking on the part of audiences.

In order to move beyond a critical emphasis on formal features, or a reliance on

the critical history involving these texts (literary and film), my methodology has required

an enormous amount of research. Taking a page from a New Historicist framework, I

perform “thick description’-linking the literary and filmic texts with other cultural

phenomena of the era (sometimes termed paratexts), and focusing on the intertextual

nature of production and reception. These paratexts include the critical works on

Faulkner, both those collected in bibliographies and those left out, as well as the

numerous biographies. Although I only cite Blotner, Karl, Williamson, Gray, Singal and

Oates, I have read every available Faulkner biography I am aware of in order to trace

how certain narratives have become codified, and to learn when/if biographers have

strayed from Blotner’s original construction of Faulkner. In order to immerse myself in

the cultural context of the time, I have also sought out many hard-to-obtain popular

culture texts, and thanks in part to the internet, I have had access to a more wide-ranging

array of these texts than my predecessors. In particular, I have used the internet to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. collect/purchase many items that have made their way into my dissertation, including

lobby cards, posters, newspaper and magazine advertisements, movie heralds, cigarette

cards, production and fashion stills, movie magazines, and video tapes. If it were not for

the internet, I doubt I would have been able to view The Story o f Temple Drake multiple

times, or use it in the classroom. I have also used the internet auction-house e-Bay quite

extensively, both as a purchasing tool and as a means of collecting information about

texts either out of my price range or which were otherwise impossible to obtain.

Through e-Bay I have saved literally hundreds of JPEG and BMP files of magazine

covers, lobby cards, posters, etc., and have found the titles of articles in movie

magazines. Gaining access to movie magazines was particularly important for my

investigation into Miriam Hopkins’s reputation, and these are notoriously hard to get a

hold of. I have also gone to memorabilia auctions, sales, and to several memorabilia

stores in Los Angeles. I spent a week at the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles,

looking at the censorship files for all of the films associated with Faulkner, movie

magazine articles, pressbooks, and compilations of press clippings for Miriam Hopkins

and Joan Crawford among others.

In order to get a better idea of how particular films were being marketed, and

received, I have turned to contemporary reviews, publicity, and other articles. Many of

these reviews and newspaper advertisements were obtained through the microfilm

records of several newspapers. But such an investigation is clearly limited by the number

of newspapers one has access to. I was limited to The Atlanta Constitution, The St.

Louis Dispatch, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Variety and several Los

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Angeles newspapers. A more wide-ranging variety of newspapers could very well reveal

corroborating evidence for my arguments, or contradictions I would need to incorporate.

In particular, I think looking more closely at smaller and/or rural newspapers might

prove very revealing. I hope to continue to complicate my own arguments and my

readings of these texts. I have also limited myself to American newspapers-doubtless,

an investigation into how Faulkner’s reputations in other countries were shaped would

be valuable, but I felt I needed to focus just on the American mainstream and critical

responses. I also turn to mainstream and literary magazines -The Saturday Evening Post ,

Scribner’s and Vanity Fair in particular-in order to get a feel for early 1930s advertising,

to read related letters to the editor, and to understand debates under way about high and

low culture, bestsellers, and the “value” and reputation of American literature.

All of my chapters also rely on less explicitly public forms of discourse, including

rumor, gossip, and innuendo. Queer theory that has demonstrated the value, and

necessity, of considering such “unrecorded” discourses, particularly in terms of their

effects on potential and actual audiences and readers. Part of this project relies on movie

magazines, gossip rags, rumors reported by individuals in interviews and biographies,

and “reading between the lines” in order to open up new ways of thinking about

“official” histories. I am indebted here to Graff as well as Patricia Meyer Spacks’ and

Andrea Weiss’ studies of the ways gossip and rumor “constitute the unrecorded history

of gay subculture” and allow us to reveal critical blind spots: “It is this insistence by the

dominant culture on making homosexuality invisible and unspeakable that both requires

and enables us to locate gay history in rumor, innuendo, fleeting gestures and coded

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. language” (Weiss 30, 32). Much of the work that has attempted to trace gay and lesbian

history in America and in Hollywood was invaluable, including works by George

Chauncey, Lillian Faderman, Jonathan Weinberg and Jonathan Katz. I sought out

connections between the Faulkner biographies and these alternate histories, to bring out

new Faulkners by juxtaposing seemingly innocuous details from the biographies with

provocative facts from these histories. Blotner tells us Faulkner’s favorite “eatery” in

New York City was the Black Rabbit, and leaves it at that. Chauncey tells us that the

Black Rabbit was a notorious gay bar in the 1920 and 30s. From such details I have

attempted to piece together the lost Faulkners.

In the spirit of cultural studies, there is also an emphasis on the process of

creation and interpretation of these texts. Publicity and advertising is vital in this

dissertation. I have looked through magazines and newspapers from the early 1930s in

order to seek out signs of Faulkner’s reputation(s) and those of others involved in the

creation and/or reception of these texts. Rather than rely strictly on biographies,

criticism, or even collections of essays and reviews, I have attempted to get access to a

more wide-ranging, albeit also limited, sample of reactions and responses to these texts

and the people involved. I make use of publicity and fashion stills, lobby cards and

movie posters, fan magazine articles, heralds, paintings, cartoons, literary magazines and

journals, mainstream magazines, etc., in order to account for a fuller cultural context for

the works in question.

The project follows a chronological order, but there are also other factors

involved in this organization. I began this project with a desire to explore the interesting

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. territory opened up by my experiences with my Faulkner and Film class. I was intrigued

by the perspectives opened up when I attempted to view Faulkner from the students’

point of view, unencumbered by all of the Faulkner baggage I had acquired. And I was

astonished to discover what contextual elements appeared significant when we worked

to “discover” Faulkner for ourselves through research and exploration of the films and

literary works in conjunction.

Remaining true to that original impetus seems important to me, and thus the

introduction to this dissertation begins by noting the chasm between the Faulkner

industry and student/general reader awareness, and the concluding chapter returns to the

classroom and the particulars of my experiences with the Faulkner and Film class in more

detail. In between, though, the sustained recontextualizations of three texts associated

with Faulkner open up issues that appear to lie beyond the scope of a focus on classroom

techniques.

Juxtaposing multiple histories-the accepted narrative of Faulkner’s career, the

less articulated elements of his experiences during the period, the history of

homosexuality in New York and among his acquaintances, the climate in which mass

publications circulated-allows me to investigate and complicate the few critical

responses to “Turnabout” and consider the reasons behind and implications of the

relative lack of examination. The process is dependent on a queering of Faulkner, and

while the chapter does not itself detail a process of adaptation, the recontextualization

sets up the analysis of Today We Live in Chapter 3.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. By queering Faulkner and “Turnabout,” Chapter 2 sets up a complication of the

conventionally linear approach to adaptation studies-an approach that frequently seems

so reductive that adaptation is not a particularly vibrant area of literary or film studies.

My reading of “Turnabout,” however, is part of a more complicated model, one that

understands both literary and filmic texts to emerge from a shared cultural field, each

shaped by the particulars of its specific medium, but sharing with the other common

cultural components on many levels.

Rather than employing a “fidelity” model, and evaluating Today We Live on the

basis of how often and to what degree it departs from “Turnabout,” I see in the changes

in Today We Live evidence of the reception and understanding of “Tumabout”-and in

both I trace the shadow of Faulkner’s (and others’) contested reputations which shape

and are shaped by the texts.

In The Story o f Temple Drake, the conventional adaptation is further disrupted.

A focus on the film’s reception and the way the mechanisms of film production and the

politics of the film industry shaped that reception, helps to illuminate the then-in-flux

reputation of Faulkner and to understand the way his eventually accepted reputation

emerged from the larger cultural field. The image of William Faulkner, the Com Cob

Man, contributed to and was part of a culture of scandal and boundary-testing that The

Story o f Temple Drake embodied so fully. The image of William Faulkner, American

Author, necessitated the retrospective disavowal of Faulkner from the film.

Reconnecting all of these pieces allows us not only to see Faulkner amid the many

influences that shaped his writing, but to see in The Story o f Temple Drake a powerful

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. interpretation of Faulkner’s text that opens up questions about our established

understanding of Sanctuary.

The overarching goal of this project is to chart the ways Faulkner’s reputation

helped shape these texts and their reception, and the ways that competing reputations did

or did not have an effect, in order to unburden “Faulkner,” to make his works and

persona more accessible, and to complicate the high/low boundaries that are so firmly

entrenched when it comes to Faulkner. Faulkner’s works-popular and literary-offer

compelling insights into early 1930s American culture, and illustrate the value of using

cultural studies and queer theory to reexamine a canonical figure, a process that has

implications for the study of other canonical authors and for film adaptation in particular.

By breaking down a high/low culture distinction the infects both Faulkner studies and

adaptation studies, this dissertation seeks to open the door to a fuller understanding of

“Faulkner” and his works in all their interrelations.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Notes

1. The possible exception might be James Joyce, but wide-eyed (or sleepy-eyed) tenth- graders are not being asked to understand, and enjoy, Ulysses, while hundreds, if not thousands, of high schools around the country teach The Sound and the Fury to uncomprehending teenagers.

2. If it seems I am overstating the case, try this the next time you are teaching. Ask your students how many of them have heard of Faulkner, and what works he is famous for. Then try the same thing for Hemingway. And this reputation (or lack thereof) is by no means limited to high school and college students, nor is it a thing of the past. In a 1997 piece for The New York Times Magazine, James Atlas claims, in an attitude that is no doubt far-reaching, that thanks to modernism, “Now we’re stuck with the notion that literature is beyond the reach of the ordinary reader-in other words, the property of an elite.” He goes on to ask, about writers such as Pynchon and Barthes, “They have their fans, but do they have readers? I’d even put Faulkner in this category” (41).

3. These include Lawrence Schwartz’s Creating Faulkner's Reputation, several “classic” works by Cleanth Brooks, Daniel Hoffman’s Faulkner's Country Matters: Folklore and Fable in Yoknapatawpha, John Duvall’s Faulkner's Marginal Couple, Wesley Morris’s Reading Faulkner and Richard C. Moreland’s Faulkner and Modernism.

4. “During the 1930s, in his proletarianizing days, Cowley had scoffed at Absalom, Absalom!, falling in with the left’s almost unanimous condemnation of Faulkner as a politically retrograde narcissist and nihilist. His change of heart in the Forties had everything to do with his ideological somersault in the same period. As he sloughed off the withered skin of his Stalinism, Cowley experienced what he called ’a rebirth of faith in the old values, in love, in friendship, in heroism, in man himself, and a hatred of every social institution that perverts them.’ And in his search for an American paragon of that Rousseauistic wholesomeness, Cowley thought at once of Faulkner, whose virtual abstention from political involvement in the Thirties and whose reluctance to arouse the masses or even to make himself intelligible to them suddenly took on a Jamesian splendor in his eyes” (47).

5. John Duvall, for example, is accused of setting up Cleanth Brooks: “Someone in Duvall’s predicament, if he is to write about Faulkner’s women at all, stands in need of a straw man to topple. Given the polarized history of Faulkner criticism, his choice is inevitable: the eighty-four-year-old but ever-serviceable Cleanth Brooks” (49).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 2

“TURNABOUT’ IS FAIR(Y) PLAY: FAULKNER’S QUEER WAR STORY

Coming Next Week: "Turn About ” by William Faulkner. No one who reads this story will easily put it out o f his mind The theme is courage, the youthful courage o f a British boy o f twenty, who makes a game o f playing with death in his torpedo boat, and the more mature courage o f an American bombing plane captain, and the story shows what each learnedfrom the other. The Saturday Evening Post February 27, 1932

Why, any casual observer can see more in one hour than 1 ’ve put in my paintings. / 've seen sailors doing lots o f things I couldn 7 dare paint. On Riverside Drive especially. I t’s always impressed me as a-well, a very sordid place. Paul Cadmus

Queering Faulkner

The recuperation of William Faulkner’s literary reputation beginning in the late

1940s came largely at the expense of his popular culture credentials. This refutation was

in part intricately bound up with a distancing of Faulkner from anything “queer.”

Malcolm Cowley’s attempts to resurrect Faulkner’s career were characterized by

ignoring or devaluing the Hollywood and magazine work, and by strictly identifying

Faulkner’s works (the ones worth mentioning, that is, which inevitably disqualified non-

Yoknapatawpha works) as Modernist while attempting to reinvent or at least redefine

American Modernism in order to make it more palatable for mainstream audiences.

Cowley believed that one way of doing so was to iwtrouble gender, to erase any

connection between the Modernist artist and homosexuality.1 Thus, as the critical and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. biographical work devoted to Faulkner began to increase, two things happened-the

works that were already “popular,” the ones “designed” to make money, were largely

ignored or denounced, and any association between William Faulkner and homosexuality

was almost fanatically denied. With so much recent critical attention paid to the

“queemess” of Modernist authors-Hemingway, Cather, Woolf, Stein, Forster-one might

expect such anxieties about a Modernist artist’s sexuality would have lessened in the

intervening fifty years, but as this chapter argues, bringing a queer reading to Faulkner’s

works remains a tricky (but productive) business. Part of my goal in this chapter is to

demystify Faulkner, to place him within his larger cultural context, and to open up his

works for alternative readings, which will then allow me, in chapters three and four, to

complicate current attitudes towards adaptation when connected to canonical literary

figures.

An article in Lingua Franca about the decline of Duke University’s English

department makes manifest the confusion, anxiety, disgruntlement, and outright hostility

many in the academy feel towards queer theory in general: “Today, when it seems every

other paper at the ML A has a title like ‘Queering Ben Jonson,’ [Eve Kosofsky]

Sedgwick is the scholar most credited-or blamed-for queer theory’s ascendancy” (Yaffe

26). Typically, the greatest hostility for this “ascendancy” is reserved for the “queering”

of established canonical authors, in particular those authors whose reputations were

established and cemented within the academy during periods of repression of

homosexuality. I’ve been told endless times (and several colleagues who have attempted

similar projects have related similar experiences) that the application of queer theory to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Faulkner’s works is “misguided,” “trendy,” and “without merit.”2 The unspoken

assumption by many? It simply isn 7 done. John Duvall’s recent work on Faulkner and

homosexuality reveals very understandable insecurities about being misunderstood: “At

the outset I said I was not here to imply that William Faulkner was a homosexual, but I

know that the connotations . . . are beyond my control” (69). And as my own

introduction to this chapter suggests, Duvall’s fears are also mine.3

But as Duvall so astutely points out, queering an author does not, contrary to

popular belief, require identifying that author as gay. “Queer” is obviously a very

controversial term both inside and outside the gay community. My use of the term here

follows a more broadly “transgressive” definition that does not seek to remove it from

the realm of bi- and homosexuality, but rather problematizes the normalized categories

of straight and gay, masculine and feminine. Ellis Hanson provides a usefully concise

definition:

By “queer” I mean the odd, the uncanny, the undecidable. But more importantly, I refer to “queer” sexuality, that no-man’s land beyond the heterosexual norm, that categorical domain virtually synonymous with homosexuality, and yet wonderfully suggestive of a whole range of sexual possibilities . . . that challenge the familiar distinctions between normal and pathological, straight and gay, masculine men and feminine women. (137-38).

I use queer here to describe “Turnabout” in the sense that Faulkner’s story is just plain

odd, unsettling, unusual, in addition to its suggestions of overt homoeroticism. Most

queer theorists argue that all texts can, and should, be queered in the sense that all texts

contain some element of queemess, even if only in the form of resistance or repression.

Alan Sinfield, author of Cultural Politics-Queer Reading, puts it this way: “Ideology

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. cannot but allow dissidence: all stories comprise within themselves the ghosts of the

alternative stories they are trying to suppress” (37). The “straight” text or author is no

more completely straight than the gay or queer text is completely queer. Any compelling

understanding of the constructions of heterosexually-identified femininity or masculinity

in a work necessitates an understanding of the queer as well. Rather than concentrating

solely on celebrating gay and lesbian characters and situations within texts, queer theory

asks us to reconsider the assumptions we bring to the reading of “straight” texts as well:

We have paid less attention to the proposition that basically heterocentrist texts can contain queer elements, and basically heterosexual, straight- identifying people can experience queer moments. And these people should be encouraged to examine and express these moments as queer, not as moments of “homosexual panic,” or temporary confusion, or as unfortunate, shameful, or sinful lapses in judgment or taste to be ignored, repressed, condemned, or somehow explained away within and by straight cultural politics-or even within and by gay and lesbian discourses. (Doty 72-73)

Queer theory makes the text’s positioning of the reader more important than the

author’s gender and sexuality and constantly questions the very categories we have come

to know as “heterosexuality” and “homosexuality,” “femininity” and “masculinity ”

Faulkner’s early 1930s works open up several particularly interesting questions

involving the complicated relationship between masculinity, homoeroticism, high/low

genre conventions, authorial reputation, and the issues at stake in that relationship. The

very fact that so many scholars are reluctant even to acknowledge the homoerotic, or

even homosocial elements, in Faulkner’s work suggests that something about Faulkner’s

“reputation” as “American Writer,” as gentleman farmer, as literary monument, makes

such a refusal easy, natural, and even necessary. After all, Faulkner is one of America’s

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. most important writers about race, about class. When you bring gender and

homosexuality into the discussion, the argument goes, everything becomes complicated.

As soon as you begin to talk about a “queer” Faulkner there is an assumption that what

follows is a tendency is to ignore all other aspects of the texts-class, race, etc -thus

diminishing the power of Faulkner. Far too often those who are opposed to queer

readings of canonized authors suggest the “gayness” of such readings is the end-all-and-

be-all, that the queemess overwhelms all other considerations. But I would argue that

discussions of Faulkner cannot really do full justice to the complexity of many-if not

all-of the texts and their cultural and biographical contexts, particularly with regard to

the ever-changing definitions of masculinity in Faulkner’s works, without access to the

insights and complexities that a queer perspective can illuminate. Queer theory, far from

hopelessly miring Faulkner studies in endless discussions that focus only on sexuality,

offers a means of exploring sexuality in order to better understand the complicated

intersections of race, class, gender, culture, and society within Faulkner’s work. Queer

theory’s consideration of the construction's) of masculinity, and particularly of the

embeddedness of the homoerotic, provides very powerful means of exploring Faulkner’s

work, which derives so much of its force from repression (of history, of memory, of

desire) and its effects. Such an approach also illuminates what one might call the history

of masculinity within Faulkner studies, in terms both of how such constructions change

over the course of Faulkner’s career and of how Faulkner critics have accounted, or

failed to account, for those changes. Consideration of “Turnabout,” a seldom-taught

war story Faulkner wrote and published in 1932, offers an excellent means of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. demonstrating these claims. The story of this story begins with an admittedly

generalized, somewhat reductive account of an oft-repeated narrative, established by

Cowley and subsequent critics, about William Faulkner’s strained relationship with

popular culture in the early 1930s, a variation of Crews’ “fairy tale.” From there I will

offer a countemarrative with which fewer are familiar.

This first, more popular narrative recounts the events of 1930-32, a watershed

period in Faulkner’s life. Straddling that line between popular, even “pulp” writer, and

literary artiste, man of letters, Faulkner had already produced difficult, complex,

critically acclaimed works, yet no one was reading him. So out of financial necessity he

wrote his “potboiler,” Sanctuary, which was published in 1931. And although the novel

was popular, not to mention scandalous, Faulkner saw little monetary reward since the

publisher, Cape and Smith, went bankrupt soon after publication. Financial pressures

soon led, in early 1932, to his Hollywood contract with MGM to write screenplays.

Faulkner’s inability to gamer a reading public drove him, this narrative continues,

to distasteful, disreputable “hack work”: writing for popular magazines and, eventually,

for the movies. In these early, lean years of his career, a cash-strapped, somewhat bitter

Faulkner was furiously submitting story after story to such mainstream magazines as

Scribner’s, The American Mercury, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and American Caravan.

By far his favorite prospective publisher was the most mainstream and populist of the

bunch, The Saturday Evening Post. As Susan Donaldson notes, between 1930 and 1932

he submitted at least thirty-two short stories to the Post, and only five were accepted,

three of those less for their mastery or mass audience appeal than for the newfound

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. notoriety Faulkner was enjoying because of the scandalous Sanctuary (184). In addition

to “Turnabout” the five include such critical and classroom forgottens as “Thrift” (Sept

6, 1930), “Lizards in Jamshyd’s Courtyard” (Feb 27, 1932), and “Mountain Victory”

(Dec 3, 1932). The only one of these early stories published in the Post that has been

critically appreciated is “Red Leaves” (Oct. 25, 1930), an antebellum Yoknapatawpha

story concerning the racial tensions between local Native-Americans and African-

American slaves, which most Faulkner critics find appealing for obvious reasons.

Admittedly, the stories published in the Post in the early 1930s appear to be some

of Faulkner’s weakest efforts up to that point in his career. And that fact dovetails nicely

into accounts of Faulkner as a (or perhaps the) Great American Author because it

confirms what many critics suspected all along-that Faulkner really was not suited for

popular fiction, that he did not really want to write for “bourgeois” publications such as

The Saturday Evening Post and Redbook* When one places Faulkner on the pedestal of

“high” art, such mainstream publications are too low for serious consideration. In fact,

Faulkner himself perpetuated this understanding, for although he pleaded, albeit in

boastful language, and sometimes anonymously, to the editors of the Post to reconsider

when they rejected his stories,s in later life he claimed to have always deplored the Post’s

cultivation of mass readership and called the stories he submitted to such magazines “big

check stuff,” tales “knocked out,” and “mechanical stories in which I had no faith”

(Donaldson 183).

Accordingly, critics under the sway of this grand narrative of economic necessity

and “selling out” have until very recently ignored the most interesting issues involving

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. gender raised by Faulkner’s “popular” works and have approached his attempts to gain a

mass audience through these magazines in one of two ways. They dismiss these stories

(and subsequently most of his screenplays) as anomalies, crass but necessary

moneymaking schemes Faulkner churned out in an afternoon so he could afford to write

“real” fiction. Or they try to demonstrate how Faulkner resists the popular, how he

“subverts” the genres, how he brings some sort of Faulknerian “touch” and complexity

to these degraded artistic forms. Not surprisingly, neither account fully explores the

complex relationship between the writing of formula work and gender.

Thus the typical narrative of Faulkner’s early career inescapably reveals

Faulkner’s (and many critics’) contempt for popular forms of writing, demonstrates

Faulkner’s frequent failures in his short fiction and screenplays, and highlights his need

(not always successfully gratified) to sometimes subvert the standard genres. But what

this common narrative often conceals or deflects is the relationship between these

popular forms and Faulkner’s increasing exploration of troubled masculinity in the early

1930s, most commonly in the form of explicit or implied homosexuality and/or

homoeroticism, and perhaps more importantly, in the public’s fascination with so-called

“deviant” sexuality.

From “Poor Fellows’* to “Pore Sons of Bitches”

Gender critics in particular have recently made much of Faulkner’s apparent

disgust for “hack” work, often following Andreas Huyssen’s delineation, first developed

in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism , of the ways

Modernism has historically been associated with masculinity, autonomy, and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. independence, while popular culture threatens with the chaos and “flooding” of mass

appeal and market-driven success. An infamous 1936 letter to his agent, Morton

Goldman, demonstrates Faulkner’s frustrated, albeit conflicted, attitude towards writing

for popular periodicals:

Since last summer I seem to have got out of the habit of writing trash but I will try to cook up something for Cosmopolitan. Maybe I can get hold of one of the magazines and take a story that they will buy and change locale and names, etc. That’s probably hard work too and requires skill, but I seem to be so out of touch with the Kotex Age here [Oxford] that I cant seem to think of anything myself. (Blotner, Selected Letters 95-96)

This letter provides compelling evidence for critics such as Donaldson and Anne

Goodwyn Jones of Faulkner’s contempt for formula writing, for female readers and

authors, for mass marketing, and to a lesser extent for women and femininity in general.

As Jones argues, with Andreas Huyssen’s high/masculine, low/feminine divide in mind,

Faulkner’s expressed attitude towards popular culture clearly strikes a misogynistic

chord:

[W]omen’s power in literary culture has long been a source of anxiety for American writers. From the beginning of the novel, women have been its primary consumers and often its most financially successful producers. Women too have had a tendency to prefer readability and personal identification to experimentation and aesthetic distance. No wonder, then, the Kotex Age should strike fear into the heart of a “masculinist modernist.” (146-47)

Jones also acknowledges, however, the inadequacy of explaining Faulkner’s expressed

fear of and contempt for women in terms of a generalized, facile conception of

masculinity. And as I’ll argue later, it seems that it isn’t so much contempt for women

being expressed here as anxiety about consumerism and advertising more

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. generally-there’s more at stake here than Hawthorne’s “tribe of scribbling women.”

It is clear that the Faulkner writing in 1931-33 is not the same Faulkner who was

publicly expressing such distaste for popular culture a short two years later. By 1936,

Faulkner was clearly already buying into the hype recently generated about his status as a

“great American writer”-a status based in large part on the critical reception of Pylon

(193S) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and on the fact that some critics were beginning

to evaluate the entire Faulkner “corpus” at this time.6 As this letter suggests, by 1936

Faulkner sought in public and private correspondences to distance himself from popular

culture even as his financial situation necessitated his continued presence in Hollywood

and his repeated attempts to sell his short stories.

Recently, an awareness of the need to explore the particulars of gender

construction and popular culture in relation to Faulkner has led several critics to take

more seriously the gender trouble so evident in Faulkner’s war stories, works generally

considered noncanonical, and unworthy of study or teaching.7 The less familiar narrative

of Faulkner and his works from the early 1930s that I’d like to place beside the “famous

author’s early years” account begins with one such story, “Turnabout.” Its history

illuminates not just how masculinity and homoeroticism figure in Faulkner’s popular war

fiction and screenplays, but also how certain aspects of Faulkner’s private and literary

life are written out of the grand narrative of his ascension to canonical status. Originally

published as “Turn About” in the March 5, 1932, issue and subsequently titled

“Turnabout” in These Thirteen and Collected Stories, this is another short story that was

expressly written for The Saturday Evening Post. It has the further distinction of having

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. been made into a film with a screenplay written (at least in part) by Faulkner-the only

instance when one of his screenplays based on his own fiction went beyond the pre-

production stage.

According to biographies, which invariably appear to take their lead from Joseph

Blotner’s massive two-volume Faulkner: A Biography, first published in 1974, Faulkner

was inspired to write “Turnabout” after hearing a story told by Robert A. Lovett, a

frequent member of the Algonquin Round Table.1 One night late in 1931, Lovett and his

wife were entertaining some of the Round Table, including Faulkner, in their New York

City apartment. Lovett, reliving tales culled from his World War I service, told a story

about the Coastal Motor Boats (CMB), tiny English Navy gunboats that each carried a

single large torpedo. The aspect of Lovett’s account that seems to have most affected

Faulkner was the description of the young sailors who manned these boats, sailors who

stood out because of their extreme youth and excessive drinking. As Blotner’s

biography recalls the evening, Lovett described to the gathering these “doomed” boys:

most had entered the war right out of school, and he would see them with their long preparatory school scarves wrapped around their necks with the ends hanging down to their knees.... On occasion the men of Lovett’s group would come across some of these CMB boys lying drunk in the gutters of Dunkirk. . . . The Navy pilots would take these sailors home with them to the squadron to recover. (733)

For Blotner and many subsequent critics, what appeared to resonate for Faulkner about

this story was the sense of tragedy, the waste of these young men’s lives. Blotner

reports that Faulkner said to good friend and sometimes literary agent Ben Wasson, as

they left the party together, “Great God Almighty, Bud, think of those boys lying in that

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. gutter-doomed. Those poor fellows” (733).

This account of the “germ” of “Turnabout” is familiar to anyone who has studied

the short story or read subsequent biographies, but the Blotner biography’s discussion of

the story and its origins also reveals certain interesting anxieties about Faulkner’s

reputation. Blotner continues the account of the night Faulkner heard Lovett’s story:

“When they reached Faulkner’s place, he pressed Ben to come in with him, still

obviously haunted by the thought, but Ben had to go on” (734). Why, we might ask,

include mention of this seemingly meaningless exchange? An obvious answer will occur

to anyone who has tackled Blotner’s exhaustive biography: because for Blotner no detail

seems too trivial to include.

Other motives suggest themselves, though, when one compares Blotner’s

account with Ben Wasson’s version of that night as he tells it in his reminiscence Count

No ‘Count: Flashbacks to Faulkner.

On the way back to the Algonquin [Hotel]-a long walk-Bill didn’t say a word directly to me, but he muttered to himself over and over such remarks as, “Those pore young sons of bitches. Just beginning to live. No wonder they stayed drunk.” At the Algonquin he pleaded with me, though it was very late, to go with him to his room and join him in another drink. I did as he wished, but I made a move to leave after we had a highball. He had scarcely spoken a word. “Please don’t leave me. Spend the night here, Ben. I can’t stand to be alone tonight.” I gave him another drink, then lay back on his bed and went to sleep almost immediately. (125)

It is clear Blotner has performed some minor cleaning-up of Faulkner’s language, but

how might we account for the more glaring difference in the story here?9 Blotner claims

Wasson declined the invitation to stay; Wasson claims he did in fact come up to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Faulkner’s room and stayed the night.10

This example is indicative of Blotner’s effort to whitewash Faulkner’s reputation,

of the conscious or unconscious removal of anything that might “trouble” Faulkner’s

firmly-established gender identity, or more accurately, his established literary reputation.

As Dennis Petrie notes in his critique of the biography, Blotner rarely stops to analyze or

interpret the facts he presents, and when he does it is usually suggestive of some attempt

to keep within the framework of the entire biography-creating “not the man, certainly

not the artist, but the Famous Author” (93). Blotner apparently became friends with

Faulkner a few years before the author’s death, and the forward to the biography is

suggestive of Blotner’s understandable lack of objectivity:

I have tried not to inteiject unduly personal appraisal into an account meant to be sympathetic yet comprehensive and objective, yet perhaps I can here permit myself to say not just that William Faulkner was a great writer, but that to me he seems America’s greatest writer of prose fiction. The narrative will perhaps reveal more clearly how he seemed to me as a man. I cannot hope to look upon his like again, (viii)

It isn’t hard to see how Blotner, a dedicated and some might say over-awed biographer,

might be accused of ignoring or diverting attention away from possible scandalous

features in Faulkner’s life. It is also true, as several critics have suggested, that

Faulkner’s self-presentation always included a great amount of fabrication-his dubious

“war service” during World War I is the most famous instance of Faulkner’s early

attempts to romanticize his image." Blotner is clearly greatly indebted to Faulkner and

his family for some, if not most, of the information in the biography, and whether out of

lack of information or respect for the Faulkners, certain “tawdry” elements are absent,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. including his affairs with Meta Carpenter and Jean Stein and the true extent of his

drinking problems.

However, pointing to such a trend in Blotner’s work does not mean that I am

suggesting that in this instance Blotner believed Faulkner was gay and consciously edited

out details he felt were “odd” about Wasson’s account, or, for that matter, that Wasson

is suggesting Faulkner ever had anything other in mind than some drinking and talk.

What this example does suggest, though, is that there is some anxiety, conscious or

unconscious, on Blotner’s part about how others might perceive the relationship between

Wasson and Faulkner. After all, it is unlikely Blotner was unaware of Wasson’s

reputation as a gay man, given that Frederick Karl boldly notes in his own biography of

Faulkner, “Wasson was known to all as homosexual” (502 n.).12 But there is no direct

mention of homosexuality at all in Blotner’s biography, let alone any direct mention of

Wasson’s sexuality.

A few pages after the account of that evening, Blotner notes that Faulkner, the

toast of the town due to the infamy of Sanctuary and his new MGM contract, wrote a

“disquieting” letter to his wife Estelle, one which did not “sound like him” and was

suggestive of “another collapse.” Blotner claims Estelle’s concern was that Faulkner

was overworked. But when we read on we can see that something else might have been

worrying Estelle:

She had tried without success to reach him at the Algonquin [after receiving the letter]. The hotel operator told her that no one by that name was registered there. She did not recognize the street number given in his letter as the address of the Woodstock Towers, one of the complex of residential hotels that formed Tudor City on Manhattan’s East Side.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Later he would tell her that he had stayed with Stark Young for three or four days. (737)

Blotner, as he so often does, fails to comment. But from what we know of Stark

Young’s reputation as an openly gay man, Estelle’s concerns were quite possibly about

more than Bill’s possible breakdown (or one of his frequent drunken binges). Young, an

Amherst College professor of English, author of the popular So Red the Rose (1934),

and one of the “Twelve Southerners” responsible for the Southern manifesto / 7/ Take

My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930), was one of the most important

figures in Faulkner’s early literary life. Back in Oxford, Young, Phil Stone, and Faulkner

had become an inseparable threesome, beginning in 1914 when Faulkner first

encountered Young. Young and Stone were, by all reports, quite influential in

Faulkner’s development as a poet and novelist. Karl suggests in his biography that

Young was perhaps closeted, at least as far as Faulkner was concerned: “Whether

Faulkner ever recognized Young’s homosexuality is not known; and how this sexual

preference affected what became a threesome-Young, Faulkner, and Stone, is also not

known” (174). But in an incident that has not made it into the biographies, Young had

been involved in a much-publicized controversy in 191 S. The poet Robert Frost, a

fellow teacher at Amherst, urged the school to dismiss the popular Young after freshman

Gardner Jackson accused Young of making unwanted sexual advances (Katz 74). It is

unlikely that Faulkner and the people of Oxford, including Estelle, would not have heard

and gossiped about the controversy. And because he did not fit within easily-recognized

notions of Southern masculinity, there were certainly suspicions about Stone’s sexuality

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (Karl 175).

In the section relating these few days in 1932 when Faulkner was writing

“Turnabout,” Blotner continues to circle around something he never quite lands on.

Walking home after taking Faulkner to see his play The House o f Connelly, Paul Green

related the following (as reported by Blotner):

As they walked Faulkner told Green that he was doing a play himself, a dramatization of Sanctuary. “And more than that, when it’s produced, I’m going to act in it.” “What part are you going to play?” Green asked. “The corncob,” Faulkner answered, laughing. “You’ll bring down the house,” said Green. Faulkner had another surprise for his companion. “Wait a minute,” he said, and turned into a florist’s shop. He emerged with a bunch of roses which he handed to the astonished Green, who began to blush. “What’s this for, Bill? I’m not a girl,” he said. “I just thought you might like some roses,” Faulkner answered, perhaps remembering Pauline Lord. (739; emphasis mine)

Notably, here Blotner does find it necessary to provide some interpretation of this

unusual moment, suggesting Faulkner was giving Green roses because he was inspired

after receiving a white rose from actress Pauline Lord a few days earlier at a party.

Blotner’s speculation as to Faulkner’s motives here suggests at the very least an attempt

to deflect attention away from what was, at least for Green, an embarrassing moment.

Blotner’s biography is surely a vital part of the Faulkner critical canon, and my

point is not so much to call Blotner to task for his project in and of itself, but to suggest

how Blotner’s relatively minor sins of omission and obfuscation are magnified by the

foundational role the biography has played within Faulkner studies. Following Malcolm

Cowley’s lead, Blotner has created Faulkner the Famous American Modem Author, and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in the process has i//iqueered him. When one considers his gay friends, the gay artists he

admired, the gay culture Faulkner was exposed to in his early life, and the obvious

gender trouble so prevalent in his stories, it should be-but is not, given the present

climate of Faulkner studies and a more general queer theory backlash-astonishing that

anyone can continue to argue that there is no gay sensibility, no queemess, to Faulkner’s

1930s works.

The boyish Claude, the manly Bogard

Why might anxieties about Faulkner and homosexuality surface so readily in

Blotner’s treatment of the writing of “Turnabout”? Judging from most critics’

descriptions, including Blotner’s, the content of the story is “typical” Post stuff,

promising Hollywood material, a “rousing yam of men in combat,” a story that

“illustrates the universal virtues of courage, honor, pride, and sacrifice, and comments on

the futility of war” (Benson 867). But it is not, of course, “typical” Faulkner, and its

form, the short story designed for public consumption, even explains seeming thematic

contradictions:

“Turnabout” is probably... Faulkner’s smoothest application of his style to the restraints imposed by the physical limitations of the short story.. .. [However], in “Turnabout” ... we have a story in which the romantic attitude toward war, hitherto anathematized by Faulkner, prevails. Why this apparent ambiguity between “Turnabout” and the other stories? The answer is, of course, that Faulkner is not writing seriously in this last story. “Turnabout” is intended for the reader who wants to be amused, who wants to be reassured that courage, loyalty, honor and faith will ultimately triumph over evil. It is an entertaining story, but it is hardly meant to be considered a sincere comment by the author on the nature of war. (Day 393-94)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Worth noting is the suggestion by critics that “entertainment” and “sincerity” seem to be

at odds, and that the story is a triumph of “style” in trying circumstances. Similarly,

Blotner does not take the story very seriously (describing it as “adventure and comedy”),

although he does claim, as does Day, that it indicates Faulkner’s “growing

craftsmanship” (735). What Blotner seems to be saying is that Faulkner was by this time

getting the hang of a less-than-respectable formula. The story, according to most critics,

is surely noncanonical and not particularly interesting when compared to the “great”

works he was progressing towards and those he had already written.

“Turnabout” is the story of Captain Bogard, an American pilot, who encounters

young-“possibly eighteen”-Claude Hope, a lieutenant in the British Navy, who is

sleeping drunk in a street in an unnamed French city during World War I. These English

sailors apparently have nowhere else to sleep, their launches being kept underneath the

docks. Throughout the story a concerned Bogard, “past twenty-five,” nurtures and

defends the drunken Claude, who is ridiculed by Bogard's fellow pilots because they

assume the “boy” is not really “in the action” and is perhaps a coward. They base these

assumptions on Claude’s seemingly childlike appearance-“the English boy yawned

terrifically, like a child does, his mouth pink and frankly gaped as a child’s”-and the tiny

boat he sails on, whose function is unclear to them. Bogard’s constant companion and

fellow aviator McGinnis says, early in the story, “Maybe they use them to fetch hot

water from one ship to another. Or buns. Or maybe to go back and forth fast when they

forget napkins or something” (i Collected Stories All). Later, another American pilot

explicitly questions Claude’s masculinity, suggesting the boats are part of the Women’s

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Auxiliary Automobile Corps: “You mean, there’s a male marine auxiliary to the Waacs?

Good Lord, I sure made a mistake when I enlisted. But this war never was advertised

right” (CS 481). The implication here is not only that Claude, as a sailor on such a boat,

is “womanly,” but also that a real man would know what to do if he were to be placed

among women during wartime.

After allowing Claude to sleep in his car and taking him to the aerodome’s mess

hall, Bogard finds himself defending the effete, happy-go-lucky Claude’s “manliness” to

his fellow pilots as they all sit around drinking whisky. In response to the jibes about the

pointlessness of the boats in question, Bogard says “I guess they do more than just ride

around” and “It must be more than that” (CS 481, 482). When Claude describes a game

he and his fellow sailor, Ronnie, play while on board their ship, Bogard thoughtfully tries

to make sense of it while the other pilots begin to abuse Claude to his face:

The men about the table looked at one another. Bogard spoke. “I see. When you or Ronnie see a ship with basket masts, you get a beaver on the other. I see.” ... “O h,. . . I see. You and Ronnie run about in the launch, playing beaver. H’m’m. That’s nice. Did you ever pi-” “Jerry,” Bogard said. The guest had not moved. He looked down at the speaker, still smiling, his eyes quite wide. The speaker still looked at the guest. “Has yours and Ronnie’s boat got a yellow stem?” “A yellow stem?” the English boy said. He had quit smiling, but his face was still pleasant.

“Jerry,” Bogard said. The other looked at him. Bogard jerked his head a little. “Come over here.” The other rose. They went aside. “Lay off of him,” Bogard said. “I mean it, now. He’s just a kid.” (CS 483-84)

Jerry goes on to mock Claude’s voice-‘“Jolly.’ His voice was now falsetto, lilting. ‘But

dangerous, what?”’ At this point Bogard, perhaps attempting to deflect this

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. discomforting attention away from his new friend’s masculinity, formulates a plan to take

Claude on a mission, telling Jerry that he’ll “show him [Claude] some war, anyway” (CS

484).

At two o’clock that evening Bogard and McGinnis take Claude on a bombing

mission, during which, of course, Claude demonstrates surprising, grand, blithe, almost

matter-of-fact courage, and Bogard’s admiration for, and fascination with, Claude

intensifies. The boy skillfully operates the airplane’s Lewis machine gun: “‘But he’s

firing that Lewis,’ Bogard thought. ‘Straight too’” (CS 489). Warned several times by

McGinnis to watch where he vomits during the flight (which he never does), Claude

remains unruffled throughout, to the point of cheerfully trying to warn the pilots that a

bomb remains dangerously suspended underneath the carriage of the plane. Due to their

own presumptions and the noise of the airplane’s engine, they misunderstand him,

however, and tell him to get back to his machine gun, where he simply watches with

trust and admiration as they land the plane, the tip of the bomb leaving an indentation in

the sand where the bomb had dragged. “Tried to tell you. But realized you knew your

business better than I. Skill. Marvelous. Oh, I say, I shan’t forget it” (CS 492).13

The “turnabout” comes the following day, when Claude invites Bogard to join

him and his mate Ronnie on his ship. When McGinnis learns this, he continues to mock

Claude’s boat: “Why don’t you take Collier [another pilot] along, with his mandolin?

Then you could sail around and sing” (CS 491). But the boat turns out to be a small

torpedo boat of the sort notorious for their dangerous, romantic, often suicidal

assignments and high casualty rates. “‘You mean-’ Bogard said. After a moment his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. voice obeyed him again. ‘You mean you aim the torpedo with the boat and release it and

it starts moving, and you turn the boat out of the way and the torpedo passes through the

same water that the boat just vacated?’” (CS S00). Bogard gets sick from fear on the

treacherous mission, forcing him to question his own bravery, and to respect Claude’s

own (somewhat oblivious) grace under fire all the more. “The boat rushed on in those

furious, slewing turns. Bogard saw a long, drooping thread loop down from somebody’s

mouth, between his hands, and he found that the thread came from his own mouth” (CS

508).

After the mission, an admiring, chagrined Bogard sends the boy a case of Scotch:

“This is for a child ... You’ll find him in the Street of the Twelve Hours. He’ll be in the

gutter. You’ll know him. A child about six feet long.... Tell him it is from Captain

Bogard” (CS 509). But a month later he learns in a bulletin that Claude and Ronnie are

missing, presumed dead after patrol duty. Almost immediately thereafter, an almost

maniacal Bogard goes on a suicidal mission-“a daylight raid .. . without scout

protection”-and bombs an ammo depot and then, contrary to orders, uses his remaining

bombs on an unplanned target. The story ends:

Carrying his remaining two bombs, he had dived the Handley-Page at the chateau where the generals sat at lunch, until McGinnis, at the toggles below him, began to shout at him, before he ever signaled. He didn’t signal until he could discern separately the slate tiles of the roof. Then his hands dropped and he zoomed, and he held the aeroplane so, in its wild snarl, his lips parted, his breath hissing, thinking: “God! God! If they were all there-all the generals, the admirals, the presidents and the kings-theirs, ours-all of them.” (CS 509).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. It is easy to infer why The Saturday Evening Post would find such a story

promising. War stories were still enormously popular in mainstream magazines and the

pulps at the time (developments in Europe made them less so by 1938), and the story’s

anti-war conclusion ostensibly matches the Post's fervent isolationist editorial position

under George Horace Lorimer. As Jan Cohn has noted, in the late 1920s and early

1930s the magazine, “[e]conomically, politically and militarily . .. urged an isolationist

position. The lessons of World War I were indelibly imprinted on the Post and the scars

from that war kept inflamed by . .. the war debt incurred by our European allies” (231).

Yet the magazine was not merely pursuing a policy of opposing war but was also

very concerned with defending “American manliness” while doing so (Cohn 116-17).

That defense of American masculinity (and with it the status quo and the fear of any

social change) was realized in the form of opposition to aliens, radicals, avant-garde

artists, Communists, socialists, and homosexuals and other sexual “deviants.” In

particular, thePost took pains to ridicule what it saw as the homosexual, artistic,

“radical” culture of Greenwich Village: “On one level, the great mass of middle-class

Americans was hostile to this upward movement in the arts. The Saturday Evening Post ,

then a self-appointed guardian of traditional American values, vented its fury against

Greenwich Village repeatedly” (Andrist 80). What makes that policy significant in

relation to “Turnabout” is that the story initially seems particularly unsuited for The

Saturday Evening Post because it so blatantly “turns” on Bogard’s thinly-veiled

homoerotic attraction for Claude and McGinnis's apparent jealousy of his rival. The real

irony here is that the story ultimately codes Bogard’s final anti-war attitude as unmanly.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. When the once-unflappable Bogard makes his furious bombing run after learning of

Claude’s death, he has essentially been transformed into the grieving widow or lover so

common in the war story, complete with newly-discovered anti-war ideology-the

emphasis might not simply lie on the waste of these men’s lives, but on the dream

deferred, on what could have been concerning Bogard and Claude. There’s also an

element of the grieving mother here, as Bogard is constantly protecting and nurturing

Claude in the story (even sending him a “care package” in the form of a case of scotch).

We might also be tempted to read this final scene as a disturbing moment of homosexual

panic, of self-loathing-perhaps Bogard, forced to finally consciously acknowledge his

feelings for Claude because of the boy’s death, reacts violently, with fury. The target of

his wrath are the people who put Bogard in a position where he would have to face this

aspect of his psychosexual makeup. Thus the motive for the bombing of the chateau

might not be simple revenge for Claude’s death, but rather Bogard’s homophobic

response to his own feelings, his need to reassert his masculinity through violent,

excessive, “manly” action.14

Yes, Faulkner has ostensibly written an anti-war story, but one which quite

blatantly also continually questions what it means to “be a man” and how far soldierly

camaraderie and respect do, or should, go. Do “real” men grieve for a “girlish” boy of

eighteen? What is Bogard’s fascination with Claude? Why does McGinnis seem so set

against Claude? Jealousy or homophobia? Bogard learns a lesson about courage from

an unlikely source-the effete, oh-so-British, “girlish” Claude, and thus the story reverses

the typical sense of honor, duty, and respect for the masculine figureheads, the generals,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. kings, politicians, etc., associated with war. Who, we end up asking, is the “virile”

American hero of the story we would expect in a war story published in The Saturday

Evening Post ?

“Turnabout” was presumably acceptable for the Post because of its seeming

representation of American virility versus English “sissiness,” but its defense of American

masculinity also depends on gender trouble, on homoerotic attraction-Claude is the

object of fascination, of protection, of the gaze, of fetishization, all underlined by

McGinnis and the other pilots’ taunting of Claude and Bogard’s protection of him,

before Claude goes on the bombing mission with the Americans. McGinnis’s jealousy,

and his attitude towards Claude’s manliness and Bogard’s “relationship” with the boy, is

made manifest when McGinnis sends a package to Bogard as the latter is preparing to

board Claude’s boat for the reciprocating mission, the “turnabout”:

Bogard took the bundle. The orderly and the marine retreated. He opened the bundle. It contained some objects and a scrawled note. The objects were a new yellow silk sofa cushion and a Japanese parasol, obviously borrowed, and a comb and a roll of toilet paper. The note said: Couldn’t find a camera anywhere and Collier wouldn’t let me have his mandolin. But maybe Ronnie can play on the comb. Mac. Bogard looked at the objects. But his face was still quite thoughtful, quite grave. He rewrapped the things and carried the bundle on up the wharf and dropped it quietly into the water. (CS 494)

We’re clearly supposed to imagine that McGinnis is alluding to Bogard and Claude

having a romantic, unmanly “day out” in their little boat (perhaps a gondola is in mind

here), complete with a comfortable pillow, a parasol to block out the sun, romantic

music and snapshots. The camera reference also suggests the tendency of soldiers to

have themselves photographed with their “buddies.” The photographs, which often

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. appear quite suggestive of the homosocial bonds between those in the military, were

often made into postcards (see figure 2.1). This classic triangulation of desire-Bogard’s

fascination with Claude, McGinnis’ jealousy-is certainly loaded with homoeroticism, as

well as denial. Bogard’s “grave” reaction to McGinnis’ “joke” is anything but

appreciative, and the story repeatedly suggests that a repressed Bogard himself can’t

quite figure out why he’s getting involved with Claude in the first place, why an

American captain would “run around” with a British lieutenant.

Faulkner’s Gay Aesthetic

What I think is most interesting about “Turnabout” and critics who have written

on it is that thepossibility of a gay subtext is continually denied or deflected, sometimes

quite dizzyingly so, despite the suggestive textual details, the homosocial nature of the

war story genre, the certainty of Faulkner's interest in theories of homosexuality, his gay

and lesbian acquaintances, and his other stories and novels written around this time with

more overt gay and lesbian themes-these texts include Mosquitoes (1927), “Divorce in

Naples” (written in 1925 but not published until 1931) and “Elmer” (a fragment begun in

1925).15 Piecing together biographical details is also suggestive-certainly not conclusive

but evocative nonetheless-of a gay aesthetic or milieu that helped to shape Faulkner’s

different figurations of masculinity and certainly had something to do with the writing of

“Turnabout.”

During his extended stay in New Orleans in the 1920s, Faulkner frequented a bar

named Celeste’s, notorious for its mix of straight and gay clientele, and spent a great

deal of time in New Orleans and New York with the openly gay Lyle Saxon, whose

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.1: Postcard. “Greetings from New York City. 1931.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. apartment on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village was reportedly a meeting ground

for young gay men, Southerners in particular (Karl 344)16. A few years prior to his time

spent in Greenwich Village, where “Turnabout” was written, Faulkner took a walking

tour of France and Italy with his New Orleans fiiend and sometime roommate, gay artist

William Spratling (Duvall SO; Karl 241-42). Faulkner definitely knew Spratling had at

least some experience with homosexuality. According to Williamson, during this trip

“Spratling told Faulkner that while he was in jail, he participated in a homosexual act”

(202), reportedly the inspiration for “Divorce in Naples.” Accompanying them at one

point was another openly gay man, Spratling’s friend, photographer William Odiome

(a.k.a. “Cicero”). They spent weeks visiting World War I battle sites, eagerly searched

for Gertrude Stein, and laid flowers on Oscar Wilde’s and Wilfred Owen’s graves. As

Duvall notes, “It would be possible to construct an argument that Faulkner’s aesthetic is

a gay aesthetic, given Faulkner’s pilgrimage during his 192S tour of Europe to Oscar

Wilde’s grave or his drawings influenced by Aubrey Beardsley” (50-51).

We have seen the accepted account of the germ of “Tumabout’-Lovett’s story

told at a party. But it is quite likely the “mood” of the telling of the story, along with

Faulkner’s reception of it, was a little less reserved and reverent than has been previously

reported.17 So what doesn 7 typically make it into the biographies? According to several

accounts, Faulkner was a welcome addition to the rowdy and reprobate Algonquin

crowd in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a group that often frequented bars such as

Tony’s Speakeasy and the Black Rabbit. As Blotner notes, the Black Rabbit was, in

fact, Faulkner’s favorite eatery while he stayed in Greenwich Village: “There was one

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. place . . . where they [Faulkner and his friend Owen Crump] were made to feel at home.

It was a restaurant and speak-easy called The Black Rabbit” (594). But Blotner reveals

nothing about the bar’s reputation-historian George Chauncey notes that “The Black

Rabbit on MacDougal at the comer of Minetta, ‘one of the Village’s gay stamping

grounds,’ was as well known for its lesbians in overalls as for its rum concoctions before

the police closed it” (241) and mentions that Tony’s was also a well-known gay hangout

in the 1930s (349).

Several frequenters or “permanent” members of the Roundtable included gay

writers, journalists and artists, including Marsden Hartley, who subtly encoded his

painting with homosexual themes, and Charles Demuth, whose more salacious

paintings-with titles such as Distinguished Air (1930) and Two Sailors (1930)-reflected

in part an obsession with gay, or “trade,” sailors, and were displayed in the homes of

several Roundtable members (see figures 2.2 and 2.3). “Gay painters Charles Demuth

and Marsden Hartley were very much in evidence, and the dandyish Demuth-whose

work was a precursor of the pop art of the 1950s and ‘60s-painted homosexual

tearooms, bathhouses, and, of course, sailors” (Miller 138). It is hard to imagine that

Faulkner, who even wrote a critical piece for The Mississippian (March 17,1922)

mentioning Hartley, never came in contact with some of this “underground” artwork

during this time or was not aware of the notorious nature of some of these artists’

works. Faulkner, an aspiring artist himself who clearly respected these painters, might

even have been inspired by the ambiguity of some of these paintings and the interpretive

possibilities they raised:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.2: Charles Demuth. Distinguished Air (1930). (Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2 3: Charles Demuth. Two Sailors (1930). (Private collection.)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. It is probable that the paintings would have a different meaning for homosexuals than it would for those unfamiliar with the way certain young men in New York or Paris spend their nights. In fact, the very invisibility of the homosexual content for the majority of its viewers allowed the clandestine subject matter to be seen by an intended few without fear of repercussions. (Weinberg 28)

The most famous of these paintings with a “hidden” homosexual subtext is Hartley’s

cubist masterpiece, Portrait o f a German Officer (1914). This is perhaps the painting

with the most interesting connection to “Turnabout,” particularly in terms of its focus on

a lost object of desire and its homosexual subtext. Portrait o f a German Officer

“incorporated direct but encoded references to von Freyburg” (Cooper 122), Hartley’s

German lieutenant lover who was killed in 1914 (see figure 2.4). These encoded

references include initials (KvF), feathers from his regimental helmet, “24,” the age he

was killed, and the Iron Cross. Faulkner, fascinated by cubism, would certainly know

the painting and would most likely know the background story given his ties to the

artists and intelligentsia of Greenwich Village.

In addition to his exposure to the arts scene of Greenwich Village, Faulkner was

at different times living with several gay men in the area, including Stark Young, Lyle

Saxon and Ben Wasson, all of whom lived on streets notorious for gay

activity-Christopher Street and MacDougal Street (Chauncey 240-44). Faulkner clearly

must have been at the very least, to use Jonathan Weinberg’s term, initiated, which need

not imply that Faulkner was gay: “By initiated, I do not mean simply . . . homosexuals

but, rather, those who shared some of the same spaces with the various homosexual

subcultures-the motley group of intellectuals, artists, eccentric patrons, and hangers-on

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.4: Marsden Hartley. Portrait of a German Officer (1914). (Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York.)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that made up the community of avant-garde life in such places as New York” (28-9).

Faulkner would have to be a very inattentive artist indeed to miss the homosexual

activity taking place on his streets, in his bars, and among his friends.

In addition to his contact with the gay subculture, Faulkner was also familiar with

the social and scientific terminology being used in the early 1930s to explain

homosexuality, male and female. Ben Wasson tells of one incident when he and his

father were discussing a recent scandal and Faulkner supplied an explanation of

lesbianism to help clarify the events (Wasson 18). Wasson also relates a story in which

he, Faulkner, and others were taken in 1932 to a Harlem gay bar, Gladys’s Place, by the

decidedly uncloseted Carl Van Vechten (121-23). Wasson’s account suggests Faulkner

was uncomfortable in the bar, but the story makes it clear he was certainly aware of gay

culture-one of the women in the group noted how Gladys, dressed in a tuxedo, was

“ogling” her.18 While Faulkner was living in Greenwich Village, local weeklies were

filled with cartoons and articles with gay themes and characters, including countless

cartoons about sailors who engaged in homosexual activity-in particular, drunk sailors

(see figures 2.S and 2.6).19 These drunken sailors also inhabited Paul Cadmus’ overtly

homosexual, scandalous paintings such as Shore Leave (1933) and The F leet's In!

(1934), and the U.S. Navy had been embroiled in a scandal that took place in Newport,

Rhode Island twelve years before (in 1919-1920) that “involved exactly the kind of

solicitation between civilians and sailors that Cadmus illustrates in his paintings”

(Weinberg 39) (see figure 2.7).20 In addition to the art world, postcards often featured

obvious and veiled references to homosexuality in the armed services (see figure 2.8).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LITTLE ACCIDENT

" O k . tkmrktf Tktrt f 4t m* kmmktr "

Figure 2.5: One “fairy” tries to pick up a sailor on Riverside Drive-“Oh, shucks! There goes my hankie again!” Broadway Brevities 7 Mar. 1932.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. MOOED COINED IEEE

'Kt. *•» » "

Figure 2.6: A prostitute loses out to a “fairy”- “Rivalry.” Note how the sailors are always represented as drunk.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.7: Paul Cadmus. The Fleet’s In! (1934). (Naval Historical Center, Washington, D C.) Note the man third from the left, who offers the sailors a cigarette (part of the pick-up ritual) and who is wearing a red tie, both codings for homosexuality in the early 1930s.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.8: “Boys of the Bulldog Breed!” Postcard. 1931.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission Some of Faulkner’s own drawings, the illustrations for “Turnabout,” even the paintings

of Demuth are both “innocent” and “suggestive,” and when we start to juxtapose some

of these high art and popular culture images (and their contexts) next to one another the

ambiguities and anxieties of male-to-male relationships becomes apparent (see figures

2.9-2.11).

Such ambiguities also feature in biographical details behind the production of

“Turnabout.” Faulkner started writing the short story while living with Wasson, and he

completed the story with a borrowed typewriter in the Beekman Place apartment, a few

doors west, of the reportedly gay Corey Ford (columnist for Vanity Fair) and his

roommate, the humorist Frank Sullivan. Against this backdrop, it is not implausible to

see “Turnabout” in new ways, perhaps even as a goof, a deliberate “jab” at both The

Saturday Evening Post (which was constantly turning down his short stories and was

engaged in a war against the Bohemian elements of the Village) and its largely female

readership (eighty percent by some accounts), a story deliberately infused with sexual

ambiguity “passing” in the guise of a rip-roaring war tale. In this light, “Turnabout” is a

story which disrupts the normative ideal of masculine mastery, one that his friends, and

the “hip” Villagers would “get,” but the regular readers of The Post would surely

misunderstand.21 To “turn about” is the same as to “invert” or reverse-Faulkner and at

least some of his readers would surely be aware of the implications of the term inversion

in the theories of homosexuality and bisexuality circulating at the time. The possibility of

such a reading suggests Faulkner’s anxieties about the high/low culture divide and his

apparent inability to write in the “low” mode without “subverting” these popular

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. riSH. TLC2H, rOWL

Figure 2.9: William Faulkner. “Fish, Flesh, Fowl.” Ole Miss. 1920-21.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.10: Albin Henning. Illustration for “Turn About.” Saturday Evening Post 5 Mar. 1932. Captain Bogard at left in foreground, Claude saluting, held up by M.P.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.11: Charles Demuth. On “That ” Street. (Art Institute of Chicago.)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. genres-how he needs to publish short stories while feeling he is “fighting the good fight.”

What “Turnabout” also reveals is a real investment on Faulkner’s part in the form and

goals of these “lower” forms. And while Faulkner’s use of homoeroticism in this story

might be critiquing middle-class American values, it also reifies them. It has been

argued, by Sedgwick and Garber among others, that homoeroticism is foundational for

patriarchal capitalist society precisely because it represents power and desire without

women.22 Thus, the anti-war statement many want to attribute to Faulkner here is

undermined-or at least complicated-by the homoerotics of the text, because in this sort

of reasoning, homoeroticism both makes war possible in the first place and is a constant

threat to it. The story, and the criticism about it, in effect enact the tension so evident in

Faulkner’s early 1930s works. What is so interesting about “Turnabout” is that is can so

easily be read in the traditional, dismissive way (as hack work designed to make money),

as subversive and thus more connected to Faulkner’s “major” fiction, and, with a little

fancy footwork, as a story full of gay codes and argot written expressly for “insiders.”

Out of touch with the Kotex Age

The very cover of the issue of the Saturday Evening Post in which “Turnabout”

was first published suggests that this kind of queer ambiguity was, in the early 1930s,

everywhere. The cover features a man in woman’s clothing, but there’s no seeming

homoeroticism or transvestism going on here. The joke of the cover derives from the

viewer seeing the look of chagrin on the husband’s face (see figure 2.12). Holding his

pipe and newspaper, the elderly, somewhat scrawny husband has clearly been

conscripted to serve as a model as his wife makes adjustments to the pink, ruffled dress

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. m

Figure 2.12: The Saturday Evening Post 5 Mar. 1932. Issue which includes “Turn About.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that he wears over his own clothes. The connotations are “safe” and domestic-this is

funny because his wife has clearly made him put on this dress. The joke lies in the power

of the wife to conscript her husband into “feminine” activities, despite his inclinations.

Technically, thisis a case of cross-dressing, but it seems pretty “innocent,” a humorous

glimpse into the domestic life of middle America. The cover, however, was drawn by

J.C. Leyendecker, the Post's most popular illustrator at the time and the artist famous for

creating the Arrow collar man, one of the most successful icons in the history of

American advertising (see figure 2.13). It’s easy to see why Leyendecker has a huge gay

following today and likely did in the 1920s and 30s as well-his drawings for

Kuppenheimer suits (see figure 2.14) and his other magazine covers often feature

blatantly erotic male imagery or situations which seem quite queer (see figures 2.15 and

2.16).23 Seemingly innocent covers of the Post and other mainstream magazines such as

C ollier’s often featured very butch men engaged in “manly” activities, often explicitly

avoiding or ignoring women (see figures 2.17 and 2.18). By all accounts Leyendecker

was an openly gay man (or as openly gay as a professional man could be at the time).

The model for his Arrow Shirt advertisements was his roommate and lover of fifty years,

Charles Beach. “Beach embodied all the qualities he expressed in his advertisements and

cover designs. He was tall, powerfully built, handsome and well-dressed and looked like

an athlete from one of the Ivy League colleges” (Cooper 132). But an artist of the time

didn’t need to be gay to produce ambiguous imagery. Even that embodiment of all-

American middle-class values, Norman Rockwell, created illustrations that can be read

queerly. The cover illustration for the January 18,1919, issue of the Post features a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. jr- r»r«-

^ s ^ o S H I R T S Evening* SHIRTS *T*Ht A» »» u til wu r rflhw fccw w i ■*• w o t * r t * fn TW nm y tf lix k ir 'eDonchester g * a * d «wfcy •/* * ikn *. i t t aB K— i of** »at aa ia aril • aaf* m t * R am a *rt ; •■)*» aad *c mprriet i

Figure 2.13: Leyendecker’s Arrow Collar man. The Literary Digest, 1914.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.14: One of Leyendecker’s drawings for Kuppenheimer suits. 1922.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.15: J.C. Leyendecker cover for The Literary Digest 29 Aug. 1908

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.16: J.C. Leyendecker cover for The Saturday Evening Post 9 Aug. 1924.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. «*#*f **#r» *r P m t m r

Figure 2.17: A “manly” cover for Collier's 24 Oct. 1921.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.18: The girls can expect little help. The Saturday Evening Post 9 Aug. 1924

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. young sailor pining for his girlfriend or wife (we see her photograph in his hand) with his

hand on the knee of a rather irritated-looking fellow sailor (see figure 2.19).

What these covers of mainstream magazines, postcards, and cartoons suggest is

that in the 1920s and early 1930s there was a real fluidity of gender roles in the public

sphere, an ambivalence about sexuality, performance, categorization. But by 1936, when

Faulkner remarked on writing for the “Kotex Age,” he was beginning to feel that he was

losing his dignity as an artist because he was being thrust into the role of writing for

women (and by extension, for consumers). At this time, women were seen as the prime

targets for advertisers, and Kotex ran one of the most successful advertising campaigns

in the 1920s and 30s, a campaign which urged women to be more independent, self-

confident, to “fill every day with activity.”24 At heart was the power (of purchasing) that

came from the domestic sphere-just like the power of the women, who appears solid and

unflappable, to enlist her clearly reluctant husband in her dress-making. The illustration

is funny insofar as there’s an irony to the king in his castle being thus robed. But what

some artists-Faulkner among them-were doing was breaking down gender roles, and

commercial work becomes a bit of a bind. Having to write for mass audiences is not

inherently the problem for Faulkner-rather, it is the limiting, constrictive nature of mass

marketing which becomes troubling. We’ll see a perfect example of this when Faulkner

is asked to “insert” a major female character for the screenplay for the Hollywood

adaptation of “Turnabout” in order to cash in on Joan Crawford’s rise to stardom.

Faulkner’s 1936 comment about the Kotex Age suggests an increasing loathing

of mass marketing, of being pigeonholed into a more stable type of creative act in terms

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 2.19: Norman Rockwell cover. The Saturday Evening Post 18 Jan. 1919.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of advertising , in addition to resentment towards women artists or consumers. In her

provocative article “William Faulkner as a Lesbian Author,” Frann Michel suggests that

Faulkner saw his own position as “feminizing,” which is both empowering and

disempowering:

A male author who sees his social or economic disempowerment as feminizing may also, like Faulkner, see that feminization as creatively empowering, insofar as it allies him with metaphors of writing as maternity. But even as Faulkner embraces and accentuates his status as feminine author, he insists on distinguishing literary from biological maternity, intellectual from physical feminization, feminized male authors from actual women or female characters.

As Michel goes on to argue, Faulkner’s attitude towards women, in his life and fiction,

can be connected to his increasing feeling of emasculation:

The persistence of this structure [male disempowerment=male feminization], highlighted by the persistence o f an intergender model of desire, prompts the male author writing as a woman to write simultaneously against women, in order to distance himself from the devalued position in which he finds himself. (18, emphasis mine)

Perhaps Faulkner’s gradual movement away from an explicit emphasis on gender

questions, on queer themes in his works, can be traced back both to his increasing feeling

of disempowerment, related to American society’s increasing intolerance towards

homosexuality in the mid to late 1930s, and mass marketing’s emphasis on rigid

categorization. Faulkner gradually learned what kind of story was expected by

Cosmopolitan , by Scribner's, and by the Post, and he came to resent having to write a

certain kind of fiction for different markets-in the Post the queemess of “Turnabout” is

replaced in subsequent years by less contemporary, more Southern-themed,

“Faulknerian” stories which eventually made up parts of The Unvanquished and The

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Hamlet.

Cultural and literary models of queerness

To argue that “Turnabout” is a story loaded with gay codes that could be read as

a “gay” text does not mean that Faulkner is establishing any sort of a fully-realized gay

identity for his characters. Rather, we might say he is exploring different aspects of

masculinity through the given conventions and ways of perceiving and interpreting within

his culture. What “Turnabout” suggests about early Faulkner is that homosexuality as a

category is not clearly delineated and that unitary masculinity is an impossible

construction to maintain, even though the story's use of homoeroticism is fairly common

in terms of the genre he is writing in. Doty’s comments about melodrama and horror

certainly also apply to the war genre: “It is . .. important to consider how the central

conventions of [genre] actually encourage queer positioning as they exploit the spectacle

of heterosexual romance, straight domesticity, and traditional gender roles gone awry”

(83).

The establishment of a meaningful relationship that ultimately results in lost

“Hope” (one of Faulkner’s less elegant puns), the desire for revenge, and the waste and

uselessness of war very often turns on the homoeroticism of the relationships without the

necessity of establishing any truly gay identity. Thus while the story emphasizes this

erotic attraction between men, it also, almost desperately, denies that Bogard's

“manliness” is really in question. Bogard is immediately established, through the

description of his appearance, as extremely masculine. As Anne Goodwyn Jones notes,

the story, “fascinated by the semiotics of gender... begins with a fashion statement and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ends with a phallic bombing” (“Faulkner’s War Stories” 48). The fashion statement,

found in the story’s first two paragraphs, effectively places Bogard, McGinnis, and

Claude on a continuum of masculinity, if “masculinity” and “femininity” are understood

not as gender absolutes but as socially constructed and performative concepts. The story

opens with.

The American-the older one-wore no pink Bedfords. His breeches were of plain whipcord, like the tunic. And the tunic had no long London-cut skirts .... And he wore simple puttees and the easy shoes of a man of middle age, instead of Savile Row boots, and the shoes and the puttees did not match in shade, and the ordnance belt did not match either of them, and the pilot's wings on his breast were just wings.... [ljooking at him, one thought, not Phi Beta Kappa exactly, but Skull and Bones perhaps, or possible a Rhodes scholarship. (CS 475)

McGinnis, apparently more concerned with looks and fashion, “was not twenty-five and

he wore the pink breeches, the London boots, and his tunic might have been a British

tunic save for the collar” (CS 476). And the seeming object of Bogard’s “unusual”

interest, Claude Hope, is described as being “quite drunk, and in contrast with the heavy-

jawed policeman who held him erect on his long, slim, boneless legs, he looked like a

masquerading girl. He was possibly eighteen, tall, with a pink-and-white face and blue

eyes, and a mouth like a girl's mouth.” Bogard’s fascination with Claude is overt, and

Claude is coded as “feminine” throughout the story. He has a “girlish delicacy of limb”

(CS 476), his mouth is described as “pink and frankly gaped as a child's” (CS 480), and

wears a silk muffler “with a club insignia which Bogard recognized to have come from a

famous preparatory school” (CS 481), a coding that implies Claude's participation in the

stereotypical English public school homosexual culture.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Claude’s description certainly bleeds into the category, as articulated by Thomas

Waugh, of the “ephebe,” the adolescent boy who was “the most popular body type in the

erotic repertory of the Victorian gay imaginary” (141). According to Waugh, “the

ephebe addressed the phallic spectator as older, stronger, more powerful, active, just as

surely as the female photographic object addressed its gender opposite, the heterosexual

male spectator” (143-44). In “Turnabout” the phallic spectator includes not only the

reading audience, of course, but the men in the story. We might be tempted to see in

Claude’s “courage” an ultimate remasculinization of the boy who has been believed

cowardly, but in fact we know nothing of Claude, since Claude is only seen through the

eyes of the males in the story and the narrator. Claude may indeed be a “man,” but he’s

only referred to that way once, before Bogard has quite “registered” his presence as he

encounters the group of men in the street . “One of the men who faced him probably

could not see him at all” (CS 475). Hereafter Claude is referred to as a “boy” or as “the

guest” during the bombing run, and is repeatedly described as youthful, girl-like, and

childish, even as he displays signs of courage and, as Hemingway would characterize it,

grace under pressure.

In Bogard and Claude’s relationship we might be reminded of works by two

authors Faulkner greatly admired-Melville’s Billy Budd, first published in 1924, and

Mann’s Death in Venice (1913). Billy and Claggard, Tadzio and Aschenbach, Claude

and Bogard-these relationships are based on voyeurism, obsession, and in the case of

Billy Budd, the furious refusal on the part of the older, “straighter” man to accept his

own desires for the boy figure. This is not new territory for Faulkner. “Divorce in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Naples” (192S) features a “married” couple (as the characters constantly joke), sailors

George and Carl, and their break-up due to jealousy on George’s part. George is “a

Greek, big and black, a full head taller than Carl,” while Carl has a “round, yellow head”

and looks like “a sophisticated baby” (CS 877-8). As Robert Dale Parker suggests, the

story constantly seeks to feminize Carl, including making him increasingly childlike, and

it is its suggestion of homosexuality that has “frightened off critical discussion” (79-80).

In a related vein, Karl notes that the fragment “Elmer,” also begun in 1925, has close

parallels withDeath in Venice: “If Elmer were only older, the description of his

adoration [for a nameless boy he sees] recalls Aschenbach and Tadzio ... a linkage

based on cruelty, passivity, and voyeurism, all connected to a debased form of art.” Karl

also suggests a connection between Faulkner’s male “boyish” objects of desire and

“those breastless, thin-hipped, bellyless young women whom Elmer and Faulkner so

admire” (152). Much has been made of the “epicene,” Beardsleyan figure in Faulkner’s

ouevre-that is, the youthful, thin, small-breasted androgynous woman, which includes

Cecily Saunders from Soldier's Pay, Laveme from Pylon, and, as we’ll see, Temple

Drake in Sanctuary15-but there has been very little attention paid to the ephebe figure in

Faulkner’s works.

As with Billy, Tadzio, and Carl, Claude is also, not coincidentally, described as

blonde. Noting homoerotic World War I poetry’s debt to Victorian imagery, Paul

Fussell in his chapter “Soldier Boys” stresses how blonde hair signifies: “To be fair-

haired or (better) golden-haired is, in Victorian iconography, to be especially beautiful,

brave, pure, and vulnerable” (275). He goes on to quote an Oscar Wilde poem that

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. follows this tradition: “Victorian pederastic poetry swarms with adored lads like the one

in Wilde’s ‘Wasted Days’: ‘A fair slim boy not made for this world’s pain,/With hair of

gold thick clustering round his ears . ...’ In this tradition, beloved acolytes and boy*

saints are most often blond so that the poet can treat their hair as a golden halo” (27S).

Fussell notes too that the term “boy” is significant beyond the childishness and innocence

it implies: “In Great War diction there are three degrees of erotic heat attaching to three

words: men is largely neutral; boys is a little warmer; lads is very warm” (282). Claude

is never referred to as a “lad,” but perhaps this is where the story (or the narrator, or

Bogard) can’t quite go.

The narrator’s description of Claude not only follows typical homoerotic

Victorian iconography, but also hits upon nearly every 1930s stereotype of the English

male homosexual (or supposed homosexual). Iwan Bloch’s 1938 book The Sexual Life

in England, Past ami Present discusses the public’s understanding of who the gay men

of England were, what roles in society they played:

“Pseudo-homosexuality” was especially to be found in England among sailors, schoolboys and university students, mine and street workers, footballers, athletes, members of certain men’s and boys’ associations and thelike... Lack of intercourse with women, and especially indulgence in alcohol, here play an important part... [of the] cult of homosexuality, (qtd in Garber 388)26

Early 1930s discussions of homosexuality make explicit the connection between prep

schools and military service and the incumbent anxieties: “There probably isn’t a

boarding school... a camp, barracks, ship, prison, house of detention, reformatory,

academy . . . or any place where males and females are prevented from intermingling .. .

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in which homosexuality or some abnormal sexual practice is not as common as lying”

(Potter 4).

Given this milieu, it should not seem surprising that a 1930s war story featuring a

young, drunk, English, ex-prep school sailor and a hypermasculine American flyer would

turn on a homosexual attraction-after all, numerous critics have noted the often essential

presence of homoeroticism in war fiction and films.27 And the story, through these

masculine and feminine codings, manipulates very common American stereotypes of the

virile, masculine American compared with the effete, feminized Englishman, fitting in

perfectly with thePost’s desire to remain isolationist but to reaffirm American

masculinity. But as I’ve already suggested, the few critics who have remarked on

“Turnabout” typically deny or discount the homoeroticism of the narrative, usually by

acknowledging the “male bonding” (there aren’t any women in the story, after all) but

refuting any connection between male comradeship and homosexuality. In his study of

the story and script for the film adaptation of “Turnabout,” Gene Phillips writes:

There is no hint of homosexuality in these scenarios' recurring motif of male friendship; to suggest otherwise would be to misconstrue the value Faulkner placed on male companionship in his writings. .. . For Faulkner a solid male friendship was founded on the wholesome mutual esteem between two men. (13)

And Bruce Kawin, as we will see in Chapter 3, stresses in his work on Faulkner’s fiction

and screenplays the difference between “buddy” stories and “real” homosexuality (54).28

Of course, this perspective suggests both that male companionship is only to be valued if

there is no “hint of homosexuality” and that Faulkner was in no way interested in more

blatant or direct representations of homosexual relationships. But Faulkner’s

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. contemporaries had no trouble identifying Claude as homosexual, at least from the

perspective of the Americans in the story. In Peter Monro Jack’s 1934 New York Sun

review of Dr. Martino and Other Stories , he writes: ‘“Turn About’ is a grand story of

the war which was made into a movie, the story of an English ‘sissy,’ as the Americans

suppose” (qtd in Inge 107). As George Chauncey has shown in his seminal Gay New

York, “sissy” was in the 1920s and 30s very common vernacular for a homosexual, a fact

presumably not lost on Jack or his New York Sun readers (15, 114).29

Phillips’ claims about there being “no hint of homosexuality” represents a fairly

common lack of interest in the cultural context in which the story was written (and in

Phillips’ case his own focus on Judeo-Christian themes within Faulkner’s works). This

allows for homosexual codes and themes to be overlooked or left unexplored-one

simply, for instance, takes Claude’s class status at face value, without acknowledging the

ways that status would have carried further implications for a contemporary audience.

But investigating Claude’s effeminacy from another perspective, John Matthews in his

“Faulkner and the Culture Industry” argues that:

It would be possible-mistakenly, in my judgment-to interpret this characterization of the “girlish” Claude as evidence of soldierly “homoeroticism”. . . . In “Turnabout” . .. Claude draws Bogard’s heterosexual notice, at once promising and precluding a relationship. . . . In the girlish Claude, Faulkner poses an irreconcilable hint of the sexualities (within and with others) repressed in defense of the dominant social order. In the story’s figural register, Claude carries the disruptive mark of the drag queen, the carnival (“masquerading”) transvestite. His valence actually contradicts the light air of predictable homoeroticism in all the other relations. (62-3)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Thus Matthews acknowledges the homoeroticism present in the typical war story, but

sees in the “girlish” Claude’s repressed homosexuality a compelling critique of the

dominant social order (best exemplified in World War I) and a subversion of the war

genre-i.e., rather than rely on “predictable homoeroticism,” Faulkner turns that trope on

its ear in his critique of dominant society’s inability to deal with “variant” sexualities.

For Matthews, Faulkner can not simply be skillfully writing a genre story:

In the cases of Faulkner’s limited experimentation with popular forms for his longer fiction, he typically ends up extending the conventions and probing more deeply into the causes of their popularity .... How may we locate the same sort of reflective resistances in Faulkner’s writing for screen and short-story markets? (60).

That Phillips could, in my opinion, fail to see obvious gender trouble, and

Matthews could be accused of perhaps trying too hard to turn the story’s “predictable”

homoeroticism into something richer, highlights the surprising power of “Turnabout,”

and also suggests just how unpredictable, how uncertain masculinity actually is in all war

texts-Faulkner simply foregrounds the issue. The story works because of the ambiguity

concerning masculine relationships, the constantly shifting notion of who is in control,

who is “patriotic,” who is “brave,” who is “cowardly,” who is “perverse.” It is not only

not necessary to claim that there are definite homosexual characters in the story, but it is

necessary not to, because ultimately the ambiguity gives the story much more force.

From the story’s very first sentence, traditional understandings of culturally defined

gender categories are put into question: “Turnabout” constantly undermines

assumptions about war, masculinity, male camaraderie, cowardice, desire, nationalism,

and homosexuality (and homophobia), not to mention assumptions about what kind of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. story William Faulkner is capable of7willing to write.

This early story, a seeming genre- and money-driven throwaway, demonstrates

something we normally claim about Faulkner’s more canonical works-the ability to

balance opposing readings. And gender ambiguity is obviously a major theme in his

more celebrated canonical works. While “Turnabout” is arguably not one of Faulkner’s

most complex, compelling short stories, it is certainly valuable for its illumination of the

fascinating melding of low art/high concept, for its insistence on the fluidity of gender

categories, for its use as a way into discussions of alternative sexualities in Faulkner’s life

and works. Or, if one is so inclined, as a ripping yam.30

But however one sees the story, against the supposed “forgotten” context of

Faulkner’s early 1930s experiences, the greatest rewards of working to reconsider

“Turnabout” come from the illumination of the story of “Turnabout”’s origins, the

illumination of the constructed nature of the stories we tell about Faulkner, of the stories

we believe Faulkner is capable of. Most critics who take on Faulkner’s “popular” (but

seldom-read) texts such as “Turnabout” feel the need to rescue them, to make Faulkner

seem resistant to popular culture, less willing to follow genre conventions, more

thoughtful, even more transgressive perhaps. But I find “Turnabout” to be both

subversive and typical, disruptive and disappointing, unusual and conventional in its

exploration of masculinity and male homosexuality compared with other Depression-era

popular culture texts of the time. “Turnabout” suggests that “Faulkner” is often used

unreflectively as a means of fixing and giving weight to particular interpretations without

fully considering the cultural context within which these texts were produced and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. received.

Assessing “Turnabout” as a story shaped by and drawing from the cultural field

from which it emerged enables us to see the story’s complexities-and to see the value of

allowing meaning to remain somewhat in flux within the text. Ambiguity in the text

reflects the ambiguities of the period when the concepts Faulkner’s story

explores-masculinity, heroism, homosexuality-were open to debate and redefinition.

Today We Live , a film that in coming only two years after the publication of the story,

could not fail to draw upon both text and context, further complicates our efforts to

examine Faulkner’s story through the apparently radical changes the story undergoes.

The benefits of the recontextualization model for assessing this adaptation are

well demonstrated by examining both literary text and film as participating in a shared

cultural context that allows us to see beyond the issues of what was changed or left out

to the whys of that process-and the accompanying implications for both texts and for

Faulkner the developing writer.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Notes

1. In Exile's Return, Cowiey attempts to distance his “brand” of Modernism from homosexuality as he discusses the “radical” mood among the literati in New York City in the 1920s. One example: “Then . . . you would set about hanging policemen from the lamp posts, or better still from the crossties of the Elevated, and beside each policeman would be hanged a Methodist preacher and beside each preacher a pansy poet.... You hated editors, pansipoetical poets, policemen, preachers. . . ” (52).

2. The attitude within Faulkner studies towards recent developments in feminist, queer and cultural studies is often pretty defensive, and not all critics are terribly enthusiastic about turning to Faulkner’s less canonical works, understandably fearing that such a move might serve only to further weaken Faulkner’s status within today’s more multicultural and diverse canon. Noted scholar Andre Bleikasten, in his “Faulkner and the New Ideologues,” rues the valorization of less socially and politically problematic works such as Intruder in the Dust and The Reivers, and finds in much recent Faulkner criticism an overt politicization designed to gradually exclude those works considered Modernist, what Bleikasten calls “the early masterpieces”: “The barely hidden assumption . . . is that literature is valuable only insofar as it represents the larger conflicts of society, and that it is more valuable as it does so in the politically correct way, that is, contributes to the emancipation of the downtrodden minorities and to the attainment of the hallowed goals o f‘social transformation’” (7-8). While Bleikasten’s stated target here is the weakest kind of New Historicism and reductive examples of feminist and postmodern criticism, it is obvious that cultural studies and queer studies, to his mind misapplied, are also very much a part of his concern: “Their [cultural critics generally] cultural relativism barely conceals a Manichaean morality of right and wrong: whatever the case may be, innovation is right, tradition is wrong, equality it right, hierarchy is wrong, femininity and bisexuality are right, masculinity is wrong, etc. Faulkner’s novels are hence investigated on the basis of a rigidly binary code, and the more readily approved of as they can be shown to serve the noble cause of liberation” (8- 9).

3. Duvall makes it clear in his essay that his purpose is not to “assert that Faulkner was a latent homosexual because, if we follow Sedgwick and other articulations of queer theory, we may discover there is no such thing simply because the homoerotic is embedded in, not opposed to, masculinity” (51). I would like in this chapter to in part take up Duvall’s challenge to trace more explicitly that possible gay aesthetic (without speculating on Faulkner’s sexual orientation) and to answer the question of its relevance to our understandings of these gender-troubled texts.

4. The only early stories which seem to avoid widespread critical condescension are the much-anthologized “A Rose for Emily” (April, 1930), partly because it was published in the more “highbrow” The Forum and was Faulkner’s first published short story (before his money woes set in), and “Dry September” ( Scribner’s, January, 1931), which

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. features the lynching of an African-American and is thus, of course, more critically acceptable thematically.

5. Faulkner’s 1927 letter to The Saturday Evening Post has been quoted several times in this regard: “If they [his submissions] do not please you the Post does not know its own children .... And hark in your ear: I am a coming man, so take warning” (qtd in Donaldson 184).

6. According to O.B. Emerson, Pylon, possibly because of its obvious Modernist Zeitgeist, “fared better with the critics, generally speaking, than any of its predecessors.” He goes on to suggest that this critical reception of Pylon “marks a turning point in Faulkner’s career at a period halfway between his first publication and his being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature” (30). This is an interesting development, of course, because today Pylon, so heavily indebted to Eliot’s The Waste Land in its structure and symbolism, is not generally considered “A-list” Faulkner and is seldom-taught.

7. See for example John Duvall’s “Faulkner’s Crying Game: Male Homosexual Panic,” Jacquelyn Scott Lynch’s “Postwar Play: Gender Performatives in Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay," and Anne Goodwyn Jones’ “Faulkner’s War Stories and the Construction of Gender.”

8. Frederick Karl’s brief mention of the Round Table suggests that even this careful biographer assumes Faulkner’s attitude towards the artistic community in New York would naturally be adversarial. “The Algonquin wits were about the last people we would expect Faulkner to find attractive; but they were careful of his feelings, did not push him, and seemed genuinely fond of him. They were, however, the essence of New York City sophistication and cosmopolitanism .... Whatever the inner workings of this crossplay of meetings and people, Faulkner felt cheered by these associations” (460). Interestingly, some book-length accounts of the Round Table, such as James R. Gaines’, fail to even mention Faulkner, so the extent of his involvement with the Round Table is uncertain at best.

9. Nearly every subsequent biography of Faulkner acknowledges a debt to Blotner, and most appear to follow the trajectory, the grand narrative of Faulkner’s life, established by Blotner’s biography. But some have found fault with Blotner’s sources, which are often not clearly identified, due in part perhaps to the biography’s unusual approach to notes and citations.

10. Karl suggests that Wasson’s version of events in Faulkner’s life should be taken with a grain of salt . “While Wasson was loyal and devoted to Faulkner, his comments must be taken lightly.... Once Faulkner became famous everyone wanted or claimed a piece of him” (502 n). Of course, the same has to be said of Blotner, which Karl also acknowledges, and Faulkner was never a reliable source himself.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11. In 1918, young Billy Faulkner, decked out in an officer’s uniform and rattan cane, returned to Oxford after a short stint in Canada training for the Royal Air Force, claiming to have crashed a plane into the roof of a hangar (after a few drinks, of course) right after the armistice. Sometimes Faulkner would claim to have a metal plate in his head as a result, and he often walked with an exaggerated limp. He also told friends and family that he had finished ground school, and had several hours of solo flight under his belt. These biographical details were often repeated, and even further exaggerated, in the “About the Author” sections on book jackets until very late in Faulkner’s career. From the 1947 Penguin paperback edition of Sanctuary: “The pattern of Faulkner’s work corresponds roughly to the pattern of his background and life.... During World War I he flew for the British.” As Joel Williamson among others has pointed out, all of this is impossible. “It is virtually certain that Faulkner crashed no planes.... He never finished ground school and was not an officer when discharged.. .. In all of this charade. .. William Faulkner’s salient talent, an amazing capacity for creating convincing fiction, had made its first striking appearance” (183). For a fascinating discussion of the photographs Faulkner posed for during these early years of his development, see chapter two, “Photographs, Letters, and Fictions” in James G. Watson’s William Faulkner: Self- Presentation and Performance.

12. In private correspondence with me, Karl notes that while a visiting professor at Ole Miss he realized that some of the Oxford townspeople and Faulkner’s friends believed Wasson was gay. He also notes that the town had always been aware of Phil Stone’s “strong attachment” to Faulkner, and that some read their relationship as ambiguous in gender terms. Also see Duvall’s discussion of the strange looks Faulkner and Wasson got one day in 1919 when they were sitting together on the grass at Ole Miss, with Faulkner reading aloud Conrad Aiken’s Turns and Movies, a collection with expressly homosexual content (52).

13. Much has been made, usually in discussions of the Hollywood adaptation of the story, Today We Live (1933), of Faulkner’s rather odd attempt to replicate an English accent for his characters, which seems to consist largely of having them use very clipped, short sentences.

14. See Duvall’s “Faulkner’s Crying Game. Male Homosexual Panic” for a discussion of homosexual panic in other stories featuring war pilots, including Flags in the Dust, “Ad Astra” and “All the Dead Pilots.”

15. For studies dedicated to exploring the gay themes of these texts, see Frann Michel’s “William Faulkner as Lesbian Author,” Edmond Volpe’s “A Tale of Ambivalences: Faulkner’s ‘Divorce in Naples,”’ and Joel Williamson’s William Faulkner and Southern History. Noel Polk’s chapter on The Hamlet in Children o f the Dark House: Text and Context in Faulkner is also quite compelling in its approach to masculinity and gay themes in Faulkner’s later texts.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16. James W. Thomas convincingly makes the case that Saxon was probably bisexual and that his homosexual affairs were “discrete” (SI), but other accounts suggest Saxon was open about his gay relationships among friends.

17. Max Putzel notes the less “reputable” atmosphere behind the inspiration/production of the story: “‘Turnabout’ ... was written and published within a few weeks of the cocktail party gossip that inspired it” (127).

18. Predictably, Blotner mentions this event, yet the homosexual elements fail to register (at least explicitly). Van Vechten, one of the most “out” men in New York, is never identified as gay, Gladys’s is just a bar, and it is suggested that Faulkner leaves because the song Gladys (“an enormous black woman who wore a dinner jacket”) sings is “blue.” However, Blotner does mention the title of the song-“Sweet Violets.” Whether he is aware of the implications of the song’s title is unclear (743).

19. See Chauncey, particularly Chapter 7.

20. For more on this infamous scandal featuring a group of homosexual sailors who called themselves the “Ladies of Newport” and the controversy due to the undercover agents “actively” engaging in homosexual acts in order to “gather evidence,” see Loughery and Gellman. Also see Chauncey (145).

21. This reading also raises interesting questions, given his rivalry with Faulkner and recent revelations about his own gender issues, about Ernest Hemingway’s decision to include “Turnabout” in the 1942 anthology of war stories he edited, Men At War: The Best War Stories of All Time, one of the only times this story has been anthologized. His only comment about the story in the introduction is: “For excitement and for a great story which should do much to make us appreciate and understand our British allies, read, “Turn About,” by William Faulkner” (xxii). I am not sure the careful reader will find much “appreciation” of the British in Faulkner’s tale.

22. Sedgwick argues that the specter of homosexuality-and its rejection-always haunts compulsory or “obligatory” Western notions of heterosexuality, that “homophobia is a necessary consequence of... patriarchal institutions” such as the military (3). But she goes on to argue that a fuller understanding of Western culture and homosexuality requires acknowledgment of a “continuum, a potential structural congruence, and a (shifting) relation of meaning between male homosexual relationships and the male patriarchal relations by which women are oppressed” (20). Sedgwick makes it clear that she isn’t arguing that homosexuality is the cornerstone of patriarchal capitalist society, or that male homosexuality is inherently misogynistic, but rather that homophobia (directed towards male homosexuality) is necessary for patriarchal power, and is inherently misogynistic.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 23. For more on J.C. Leyendecker, see the web pages “Joseph C. and Frank X. Leyendecker and the Gleaming Adonis” and “J.C. Leyendecker Biography.”

24. For more on Kotex’s advertising history, see Marchand (20-24).

25. For example, see David Rogers’ “Matemalizing the Epicene. Faulkner’s Paradox of Form and Gender.”

26. See also Robert Graves’ 1929 reminiscence Goodbye to All That , where he discusses his own experiences with homosexuality in English preparatory schools, and Alan Sinfield’s analysis of the crucial role preparatory schools in the development of homosexual identity and culture in The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Moment (308-9).

27. See for example Vito Russo on Wings (1927) in The Celluloid Closet. “Richard Arlen and Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers have a more meaningful relationship with each other than either of them has with Jobyna Ralston or Clara Bow .... In fact Arlen and Rogers have the only real love scene in Wings" (72-3). Also see Neil Miller’s discussions of the homoeroticism of World War I poetry and literature: “What the War did .. . was to legitimize the celebration of male youth and beauty. Homosexually inclined writers could yearn for their fallen comrades in their poetry as they would a lover and be considered patriotic rather than immoral” (94). Eve Sedgwick argues that “The fact [is] that what goes on at football games, in fraternities, at the Bohemian Grove, and at climactic moments in war novels can look, with only a slight shift of optic, quite startlingly ‘homosexual’” (89). Of course, war literature raises particular problems when it comes to possible homosexual implications. As Mark Lilly notes, “Conventions of expression [in war poetry] sometimes make brotherly affection, physical tenderness and sexual desire all sound the same” (66). It is this ambiguity which makes Faulkner’s war fiction so interesting (and, for some, so anxiety-inducing).

28. Taking his cue from Molly Haskell, Kawin defines the buddy film as one which “might generally be characterized as a love story involving two heterosexual males who support, enrich, and occasionally destroy each other” (54). Haskell explicitly distances the buddy film from homosexuality: “Sexual desire is not the point, nor ‘homoeroticism’ the term for these relationships or for men fighting back to back in a Hawksian fraternity . . . the point is love” (24).

29. Time's one-sentence mention of the short story in its review of Dr. Martino & Other Stories (1934), where “Turnabout” was first published in book form, is sexually suggestive and is most likely tongue-in-cheek: “A very young British naval officer is rescued from the gutter by a U.S. airman, taken on a night bombing flight. Next day he reciprocates by showing the airman what his tiny torpedo-boat can do” (“Ghost Stories” 77).

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30. The “yam” also seems to have enjoyed modest success and notoriety in the early 1930s. William Rose Benet’s review of Dr. Martino implies public recognition of the story: “‘Turnabout,’ of course, was a story of the late war. It seemed to me, though, an excellent yam of its kind” (64S). And in one of the first general critical assessments of Faulkner, Philip Blair suggests a totally different understanding of Faulkner’s work than we have today-for Rice, Faulkner is a good pulp writer and a bad “philosophical” one. “This morsel of social philosophy [the anti-war ending o f‘Turnabout’], crude and trite enough in itself, has not been in any way prepared for in the story .... Perhaps it is as well that Faulkner generally leaves ideas alone and sticks to the crafi of story telling, in which he is unexcelled” (479).

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FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT: AUTHORIAL

CONTROL AND TODA Y WE LIVE

It was again our little love theme about two boys who get together. Well, Metro didn't have a picture for Joan Crawford, so a week before we started they announced to me that she was in the picture. Howard Hawks, interview with Peter Bogdanovich (10)

“Who have you got? ” I said, “I ’ve got Gary Cooper and two youngfellas. Bob Young and Franchot Tone. ” They said, “Well, y o u ’ve got Joan Crawford too. ’’ I said, “No, there’s no girl in the picture. ” They said, “There is one now. We ’// lose a million dollars if we don’t have something for Joan Crawford. So you ’re stuck. ’’ I called Faulkner in and told him, “Bill, we gotta put a girl in this story. ’’ And he said, “Holy smoke! ” We put the girl in, ami the picture was quite successful. Howard Hawks, quoted in McBride (57).

At times indeed he [Faulkner] approaches melodrama, though melodrama may often be truer-to-life than more placid fictions. Matthew Josephson “The Younger Generation: Its Young Novelists” (251).

Biographies and criticism from the late 1940s on, I have been arguing, necessarily

and quite naturally limited how subsequent readers and critics have made sense of

“Faulkner,” both as human being and body of work. The disavowal of Faulkner’s

serious engagement with popular forms has led, essentially, to two ways of dealing with

many of these less “literary” texts. On one pole of this binary, we excuse Faulkner from

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simply trying to make some money so he could go on with his real writing. Or we claim

that Faulkner was able to subvert these genres, to undermine the conventions in ways

thatcareful readers and critics can pick up on. As we saw with “Turnabout,” both of

these poles tend to oversimplify the matter and to suggest more clearly-defined

distinctions between high and low culture than actually exist. In each, Faulkner the

so litary artist is stressed, and in each we see the suggestion that Faulkner simply did not

engage with or embrace popular culture-he participated out of necessity, and/or did the

best with it he could.

I have argued already that the importance and complexity of the context within

which Faulkner wrote has been underestimated. Faulkner’s reputation-shaped in part by

Malcolm Cowley, Joseph Blotner, his friends and acquaintances, contemporary reviewers

and critics, advertising-was in the early 1930s a particularly interesting point of

contestation, of competing discourses and overlapping reputations. For “Turnabout,”

these included the reputations of Faulkner the serious writer, Faulkner the short story

writer, The Saturday Evening Post, the Algonquin Round Table, sailors, Faulkner’s

friends and acquaintances, American Modernism, and, of course, the constantly shifting

definitions of homosexuality in American culture. There were also certainly limitations

imposed on the writer, as well as other complicating factors, including the original story

told by Robert Lovett, the requirements of the Saturday Evening Post, the WWI genre,

and the short story form itself. But throughout our investigation of “Turnabout,”

authorial “control” has more or less remained with Faulkner. It is still he who weaves,

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. consciously or not, these parts together, even in my reworked narrative. By and large

Faulkner as ultim ate author figure remains relatively uncontested for “Turnabout.”

The same cannot be said for the film adapted from that story two short years

later, MGM’s Today We Live (1933). As a result, the critics’ anxieties about this film

differ from those about its source story, as does the role Faulkner’s reputation plays in

the film’s reception. Given the previous chapter’s reading of the source material and the

cultural context within which it was produced, plus the added presences of the

undisputed king of the “male bonding” film, Howard Hawks, and gay icon Joan

Crawford, we might expect the critical disavowal of Today We Live once again to be

linked with the troubling specter of homosexuality and the “muddying up” of Faulkner’s

ur-text. The film is, without a doubt, ripe for queer and/or camp readings. But what is

interesting about Today We Live is that what little critical attention has been devoted to

this film is largely characterized by the act of distancing Faulkner (and, for that matter,

Hawks, Crawford, and Gary Cooper) from the material not so much because of its

homoerotic possibilities or the “quality” of the film, as because it resists easy placement

within the narratives it might be seen to be a part of. There are so many competing

reputations involved that critics cannot ascribe control over the text’s “meaning” to

anyone-not the director, or the authors), or the stars, or the studio, or the publicity

department. Nor do they seem able to imagine what audiences might have made of the

film. It is generally agreed that it is not a particularly “good” film, but the difficulty of

pinpointing precisely how and why this is so means that it gets overlooked. Whether a

critic is writing a narrative centered on Hawks or Faulkner or Crawford or MGM, the

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seems to challenge the cult of authorial control (be it in the realm of “literature,” or

auteur theory, or “star power”) and that, in combination with a failure to consider how

the film might have worked for the audience of its day, has consigned it to virtual critical

oblivion-despite the fact that it is readily available on video and shown frequently on

Turner Classic Movies, while The Story o f Temple Drake, an oft-referenced film, is

virtually unavailable for viewing.

Since my own central narrative focuses on Faulkner, I will begin with the story of

the making of Today We Live from his perspective: Still “cashing in” on his new-found

Sanctuary notoriety, Faulkner laid the groundwork for his first Hollywood contract on a

trip to New York City in November, 1931. His letters home (always to be taken with a

grain of salt) indicate that he was being courted by the literary world as well as

Hollywood. This from a letter to his wife Estelle, dated November 13d1, 1931:

I am writing a movie for Tallulah Bankhead. How’s that for high? The contract is to be signed today, for about $10,000.00.... I have created quite a sensation. I have had luncheons in my honor by magazine editors every day for a week now, besides evening parties, or people who want to see what I look like. In fact, I have learned with astonishment that I am now the most important figure in American letters. That is, I have the best future .... Anyway, I am writing. Working on the novel, and on a short story which I think Cosmopolitan will pay me $1500.00 for. As well as that Bankhead play. (Blotner, Selected Letters 53)

As with most of his letters home, this one is filled with suspicious claims-we know he

did not sign a movie contract during this trip, he never received that kind of money from

Hollywood, and he never published in Cosmopolitan or completed a play for Tallulah

Bankhead.1 But we also see the apparently enthusiastic embrace of various forms of

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screenplay. He seems to be happy writing in any mode at this point in his life. By the

end of 1931, he was eventually officially approached by Sam Marx of MGM. In April,

1932, he signed a six-week contract with MGM, effective May 7th and continuing until

June 16th.2 During this time, Faulkner became even more famous, or notorious, when

Paramount optioned Sanctuary early that June.3

Faulkner reportedly met Howard Hawks at MGM in July, 1932, and they quickly

became friendly, often drinking together. Faulkner and Hawks biographies are quick to

note the important friendship that developed between these two and suggest that

Faulkner’s Hollywood career would have been a com plete disaster had it not been for the

support of his friend. (In total they worked together on six films, starting with Today We

Live and ending with 1955’s Land o f the Pharaohs.) Hawks, who by 1932 already

exercised almost unheard-of control over his projects as producer and director, admired

Faulkner’s novels (particularly Soldiers ’ Pay (1926)), and suggested Faulkner adapt

“Turnabout” (MGM paid $2,250 for the option). He reportedly helped get Faulkner

back on MGM’s payroll (at a reduced salary, however). Legend has it that Faulkner

wrote the first treatment, called Turn About, in five days, and closely modeled it on the

short story. Legend also has it that Irving Thalberg, the head of production at the

studio, loved it and was prepared to shoot it “as is.”4

Then, in one of those stories Faulkner (and Hawks) scholars love to tell, a

complication arose. Here is how Joseph Blotner recounts it:

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As the pages of script accumulated, Hawks oversaw the other preparations for the actual shooting. Gary Cooper would be available, along with Franchot Tone and Robert Young. So, unexpectedly, would Joan Crawford. When Faulkner learned from Hawks about Miss Crawford’s availability, he remained silent for a moment. Then he said thoughtfully, “I don’t seem to remember a girl in the story.” “That’s the picture business, Bill,” Hawks told him. “We get the biggest stars we can, and Joan’s a nice girl, too.” (781)

Note how the decision to include Crawford seems to be Hawks’ in Blotner’s version of

the story. Other versions lay the blame on a “venal” MGM and suggest that Hawks was

exasperated with the decision, but powerless to do anything about it. Blotner’s version,

though, puts Hawks squarely in the driver’s seat-the experienced director leading his

innocent, reluctant charge through the treacherous waters of Hollywood.

Regardless of who ultimately made the decision to include Crawford in the

production-and we will explore this question later-her presence obviously required

major rewriting, not only by Faulkner, but also by other screenwriters brought in to work

on the project, including Dwight Taylor, Edith Fitzgerald3, and Anne Cunningham.

Taylor and Fitzgerald eventually ended up with “screenwriting” credit. Faulkner’s listing

in the credits is “Story and Dialogue by William Faulkner.” Anne Cunningham, who was

brought in to beef up Crawford’s character, is uncredited.6 Most critics do not bother to

mention, let alone take seriously, these writers’ contributions to the final film, perhaps

because they further muddy the waters, and the extent of their contribution does remain

largely unexplored.

In order to accommodate Crawford, Faulkner came up with the character Diana

(Ann) Boyce Smith, Ronnie’s sister, who has been “betrothed” since childhood to

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Claude, who has himself been transformed into a ward of the family. Faulkner’s various

scripts include scenes with these three as children-one taking place at a muddy brook,

which has led many critics to compare elements of these scripts to The Sound and the

Fury1-as well as scenes with Ronnie and Claude at prep school. All were eventually

removed.* The majority of critics zero in on the inclusion of Ann’s character in their

dismissal, or praise, of the film, and use this particular circumstance to make larger

claims about the value of Faulkner’s Hollywood years.

Working the Salt Mines: Faulkner in Hollywood

One reason little is said by Faulkner critics about Today We Live -most of it

negative-is the more general disavowal of all of Faulkner’s Hollywood work, even

undeniably popular and critical successes such as The Big Sleep (1946) and To Have and

H ave N ot (1944). While most critics have come to dismiss what Richard Fine has

identified as the large-scale “Hollywood-as-destroyer legend,” parts of that legend linger

to this day, still coloring perceptions of Faulkner’s Hollywood work. As Fine explains

the myth.

Novelists and playwrights of acute sensibility and talent, so the legend goes, were lured to Hollywood by offers of huge amounts of money and the promise of challenging assignments; once in the studios they were set to work on mundane, hackneyed scripts; they were treated without respect by the mandarins who ruled the studios; and they were subjected to petty interferences by their intellectual inferiors. In the process, they were destroyed as artists. Hollywood was a loathsome and demeaning place which invariably corrupted writers. Although writers prostituted themselves by accepting Hollywood paychecks, the film industry itself was the true villain of the tale. (3)

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This is the legend that has haunted F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West criticism, to

name but a few examples. It is also evoked, and ultimately complicated, in the Coen

brothers’ film Barton Fink (1991), which is very loosely based in part on Faulkner’s

reputation and his experiences in Hollywood.

Joseph Blotner’s 1966 article, “Faulkner in Hollywood,” sets up his exploration

of Faulkner’s Hollywood years this way:

The creator of Yoknapatawpha County, from the early 1930’s the most famous of Mississippi’s sons, was to spend a total of nearly four years in California working for various studios [MGM, Warner Brothers and 20th- Century Fox]. This time was accumulated during a period of twenty-two years in often painful sojourns of varying lengths .... Why did he do it-the most fertile and creative writers in this century? What came of this forced transplanting that never really took, and how did he feel about it? And what, finally, did the balance sheet show-how much had he gained, and how much had he (and American letters) lost? (262)

Blotner’s attitude here is clearly reflected in the rhetorical questions being posed. More

interesting is the farming metaphor. The use of “Southern” metaphors and

colloquialisms to describe Faulkner’s writing became standard practice in Faulkner

criticism, but only after his “Gentleman Farmer” persona had been firmly established in

the l9S0s. Such language, interestingly, works to limit Faulkner in that he cannot

apparently “grow” just anywhere-he is not that hardy. The myth that Faulkner had to be

on his native soil pervades criticism and folklore about Faulkner. His was a fo rc e d

transplanting too, which ties in nicely with the “balance sheet” reference at the end.

Blotner makes much of the seeming artist/money incongruity, reaffirming the

championing of “natural” artistry versus the unnatural/unholy pursuit of money.

Faulkner himself, ever with an eye to a telling metaphor, updated the image in later

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. disavowals of his pop culture writing, referring to Hollywood work as the “salt mines,” I evoking both the drudgery of mining and being caught up in a Soviet-like “cookie-

cutter” system which tolerated no dissidence.

Blotner ends up, however, suggesting that the polluting effects of screenwriting

did not permanently “contaminate” the writer’s (real) work: “Faulkner felt that it did not

take excessively long to get Hollywood ‘out of his lungs’ each time he returned home”

(301). Thus few critics completely buy into the massive simplification of Hollywood,

whereby the film industry utterly destroys the author, and Faulkner’s own conflicted,

often contradictory statements about Hollywood make the legend difficult to completely

endorse in his case. But Blotner does take it for granted that the time away from home

ultimately hurt the writer’s career. “The work itself, as compared with the anguishing

that went into most of his novels, was slight; it was the expense of spirit that was costly

for Faulkner, who wanted above all to be a serious artist” (262); and “Of course he lost

books. And it is impossible to say how many.... One wonders what else Faulkner

could have done” (302-3). Little surprise then that Faulkner criticism has been slow to

champion the Hollywood output-even more so than in the case of other famous

authors-when Faulkner’s most famous (and exhaustive) biographer and editor made

such assessments. Subsequent biographies continue this narrative. Stephen Oates

proclaims of Faulkner, in his 1987 biography, William Faulkner: The Man and the

A rtist, “He liked nothing about Hollywood: the thankless work, the mayhem, the loud

extroverts who gave him orders, the pretentious people” (121).

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Thus, despite the fact that critics are increasingly taking more seriously the pop

culture aspects of William Faulkner’s career, the standard narrative of Faulkner’s disdain

for Hollywood and his inability to succeed with “popular” forms of entertainment

continues to hold sway in Faulkner criticism, particularly that which is produced largely

for non-academics and undergraduates. Ironically, it is under these conditions that

Today We Live finally gets some ink. A recent Literary Masters volume (published in

2000), part of a series aimed at “the common reader,” nicely encapsulates many of the

still-prevailing attitudes within the critical community. Author Thomas L. McHaney

briefly takes time out of his discussion of Faulkner’s “serious” works to vilify

Hollywood’s studio system: “If Faulkner’s career as a novelist was to some degree in the

control of moralists who condemned the frank portrayal of human folly, in Hollywood he

was under the control of a venal and aesthetically corrupt division of the entertainment

industry” (116). The Hollywood-as-destroyer myth is apparently as hard to kill as “Mad

Man” Mundt from Barton Fink.

Later, McHaney continues to reinforce the standard high/low cultural divide, as

well as the idea that theg o a l of these fiims-mass appeal-mattered more than any

individual’s contribution: “The movie adaptations of Faulkner’s novels made in his

lifetime were aimed at a mass audience. They justifiably met with a mixed public

reaction because they were not always well made or even true to the novels on which

they were based” (134). The unspoken assumption here, of course, is that if these films

had somehow been “true” to the novels they might well have been successful. This

belief in the “fidelity” model of adaptation is particularly popular in Faulkner criticism-if

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would surely be a huge success (at least an artistic one). Somehow, crass movie

producers and studio executives continue to “ruin” Faulkner’s works. The flip side of

this, of course, is the argument that Faulkner’s works are too “complex” to adapt to film,

and thus the attempt should not even be made. Henry James, anyone?

McHaney has difficulty reconciling the “complexity” argument with the “crass

Hollywood” one. He highlights the adaptation he seems to find most egregious, the one

which best exemplifies for him Faulkner’s frustrations with the Hollywood studio system:

Faulkner’s own movie adaptation of his all-male war story, “Turn About,” released in 1933 as Today We Live, was turned into a Joan Crawford vehicle advertised in newspapers with a fashion spread on her movie wardrobe .... Faulkner’s concerns and strengths as a writer were different from those of movie producers trying to appeal to a popular audience. Hollywood . .. wanted straightforward storytelling, something Faulkner rarely employed. His books often tested, puzzled, or even offended popular taste. (134)

The assumptions here are worth teasing out. Today We Live was ruined by the forced

addition of a female part to Faulkner’s “all-male war story.” The film turned out to be

merely a “Joan Crawford” vehicle, implicating both Crawford’s reputation as

melodramatic actress and the crass commercial attitude of MGM in forcing Crawford

into the production (presumably against the wishes of director and screenwriters). What

is also interesting here is the argument that Faulkner did not do well with

“straightforward storytelling,” when earlier McHaney argues that the problem with

Today We Live is that Faulkner’s war story (surely a fairly straightforward text according

to most definitions) was complicated by the addition of Crawford’s part. And, of course,

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. there is the valorization of writing that offends or puzzles “popular taste,” a loaded

message to readers just discovering Faulkner, and one, 1 certainly hope, we would now

be prepared to question and complicate.

From the perspective of a Faulkner narrative, then, Today We Live is noteworthy

as evidence of time misspent and the ills of the Hollywood system, as a stage in the

Hawks-Faulkner friendship, and as a symbol of how insensitive treatment threatens the

hardiness of the “quintessential” Southern writer and his work. Not surprisingly, with

some variation a similar list can be drawn up for Hawks’ relation to the film. Hawks

critics and biographers delight in pronouncing the director’s 1930s MGM sojourn a

disaster-McCarthy’s chapter on this period of Hawks’ career is titled “Sidetracked at

MGM.” The reason-the studio’s reputation versus that of the director’s. “Hawks .. .

knew Mayer, from his previous tenure at the studio seven years earlier, to be a blow-

hard, a phony, overemotional, hypocritical, unrefined tyrant whose taste in

films-sentimental, gilded, weepy, family-and-country-oriented-couldn’t have been more

antithetical to his own approach” (173). McCarthy goes on to suggest that this

particular moment in Hawks’ and Faulkner’s careers exemplified the limitations “artists”

could expect with the studio system:

Fatalistic and enshrouded in a doom lightened only by booze and the camaraderie of beautiful young men, “Turn About” might well have become a noteworthy addition to the Lost Generation cycle of film and literature, and its streamlined structure and clipped dialogue are strong enough to make very clear what Hawks would have done with it. However, what happened to “Turn About” stands as an almost grotesque illustration of the studio system at its worst. (179)

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Hawks’ time at MGM was almost, the narrative goes, as fruitless as Faulkner’s. The

only film produced which Faulkner received screen credit for was Today We Live.

Hawks could claim only one more-the unremarkable Viva Villa! (1934). Once Hawks

(and Faulkner) escaped the prison-house of MGM, their talents were, this narrative

claims, allowed to shine. The proof? The Road to Glory. To Have and Have Not. The

B ig Sleep. (Never mind that the source material for these films might simply have been

more appropriate for Hollywood cinema, or that director/screenwriter might simply have

worked better in particular genres.) Also not surprisingly, given the accounts of the film

we have already examined, Crawford’s/Ann’s insertion functions as a neat symbol of the

philistinism of MGM.

Almost all accounts of Today We Live repeat the story of the “forced” inclusion

of Crawford into the production, usually painting a tale of woe and suffering-on the part

of at least three of the principal players-as well as “stoic” acceptance of such a fate. In

an interview (quoted at length in the epigraph of this chapter) Hawks clearly suggests

how unhappy, angry, and yet resigned he was when ordered to “put a girl in this story”

(McBride S7). Gene Phillips writes, “Faulkner at this point was willing to make every

effort to see something he had written for MGM at last reach the screen, so he complied

with this unexpected directive with little noticeable complaint, beyond muttering stoically

that he did not remember any ‘girl’ in the original story” (16-17). And as Kawin notes,

legend has it that “the girl” was also upset about possibly ruining the picture: “When

Crawford heard that there had been no plans for a female role in Turn A bout, she went to

Hawks-an old fiiend-and tearfully apologized. Hawks told her he saw no way for either

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of them to ‘get out of this’ and suggested they make the best of it” (104).

Criticism almost always suggests that Crawford’s inclusion “ruined” the film.

Tom Dardis’s Some Time in the Sun , an example of the “writer in Hollywood” sub

genre, suggests that,

The addition of a heroine entailed a complete rewriting of the script, and the result was a lugubrious love triangle, with Crawford in love with both Gary Cooper and Robert Young. The action sequences were the only good thing about the picture; it failed with the critics and had a very modest financial success. (94)

Peter Hogue accurately sums up the film’s rock and hard place: “Hawks aficionados

may find that the studio’s emphasis on production values is distractingly evident in the

early parts of the film and Faulknerians may see the creation of a role for Joan Crawford

as a typical Hollywood compromise with the box office” (SI).

But Hogue’s take on the film is more interesting than most, and, as he avoids the

usual knee-jerk denigration of Today We Live , raises an interesting issue concerning

Faulkner’s original script (the one based on “Turnabout”). He ends up arguing that “the

film retains a great deal of the quality of Faulkner’s original while it also functions as a

fascinating half-way house between the naked anguish of The Dawn Patrol and the self-

possessed stoicism of Only Angels Have Wings" (51). Throughout his article, which is

clearly influenced by auteur theory, Hogue ends up conflating the “thematics” of

Faulkner and Hawks. The film seemingly holds onto some of Faulkner’s “quality” while

evoking other Hawks films. Hogue, as we shall see, identifies, as do many subsequent

critics, the “Faulknerian” and “Hawksian” elements of the film-many of which the two

artists appear to share.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. What is interesting about this is the assumption, made by Hogue and so many

other critics, that “Turnabout” would have made a good film, and was perfect Hawks

material. But as my last chapter suggests, “Turnabout” is not a typical “men at war”

story, at least not in the “ripping yam” tradition. In fact, I would argue that it could be

considered more a slightly off-kilter “male melodrama” than your usual “male-bonding”

war story. Conflicted emotions, heated confrontations, misunderstandings, desire from

afar, stoic self-denial, ultimate sacrifice, sexual rivalry, and the development of character

through suffering and loss-these themes characterize “Turnabout.” This description

does not, to my mind, suggest solid Hawks material, despite Hogue’s claim that it “has

the fatalistic gallantry of The Dawn Patrol as well as the competitive camaraderie of so

many later Hawks films” (S2). Hawks’ best-known films certainly are not a//-male

affairs, despite the emphasis sometimes placed on male relationships, and Faulkner’s

original story clearly relies on a homoerotic anxiety generally not found in Hawks.

Think of Red River, The Big Sky, Air Force, E l Dorado. Even H atari. Sure, these guys

loved each other, but they did not go around worrying about it, or trying to hide or

repress it.

There are further reasons to challenge the idea of a “perfect” Hawks/Faulkner

collaboration that got mined. Indeed, the usual story about Irving Thalberg “loving”

Faulkner’s original script-and then being unable or unwilling to stop the addition of

Crawford to the production-could easily be apocryphal. McCarthy claims it was Eddie

Mannix, MGM’s vice president, who “informed the director that his all-male picture was

now to be a vehicle for Joan Crawford” (179). Like so many of these stories told about

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possible that Thalberg, who was reportedly an intelligent, well-read man, liked

Faulkner’s story but also recognized how entirely unsuited it was for a Hollywood film,

let alone an MGM production. Consider from a cinematic perspective how to explain

Bogard’s fascination with Claude, his need/desire to protect him? Would the visual

representation of an older man together with a drunken, “girlish” sailor cause problems?

In other words, would putting this story into a visual register make the homoeroticism

more obvious, more problematic? How might the censors have reacted? Further, there

is the prospective audience to consider. An all-male cast would have seriously limited

box-ofiice potential. MGM largely catered to the female audience, and in that regard

“Turnabout” would certainly have been a hard sell. Finally, it is questionable whether

there is even enough action in Faulkner’s story to sustain an entire film.

These are all issues Faulkner criticism does not tackle, questions it has not

learned to ask. It is much easier to enlist a “heartless” studio and crass commercialism to

explain why the author’s original conception was altered. An attempt to sketch a fuller

story is decidedly more complicated and thus less definite. A short summary of Today

We Live will help us begin to explore how the competing reputations-of director, author,

stars, studio, designer-were put into play in the production, publicity, and reception of

the film-as well as reveal what sorts of changes had to be made in order to include

Crawford’s part. Ultimately, such an exploration allows us to go beyond the

acknowledgment that Faulkner’s story was changed and toward an understanding of how

the changes offer both an interesting interpretation of Faulkner’s “original” text, and by

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. highlighting the intersections of various overlapping and competing reputations suggest

the ways in which Faulkner may have gained insight as a writer.

The final version of the film (the original was 136 minutes and was cut by more

than twenty minutes for its final release version) starts with a wealthy “neutral”

American, Richard Bogard (Gary Cooper), who has come to England in 1916 in order to

take over the Boyce Smith estate, which he has bought. The Boyce Smiths, an upper-

class family, are down on their luck due to the war. The matriarch is apparently already

dead, and Ann has gotten word of her father’s death in battle just as Bogard appears at

the estate for the first time. Her brother, Ronnie (Franchot Tone), and fiance, Claude

(Robert Young), have joined the Royal Navy and are soon to ship out, leaving her in the

presence of Bogard, who is apparently taking over the property rather slowly (see figure

1). Ann and her servants move to a small cottage on the estate and “make do.” As an

early drawing room scene between Ann and Bogard makes clear, the Boyce Smiths have

to ration everything. Ronnie and Claude appear for one last dinner before they head for

France, and Claude and Ann make their engagement semi-official as they exchange rings.

But as the third member of this strange triangle, brother Ronnie gets one too. “Here,

Ronnie. You must be in on this.” It is difficult to say what factors of production are

most responsible for the strangeness of this scene and the duty-bound nature of Ann and

Claude’s relationship, and the voyeuristic nature of Ronnie’s presence throughout their

courtship.

Ronnie and Claude ship out, and suddenly Bogard and Ann-seemingly after one

bike ride-are declaring their love for each other, but she nobly realizes this is impossible

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 3.1: Sublimated (?) incest. Ronnie (Franchot Tone), Ann (Joan Crawford) and Claude (Robert Young). Publicity still.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. because of her “pact” with Claude (and thus also Ronnie). She cannot let the boys

down. So she leaves Bogard a quick note (“Richard. I love you. Sorry it had to be this

way. Goodbye.”), joins the Women’s Auxiliary Ambulance Corps and leaves for

London to avoid temptation (much to Bogard’s chagrin and confusion). Ann is

ultimately stationed in the same French town as Claude and Ronnie, who pilot a small

torpedo boat, their missions “very hush-hush.” Alone with Ronnie, Ann tells him about

Bogard, but refuses to “let Claude down,” despite the fact that Ronnie tells her, in his

clipped way of speaking, “Can’t help feelings, Ann. Can’t change love.” After Ann

makes it clear she will keep up her end of the bargain, Ronnie calls her a “stout fellow”

and kisses her for what, we learn from the astonished (yet overjoyed) Ann, is the first

time in their lives.

One day while Ann is working in the military hospital, Ronnie brings her a list of

those recently killed-Bogard has apparently died during RAF cadet training.9 Reading it

she muses, in a striking failure of continuity editing: “Richard. He’s dead before I even

learned to say his name.”10 Ann now thinks her “true” love dead. Soon after, Claude,

drunk and angst-ridden, winds up on her front steps, and is set to go, in a few short

hours, on what seems a potentially fatal mission (a “special assignment”). So Ann and

Claude decide to sleep together (she simply leads him into her room, but the implications

are clear). The next day they tell Ronnie what they have done-“We didn’t wait”-which

curiously seems to make Ronnie as happy as we have thus far seen him (he beams at Ann

and gives her a big kiss on the lips).

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Of course, complications ensue. In a plot point that will be familiar to anyone

who has seen the recentP earl H arbor (or any number of 1920s and 30s romantic war

films), it turns out Bogard is alive and now flying missions with the American Air Force

(and just happens to be stationed in the same town). Visiting his mortally wounded front

gunner, he and his friend Mac (Roscoe Kams) encounter Ann in the hospital corridor.

At first Ann and Bogard embrace and kiss (this somewhat chemistry-less image

dominates publicity materials for the film-see figures 2 and 3), but then Ann remembers

herself and pulls away. Mac seems to understand, and pushes Bogard out of the

hospital.

This is when the “Turnabout” section of the film begins, but it has taken an

interesting turn. Bogard and Mac encounter Claude, drunk and asleep in the street.

They take Claude “home”-which happens to be Ann’s room-and Bogard, filled with

disgust and rage, finally understands what is going on (or at least thinks he does). Later,

Mac and Bogard encounter Claude in a bar, and Bogard asks him to fly with them.

Whereas in the short story it is Bogard’s fascination with the “girlish” Claude and his

need to protect the boy from Mac and others that leads to the invitation to join them on a

mission as front gunner, here it is his hatred and his transparent desire to get Claude

killed (since Bogard has already lost several front gunners).

Claude goes on the mission, performs bravely, and gains the respect of Bogard.

At the same time, Ann learns from Ronnie what Bogard has done and understands how

much he hates her now. Ronnie, trying to open Bogard’s eyes and make him understand

Ann’s situation, asks him to come on a mission on their torpedo boat. Bogard goes on

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Figure 3.2: Bogard (Gary Cooper) and Ann reunite. Feel the heat. Lobby card and cigarette card. On the back of the latter, this summary: “The story tells of her affection for her brother and the complications of her love for the other two men.”

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 3.3: Ann remembers her promise. Note the ring on her thumb. Publicity still.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this typically dangerous mission (and does n o t act in a cowardly fashion, as he does in

the short story), but Claude is blinded (although Bogard does not know it). Bogard

leaves a note for Ann, telling her he understands everything now, everything presumably

encompassing the tenuous nature of life and death and the constant risks Claude is under,

as well as the deeply-held bond between her and Ronnie and Claude. Ann, who was

going to tell Claude about Bogard and pursue her true love, learns from Ronnie that

Claude is now blind, and refuses to let him down once again (despite Ronnie’s urgings).

But Claude now “sees” things more clearly, and knows that she does not love him. He

and Ronnie agree to undertake a suicide mission that Bogard has unnecessarily

volunteered for, ostensibly to clear the way for true romance and Ann’s ultimate

happiness. The film cross-cuts between Bogard and Mac in their plane and Ronnie and

Claude in their boat as they approach the target, a large German cruiser (inter-cut with

Ann pacing back and forth in her room-which of Ann’s three loves will survive?).

Ronnie and Claude arrive first, and nobly steer their boat, kamikaze-style, into the

cruiser. Bogard and Mac fly off. The film ends with Ann and Bogard, arm in arm,

silently looking at a memorial to the war dead, which includes the names of her father,

Ronnie and Claude. We then see the content couple walking towards what is, we

assume, their estate now.

Faulkner the “Sharecropper”

Bruce Kawin, who has in books such as Faulkner and Film and F a u lk n er’s

MGM Screenplays done perhaps more than any other critic to revive interest in

Faulkner’s film career, reveals in the body of his work notable concern about authorial

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. control. This concern is noteworthy because it counterbalances and limits Kawin’s

efforts to reevaluate Faulkner’s film career. Kawin moves beyond the all-too-easy

suggestion made by scholars such as McHaney that Faulkner’s Hollywood writing

should be considered hack work and nothing more. But in one of his last published

articles on Faulkner, “Sharecropping in the Golden Land,” Kawin displays the need to

re-imagine Faulkner’s awkward position in Hollywood, inviting us to put ourselves in

Faulkner’s shoes:

Let’s say you’re Faulkner and you’re writing a script based on your story “Turn About.” You and the director, Hawks, got drunk and talked all night about how to do it, or anyway how it could be done. You end the script with the same ending as the story, because it’s just as terrific as it ever was, and it creates exactly the right tone for the ending even when you’re writing the second draft and they’ve told you to put “a girl” in the picture. You have Bogard and Ann, after the raid and their marriage, standing in a chapel and facing a window inscribed in memory of Ronnie and Claude, and you have them say: ANN: But you did. You went. When you flew down at that chateau and knew that you wouldn’t get home again. BOGARD: Yes. God, God. If they had only all been there: generals, the admirals[,] the presidents, and the kings-theirs, ours, all of them! ANN: Hush. (Draws his head down to her breast, holding it there) Hush-hush. In the movie, however, they just stand there silently in the chapel. This is the movie Today We Live, made from your script from your story. This is your favorite joke without the punch line. This blows the whole thing. But this is not YOUR Today We Live. (203-4)

Note the use of second person throughout, as Kawin perhaps reveals his, and our, own

frustrations in dealing with Faulkner’s conflicted relationship with Hollywood, and

rhetorically forces us to identify with Faulkner’s (and implicitly the critic’s) ambivalence.

The implication is, of course, that someone or som ething has essentially ruined the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. power of both Faulkner’s original story and that of the “forced” script he has written

(despite the fact that few critics have found “Turnabout” all that compelling).11 But

Kawin ultimately has to admit that Faulkner never really complained about the changes

made to his stories when they were made into films. He ends up arguing that Faulkner

found a way to deal with his situation, despite his “literary” attitude towards

collaboration, saying of the apparent paradox: “But Faulkner could contemplate and

even watch Today We Live and other pictures without blowing a gasket. Since he would

not let anyone treat his novels or his stories this way, since he tolerated no rewriting but

his own, how could he of all people have adapted to the demands of creative

collaboration?” (204). The critic ultimately finds a clever way to give Faulkner a

modicum of control over his texts, by positing another of those comforting agrarian

“Southern” conceits we saw earlier in Blotner:

Let the auteurists wrangle over whether it was Hawks’s personal creation; the fact is that MGM owned it-or did then, anyway. Faulkner had sold Hawks and MGM the right to adapt “Turn About” any way they chose. In cases where he was not adapting his own work . . . he fully understood that by accepting a paycheck he was selling what he wrote and that anything could be done to it or in spite of it. Either way, the property . . . on which he worked was somebody else’s literal property .. . . It is my guess that the artist in him would still have gone privately nuts if he had not gone on to solve the screenwriter’s key problem, authorial control.... Still striving to reconcile modernist and commercial values as well as Southern and Southern California values, what synthesis between author and not-author could he discover? The resolving metaphor might have occurred to him as sharecropping, an honorable occupation in which to practice the moral discipline and suffer the indignities of Faulknerian endurance. Like a sharecropper he worked on somebody else’s property, not his own. He raised the best crop he could because he was a good farmer, and he got to keep enough of it to keep going. (204-5)

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Aside from the assumptions about this being a two-person-only struggle for

control, this passage is striking for the way Kawin develops the metaphor of

sharecropping to describe Faulkner’s experiences in Hollywood, emphasizing the

“honorable” nature of the endeavor, as well as the “suffering” involved. What is also

being tacitly acknowledged is Faulkner’s stoic acceptance of his fate. Indeed, if it were

not for the familiar quaintness of the sharecropper image here, Kawin might seem to be

coloring Faulkner in existentialist terms-like Sisyphus, he struggles on. By relying on a

rural, agrarian image, Kawin paints a by now familiar picture of Faulkner as victim of an

unfair system, and as a man unsophisticated in the ways of the (commercial) world. The

implication once again is that Faulkner was, when it came to popular culture forms, a bit

naive, trusting, even a dupe. As my last chapter argues, Faulkner was no country

bumpkin amazed by big city ways, yet Kawin ends up reifying the traditional Modernism/

commercialism binary. I think he gets it right when he suggests that Faulkner was not as

uneasy, or insecure, about collaboration as some critics suggest, and he makes it clear

that Faulkner did take it seriously and saw it as valuable (at least to an extent). But he

ends up, as so many critics do, making Faulkner’s time in Hollywood into a bigger

melodrama than Today We Live itself, complete with misunderstandings, suffering, and

stoic patience in the face of adversity.

Faulkner’s “Brilliant Solution”

At the other end of the spectrum is John Matthews’s article “Faulkner and the

Culture Industry,” which I have already touched on in the last chapter. Matthews’s

Faulkner is no babe-in-the-woods. He is a savvy player, a manipulator of all thing

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. commercial, who is always able to subvert or otherwise transgress the stifling genres in

which he is working. Matthews attempts to complicate Faulkner criticism’s tendency to

scoff at the Hollywood material:

My approach means to distinguish Faulkner’s productive engagement with mass cultural forms from reductionist dismissals of his pandering to market expectations in order to make money. To segregate any writer’s serious art fiction totally from his or her writing for commercial uses, or even from an awareness of market pressures, is to participate uncritically in a myth advanced by modernist aesthetics. (69-70)

This sounds good, but “productive engagement”? For all his talk about the joys of

Barton Fink and about taking Faulkner’s popular culture texts seriously, there seems to

be an implied value judgment going on throughout his analysis. “Mass cultural forms” do

not, Matthews seems to be saying, have any inherent value beyond what a genius such as

Faulkner can bring to them. He is productively moving beyond the modernist myth, but

is establishing another-Faulkner as subverter of popular culture.

Matthews uses Today We Live, and in particular the Joan Crawford dilemma, to

comment on how this experience had an impact on Faulkner’s overall attitude towards

popular culture: “MGM insisted on one drastic change in Faulkner’s story; I think we

can detect how it provoked him to a still further reflection on the ways of the culture

industry .... The script Faulkner produced ingeniously made the problem of the

woman’s place in the movie the very question to be entertained” (66). He goes on to

talk about the scenes with the three children playing in the brook, making it clear that he

is talking about Faulkner’s second script for the film, not the film itself. This move in

itself is interesting-Dallas Hulsey does the same thing in his narratological comparison of

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this same script and the short story. Critics are understandably more comfortable dealing

with a text that they can, more or less, assign to just one author. The film has

too many variables-other screenwriters, the director, the editing room, etc.-and, as I am

arguing, too many complicating factors when it comes to reception of the text. But this

raises a serious pedagogical and scholarly issue-no one reads screenplays, particularly

unproduced ones, so how valuable is such an analysis to understanding the product

people actually experienced? Very little from Faulkner’s second script actually makes it

into the film, and unless you are reading Kawin’s out-of-print collection of MGM

screenplays, you would never encounter this text.

Nevertheless, much of Matthews’s analysis is applicable to the film, and he

provides valuable insights, even in his short summary of the story:

She [Ann] needs to be related to the soldierly trio of “Turnabout,” so Faulkner makes her Ronnie’s sister and constructs a romance plot around her and Claude, who now lives with the Boyce Smiths as a ward. She must be made an object of desire, so Ann becomes Claude’s fiancee, gathers in a stray kiss or two from her newly affectionate brother, Ronnie, and falls in love with Bogard, who marries her in the last scene after Ronnie and Claude have completed a suicide mission. Although one can feel Hollywood conventions reshaping Faulkner’s story, one can also see his imagination resisting too slick a repackaging. (66)

Matthews seems to be suggesting that Faulkner simply cannot follow the program,

cannot create the kind of “typical” Hollywood melodrama he is being asked to invent out

of his own original story. Hulsey agrees, seeing the screenplay as “not just a reflection

of borrowed plot elements, but as a major writer’s ongoing experiment with the

development of triangular desire” (67), eventually emphasizing the “sublimated incest” in

the story. As we have seen, “Turnabout” can itself be seen as a fairly “slick” male

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. melodrama, and certainly an example of a work playing with “triangular desire.” But

more importantly as far as Matthews’s argument goes, no matter what limitations and

additions were being called for, isn’t this screenplay still “Faulkner’s story”? When

Matthews says that Hollywood conventions “reshape” Faulkner’s story, the anxiety of

authorship becomes manifest. He wants to retain for Faulkner writerly autonomy, while

at the same time maintaining that stifling genre conventions have forced the writer to

cooperate-but not too much.

What is even more interesting is the way Matthews brings, to his discussion of

this unproduced screenplay, feminist and post-structuralist film theory in order to

reinforce the notion that Faulkner subverts the classical Hollywood narrative. First, he

introduces to us a Faulkner who is not naive and one-dimensional, not out of his element

in Hollywood. This Faulkner quickly understands the movies:

The simple presence of Ann may be read as the transformative force of the cinema itself in Faulkner’s narrative. That is, Joan Crawford is the movie. I think Faulkner proved a quick study of the star-vehicle system; he must have understood that the female romantic lead exists to be desired as object by the male audience, and to be identified with as desiring subject by female spectators. (66)

But Matthews also gives us a somewhat dated rendition of feminist film theory-woman

as male object of desire, and source of female identification. Following Teresa de

Lauretis, he positions “masculine” pleasures in the “desire to know”: “The Oedipal

narrative solves the Sphinx’s riddle with the answer ‘man’; it rests on the social reality of

patriarchy in which woman functions as sign and value of exchange according to the

incest prohibition that founds social relations” (67). But, Matthews argues, for the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. female spectator “identification must be doubled. The viewer’s engaged subjectivity

cannot identify herself as object, and so must occupy the ‘masculine’ position

simultaneously” (67). This model of female identification surely calls for some further

complicating, particularly in terms of social and cultural factors which are involved in the

concept of spectatorship, as well as the place of queer reading in such an inherently

heterosexist formulation.

For the moment, however, let us accept the logic of Matthews’s Oedipal

narrative and see where it takes us, which is back to the canny Faulkner:

Faulkner’s script does suggest Ann’s constitution as the product and intersection of these contrary forces. Ann as object materializes within the semi-incest plot Faulkner imports from The Sound and the Fury. As Sedgwick might predict, Ann mediates the bonds between Ronnie and Claude.... They’re . . . generally discharging homosocial current through Ann. Her lack of a proper place occasions a relentless exercise of male property rights.... Faulkner’s script, then, locates the place of woman in film as the image of exchange and value within the Oedipal logic of patriarchal narrative. There really is no place for Ann in the story, but when asked to, Faulkner found her as the repressed subject of patriarchy. (67)

I think Matthews is right on the money here with his reading of the “homosocial current”

running between Ronnie and Claude through Ann. (In the film, how much of this is

Faulkner, how much Hawks? For that matter, how much Edith Fitzgerald and Dwight

Taylor?) But to claim that Faulkner is somehow making some sort of implied statement

about the “place of woman in film as the image of exchange and value” feels a bit far

fetched.

Matthews’s Ann is a transgressive female warrior who is hard to reconcile with

the film, the script, or Faulkner’s other female characters, for that matter:

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ann defies her objectification in the Oedipal narrative-at least until the script’s final images of resolution. Scandalously, and indispensably from the standpoint of the movie’s need to activate female desire, Ann decides to sleep with Claude despite not loving him and without expecting to marry him. . . . Ann muddies the clarity of patriarchal privilege over her body and affections .... Faulkner’s brilliant solution to making a place for Ann involves capacitating her to strike a blow at the masculine frame. When she withholds her love from Claude, or later dissembles to him about her love for Bogard, Ann is refusing to comply with the Oedipal logic of narrative itself. The questor Claude ends blinded like Oedipus, but emphatically not in possession of tragic insight. . . . Faulkner’s screenplay . .. illustrates, albeit with some self-consciousness, the will to closure and coming together demanded of the Hollywood formula romance. (68-69)

This description makes me wonder whose “female desire” is being activated, since Ann

and Crawford do not appear to be having much fun-the rather colorful term “pity fuck”

comes to mind. This also helps illustrate why it is so much easier to talk about the script

than the film. As I have already suggested, the only real sexual chemistry in the film is

between Crawford and Tone. Crawford’s and Cooper’s love scenes are almost painfully

stilted. Is Matthews talking about the potential female audience, and why would this be

any more likely to activate their desire? Further, it is unclear how Ann’s

actions-withholding love from Claude, lying to Bogard-signify a refusal to “comply with

the Oedipal logic of narrative itself.” Or, more precisely, how the actions of fifty other

heroines from melodramas or “women’s films” do not actually do the same thing in the

course of their troubled lives. Unless Matthews is arguing that the very nature of the

melodrama itself is to repudiate a patriarchal narrative, it is unclear how Ann is making a

stand for females everywhere (or at least within popular culture narratives), unless it lies

in her refusal to have her desire actuated by command-T will sleep with Claude not

132

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. because I want to, but because I do not have to”? It is clear why this line of reasoning

becomes troublesome quickly. And, of course, I would argue that blind “questor”

Claude does gain tragic insight—it is after he is blinded that he realizes that Ann does not

truly love him, which leads him to describe himself as worthless and justifies his noble

self-sacrifice in the name of her happiness.

Hulsey also makes claims for Ann’s autonomy:

Ann is no passive object that Ronnie can maneuver into marriage with Claude, or that Claude can then “pass” on to Bogard. Rather, she is a dynamic part of the triangle, and by asserting her sexual independence, she repudiates her status as object and becomes an active subject in her own right. She subverts this patriarchal logic despite Ronnie and Claude. It is her choice to wed Bogard, and she literally gets the last word since the screenplay ends with her final line “Hush-hush.” (76)

As I suggested in the last chapter, Matthews’s reading is certainly clever, as is Hulsey’s,

but ultimately I think they are trying too hard to make Faulkner “resistant” to popular

culture, and their emphasis on the “purely” Faulknerian text limits the kind of interpretive

work we can do with the relationship between Faulkner and popular culture. In other

words, I think Matthews and Hulsey bring more compelling interpretive frameworks to

Today We Live than a critic such as Kawin, but criticism such as this ends up suggesting

that Faulkner need somehow be redeemed from pop culture, and that he never really

engaged, or even enjoyed , working on commercial projects. Popular culture in this sort

of scheme is something Faulkner transcends. Faulkner, I would argue, was more likely a

bemused participant, one who learned as he went along, and who understood very well

that authorial control in these situations was an impossibility.

133

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. For a start, let us see what happens when we break out of a “Faulkner versus”

mode of thinking, as in Faulkner versus Hawks (for control a la Kawin), or Faulkner

versus popular culture’s restrictions (a la Matthews and Hulsey). What if Today We Live

does not fit well into the Faulkner (or Hawks) narratives because neither figure is

ultimately central to the way the text worked-and what if we examine Crawford’s/Ann’s

insertion not as the irremediable problem of the text, but the key to understanding it?

From this perspective, what can we learn not from Faulkner’s control, but from his

relative loss of control, and the potential benefits of this experience? Readings of Today

We Live can and need to move beyond “Faulkner as Author” and begin to ask what other

discourses, what other reputations, were in play as the film was being made, publicized,

and received.

Neither “Hawksian,” Nor “Faulknerian”

Today We Live occupies an interesting place in the Hawks-Faulkner canons, as I

have already suggested, and it occupies a similar place in Hollywood film canons

generally, in that it does not occupy much of a place at all. It continues to be seen as a

“blip” in the careers of Faulkner, Howard Hawks, Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper, to name

just the major reputations. The rare mentions in film make it clear that the film was a

failure: “Miss Crawford’s foot slipped ... when she made two pictures, Rain (1932) and

Today We Live (1933), which were beyond her dramatic reach and outside the interests

of her fans” (Griffith 414);12 “Her next picture, Today We Live , was loaded with talents

(Faulkner to write, Hawks to direct, Cooper to star), but she wasn’t right in it, and it

wasn’t right anyway” (Raeburn 9). In Cooper biographies, Today We Live is compared

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. unfavorably to his previous wartime hit, the adaptation of Hemingway’s A Farewell to

Arms (1932); in Crawford’s, to the wildly successful Letty Lynton (1932), Grand Hotel

(1932), and her much more popular film from that year, Dancing Lady (1933).

In Hawks criticism, there is a notable, somewhat surprising gap when it comes to

Today We Live, and, when it is mentioned, consistently negative interpretations. In

Donald Willis’s The Films o f Howard Hawks, this film, partly penned by one of

America’s most famous authors and starring two of the biggest box office stars at the

time, never merits so much as a mention. Jim Hillier and Peter Wollen’s collection of

essays, Howard Hawks: American Artist, manages to include only two quick notes about

the film.13 In Gerald Mast’s Howard Hawks: Storyteller, the film gamers about a page in

total. Mast’s critique reveals how Hawks’ own standard critical narrative-independent

artist working against the confines of cookie-cutter studio practice-has affected

subsequent views of the film:

Today We Live suffers from the MGM attempt to stuff Joan Crawford into the guise of a genteel, polite, suffering, stiff-upper-lip member of the British upper class. . . . It was only with great difficulty that Hawks and Faulkner could get Joan Crawford into the picture at all. The first section of the film-the Crawford section-seems as weighted down with MGM’s glossy production values as Miss Crawford seems weighted down by lip gloss, mascara, and pancake, the make-up so thick it is a marvel she can keep her eyelids up and her lips off the floor. (No wonder Hawks did not find MGM a very amicable place to work). (351)

Mast, who somewhat simplifies the auteur theories applied to Hawks, argues that

Hawks’ “best” films rely on star power wed to interesting characterization: “The stars

are the characters and the characters are the story” (349), and he clearly feels that

Crawford is playing out of character, thus the film does not work: “Given the essential

135

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Hawks equation of star as character as human being, this obvious artificiality strikes at

the root of Hawks’s narrative credibility” (315). In other words, MGM forced Crawford

on Hawks, and thus ruined the film.

For Hawks critics, the film’s failure is never the director’s responsibility, nor is it

Faulkner’s. They are described as a pair of fiiends-and drinking buddies-who faced a

tough situation and made the best of it they could. The villain in this scenario is the

studio, although I would argue that for many critics the larger problem was the

increasing attempts on the part of popular culture to appeal directly to female audiences.

The assumption is that MGM took what was going to be a “man’s” picture about honor,

bravery, camaraderie and ultimate “masculine” sacrifice and turned it into a

melodramatic “woman’s picture” about misunderstandings and sacrifice in the name of

love and romance, and thus ruined Faulkner’s and Hawks’ potentially glorious two-man

collaboration, despite their “fighting the good fight.” Todd McCarthy’s recent biography

best demonstrates this tendency in the criticism:

Hawks tried to make the best of a bad situation, but by now the film was hopelessly removed from what he and Faulkner had started out with six months before. Faulkner made a valiant effort to position Ann (now renamed Diana) at the center of a story of which she originally was not a part. But this resulted in opening sequences so laboriously expositional that after twenty minutes the film was in a hole so deep it had no hope of climbing out. Hawks and his actors seem so ill at ease in the early drawing-room and church scenes that these emerge as among the worst scenes he ever directed .... The picture admittedly improves in its second half, which is where, not at all coincidentally, it converges most snugly with Faulkner’s original. (184-5)

The implication here is that “Turnabout” was choice material for a Hawks/Faulkner

collaboration, and that an opportunity was missed. What is generally claimed is that

136

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ultimately Today We Live is not “Faulknerian,” or “Hawksian,” although a few critics

such as Peter Hogue do note that the preoccupations of both artists seem to be reflected

in the elements, such as male camaraderie, fatalism, stoicism, and incest, to name a few.

MGM, Crawford, and “Gowns by Adrian”

When one looks at the publicity and initial reception of Today We Live , what

becomes immediately apparent is that neither Faulkner nor Hawks figure too

prominently. A few reviews mention Faulkner’s notorious reputation, but usually only to

comment on how the film is so unlike the texts that purportedly secured this reputation.

Richard Watts’s review for the Mew York Herald Tribune is worth quoting at length:

Although William Faulkner is billed as the author of “Today We Live,” the picture is no devastating survey of the degeneracy of the New South, filled with murderous neurotics and pathological passions. Instead, it is a lugubrious romance of the war, replete with clipped speeches, heroic sacrifices, self-effacing nobility and many cries of “stout fellow!” As a matter of fact, it is only when one of the characters begins to play quaintly with a cockroach that you see any particular traces of the Faulkner influence at all. For the rest of the time, the works seems more akin to “Journey’s End” than to “Sanctuary” or “Light in August” and devotes most of its efforts to permitting Robert Young and Franchot Tone to destroy themselves gallantly so that Gary Cooper may henceforth live happily with Miss Joan Crawford. It was my suspicion yesterday that their sacrifice was too great. (Qtd in Quirk 104)

Watts here seems already in 1933 to be ascribing to an auteurist vision of what is and is

not “Faulknerian,” and seems to denigrate the film for its melodramatic tendencies.

Note, too, that it is the actors, not their characters, who are mentioned, as if the reviewer

never got lost enough in the plot to forget who exactly was on screen. This again echoes

the notion that too much all around was done to fit Crawford into the film-at the cost of

too great a sacrifice. Pare Lorentz goes Watts one better, and suggests that Faulkner has

137

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “tried” to write a bad adaptation (ignoring, once again, that Faulkner only received

“Story and Dialogue” credit):

Lacking even a journalistic, contemporary quality, Today We Live is a flimsy business. Mr. Faulkner is credited with having dramatized his own short story, but, unless they played him false on the coast, he evidently played an expensive practical joke on his employers, and tried successfully to outwrite the worst hacks in the business. (37)

Again, this echoes the notion of Hollywood as a business that could play a writer false,

and predicts the Faulkner-as-subverter readings from critics such as Matthews and

Hulsey. These reviewers, however, are the exceptions, even as they point to

interpretations to come. Most of the contemporary reviews do not even bother to

mention Faulkner at all, and most do not mention Hawks either. The real emphasis in

most reviews is on Crawford, the love story, and fashion. Similarly, in the seven

newspaper advertisements I was able to track down, Faulkner and Hawks do not figure

prominently (if at all). In three of the ads neither the director or the author are

mentioned. In three others, Faulkner’s name comes up, but not Hawks’. Hawks might

have been famous (or infamous) for Scarf ace, but he was not yet an advertising

commodity.

When Faulkner is mentioned, it is usually in an attempt to cash in on the notoriety

of Sanctuary (which we will be exploring in more detail in Chapter 4). Two of the ads

mention the novel, “William Faulkner (Author ‘Sanctuary’) (see figure 4), while another

seems to conflate Faulkner’s notorious novel with the little-read short story the film was

based on: “From Wm. Faulkner’s Celebrated Novel” (see figure 5).

138

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Figure 3.4: “William Faulkner (Author1 Sanctuary’) ” Newspaper advertisements. The Atlanta Constitution

139

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Figure 3.5: “From Wm. Faulkner’s Celebrated Novel.” Newspaper advertisement. New York Times (May 5, 1933): 13.

140

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A ll of these ads, of course, feature Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper. And even the

studio’s reputation clearly was expected to signify more to potential viewers than either

Faulkner or Hawks. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was, according to most film histories, the

only studio in the early 1930s on solid financial ground, and had a reputation for

“classy,” high-gloss films. “The one studio that was sailing through the worst of the

Depression with its head above water, MGM had, in a few short years, unquestionably

established itself as the classiest shop in town, the studio with the biggest stars, the

largest reserves of money, and the most glamour, power, and prestige” (McCarthy 173).

Without fail, MGM is equated with big money, glossy productions, and excess. The

implication . MGM was the kind of place “straightforward,” independent men such as

Hawks and Faulkner would unproductively languish. And of course, the sheer size of

the studio plays against Faulkner’s reputation as a shy, naive foreigner overwhelmed by

his surroundings. Blotner spends a good deal of time in “Faulkner in Hollywood” setting

the (awe-inducing) stage:

In 1932 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the undisputed leader among the film studios. Its galaxy of stars-the Barrymores, Gable, Harlow, and Crawford brightest among them-outshone the others. MGM picture budgets averaged $ ISO,000 more than the other companies’. MGM’s forty feature films a year-led by productions such as Red Dust, Rasputin, and Grand Hotel-grossed more than $100 million a year by playing before an estimated total world audience of a billion persons. The sixty- two writers on the payroll earned a total of $40,000 every week. (There were more writers in the MGM lot, commented a Fortune writer, than it took to produce the King James version of the Bible.) Eighteen directors reported to six associate producers who were directly under Thalberg, MGM’s vice president in charge of production. (265)

141

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Subsequent biographers have inevitably picked up on this “reluctant initiation” narrative

which always features a faceless, heartless studio:

He stood on the dusty outskirts of Los Angeles, a lonely little man from Mississippi, staring at MGM’s Culver City studio. MGM was the biggest motion picture company in Hollywood, grossing $100 million a year even in the Depression, and the sheer size of its operation overwhelmed him. He had scarcely met his superior when he bolted the studio. A week later he returned. He had been wandering in Death Valley, he said, a hundred and fifty miles away. He was contrite and ready to work now, determined to get through his enslavement here. (Oates 122)

And as we have already seen, MGM makes a convenient villain in Hawks’ narrative.

“ Today We Live suffers from the MGM attempt to stuff Joan Crawford into the guise of

a genteel, polite, suffering, stiff-upper-lip member of the British upper class.. . . No

wonder Hawks did not find MGM a very amicable place to work” (Mast 351).

But this reputation for ruthlessness, for the stifling of individual genius, certainly

was not in place when Today We Live was being produced and promoted. Faulkner and

Hawks critics seem to forget that audiences sought certain pleasures from an MGM film,

were seeking the glossy production values and romantic twists and turns, and quite likely

did not feel quite so “betrayed” by the end result. The advertising for the film makes it

very clear what kind of film audiences could expect. In one magazine advertisement, a

dapper, tuxedoed Leo the Lion (MGM’s mascot), complete with monacle and crown,

bows to a seated Joan Crawford, decked out in a fancy dress and hat (one of several

outfits featured in the publicity but which do not actually appear in the film) (see figure

6). The dialogue is represented as follows:

Joan: I love my role in “Today We Live.” No part ever thrilled me so deeply, touched my heart so keenly. Do you think the public will like

142

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. JOAN: "I love my role m TODAY w e LIVE’. Nd pan ever thrilled mo to deeply, touched my heart so keenly. Do you think the public will like me in it, Leo?"

L E O : " M v child, the public always appreciates genius. It s a great emotional pan. You are per- iect in ’Today W e Live ." JOAN: "If that's so. then we must thank Howard Hawks' mar velous direction for his greatest t j m w , picture since 'Hell’s Angels’, and the inspired playing of i <' .' ' * "7 ^ Gary Cooper."

The finest picture Joan Crawford has yet made. Gary Cooper shares the stellar hon ors. The Kane at her home, where the sweetheart she believed dead returns and finds her the mistress of another—is as powerful on emotional scant as tho icraon has ever witnessed. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is vary proud of ‘‘Today We liv t “l W.re listrr lw<| *>•«•«' let* ••Mat I ton oat Oieippit a •trmm ItrliMr hr* •to* |r W |e« Oa#t h

Figure 3.6: Magazine advertisement for Today We Live.

143

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. me in it, Leo? Leo: My child, the public always appreciates genius. It’s a great emotional part. You are perfect in “Today We Live.” Joan: If that’s so, then we must thank Howard Hawks’ marvelous direction for his greatest picture since “Hell’s Angels,” and the inspired playing of Gary Cooper.

At the bottom of the ad the copy continues, “The finest picture Joan Crawford has yet

made. Gary Cooper shares the stellar honors. The scene at her home, where the

sweetheart she believed dead returns and finds her the mistress of another-is as powerful

an emotional scene as the screen has ever witnessed. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is very

proud of ‘Today We Live’!” Several points need to be made here. The publicity for the

film often makes it clear that MGM gives Today We Live the “seal of approval,”

suggesting it is up to the studio’s rigorous standards. Thematically, the film is

guaranteed to deliver the emotional goods-Joan’s is “a great emotional part.” And

audiences can expect one supposedly dazzling emotional scene-“as powerful an

emotional scene as the screen has ever witnessed.” Of course, MGM made such claims

for just about every high-profile release, but the emphasis on the melodramatic aspects of

the film suggests what kind of audience expectations were in place, and what kind of

reputation MGM enjoyed at the time. It is also interesting to note that Hawks had

nothing to do with Hell's Angels , and was accused of stealing from Howard Hughes’

film for his own The Dawn Patrol (1930). This could suggest that the publicity

department was interested in evoking that controversy (and the “rumors” that Today We

Live was using actual aerial footage from Hell's Angels), or they assumed people did not

really pay much attention to who directed or produced the films, and might simply get

144

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Howard Hughes and Howard Hawks mixed up. Or, more disturbing for Hawksians, that

the publicity department got the two men confused. In any event, it suggests a lot about

the assembly-line nature of the publicity process and the fact that neither Hawks nor

Faulkner had a reputation that outweighed MGM’s or Crawford’s.

Also telling is the evocation of fashion and elegance in the ad. Crawford might

spend more than half of Today We Live in a military nurse’s uniform, but that particular

outfit figures in almost none of the advertising, and as I have pointed out, outfits which

never appear the film are presented in the ads (see figures 7, 8 and 9). It is worth

pointing out, with regard to figure 9, that Cooper and Crawford never appear in tuxedo

or evening dress, and this poster is particularly misleading. Contemporary reviews often

focused on the seemingly “outrageous” outfits worn by Crawford in the film. Mordaunt

Hall, for the New York Times, wrote, “It is also anachronistic, particularly as regards the

costumes worn by Joan Crawford” (qtd. in Quirk 104). Pare Lorentz’s review for

Vanity Fair links Crawford’s wardrobe with her reputation for overacting (or perhaps

for acting in overly melodramatic films): “Joan Crawford, in an odd collection of clothes,

stupidly displayed off-key and out of date with the story, gives the show away by acting

her head offin . . . the best tradition of the ‘Oh, the pain of it!’ school” (37).

These critics might take exception to the emphasis on Crawford’s fashions, but

her fans apparently could not get enough of it. Crawford and fashion became inseparable

after the success oiLetty Lynton, a film which film historians identify as putting her on

the same plane as the biggest female Hollywood stars: “The resounding success of Letty

Lynton prompted MGM to put the publicity machine into high gear and publicize her as

145

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Jjouin PALACEStarts TODAY :?£! I JOAN CRAWFORD, the perfect screen soul-mate

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Figure 3.7: Joan Crawford in one of many outfits featured in the film’s publicity but not found in the film. Newspaper advertisement. The Washington Post (May 5, 1933).

146

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Figure 3.8: “All the romance o f‘Letty Lynton.”’ Joan Crawford in another Adrian design. Newspaper advertisement. The St. Louis Dispatch.

147

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission Figure 3 .9: “Look, it’s Grand Hotel. Oh, wait a minute. No it isn’t.” Cooper and Crawford in evening wear they don’t get a chance to wear in the film. Window card for Today We Live.

148

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. a glamorous star on a scale with Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer” (Tapert S3). One

dress in particular solidified her position as “fashion plate” for future MGM films, and

the reputation of gay designer Adrian. This dress came to be known simply as the “Letty

Lynton dress.” In their article on this dress and the phenomenon it sparked, Charlotte

Cornelia Herzog and Jane Marie Gaines note how in the early 1930s fashion became the

point of interest in a Joan Crawford film:

Designer Helen Rose, in her book, Just Make Them Beautiful, says that women went to Adrian-designed films just to see what the stars wore. It seemed to her that it hardly mattered at that time if the clothes were even appropriate for the scene. Rose’s recollection is perhaps a better description of the Crawford than the Garbo and Shearer vehicles designed by Adrian between 1929 and 1941. During the Adrian years at MGM, the display of clothes became conventionalised in Crawford’s films .... Both the sheer number of costumes and the look of expense were important to Crawford’s promotion during the “clothes horse” phase of her career. The extensiveness of her personal wardrobe and the variety of costume changes in each new release were standard publicity topics, as was Adrian’s financial extravagance. Crawford would recall that for these fashion plate films more was often spent on wardrobe than on the rights for the script. Critics at the time said that when there was little to remark about in the films, they could always write about the clothes. (77- 78)

The preponderantly male critics at the time went out of their way to remark on the use

(or rather misuse) of fashion in Today We Live, but incongruity was not the point. Many

women (and presumably a lot of men as well) went to these lavish MGM films expecting

to see gorgeous outfits. Ann Boyce Smith can hardly afford to offer Bogard sugar for

his tea, but that does not mean she can’t wear an outrageous dress complete with totally

impractical collar (see figure 10).14

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 3.10: Our first sight of Ann, in a fabulous gown by Adrian. What a collar. Publicity still for Today We Live.

150

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 3.11: Crawford’s outfit for the church scene. Fashion still.

151

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 3.12: The ring-exchange outfit. Fashion still.

152

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 3.13: Crawford’s bike-riding outfit. Fashion still.

153

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 3.14: Crawford looking smart in her nurse’s uniform. Fashion still.

154

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Crawford makes no fewer than four costume changes in the first twenty minutes of

Today We Live (see figures 11, 12 and 13). By the 23rd minute, she is in her nurse’s

outfit (and even in this she looks pretty smart-see figure 14) and is only pictured one

more time in civilian clothes-in the final, silent scenes with Ann and Bogard at the end of

the film. Adrian’s designs were, as Herzog and Gaines suggest, a major part of the

publicity and had a great impact on the reception of the film. In pre-release publicity for

Today We Live, Crawford’s connection to fashion is emphasized. A January 7ttl, 1933

issue of Picturegoer presented a fashion show of sorts under the title of “Joan

Crawford-Mannequin” (see figure 15). In Capitol Theatre Magazine (April 21, 1933)-a

New York City theater program-in the regular column, “Leo the Lion Roars,” we get

this little bit of “gossip”:

Joan Crawford was having a fitting of the gorgeous creations Adrian is making for her. So pleased was she with her clothes she insisted that everyone she knew come in and watch her model them. Finally, Louis B. Mayer, executive head of the studio, came to pay his respects, and the fashion show was pronounced a huge success. (4)

Part of the reason Crawford’s outfits seem to rub some critics the wrong way is

because they do not seem to think they fit in with her reputation as the down-and-out

shop girl who tries to rise above her circumstances. But her screen persona was

certainly more complicated than that. Annette Tapert argues that Crawford did have this

“shop girl” reputation, but that this did not necessarily conflict with her glamorous

accouterments:

She posed, she preened, she was the first star to share her rough-and- tumble beginnings in the movie magazines, and she solidified her image through them. She revealed her packing solutions for a European trip to

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (Jan. 7, 1933). Picturegoer Figure 3.15: Figure Crawford-Mannequin.” “Joan

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. readers. She gave them beauty and fashion tips and told fans that with ingenuity they could be glamorous on a shoestring. In the process, Crawford became an oracle for working-class girls, for she instilled in them the notion that a polished appearance was crucial to social advancement. So it didn’t matter to them that her on-screen high-fashion clothes were completely incongruous with her “shopgirl” parts. When reviewers criticized her for this, she was reminded by Joe Mankiewicz, .. .. that her female fans wanted to see her in a dreamy version of their own life: “She doesn’t want to see you in a housedress with armpit stains. She wants you dressed by Adrian, as she would like to be.” (54).

Of course, in Today We Live Crawford’s Ann is not a shop girl on her way up, but a

privileged Englishwoman apparently on her way down (until she marries the rich

American Bogard, that is). Presumably Bogard is not won over by her outfits-social

advancement is not really much of an issue in this particular film. This brings us to an

interesting point made by Jeanine Basinger, who notes that Crawford did not really play

a shop girl often at all. She argues that this reputation is undeserved, and brings to light

the ways reputations shift during the course of an actor’s career and how the personal

life of the actor impacts audience reactions to her:

Many people think that in the 1930s Crawford played the shop girl who rises to wealth, and that is her image for that decade. Yet in the twenty- six movies starring Joan Crawford released between 1930 and 1940, she played a shop girl exactly twice, in Our Blushing Brides and The Women .... This means that Crawford played an heiress or socialite eight times, or four times as often as she played a shop girl.... Here is another case of persona misfiring in the audience’s memories. Joan Crawford in the 1930s was in movies to provide escape for audiences via stories of wealth that allowed her to wear the fabulous, angular clothes designed for her by the great Adrian. Why does everyone think of her as suffering behind a hosiery counter? (172-73)

Basinger’s answer suggests something about how the personal lives of the stars (or at

least the ways the lives of the stars were reported in fan magazines and studio publicity)

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. factors into audiences’ interpretations of what was going on up on the screen, and might

at least partly account for why some viewers might not have “bought” Crawford as Ann

Boyce Smith:

In the 1930s, Crawford was young and vibrantly beautiful, and she wore clothes magnificently. But as an heiress or daughter of a wealthy industrialist. . . she was somehow not authentic. The audience sniffed out the common clay in her and recognized her as their surrogate: someone like them who pretends to be an heiress on their behalf. This is the source of Crawford’s stardom and popularity. She wasn’t going to die for the audience’s sins, like Garbo, but she would wear ermine and make love to Gable for them. The audience formed an allegiance to Crawford’s determined climb, her desperate efforts to shake off the lowdown past she had actually lived. They identified, without realizing it, with her attempt to be something other than what she really was: an ambitious woman, and an angry one. (172-3)

This brings us back to interpretations such as those offered by Matthews and Hulsey. If

Crawford’s Ann is somehow striking a blow for women against patriarchy, part of that

reading surely comes from Crawford’s persona and her reputation. But Crawford’s

presence, as we have seen, also represents for many the crass commercialism of

Hollywood itself. Crawford=fashion=melodrama=appeals to women audiences. We are

back to Huyssen’s women=popular culture=threat to Modernism formulation. By

focusing on Ann as scripted, Matthews and Hulsey remove from the interpretive

framework these competing reputations. Such readings also cannot take into account

how audiences might actually resist the roles as written and essentially create their own

heroine or hero. Even though Crawford hardly ever played the social-climbing shop girl,

that is how audiences saw her, regardless of the role she was playing.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As I have been suggesting, a strictly formalist reading of Today We Live only

gets us so far, since it ignores complicating factors such as competing reputations and

audience expectations. Presumably, for many viewers the real interest in the film came

down to Adrian. Herzog and Gaines quote an article by Helen Harrison called “Adrian’s

Fashion Secrets,” from the September, 1932 issue of Hollywood magazine:

As the first thrilling bars of music herald the latest Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford or Norma Shearer production, you will notice, as the presentation unreels, the simple credit-“Gowns by Adrian.” That is your cue to sit taut in your seat and strain all your faculties for what you and you and you will next be wearing is about to be revealed!” (77).

Of course, “you and you and you” were not about to be wearing what these stars

revealed in these films, but that hardly seemed to matter. Adrian’s name never showed

up in newspaper advertisements or publicity stills, but his fashions certainly did. As

Charles Eckert notes, “The names of the leading studio designers, Adrian of MGM,

Orry-Kelly of Warners, Royer of 20* Century-Fox, Edward Stevenson of RKO, Edith

Head of Paramount, Walter Plunkett of Selznick, became as familiar to readers as the

stars themselves” (34-3 5). Audiences knew what to expect with Crawford, and with

Adrian. Or more accurately, they thought they knew, and that is what mattered. Most

readings of Today We Live ignore the possibility the audiences willfully saw what they

wanted to see in a Joan Crawford film, particularly one from MGM, with gowns by

Adrian, and this sort of advertising campaign.

It is also worth noting that all of these reviewers and critics who denigrate the

film are male. The only pieces on Today We Live written by women I have been able to

find are short movie magazine articles or publicity materials that clearly came from the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. studio. And, of course, they are glowing. It is extremely difficult to gain insight into

how real female audiences at the time might have responded to the film, since few of the

major newspapers (the ones we still have research access to, that is) had female movie

reviewers, and one must take publicity materials and movie magazine texts (often one

and the same) with a large grain of salt.

Contemporary male reviewers, however, are clearly pleased about denigrating

women’s pictures. In a 1934 issue of Liberty, Rob Wagner’s review, titled “Subs, Sobs,

and Sex,” is a good example:

There is no laughter or sunshine in this picture. For seven reels Joan Crawford suffers and cries. When it isn’t raining, night descends upon the action, and we see the figures eerily. Not a note of musical relief, but for reels on end the terrible roar of battle .... Joan has two loves, her brother, Robert Young, and a neighbor lad, Franchot Tone, both of whom join the navy. Of course she falls in love with Gary, and to run away from her dilemma joins an ambulance corps. Gary, not to be outdone by his young rival, enlists in the British air service and later is reported dead, so in soul’s desperation, Joan “gives herself’ to Franchot. (32-33)

Of course, Robert Young does not play her brother-it is Tone. Is it possible Wagner

was not even paying attention, that he is feigning boredom and a lack of attention, or

that he picked up (perhaps subconsciously) on the sexual connection between Crawford

and Tone? It is hard to say, but it is interesting to consider the ways in which so many

film reviewers at the time reveal their thinly-veiled negative attitudes towards

melodramas.

What does not get picked up on, either by contemporary reviewers or more

recent critics, is Today We Live's potential for all sorts of queer readings, and not, I

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. would argue, because there is not much of a basis for such readings. Given the

reputation of Hawks’ films, Crawford’s reputation for bisexuality at the time, even Gary

Cooper’s ambiguous sexuality in the early 1930s,13 you would think the film would at

least be given some attention from that kind of interpretive framework. Robert

Osbourne’s introduction to the film before a recent showing on Turner Classic Movies is

noteworthy: “It’s one of the true oddities in the MGM library. It’s a film directed by

Howard Hawks, written by no less than the great William Faulkner, and it co-stars for

the first and only time on screen together, Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper. A very odd

mix at best.” Osbourne never explains what he finds so “odd” about the film, and I think

a lot of the uncertainty about what to do with this film has to do with its queer content as

well as its competing reputations and critical silence. Marty Roth notes, “Homosexuality

is never really erased from the stories it has once inhabited; understanding of its presence

flickers on and off like the light on an old-fashioned movie marquee” (274). As I have

argued, “Turnabout” is certainly open to queer readings, and so is Today We Live. One

scene in particular comes to mind. As Ronnie and Claude prepare to go on their suicide

mission, Claude wants to “look in” on Ann, who is sleeping, one more time. As the men

stand in the doorway, Claude says to Ronnie, “Touch me while you look at her.” As

Hogue notes, “The film also plays a good deal on the idea of partnership and an intimate

sort of professionalism. Here as elsewhere in Hawks, one man serves as another’s eyes”

(54). I would add that nowhere has the homoeroticism of this motif been made more

explicit.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. My students pick up on such moments very quickly-screenings of Today We Live

are punctuated by peals of laughter throughout. And this from what is always described

as a very dour, sentimental, disappointing film. This scene in particular gets a very vocal

reaction-usually laughter from the women, and groans from the men. I am, to put it

bluntly, conflicted. This film fascinates me because of the authorial crisis I see being

played out on the screen, behind the scenes, and in the critical discourse. And it is full of

very odd -and thus interesting-moments. But I have to agree with most critics that

Today We Live is not very entertaining on most levels. Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford

do not have any real screen chemistry (this was the first, and last, film which cast them as

lovers), the plot is nonsensical, the “clipped” dialogue is often laughable, and Crawford’s

dresses (and multiple costume changes) are disconcerting. Scenes end too abruptly,

seemingly cutting off the actor’s lines, or they drag on interminably.16 Finally, the war

scenes mix uncomfortably with the romantic elements.

Having said that, I still find enormous pleasures in the film, as I am sure many

filmgoers did when it was first released. The “Gowns by Adrian” are fascinating (albeit

“anachronistic” and absolutely impractical), the romantic complications and shifting

sources of sexual tension-and the plot machinations necessary to reveal them-are worthy

of the best melodramas of the period. It is interesting to watch as the most convincing

sexual chemistry develops between Ann and her brother Ronnie (Franchot Tone), not

necessarily because of the way this sublimated incest has clearly been written into the

script, but more likely because Crawford and Tone were “falling in love” on the set

during filming-Crawford would soon divorce husband Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and marry

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Tone. The war scenes are exciting, although the dogfights were reportedly recycled

from Howard Hughes’s H ell’s Angels { 1930), and Hawks’ “co-director” Richard Rossen

was responsible for the scenes of the torpedo boat attacks. And there are great camp

moments in the film.

But we do not get to discuss all this, as critics or teachers, unless we actually

discuss the film and not something we can readily identify as Faulkner’s text. This may

require recognizing that Today We Live is interesting because what we perceive as

failures in the film open up further questions that we might profitably explore. What I

think is ultimately most interesting about Today We Live is the proposition that Faulkner

might have actually gained something from the collaborative efforts-in particular, in

being forced to imagine a different space for women than he might have been used to.

Rather than think about Ann’s inclusion as another example of Faulkner being

stifled/misunderstood/used, I find it more fruitful to use this particular moment in

Faulkner’s career to consider what he might have learned from the experience. Suddenly

the author was presented with the task of imagining female desire, of finding a way to

include an important female character, one presumably sexually alluring, tragic, and

noble all at once. And into an all-male, arguably homoerotic story at that. Today We

Live ultimately takes us beyond Modernism’s fear of the female and consumerism and

suggests a more conflicted, complicated figure in Faulkner.

It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to look at subsequent works by

Faulkner and to tease out all of the possible connections between his writing of this

particular character and female characters from his other works, but by complicating the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. notion of authorial control (or lack thereof), and by taking into account the competing

reputations behind the production and reception of Today We Live, I think we can see

how the typical Modernism/commercialism split so often invoked when talking about

Faulkner and his reputation becomes more complicated.

At least part of the reason this is a Faulkner we do not perhaps know is due to

the author himself. After his resurrection and Nobel Prize, he made it a point to disavow

his Hollywood years (and to suggest that the only reason he would get involved with film

in the 1950s was because of his friendship with Hawks). This comes from an early draft

of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “A few years ago I was taken on as a script writer

at a Hollywood studio. At once I began to hear the man in charge talking o f‘angles,’

‘story angles,’ and then I realized that they were not even interested in truth, the old

universal truths of love and honor and pride and pity and compassion and sacrifice”

(114). A particularly telling mix-this seems to describe Today We Live, or at least what

audiences were promised and presumably found there. Despite claims to the contrary,

the film did solid box office business, and was by no means a commercial failure. But

the film is not presumably the package Faulkner wanted to lay claim to or needed given

his growing reputation as American “man of letters.”

But what if we considered the possibility that Faulkner’s time in Hollywood did

not “cost” him books (in Blotner’s terms) but instead gained him perspective that

contributed to his major works still to come? How might we further trace the dilemma

of female desire in later works? Molly Haskell long ago observed of the “male bonding”

film:

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Sexual desire is not the point, nor “homoeroticism” the term for these relationships or for men fighting together shoulder to shoulder at the front, or back to back in a Hawksian fraternity, or cubicle to cubicle in a Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play; rather, the point is love-love in which men understand and support each other, speak the same language, and risk their lives to gain each other’s respect. But this is also a delusion; the difficulties of the adventure disguise the fact that this is the easiest of loves: a love that is adolescent, presexual, tacit, the love of one’s semblable, one’s mirror reflection. (24)

Perhaps the “forced” inclusion of female desire in this all-male scenario led Faulkner to

recognize the ways in which “Turnabout” represents on some levels “the easiest of

loves,” and had some sort of impact on his subsequent works. How might Faulkner have

been influenced not only by Symbolist poetry and T.S. Eliot, but by imagining a role for

Joan Crawford in a melodrama? How might the Laveme-Roger-Jiggs triangle in Pylon

(193S) have been affected? How might we complicate Charles Bon’s and Henry

Sutpen’s homosocial/homoerotic relationship gone wrong in Absalom, Absalom! (1936),

as we note how much of that novel is about Rosa's and Judith's desires (albeit thwarted

ones).17

Even as early as 1935, with the publication of his scathing indictment of all things

California in the short story “Golden Land” (published in 1935 in the “high-end”

American Mercury), we see Faulkner distancing himself from his Hollywood

experiences, and throughout his career he made comments which suggest he felt his time

wasted there. But to reject the impact of Hollywood on his reputation, and his literary

career, it surely shortsighted. One thing that must have quickly occurred to Faulkner

during his “sojourn down the river” was the power of gossip in his temporary

home-there are surely parallels to be drawn between the power of stories, rumor, gossip,

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and reputation in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha and the imaginary community called

Hollywood. Nowhere is that made more evident than in the notoriety of The Story o f

Temple Drake, which was released a short two months after Today We Live. In my

investigation of the latter, I have suggested how the notion of failed collaboration, and of

overlapping reputations, might have pointed out to Faulkner weaknesses in his own

writing-and perhaps humbled him a bit. In my next chapter I want to explore what

happens when reputations do not work at cross purposes, and to explore how notoriety

and reputation helped shape the production and reception of Paramount’s adaptation of

Sanctuary, and how the film and the novel open up for each other interpretive

possibilities that have largely gone unexplored.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Notes

1. According to Bruce Kawin, Faulkner’s unproduced script The College Widow was possibly the one meant for Bankhead (Faulkner ’s MGM Screenplays 29).

2. For a detailed account of Faulkner’s early MGM treatments and screenplays, see Kawin’s Faulkner's MGM Screenplays.

3. For a handy guide to significant dates in Faulkner’s life, see Michel Gresset’s A Faulkner Chronology.

4. See Blotner’s biography of Faulkner (779-80); for a more detailed version, see Kawin (Faulkner's MGM Screenplays 101-8).

5. Edith Fitzgerald worked on many early 1930s “women’s films,” including Many a S lip ( 1931), Compromised ( 1931), Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) , Laughing Sinners (1931), Ex-Lady (1933) and The Painted Veil (1934). Taylor, who had only worked on a few films prior to Today We Live, ended up working mainly on musicals such as The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935) and Follow the Fleet (1936).

6. According to Kawin’s Faulkner's MGM Screenplays, Cunningham’s treatment was rejected and the script turned over to Fitzgerald: “They brought in Anne Cunningham to write a treatment from the woman’s point of view ... what she turned in was extremely sentimental” (106).

7. See Matthews (66-68); Kawin (104); Hogue (53); Hulsey (72)

8. There is some debate as to whether these childhood scenes were cut because the child actors who were hired could not master English accents, or whether Hawks and/or the studio recognized that the script was much too long.

9. An interesting biographical note here. Part of the Faulkner legend (one he helped create and maintain) had him training as an RAF cadet in 1918 (which is true-he was a cadet training in Canada) and ultimately crashing several planes, necessitating a metal plate in his head and accounting for a serious limp (which is not true). Faulkner reputedly came back from Canada with a cane, a limp, and an officer’s uniform. Early biographical sketches, even the blurbs on the back of paperback book jackets, repeat these biographical errors, which he refused to correct until much later in life.

10. Ann does know Bogard’s Christian name, as we have seen in brief note she left him back in England.

11. Kawin’s complaint here about Hawks’ (or Thalberg’s, or MGM’s, or whoever’s) decision to throw out Faulkner’s original anti-war ending for the admittedly unsatisfying silence in the completed film ultimately does not make much sense. After all, the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “suicide” mission has changed, so there is no chateau in the film—it would presumably be rather difficult for Ronnie and Claude’s suicide mission to target a chateau. Faulkner’s script has Bogard, after arriving too late to sink the cruiser, go on to bomb an ammo depot and the headquarters on another seemingly suicidal mission. Of course, such an action would lengthen and already too-long film, but more importantly, it would force us to question Bogard’s commitment to Ann. Faulkner’s script makes Bogard’s commitment to the boys-and their tragic “cause”-at least as important as his love for Ann.

12. Griffith never makes it clear why these two films were beyond “the interests of her fans.” I can only assume it has to do with Crawford’s playing a prostitute in Rain, and because of the war elements in Today We Live. The alternative might be that both productions, based on stories by Somerset Maugham and Faulkner, have the “taint” of “literature” about them.

13. One being a few sentences from Hawks in Bogdanovich’s 1962 interview, the other a listing, by auteurist Andrew Sarris, of Today We Live with other Hawks films featuring “quasi-suicidal climaxes,” including Dawn Patrol (1930), Ceiling Zero (1936) and another (sorely underappreciated) Hawks/Faulkner collaboration, The Road to Glory (1936) (105).

14. For more on the connection between female audiences and fashion in early Hollywood cinema, see Eckert.

15. For a very interesting argument about the ambiguity of Gary Cooper’s sexuality and shifting notions of masculinity, see Jeffrey A. Brown’s ‘“Putting on the Ritz’. Masculinity and the Young Gary Cooper.” Wayne’s Cooper’s Women also suggests that within some circles Cooper had a reputation as a bisexual, noting that his closest male friend was the openly homosexual Anderson Lawler (34-35).

16. When Bogard learns, from a servant, that the reason Ann has been so upset during their first meeting is not due to his is taking over the estate, but because she has just learned that her father has been killed, the fade-out begins mid-sentence. His final words in the scene, “I see,” are spoken as the screen is completely dark. This may, of course, be a stylistic choice on the part of Hawks, but it plays out very awkwardly, and almost feels like an editing mistake. There are many such moments in the film. And the ending, where Ann and Bogard stand silently looking at the monument to the local men killed during the war, then walk back to the house, is drawn out too long, and the lack of dialogue in the scene is unsatisfying.

17. In his article “Absalom, Absalom!: The Movie,” Joseph Urgo makes a compelling argument suggesting that the novel’s “back and forth” creation of Sutpen’s story was in part inspired by the story sessions Faulkner was engaged in during his early years in Hollywood.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 4

“LIFTING THE FOG”: FAULKNER(S), REPUTATIONS AND

THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE

It is a sordid, base and thoroughly unpleasant picture that will add nothing to the advancement o f the screen .... When measured in light o f the novel, the film story is a Sunday-school treatise for which, I am sure, you are to be credited. The fact that you got out o f that novel, “Sanctuary, ” anything, anvthing-presentable on screen is a tribute to your genius. Bravo! Letter from Joseph Breen to James Wingate. March 17, 1933

The most important viewing strategy has been to concentrate on the subtext, the “hidden ” meaning, o f commercial films. The notion o f the lesbian subtext depends on the knowledge, suspicion, or hope that some participants in the film (director, actress, screenwriter) were themselves lesbians, and that their perspective can be discerned in the film even though disguised. Subtexting, then, depends for its cues on gossip. Gossip provides the official unrecorded history o f lesbian participation in film. Edith Becker, Michelle Citron, Julia Lesage, B. Ruby Rich. “Lesbians and Film” (30)

Mr. Faulkner’s “Potboiler”

It is no surprise that Sanctuary (first published on February 9, 1931), Faulkner’s

most popular-and loudly vilified—literary work, also came to be devalued during the

recuperative period in the 1940s-1960s spearheaded by Malcolm Cowley and the New

Critics. Unlike Today We Live , and to a certain degree “Turnabout,” Sanctuary has

since regained its critical respectability. E. Pauline Dergenfelder’s 1977 summary of

Sanctuary’s fall and rise is a fairly typical account:

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The initial popularity of Faulkner’s novel Sanctuary was no doubt due to its more sensational aspects as a gangster story which duplicated the riotous times in which it was published. Based originally on a newspaper account of a criminal who raped a girl with a pistol, the novel, which Faulkner himself labeled a “basely conceived” potboiler and which he withheld in order to revise and thereby legitimize it, was released for publication in 1931, struggled to gain respectability, and today occupies a secure position in the family of Faulkner’s fiction. (544)

This narrative, I will be arguing, simplifies the reputation the novel enjoyed, and the

reputation of its author, and raises interesting questions about why Sanctuary's initial

reception was misrepresented in subsequent Faulkner criticism, and what interpretive

possibilities are opened up by paying closer attention to the critical and mainstream

responses during this watershed period of the development of Faulkner’s reputation.

Throughout this dissertation I’ve argued that to do justice to Faulkner’s literary

reputation we not only should pay greater attention to his forays into popular culture,

but we must, not only to break down those ultimately unproductive high/low culture

divisions, but also in order to begin to ask new questions about Faulkner, his

reputation(s), and the works affected by those reputations.

Rather than focus exclusively on the novel and its critical history, however, it is

my intention to look at Sanctuary's first film adaptation -The Story o f Temple Drake-m

order to further investigate the value of taking Faulkner’s relationship with popular

culture seriously. I will argue that we need to continue to question who, or what, is

“Faulkner,” particularly when we start to look to Faulkner the Modernist, the

controversial and “experimental” chronicler of debased humanity. We need to know

what that name has meant to other readers, moviegoers, critics, students, and the public

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. at large. Even during those few months in 1933 between the release of Today We Live

and The Story o f Temple Drake, what kind of changes were occurring to Faulkner’s

literary and public reputations? How did MGM’s “quality,” and the reputations of

Hawks, Cooper, Crawford, even Adrian, differ from the somewhat sensationalist

Paramount and its popular, but less “reputable,” star Miriam Hopkins? How was

Faulkner’s name and reputation attached to The Story o f Temple Drake differently? And

how does looking at Hopkins’ reputation force us to reexamine our understanding of

Sanctuary, and our assumptions about how audiences at the time understood the novel?

I am continuing in this chapter to zero in on Faulkner’s reputation during the

relatively short span of time when the furor surrounding Sanctuary was at its

peak-1931-1933. People were not really aware of Faulkner because of his Saturday

Evening Post story “Turnabout,” or MGM’s Today We Live, despite the relative

popularity of both of those texts. His reputation, insofar as it existed during this period,

was based first and foremost on Sanctuary. To most post-1940s critics, this was a

distressing sign of the public’s fascination with the seemingly macabre and the sordid,

and the popular failure to appreciate fully Faulkner’s “genius.” The “standard” Cowley-

inspired narrative about Faulkner’s early career discusses Sanctuary as Faulkner’s

blockbuster, his “potboiler,” his foray into popular culture which he later famously (or

infamously) disavowed in his Preface to the Modem Library reprint of the novel in

1932.1 Scores of critics have long since reexamined the novel (in all its permutations)

and found it “worthy” of inclusion in the Faulkner corpus, and the novel has achieved

what is probably “second-tier” Faulkner canon status. But there continues in the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. criticism to be a drawing of boundaries, a conscious or unconscious understanding of

and nod to Sanctuary’s “public” reputation as that of a sex-drenched, violent, very

////literary novel. This narrative obviously feeds the perception of the arc of Faulkner’s

career from undistinguished early works ( Soldiers' Pay, Mosquitoes), to brilliant but

publicly unpopular works ( The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying), and then an

attempt to pay a few bills with Sanctuary. “After writing Sanctuary, [Faulkner] feels as

if he has become a commodity” (Guttman 17).

But contemporary references to Faulkner offer a somewhat different view. In

June of 1931, a Vanity Fair spread entitled “New reputations-This has been their gala

year” clearly places the young, exciting new author William Faulkner among the ranks of

America’s foremost novelists: “William Faulkner wrote The Sound and the Fury,

Soldiers ’ Pay and As I Lay Dying, but it was not until Sanctuary that he was loudly

acclaimed by the critics as a ‘genius.’ The late Arnold Bennett said of him, ‘He writes

like an angel’” (69) (see figure 1). It thus appears that to many of his contemporaries, it

was Sanctuary that persuaded them of Faulkner’s “genius ” This situation is remarkable

for a number of reasons. Most obviously, some Faulkner critics have long assumed that

several “prescient” 1930s critics were supporting (rightly) works such as The Sound and

the Fury and As I Lcty Dying and more or less rejecting (wrongly) Sanctuary because of

its “blockbuster” status. Yet contemporary magazines, newspapers and literary journals

did not necessarily reflect that version. When one reads all of the contemporaiy reviews

of Sanctuary (and not just the ones reprinted in collections such as William Faulkner:

The Critical Heritage and William Faulkner: The Contemporary Reviews), a much more

172

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[New reputations—This has been their gala year

Figure 4.1: “New Reputations.” Variety Jun. 1931: 69.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. balanced response to the novel is evident. While many reviewers are indeed horrified,

righteously indignant, or simply baffled, the novel was clearly not as widely dismissed as

many Faulkner critics, understandably, assume. Further, evidence emerges that the

current truism that a work cannot be critically well-regarded and also entertaining for the

masses was apparently much less widespread in 1931.

Interestingly, this distinction was seemingly breaking down again, much to some

critics’ and authors’ disdain, with Oprah Winfrey’s hugely successful and influential

Book Club, which in the mid to late 1990s began to initiate big sales for authors such as

Toni Morrison, Isabel Allende and Ernest Gaines. It could be argued that the recent

high-profile abandonment (officially a “cutting back”) of that project, popularly believed

to be the result of complaints from author Jonathan Franzen, was also due in part to a

critical backlash within a literary community uncomfortable with rubbing elbows with

the “public,” which many seem to associate with “selling out” to commercial interests:

“Jonathan Franzen caused a minor tempest last fall when his book The Corrections was

made a selection. In interviews, Franzen worried about his place in the ‘high-art literary

tradition’ and complained the Oprah logo on his book cover amounted to a ‘corporate’

endorsement” (“Oprah’s Book Club”). This suggests to me the further value of

reexamining the career and reputation(s) of an author such as the respected (and

somewhat codified) Faulkner in order to see how these kinds of controversies about

critical respect versus mainstream popularity eventually get buried by the weight of

critical discourse, for a multitude of reasons.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the same month that theVanity Fair blurb appeared, The Atlantic Monthly

carried in its regular “The Bookshelf’ column a discussion of bestsellers which suggests

that the critic/reader binary was being broken down by developments in the literary and

publishing world:

Our “best sellers,” generally speaking, have shown improvement. That is not necessarily to say that the quality of our books is better, but rather that our better books have today a better chance of being known than was possible fifteen years ago. The growth and influence of our literary supplements, the expansiveness of our review columns and columnists, have helped to bring this about; so have the book clubs, with their emphasis on selection. So, they say, have the radio book talks-not to mention the critics. Few of the phenomena of literature are more gratifying to the critic than the improvement in best sellers. A quarter of a century ago, to call a book a “best seller” was to classify it as sentimental, scandalous, or vapid; today the term suggests practically nothing regarding quality. (22)

Now this may of course have been wishful thinking on the part of an industry evaluating

its own relevance in the heyday of Hollywood and radio. But this discussion of “best

sellers” does suggest the connotations of the term were undergoing a significant re

shading at the very time Sanctuary was published and being widely discussed. The

controversy about this novel and its “worth” became part of an ongoing dialogue and

debate in the literary columns of newspapers and magazines which involved other

controversial texts of the 1920s and early 1930s, such as Hemingway’s In Our Time

(1925), The Sun Also Rises (1926), and Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (1925).

To be sure, many critics, readers, and even those who had only heard about the

novel were outraged, confused and offended by Sanctuary, and censorship was

threatened in many parts of country. As we have seen in recent examples, such as Bret

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone, and the furor

over Carolivia Herron’s Nappy Hair, controversy can fuel interest and book sales, and

the case of Sanctuary was a notorious example of its time. But that notoriety and the

subsequent popularity of the novel was not explained away by most 1930s critics as

another case of sensationalism and lurid subject matter. In other words, the critics and

the public did not necessarily consider Sanctuary “hack work,” which is the way

Faulkner criticism has gradually come to understand the public reaction to the novel

upon its publication.2 An October 19, 1931, Time review of These Thirteen displays the

back and forth nature of the distinction between critic, reader, quality and popularity:

Sensation of the year in U.S. fiction has certainly been Author William Faulkner. His nightmare novel Sanctuary .. . sent many a critical wig flying on the green, many a reader hurrying to get Faulkner’s earlier books ( Soldier's [sic] Pay, Mosquitoes, Sartoris, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying). Of these 13 short stories (his first collection) some are new; none will much help or hurt his still controversial reputation. (64)

Rather than dismissSanctuary for its admittedly lurid and sensational subject matter,

1931 critics usually praise the book for its ability to deal with the material so skillfully,

thus warning off readers who might be offended and spurring the interest of those

attracted to such content. In an advertisement for Cape & Smith in the June issue of The

American Mercury Robert Sherwood is quoted: “I don’t think that I have ever read a

more terrible book. But I do know that it is a great novel” (ix). An anonymous reviewer

for The American Mercury, in their monthly “Check List of New Books,” writes: “The

thesis of this book, to the native Southerner, is horrifying but undeniable, it is that the

low-down Southerner, with his talent for the dirt, as he calls it, is probably the most

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. depraved of white Americans .... This is the barest of outlines: for the details go to the

highly skillful and wholly unsqueamish Mr. Faulkner” (xviii). Time's review of February

16, 1931, begins “A favorite question on Shakespeare examinations is ‘Distinguish

between horror and terror.’ Sanctuary is compact of both. The horrors of any ghost

story pale beside the ghastly realism of this chronicle” (SS). And in another Cape &

Smith advertisement for Sanctuary, located in the March Atlantic Monthly, theNew York

Evening Post's reviewer’s blurb reports that, “For anyone who has the slightest desire to

know the important accomplishment of contemporary American writing, Mr. Faulkner’s

work is compulsory reading” (25).

The tenor of these examples demands a reevaluation of what we tend to see as

Sanctuary's significance with respect to Faulkner and popular culture. Consider George

Garrett’s 1990 analysis of Faulkner’s 1932 introduction to the novel.

Among the many snarls of irony in the celebrated and much-discussed, and often-misunderstood, introduction to Sanctuary, one of the threads of irony in that introduction, is that it constitutes a farewell to the hope (not the idea or ideal but the hope) of the novel as popular art. In the heart, the dead center of the Great Depression, in (of all places!) America, William Faulkner begins with an apology for even entertaining the vague idea that he might possibly earn some money from writing this book, any book .... I think his introduction to Sanctuary can be taken as a personal valediction, a farewell to the novel as an artifact of popular culture. (299)

This seems to me an ahistoricization of Faulkner’s reputation, an example of (perfectly

understandable) historical and cultural un-remembering. Garrett, as a graduate of

Princeton and under the sway of the then-popular New Criticism and the Agrarians in the

late 1940s, was following an established narrative about Faulkner’s career and the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. significance of Sanctuary to it. Garrett argues that “Faulkner’s generation began by

imagining the somehow they could be, at one and the same time, serious artists and

popular novelists” (298), but suggests that by the time Sanctuary was written that dream

had died. It seems clear that the implied separation between popular and literary works

was not so easy to discern at the time of the novel’s initial reception as the now-standard

narrative suggests.

Supposed “Faulkner-basher” Clifton Fadiman offers one of the best examples of

the largely unconsidered counter-narrative, tellingly illuminating the fluidity between high

and low with regard to Sanctuary, when he writes in his 1955 collection Party o f One, in

a section entitled “Puzzlements,”of his endless struggles, his “tiny nay” (99), against the

New Critical establishment, whom he terms “Mr. Faulkner’s bully-boys” (100). Fadiman

recalls that after The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying he just wasn’t getting it,

but he finally found respite:

On April 15, 1931, Sanctuary almost drew me out of my coma. But I’m a little ashamed of my improvement. I didn 7 know it at the time, but it now develops that Sanctuary was a potboiler.. . . I fell for the potboiler, corncob and all, rather than for the masterpieces. I conclude that when Mr. Faulkner writes for the populace (me) he abandons about 50 per cent of the famous style. This relaxation of genius is just enough to give me a chance to find out what he’s talking about. The material, however, potboiler or no potboiler, is not much different from what is to be found in his noncommercials. (104, emphasis mine)

And in his actual 1931 review for The Nation , Fadiman’s praise for Sanctuary is even

more unequivocal: “By virtue of this book alone he at once takes his place among the

foremost of the younger generation of American novelists. He is an original” (422).

Fadiman was certainly aware that the novel was “sensational” (but not in the derogatory

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Among the characters of Mr. Faulkner’s latest novel are a murderer, an ex-harlot, a drunkard, two half-wits, a nymphomaniac, a degenerate child, three procuresses, and a voyeur. The action of the book includes two cold-blooded killings, an emasculation, a lynching by gasoline fire, a jazz party in honor of a gunman’s corpse, and a particularly inhuman sexual assault. In his search for the perfect Inferno Mr. Faulkner makes no Dantesque joumeys-his hell lies in the territory of northern Mississippi. There is no recent book better contrived to send Mr. Irving Babbitt into a (restrained) fit of delirium tremens. (422)

Despite its lurid content, Fadiman did not think Sanctuary unworthy of being considered

one of Faulkner’s “literary” works. In fact, he ends up claiming that, “From almost

every point of view, Sanctuary is a better book than either As I Lay Dying or The Sound

and the Fury” (422). This raises a very real issue: are we often guilty, particularly with

Faulkner’s works, of valorizing the inaccessible and downplaying the popular? Is there

an overemphasis on stylistic complexity as a gauge of how “worthy” Faulkner’s works

are? And if so, what are the cultural and aesthetic factors behind that development? Is

the contemporary reaction to Faulkner accurately portrayed in subsequent criticism, and

if not, as I have been suggesting, then what are the implications of this? Fadiman clearly

did not find accessibility a strike against Faulkner-in his 1931 review he concludes, “He

remains, for me at least, with Ernest Hemingway and Conrad Aiken, among the most

interesting young novelists now writing in America” (423). High praise indeed, coming

from the critic many consider Faulkner’s worst detractor.

Contemporary evidence indicates that the reputation of both Faulkner and

Sanctuary were, in 1931, much more nuanced than the accepted narrative of Faulkner’s

literary career indicates and that the gap between American literature and its public

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of such “disrepute” also be great American literature? Many critics of the time thought

so, though this initial reaction to the novel is now largely forgotten. Not surprisingly,

the key to understanding this rewrite of history lies with Cowley’s master narrative. And

again, not surprisingly, we will see that looking in the shadows cast by that narrative

allows us to see a different Sanctuary, illuminated by the film adapted from it and ripe

for further exploration.

Lifting the Hollywood Fog

My subtitle is borrowed from the caption of another Vanity Fair photo layout,

from May 1933, which serves to describe an essential step in making sense of Faulkner’s

differing reputations. Most accounts of “Faulkner’s reputation”-such as that found in

Lawrence Schwartz’s otherwise excellent work Creating Faulkner’s Reputation

(1988)-keep the discussion of reputation positioned squarely in the realm of critical and

literary history.

Graphically similar to the “New Reputations” layout discussed above, “Lifting

the Hollywood Fog” reuses the picture of Faulkner that appeared in the earlier piece, but

the circumstances behind his presence in the spread have changed drastically in the

intervening two years (see figure 2). Directly above Faulkner are photos and captions

for two esteemed, thoroughly “literary” figures whose relations to Hollywood are

presented as ones of distaste for and difficulties with adaptations produced from their

works-Theodore Dreiser (“Americana’s war-horse”) and Ernest Hemingway. Public

scandal and authorial disapproval of Hollywood are the most obvious issues being

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Lifting the Hollywood fog

Figure 4.2: “Lifting the Hollywood Fog.” Variety May 1931: 40.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. addressed. Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (1925) and Hemingway’s A Farewell to

Arms (1929) were both made into controversial Hollywood films (in 1931 and 1932

respectively), and neither author was reportedly too pleased with the results. Dreiser, it

is suggested by the caption, only reluctantly agreed to have Jennie Gerhardt (1911)

filmed after the “harrowing ... encounter” of An American Tragedy. And

Hemingway’s take on his novel’s Hollywoodization is left for the readers to flesh out for

themselves, based on their sense of his persona, since his reaction is described,

characteristically, as ’’practically unprintable.” It is made equally clear that Hemingway

and Dreiser are not working in Hollywood, and are above that occupation, although they

apparently occasionally overcome their reservations about the cinema to allow their

works to be filmed.

The text under Faulkner’s picture offers an interesting variation on this theme:

“William Faulkner is one of the last authors on earth whom we should expect to find

writing for the movies, but here he is, with a Hollywood contract tucked away in his

pocket and two films already practically finished, Today We Live , and Sanctuary. More

are forthcoming.” What is articulated in the avowed surprise is not simply an unwritten

but obvious value distinction between “literature” and “the movies,” but a vision of what

American “literature” was circa 1933. The other nine writers in the layout, among them

Dashiell Hammett, Ben Hecht, Clemence Dane, Rosamond Lehmann and Charles

MacArthur, are unambiguously identified as screenwriters, some “former artists” who

have come to Hollywood to ply their wares. In this context, the “Hollywood Fog” can

perhaps be understood at least partly as the shame, and sought-out anonymity, of the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. screenwriter in Hollywood. Or perhaps that, too, is a reading informed by the master

narrative of Hollywood’s corruption of artists that the careers of Faulkner, Fitzgerald,

Steinbeck and West helped to shape. The “fog,” following this line of reasoning, might

be the fog of difficulties experienced by studios in the transition from silent to talking

pictures. Faulkner as Hollywood hero may seem far-fetched, and he does not seem to

have been eager in later years to see his Hollywood experiences in this light. Certainly,

Today We Live suggests that his take on dialogue was not something that translated fully

successfully to film. Yet his contributions to the ongoing struggles to define the nature

and boundaries of appropriate film subjects suggest his contributions should not be so

readily dismissed.

Faulkner, pictured next to Ben Hecht but directly beneath Dreiser and

Hemingway, rests in 1933 on that dividing line between American literary artist and hack

screenwriter. The relatively “high-brow” Vanity Fair is obviously being forced to

rethink its own 1931 assessment of Faulkner’s status as American literary figure,

expressing polite shock at his acceptance of a Hollywood assignment. Besides the

manifest anxiety about Faulkner’s status as “author” and/or screenwriter, an interesting

conflation between his literary and Hollywood output is evident here. The caption

suggests Faulkner was a screenwriter for Sanctuary, even though the film had been

retitled The Story o f Temple Drake by Paramount several months earlier (due at least in

part to the highly publicized controversy about the film and its battles with Joseph Breen

and the Hays Office) and Faulkner had nothing to do with the film (other than selling the

rights), as he had been under contract to MGM since 1932.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Is it possible the writers and editors at Vanity Fair had somehow missed this

controversy, or does the inaccuracy reflect a cavalier, uninterested attitude towards the

“goings on” in Hollywood? This 1933 pictorial indicates that those who might consider

themselves the keepers of the cultural torch were eager to distance an up-and-comer

from the disrepute of Hollywood screenwriting (particularly since Vanity Fair had taken

such an interest in Faulkner two short years earlier). If we take our cue from the

established narrative of Faulkner’s reputation, we would assume that Vanity Fair would

also have desired to disavow Sanctuary, or that it would seem unremarkable to a 1933

public that the author ofthat notorious novel would now be plying his wares in

Hollywood. But as we have seen, Faulkner’s genius was, as far as some members of the

Vanity Fair staff were concerned, first revealed in Sanctuary. What does this say about

the line between high and low culture that we critics constantly say we are breaking

down and investigating-a boundary that appears, from this example, to have been much

more fluid and complicated than is usually suggested?

Even taking into account the individual biases and prejudices, idiosyncrasies, and

likes and dislikes of readers and editors, there is enough evidence to suggest that a

careful examination of Faulkner’s contemporary reviewers and commentators in the early

1930s can challenge and reshape our understanding of what “Faulkner” meant to 1930s

readers and film-goers, and why that name means what it does today, as well as how we

came to hold the standard, accepted understanding of the connection between the two.

Such an investigation quickly reveals the complexity of the name “Faulkner.” “Faulkner”

as a designator of identity, authority, reputation, notoriety, reception, and interpretation

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is never a constant; it is, for lack of a better term, a signifier continually in flux, an

author-function constantly on the move, forever eluding our grasp. We can arrest it for

a moment or two, identify how it is operating within particular historical and cultural

contexts, but it can never be entirely at rest, nor should we desire it to be. This, of

course, does not mean a complete denial of subjectivity, a death of the author. William

Faulkner was undeniably a living, breathing, feeling, writing, worrying, emotional being.

Yet that subjectivity (or those subjectivities), like his works and the ways in which his

name “means,” remains forever in flux, and a great deal of the criticism could stand to

acknowledge this instability. In 1933 that conglomeration of meanings and identities that

was “William Faulkner,” or Sanctuary for that matter, was very different from the one

we now know. For the rest of this chapter I would like to explore the question of

Faulkner’s current relevance and accessibility-critically and pedagogically-by looking at

different ways authorial (and other) “reputations” affect our reception and understanding

of literary and popular culture texts, particularly with regard to Faulkner’s somewhat

ambivalent, conflicted relationship with Hollywood and American literary history.

The Story of Temple Drake in the Public Eye

Part of the effect of the critical machinery which began “rehabilitating”Sanctuary

as early as the late 1940s and 1950s was the novel’s gradual acquisition of a reputation

for possessing more artistic power and value than it was accorded, the narrative usually

goes, at the time of its release by an uninformed, thrill-seeking public. Consequently,

Sanctuary has gradually, even grudgingly, become canonical Faulkner. By the 1980s,

Sanctuary was considered the early Faulkner novel that had been unjustly

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. underappreciated for decades. The presumed “sordidness” of the novel, its notoriety at

the time of publication, and the novel’s reputation today are often exaggerated,

particularly in work concentrating on Faulkner’s films. In his 1977 article “Faulkner and

Film: The Two Versions of Sanctuary,” Gene D. Phillips writes:

Faulkner . . . revised the novel for publication, but even then it became a succes de scandale-a circumstance which not only prompted his removal as leader of a Boy Scout troop but earned him the reputation of being a sordid Gothic writer that he still holds in the popular mind. Such an image of Faulkner can only be maintained by totally ignoring the serious moral and psychological dimensions of Sanctuary. (263)

It is worth noting how a critic writing in the 1970s, relying mostly on uncritical

biographies such as Blotner’s and an obviously less voluminous critical heritage, sees

Faulkner’s reputations. We now know that the Boy Scout story is, like so many stories

about Faulkner, very likely apocryphal-more recent biographers suggest that although

reaction to the novel in Oxford, Mississippi, was cool at best, Faulkner’s alcoholism and

failure to show up for meetings was probably the cause for his dismissal, i f it even

happened. It is also interesting that Phillips argues that Faulkner’s reputation was in

1977 or thereabouts that of Gothic writer. Perhaps even as late as the 1970s the public

understanding of Faulkner could have relied on his reputation as a Southern Gothic

writer. I would argue that his current “popular” reputation is one of inaccessibility, of

difficult modernist technique coupled with “alien” characters, and not the doom and

gloom or cult of cruelty.

Phillips later goes on to argue that “In 1931 Sanctuary was a best seller for all

the wrong reasons, since many critics and most readers overlooked the serious dimension

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of the story” (265). It appears that by 1977 the novel was well on its way to fiill

rehabilitation (and the not-so-subtle desire to take the novel out of the hands of “most

readers”). Edwin T. Arnold’s introduction to the more recent Reading Faulkner:

Sanctuary nicely exemplifies a less hyperbolic, albeit similar, version of the standard

story of the novel’s resurrection:

Sanctuary defined Faulkner in the public mind as a writer of violent, sensational, semi-pornographic novels. He became known as the “corncob man,” the leader of the “cult of cruelty” in American literature. His Modem Library introduction, with its mock implication that the book was a cynical attempt to appeal to his readers’ worst impulses, did little to mitigate that impression. Although some critics recognized its artistry and sensed the deeper moral concerns evident in the book, for far too many Sanctuary was a novel to be excused or ignored, a hasty and minor work at best. Today, it can be argued that no other Faulkner novel speaks as directly to its readers, continues to challenge our beliefs, to confront our sensibilities, as does this book. Certainly no other Faulkner novel has experienced the kind of critical re-evaluation and repositioning as hasSanctuary, (xiv)

The first film version of the novel, however, has not been nearly so fortunate (or

unfortunate, depending on your point of view). No such wide-ranging resurrection or

reevaluation of this film has been attempted. Released by Paramount in May of 1933,

The Story o f Temple Drake opened to reviews ranging from glowing, to appalled, to

lukewarm, and after Joseph Breen assumed control of the powerful Hollywood

censorship office, the Production Code Administration, the film was effectively “killed”

in 1936 when it was declared Class I and thus withdrawn from circulation, never to be

rereleased (Leff 59). In a February 20, 1935, letter to Production Code Administration

founder Will Hays, Breen noted that along with The Story o f Temple Drake several other

films would not be allowed additional contracts, including the notorious Baby Face

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (1933), Female (1933), Born to Be Bad( 1934), and Tonight is Ours (1933). Since

1936 it has been virtually impossible to see The Story o f Temple Drake except at a

handful of film festivals (usually focusing on pre-Code Hollywood, or “Sinful Women”),

or by viewing UCLA’s copy. It has not been made available on VHS or DVD, and has

very rarely been shown on television. Thus, it is unfair to rake critics over the coals for

not commenting on a movie they could not see and that was removed from public

viewing.

But that is precisely the point that needs to be stressed. Because of who the

critics were, and what was made available to them, a particular “literary” narrative was

established about Faulkner’s life and career, one which understandably highlighted his

literary reputation and ignored the “suspect” aspects of his Hollywood career, while

another narrative about The Story o f Temple Drake was established within the film

community, in part because in the 1930s and 40s the vast majority of films were shown

and then forgotten. Few films were re-released, and there was no television to broadcast

movies. It was the relatively rare 1930s and 40s critic who took film seriously as an art

form, and no Faulkner critics even considered his Hollywood reputation until the late

1950s.3 However, for at least three years, public understanding and awareness of

Sanctuary and Faulkner’s reputation were greatly affected by the controversy

surrounding the film’s production, a fact little-discussed in the majority of Faulkner

criticism about the novel. Looking at the film and the controversies surrounding it

begins to allow us to contemplate a different aspect of Faulkner’s reputation-a road (or

critical narrative) not taken that begins with the public’s fascination with Sanctuary.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Sanctuary sold very well in 1931, and buzz about its potential as a Hollywood

film, and as a testing-ground for the power of Hollywood’s self-appointed censor, the

Hays Office, started almost immediately. Several critics speculate that Faulkner might

even have had a film adaptation in mind as he was writing the novel-or revising it-much

as his occasional drinking buddy Dashiell Hammett specifically wrote The Maltese

Falcon (1930) with an eye towards a movie deal.4 According to biographer Daniel

Singal, “When he undertook an extensive revision of the galley proofs in late 1930-the

publisher had initially thought the work too hot to handle and kept it on the shelf for a

year-he did so with an eye to the movie rights” (154).5 When Paramount’s Emanuel

Cohen inquired into purchasing the film rights to the novel, Will Hays reportedly told Joe

Breen: “We simply must not allow the production of a picture which will offend every

right-thinking person who sees it” (Vieira 149). It is interesting to note that Breen later

admitted privately that he never read Sanctuary. “Joseph I. Breen, in charge of public

relations for the Hays Office, admitted in a memo dated 17 Mar 1933 that he had not

read the novel but was convinced that people would say that the filmmakers had adapted

for the screen ‘the vilest book of the present years’” (Hanson 2063).

Major newspapers typically condemned the production, often with a seemingly

shaky grasp on just what was so shocking about Sanctuary-it was enough that the novel

had a sordid reputation. The heat was on the Hays Office. The New York News asked,

“What is the function of the Hays Office if it doesn’t keep projects like this off the

screen?” (Doherty 114). As so many studios did before the strengthening of the

Production Code Administration’s powers on July 2, 1934, Paramount (perhaps because

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of its financial difficulties) ignored Breen and Hays and bought the rights to Sanctuary in

early 1932, a move coinciding with Faulkner’s initial appearance in Hollywood as a

willing, but rather luckless, screenwriter for MGM. Throughout 1932 and 1933 the film,

and thus the novel and author, were constantly in the spotlight. As Thomas Doherty

suggests, “the odor of sleaze hung over the project from the start” (114), and despite the

fact that Faulkner himself had nothing to do with the production, his own “good” name

was often dragged through the mud along with the film. As we have seen, no such

controversy surrounded the film Faulkner was working on at the same time, Today We

Live, which says something about the power of controversy and the studios’ abilities to

generate and manipulate buzz about a production, as well as the importance of other

reputations.

Very few articles written during the production or subsequent reviews of The

Story of Temple Drake bother to mention its director, Stephen Roberts, not an unusual

circumstance in the studio days, and Roberts certainly was not a household name. But

there was much publicity surrounding the film’s producers (which included sometime

screenwriter Benjamin Glazer), who reportedly fought “endlessly” with the Hays Office,

each skirmish dutifully detailed by local newspapers and Variety 6 A title for the project

could not be agreed upon. Breen publically declared that Sanctuary could not be

mentioned in any advertising or publicity for the film-of course, a public declaration of

this sort would seem to defeat the purpose, but only if one does not consider how the

Hays Office often worked with the studios to generate publicity for their films.7 At one

point the working title was The Shame o f Temple Drake (suggestive of the “moral”

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. shape the project was taking in placing blame on Temple), and was only changed to The

Story o f Temple Drake well into production.* In a well-publicized rift, actor George

Raft, best known for his gangster roles in films such as Hawks’ Scarface (1931), pulled

out of the production, reportedly stating that it would be career suicide to play the

impotent rapist Popeye.9 And due in part to Paramount’s ownership of the Popeye

characters created by Max Fleischer, Sanctuary’s Popeye had his name changed to

Trigger, presumably to emphasize and cash in on the gangster elements of the film.

Recent film histories have established their own narrative of the case of The Story

o f Temple Drake, perhaps the film’s only true claim to fame. For a film that is very

difficult to get access to-most film historians have not even seen \l-The Story o f Temple

Drake features prominently in most works about censorship in Hollywood, some even

suggesting it was this film that instigated the formation of the Legion of Decency. In the

rare instances when these histories go into specific detail, they almost always imply that

it is the corncob rape of Temple that was the real source of anxiety and the reason for

the production’s problems with the Hays Office. For example, discussing the

controversy surrounding the character of Diamond Lil in Mae West’s She Done Him

Wrong, Leonard Leff and Jerold Simmons follow the fairly standard narrative of The

Story o f Temple Drake’s battles with the censors, and suggest the Hays Office’s attitude

towards Temple’s rape-that it was, in fact, her fault. The rape is understood as a natural

consequence of Temple’s promiscuous behavior, and she is the one who should be the

one feeling shame:

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Having purchased a book centered on a corncob rape, why would Paramount even hesitate to produce a Mae West picture? .. . Despite the censors’ actions on She Done Him Wrong, Paramount moved ahead on Sanctuary. Hays told [James] Wingate to exercise “the strictest supervision” over the production, for what Hays read and heard suggested that Faulkner heroine Temple Drake would shame even Diamond Lil. Variety and the Hollywood Reporter had condemned the novel, the Memphis Evening Appeal predicted that the screen version would offend “every sense of decency,” and George Raff had refused a role in the picture because of the “unsavory subject matter.” Though later Hays learned that a contract dispute-not scruple-had come between Raft and Sanctuary, he remained convinced that the picture would damage Paramount and the Association [PCA]. (26, 32)

So was the rape itself the problem, or Temple’s trangressive behavior? Like most film

histories, LefF and Simmons are very inexact when it comes to identifying explicitly what

it was about Sanctuary that had the Hays Office up in arms, and had the nation talking.

Film histories tend to make seemingly unfounded assumptions on what this “prurient

gap” is. If it was so obvious to everyone that the film could not even broach the subject

of a corncob rape, what might be other sources of anxiety on the part of the Hays Office

and the film’s producers?

A recent documentary series about sex and Hollywood cinema, Sex and the

Silver Screen, perpetuates many of the reductive explanations of the film’s battles with

the censors without considering what elements of Faulkner’s novel would be known to

the public or figuring his own reputation into the equation. In other words, The Story o f

Temple Drake is painted with the same brush asBaby Face and I'm No Angel, and

treated as just another example of the studios pushing the boundaries by attempting to

run objectionable material past a finger-wagging Will Hays (see figure 3): “Paramount

decided to go for broke. Studio president Adolph Zukor announced his intention to film

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 4.3: A stem-looking Will Hays seemingly “outraged” over the purchase of the rights to Sanctuary by Paramount. Capture from Sex and the Silver Screen.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. William Faulkner’s controversial story of seduction, rape and betrayal, Sanctuary.”

Sanctuary is certainly disturbing, but “seduction, rape and betrayal,” which could easily

be used to describe dozens of “fallen woman” pictures from the 1930s, do not

adequately describe what so horrified Hays and his henchmen. The documentary notes

that Lamar Trotti, one of Hays’s men, is quoted as saying, “ Sanctuary is the most

sickening novel ever written in this country. It is utterly unthinkable as a motion

picture,” but does not explain the vehemence behind this statement or clarify the real

“horror” of the novel.

In Faulkner criticism, The Story o f Temple Drake has largely evoked silence. In

film criticism, it has been discussed almost exclusively in terms of censorship and the

Production Code, but the exact nature of what was written out of the script (or what

censors were afraid would be included) is never fully examined. As most works on

Hollywood and censorship suggest, all of the publicity served to make The Story o f

Temple Drake into the most talked-about production in late 1932/early 1933. As

Doherty observes, The Story o f Temple Drake was “the most notorious vice film of

1933” (108), and several film histories suggest that it was perhaps most responsible,

along with Baby Face, for bringing stricter censorship to Hollywood productions (Miller

76). These newspaper and trade articles kept Faulkner’s name in the news. In many

newspaper and magazine accounts Faulkner is even reported to be writing the screenplay

(as we saw in the Vanity Fair spread); publicity often ambiguously suggests writing

credit due to Faulkner. From the May 15, 1933, Atlanta Constitution. “William

Faulkner’s flaming story of a girl who thought she knew!” (9) (see figure 4). In almost

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Now! / W ra. F t u l i a t r ’* f U s i s r iterr of & firl who thooffet ih i ka«w! ‘THE STORY.OF TEMPLE DRAKE’ SU rria* anaiAjc so tsn n Jr. Jock Xj2 ui, ^ss- CoUUr Atl* 3t»' O aly 8 bo win* t t t s s Bob VTurUU*' ?te»sc' #'2S *S t$ ** ■ \b» r v-aS**

Figure 4.4: Advertisement for The Story o f Temple Drake. “Wm. Faulkner’s flaming story of a girl who thought she knew!” The Atlanta Constitution 15 May 1933: 9.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. none o f the articles or advertisements is Faulkner’s name absent.

It is apparent from these articles, and the subsequent reviews of the film itself,

that public awareness not only of the existence of the novel Sanctuary, but also of the

specifics o f its contents , is assumed by the media. Those contents are rarely mentioned

in the reviews, but are nearly always alluded to, as in this June 6, 1933 review:

In cleaning up the William Faulkner novel, Sanctuary to make it permissible on the screen, the adaptors tried subtle suggestion in putting over some of the original theme, but the result is a mixed affair that is not likely to stir up much sympathy or prove very satisfying to those who haven’t read the book or know something about it. (Hamann 38)

Several reviews even fail to register the fact that Popeye’s name has been changed to

Trigger: “A dramatic story is made from Faulkner’s highly subjective narrative by the

initial shifting of the center from Popeye to the girl Temple” (Troy 594). Mourdant Hall

for The New York Times calls the film “a free translation of William Faulkner’s book,”

and finds that “considering the changes that were expected in bringing this novel to the

screen, the producers have wrought a highly intelligent production” (11). The Nation

finds the film “extraordinary because it departs a great deal from the book without

sacrificing any of its essential quality” (Troy 594). And the May 27, 1933, Washington

Post, far less enthusiastic about the film (but implicitly positive about the novel), assumes

public knowledge of the “story” Temple has to tell, but laments, “The way it was told

through the pen of William Faulkner, it forms a yam that offers the cinema a challenge,

at the same time compelling the makers not to be too literal in the screen translation.

Small wonder it is, then, that ‘The Story of Temple Drake’ is unsatisfying” (4).

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Most contemporary reviews, however, are positive, and usually note the film’s

success despite its source, a statement not so much about the quality of Faulkner’s novel

but on the incompatibility of Faulkner and the censors. It is also worth noting the central

event most reviewers concentrate on-the rape of Temple in the com crib:

The Story o f Temple Drake, described as adapted from William Faulkner’s novel Sanctuary, is good enough that one is disposed to forgive the Paramount executives for the box office skullduggery they were guilty of in buying the movie rights to a lurid yam they knew very well they would not be permitted to present veraciously on the screen. Temple Drake emerges as a well told cinema story, full of suspense from start to finish, and with an air of menace about it which one must credit largely to the directorial finesse of Stephen Roberts and to the black and white photography of cameraman Karl Struss. The picture is more like the novel than your reviewer expected it to be.... The crucial com crib scene between Popeye and Temple is included in the picture story, but Popeye (he’s called Trigger in the film, by the way) is a degenerate in such a way as to make him seem almost respectable when compared to the unwholesome central figure of Faulkner’s novel. (Crow A4)

The fact is, the plots ofSanctuary and The Story o f Temple Drake are

understandably very different. What did the public, even those who had never read the

book, know about Sanctuary and its notorious heroine? What kind of knowledge did

viewers bring? What precisely was the Hays Office determined to keep out of the film?

And how did the producers attempt to work their way around, even manipulate,

censorship restrictions and manage to evoke the “horrors” of Faulkner’s novel without

spelling things out too clearly?

Until now, the general take on the controversy suggests that the obvious culprit

as far as Breen and Hays were concerned was Temple’s rape by Popeye with a corncob,

and some critics have commented on how the filmmakers attempted to suggest the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. corncob rape without explicitly presenting it. Lea Jacobs identifies The Story o f Temple

Drake as a test case in which the use of “ellipsis” was allowabie-a practice that was by

1934 no longer deemed acceptable, partly because of the controversy surrounding this

film:

Censors would have preferred that this incident be written out of the screenplay entirely, but the studio found a way to retain at least a portion of the original plot. A plot device is contrived so that, at the moment of the rape, the lights suddenly go out. While the spectator’s vision is blocked, a woman’s scream is heard. The film then cuts to another scene. The ellipsis clearly serves to circumvent cuts by the state boards-the rape has already been removed, in the sense that it is not made visually explicit. While the Studio Relations Committee agreed upon this method of filming the rape, negotiations between industry censors and producers concerned how far the film could approach Faulkner’s version, even by suggestion. (97)

Jacobs goes on to note that a proposed cut-away shot of a corncob before the blackout

was vetoed. It is interesting to note, however, that although she uses in her article a

production still of Temple lying on her back in the bam, fearfully awaiting Trigger’s

assault, Jacobs fails to mention that the still very prominently displays comcobs-TempIe

is in fact surrounded by them (see figure S). This still clearly suggests that the

filmmakers were attempting to allude to the corncob rape featured in Faulkner’s novel

without explicitly presenting any such “perversion.” What is even more telling, however,

is that the rape is the only really “disturbing” part of the novel that the film even tries to

retain (aside from Tommy’s murder). Gone is Popeye’s impotence, his voyeurism

involving Temple and her “lover” Red (who is completely removed from the film),

Temple’s imagined growing o f a penis (as she is being threatened by several men before

the rape), and her ultimate peijury when she lies about Lee being the rapist/murderer

198

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 4.5: Publicity still, The Story of Temple Drake. Note the prominent display of corn cobs. This image of Temple in the corn crib is used very sparingly in publicity material for the film. Author’s collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (which leads to his violent castration and death). These are elements that readers of the

novel (and those who had just heard about it) would surely consider just as disturbing, as

“sordid,” as Temple’s corn-cob rape.

But nearly every film history and work on the history of Hollywood censorship

claims that it isSanctuary's “perverse” rape scene that the public was both scandalized

by and anticipating, and that the rape (featuring a now-potent Trigger via cinematic

magic and the Hays Office’s refusal to allow for impotency or a corncob rape) was what

Hays and Breen were so concerned about. (It is telling that impotency is the reason

Faulkner’s novelistic scenario was considered taboo for Hollywood-Temple’s violation

was never the issue.) But I would like to offer an alternative, a reading of The Story o f

Temple Drake which opens up several different avenues of interpretation, not only for

the film but also for Sanctuary as well. These accounts of the film’s battles with the

censors rarely even mention, let alone discuss in depth, the possible effects of the film’s

star, Miriam Hopkins, and her own somewhat ambiguous public and private reputation.

Further, they fail to imagine what precisely was so troubling, and fascinating, about

Temple Drake.

“That Peculiar Gal”: Miriam Hopkins

Admirers of WF and readers of his book about that peculiar gal, “Temple Drake” (and aren’t we all?) will jump at the opportunity to see their favorite story on the screen. It is at the Paramount this week, with Miriam Hopkins ideally cast as Temple Drake. And it isn’t deleted enough to spoil the story. Which is quite a blessing. (Jones 4B)

This short article from theAtlanta Constitution's entertainment section, most

likely a “planted review” (meaning it was written and distributed by the studio, filling in

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. for the lack of a “legitimate” review by an independent film critic), raises several

interesting questions. The first thing to note is the inappropriately lighthearted tone of

the piece. One might think this were the heartwarming tale of a girl who, despite some

fairly insignificant troubles, faces down adversity, and not the story of a young co-ed

who is raped and seemingly forced into prostitution and implicated in murder (among

other sordid activities). Whose “favorite story” could this bleak, unflinching look at

depravity and evil really be? And what is meant by the description of Temple (and by

extension the “ideally cast” Miriam Hopkins) as “peculiar”? Promiscuous? Mentally

unbalanced? Perverted?

The newspaper advertisements and plugs, production stills, planted reviews, and

lobby cards for The Story o f Temple Drake-al\ a means of disseminating information

(and interpretive possibilities) to the public—tell an interesting tale when placed next to

one another. Without fail, the ads feature the film’s star, Miriam Hopkins, which is of

course not unusual. After all, hers was the only really significant Hollywood “name” in

the production after George Raft backed out of the project. But almost without

exception she is featured alone, which is quite odd. Even a cursory examination of

advertisements for 1930s Hollywood films reveals that they nearly always feature a

couple, the male and female leads locked in an embrace, or the typical romantic triangle

featuring two men and a woman or two women and a man. What is behind of the

unusual nature of these Story o f Temple Drake ads which feature only one woman?

Does this incongruity derive from Miriam Hopkins’s popularity? Hopkins was in 1933 a

very popular, if controversial, box-office attraction and one of Paramount’s biggest stars,

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. but she was certainly not as popular as a Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich, the only stars

who might regularly be represented this way in movie advertisements because of their

overwhelming popularity.

The other most noticeable characteristic is that all but one of the ads feature

William Faulkner’s name prominently, and two from the St. Louis Dispatch go so far as

to completely ignore Breen’s order not to mention Sanctuary explicitly in the

advertising: “The Novel ‘Sanctuary’ NOW on the Screen” (May 18, 1933) (see figure

6); “The Story They Dared Not Film Till Now!! The much-discussed novel, ‘Sanctuary,’

bringing to the screen the half-good girl... with two kinds of emotions!” (May 16,

1933) (see figure 7). In the ad from The Atlanta Constitution previously mentioned, the

film is tagged as “William Faulkner’s Flaming Story of Temple Drake” (May 15, 1933),

which obviously suggests (among other things) that Faulkner had some hand in its

production. Other ads proclaim the film is “From William Faulkner’s Daring Novel”

{The Washington Post, May 26, 1933) and “William Faulkner’s Sensational Novel” {The

Atlanta Constitution, May 15, 1933).

Even more interesting, however, is the iconography itself. We might expect most

of the advertising to cash in on the controversy of the revised rape scene if this was, in

fact, the main focus of the adaptation scandal. But only in one ad from the entire

pressbook does the iconography feature imagery similar to that of the rape scene we saw

in the production still that is so often used in film histories (see figure 5), and it seems to

imply that the rape was the result of Temple’s actions, if not her “true” nature (in a

description that could surely be applied to Miriam Hopkins’s own reputation): “Bom

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25c Till 6 & Balcony TODAY! Alter 8 Th« .Nuv^l ".ip. • { l A ^ NOW on thr rrpn* S t r i c t l y E n t e r t a m m

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Figure 4.6: Advertisement for The Story o f Temple Drake. “The novel ‘Sanctuary’ NOW on the screen! (Strictly Adult Entertainment).” St. Louis Dispatch 18 May 1933: C8.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THURSDAY*

w p i m t i u n ^ T O K I N i t f M

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Figure 4.7: “The much-discussed novel, ‘Sanctuary,’ bringing to the screen the half-good girl... with two kinds of emotions!” St. Louis Dispatch 16 May 1933: D5.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reckless-That’s All!! Her NAME a by-word on sneering lips of men-Her

REPUTATION a tid-bit for women’s gossiping tongues. .. YET! Temple Drake isn’t

BAD!” (see figure 8). This also begs the question, if she isn’t “bad,” what is she?

Very prominent in the advertising is a discernible split, slash or line drawn either

through Temple herself or next to her which presumably represents the “wild streak”

featured in the copy, as we see in an advertisement from the May 26, 1933 Washington

Post (A12) and a movie herald (see figures 9 and 10). And several of the ads discuss

Temple’s “dual” or double nature: one features a languorous Temple reclined on a bed,

with the text, “‘I’m a half-good girl! I tried to be ... longed to be respectable .. . and

what? The other side ofme... the wild Drake streak ... it’s too strong! ... it’s like

there are two me ’s’” (see figure 11). Reviews, often provided by the studio, feature

descriptions of Temple’s “dual personality,” “curious makeup,” “complexity,” her

“hidden streak of bad.” How do we begin to explain what’s going on with this “split

personality” theme found in these ads, this “wild streak,” the absence of the normal

“clinch” iconography, the emphasis on Faulkner and the novel’s reputation?

I want to suggest that the makers of The Story o f Temple Drake attempted, in the

advertising and the buzz surrounding the film, to cash in on the public’s fascination with

lesbianism and bisexuality, particularly, in this case, with regards to both star Miriam

Hopkins’s rumored lesbianism and the reputation of the novel itself. At issue in

understanding how different audiences respond to certain texts are the many different

“authors” of a text, including actors, directors, studios, etc. Sources suggest that it was

widely known in Hollywood, and hinted at in more public arenas such as movie

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. n — \ , T E M P L E I

■ V S tC A L ^ D R A K E I ,C T « A S 3 f miriamTopwns » ■W . JACK LA RUE- B«tty Baop < ^ 3 S WIlllAM CAR.CAN CARTOON WILLIAM COLLUR.J*. ! MORTON / Wlaitta « Unlf S h a m i n g DOWNEY ‘*'7-,..?*-., 77m ?L*Y1NG *• * " t i i~< , '

Figure 4.8: “Born Reckless-That’s All!! . . . Yet Temple Drake isn’t BAD!” Advertisement from pressbook.

206

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 4.9: “All the Drakes had a wild streak . . . and she a Drake!’ Washington Post 26 May 1933: A12.

207

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 4.10: Herald.

208

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. WILLliM GiHGlX JACK L i RUE

— EXTRA— FRED WAR!N6'S PENNSYLVANIANS /1 "ALMA MARTYR" DOSKOS -K.NIGHT MARE” CARTOO.MZING THE 4 MARX BROS.

Figure 4.11: “ . . . it’s like there are two me’s!” Advertisement. St. Louis Dispatch 17 May 1933: D5

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. magazines and the studio publicity machines, that Miriam Hopkins was lesbian or

bisexual. Known as the “bad girl” at Paramount, she was often cast in “bitchy” roles

playing sexually transgressive and/or strong women living “alternative” lifestyles or as

women forced to hide their true identities, and for the years of 1931-1937 she was a very

hot item in the gossip and movie magazines. Even after her star had dimmed somewhat

when her contract to Paramount was not renewed in 1934, she continued to make films

with “suggestive” themes, and she and her films were publicized in ways designed to

cash in on her notoriety.

As Andrea Weiss notes, lesbian “buzz” surrounding Hollywood actresses in the

early 1930s was not unusual-stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Joan

Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, Claudette Colbert and Barbara Stanwyck also had

“suspect” reputations which were either created or manipulated, and ultimately deflected,

by the studios. These stars were never featured in overt lesbian relationships or

situations in these films, and were never publicly outed in real life, but the films and

publicity were often loaded with innuendo and homoerotic possibilities:

The Hollywood studios went to great lengths to keep the star’s image open to erotic contemplation by both men and women, not only requiring lesbian and gay male stars to remain in the closet for the sake of their careers, but also desperately creating the impression of heterosexual romance .... But the public could be teased with the possibility of lesbianism, which provoked both curiosity and titillation. Hollywood marketed the suggestion of lesbianism, not because it intentionally sought to address lesbian audiences, but because it sought to address male voyeuristic interest. (32)

Fans were treated to cover stories about Marlene Dietrich’s “mannish” clothing, Greta

Garbo’s exotic European parties, Tallulah Bankhead’s “unusual” lifestyle. And on

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. screen these stars were often featured in roles which required them to don men’s

clothing, or placed them in situations designed to suggest lesbian attraction and

eroticism. Some of the most famous examples are Garbo’s cross-dressing role in Queen

Christina (1933) and Dietrich’s tuxedo number in Morocco (1930), during which her

cabaret singer character sings to and kisses a woman.10

Miriam Hopkins does not have the gay cult following of many of these 1930s

actresses, which is interesting, considering the films she did make and the ways in which

the studios marketed her. This may very well have to do with Hopkins’s Southern roots

(she was bom in Georgia)-she lacked the “exoticism” of Europeans Garbo and Dietrich.

But as Tamsin Wilton notes in her introduction to Immortal Invisible: Lesbians and the

Moving Image, other factors might be at stake: “That the pantheon of Hollywood

goddesses included some lesbians among their number we know (although . .. their

‘lesbian’ is not ours .. .) but because immortality was conferred upon them precisely as

heterosexual icon, the ‘lesbian’ remained invisible” (1-2). This suggests that while

audiences at the time might have suspected, the weight of the star’s entire career makes

it difficult to recapture that ambiguity, and also that our notions of lesbianism and

bisexuality have obviously changed since the early 1930s. Even by 1937, as Hollywood

was becoming safer and safer, Hopkins’s roles were less tantalizing, less disreputable,

less “transgressive.” That is not to say that some current critics/fans have not recognized

Hopkins’ appeal to gay audiences. In his internet article on “sissies” in Hollywood

cinema, Ray Davis briefly mentions Hopkins: “Perhaps surprisingly, the feminine form of

sissy was not super-femininity.. . . The female equivalents to the ambivalent male were

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. actors like Margaret Sullivan and Miriam Hopkins: querulous, intelligent, awkward, and

driven; oddball ex-tomboys vibrating with untrustworthy intensity.” And Peter

Merholz’s brief review of Davis’ article reveals one gay man’s reaction to Hopkins:

“Special added bonus: tough tomboy women! (Oh how I swoon for Miriam Hopkins).”

A recent discussant on the SCREEN-L list, following a thread concerning Hollywood

films which feature strong roles for two women, made this list (and subsequent

discovery): “The Animal Kingdom, Trouble in Paradise, When Ladies Meet, These

Three/The Children's Hour, The Old Maid, Old Acquaintance. (Hmmm. Most of these

starred Miriam Hopkins!)” (Keser). But outside of Bette Davis biographies, no one

explicitly suggests that Hopkins was lesbian or bisexual, and most people seem to agree

with John Kobal that she has mostly faded into obscurity: “She seems to be almost

forgotten today. Somehow, her films don’t get shown much on TV, and when buffs

recall her, it’s for her two films with Bette Davis, The Old Maid and Old Acquaintance”

(351). I might add that she is often remembered for starring in the first full-length

Technicolor film, Becky Sharp (RKO 1935), but Kobal’s point is well taken.

It is fairly certain that despite Hopkins’ rather obscure contemporary image, she

did have a “suspect” reputation in the early 1930s and was the object of much rumor

and innuendo. She was, in the early 1930s, a very popular star, as even the sheer number

of cigarette cards devoted to her from 1931 to 1937 attests (see figure 12). She starred

in several controversial films which were based on sources with overtly gay themes, the

most infamous being Design For Living (1933), adapted from Noel Coward’s play

featuring a decidedly homoerotic triangle between two men and a woman, and These

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. MIRIAM HOPKINS

Figure 4.12: Cigarette cards. These provided cheap publicity for Hollywood stars and usually featured short biographies on the back of the card. They were included in the tobacco products of companies including Carreras, Ogden’s, Ardath, Godfrey Phillips and Gallaher.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Three (1936), which was based on Lillian Heilman’s play about two women who run a

boarding school and are accused of lesbianism (Hopkins also had a small part in the 1961

remake of that film under Heilman’s original title, The Children's Hour). Although the

overt lesbian content was removed for the 1936 version-the scandal is transformed into

the rumors of a premarital (hetero)sexual relationship-audiences were likely aware of the

controversy of Heilman’s play and its own battles with the censors. Most of the

advertising for the film also features Hopkins and co-star Merle Oberon together, usually

without the male lead, Joel McCrea, in attendance (see figures 13 and 14). Less

controversial, yet more interesting in terms of the publicity it engendered, is She Loves

Me Not (1934), a film in which her nightclub singer disguises herself by cross-dressing,

of course, and hides from thugs in Princeton student Bing Crosby’s dorm room (see

figures IS and 16). And though few people would find much of a lesbian theme in B eefy

Sharp, much of the publicity appears to be highlighting the relationship between the

women in the film (see figure 17). Although the studios ultimately “heterosexualized”

any of these films based on gay-themed sources by adding romantic subplots or changing

the nature of the sexual conflicts, the publicity and controversy surrounding the changes

also inevitably factored into Hopkins’ reputation."

Miriam Hopkins is best remembered these days as a temperamental, eccentric,

scene-stealing, bitchy “virago,” an actress who often feuded with her co-stars,

particularly Bette Davis.12 Following Davis’s lead, her biographers seem determined to

keep this particular image of Hopkins alive in order to lessen the severity of Davis’s own

reputation, in terms of both her reputed inability to get along with her coworkers and the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. These These Three. Figure 4.14: Publicity for still 4.14: Publicity Figure

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (1934). She She Loves Me Not Crosby. Lobby card from Crosby. card from Lobby Figure 4. IS: A masquerading Miriam Bing and the “manly” Hopkins Miriam masquerading IS: A 4. Figure

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Figure 4.16: A butched-out Miriam Hopkins with co-star Kitty Carlisle Publicity still for She Loves Me Not.

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Figure 4.17: Miriam Hopkins and Frances Dee. Publicity stills from Becky Sharp (193 5).

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rumors of her own possible lesbianism: “Miriam Hopkins was a pretty, blond, ruthless

young woman-hard-bitten, mean-tempered, a ‘card,’ and a caution .... She was

jealous, consumed with hatred, petulant, self-pitying, coarse” (Higham S3-S4); “With all

her beauty and talent, Hopkins was immensely insecure, mean-spirited, paranoid, and

given to the most outrageous scene stealing, even from the lowliest extra” (Spada 57);

“Miriam was autocratic, demanding, temperamental, and a scene-stealer par excellence”

(Quirk 23).

These biographers-uniquely, I might add-are also quick to pick up on Davis’s

claims that Hopkins was bisexual and made passes at her, going so far as to suggest that

the former’s rebuff was the event responsible for the famous Hopkins-Davis feud. Davis

first encountered Hopkins in 1928 as she played a small role in the play Excess Baggage,

which starred the already established Hopkins:

At first Bette was only disconcerted by Miriam’s habit of patting her on the backside and telling her what a beautiful neck she had. Naive as Bette was, she didn’t know about the rumors that Hopkins’s sexual preferences included women as well as men. Although she’d been married twice, Miriam raised eyebrows in the company when she introduced a lovely young girl as her “protegee” and shared a bungalow with her every night. (Spada 57-58)

According to Quirk, who features in his biography a Hopkins hopelessly infatuated with

Davis throughout the years, the actress “invited Davis to join her and the girl in her

bungalow,” and Davis’s mother Ruthie told Bette, “Stay away from her-she’s trouble,”

which led to Hopkins’s becoming cross and impatient with Davis, setting the stage for all

their later conflicts (23-24). In fact, Hopkins is the chief villain in Quirk’s biography,

which may in part be the result of his attempts to distance Davis from the rumors about

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. her own sexuality (425-26). Higham also vilifies Hopkins throughout his biography, and

recounts a much later instance where Davis seems overly concerned about her

reputation, and by implication, Hopkins’s:

There was further trouble in October 1943 when Bette walked past a record store and saw a copy of the song entitled “Old Acquaintance” showing her and Miriam toasting each other on the cover. She had never given permission for this and became hysterical, saying that the lyrics printed under the image suggested lesbianism. Bette didn’t stop complaining about the implication of a love relationship between her and Miriam for weeks. (209)

These biographies all seem to suggest that Davis was straight, and that the main cause of

the rumors about her sexuality was the treacherous, notorious Miriam Hopkins. (Of

course, one could read this as a case of “protesting too much,” suggesting anxieties

about potential same-sex desire.)

Although Davis was apparently pleased to claim that Hopkins made sexual

advances towards her, and the details of Hopkins’s life are certainly suggestive, I do not

think it is essential to know if Hopkins was gay or bisexual. As Weiss notes, stars such

as Hopkins were inevitably the subject of erotic contemplation by both gay and straight

audiences: “Whether these actresses were actually lesbian or bisexual is less relevant than

hew their star personae were perceived by lesbian audiences. This star persona was

often ambiguous and paradoxical” (33). For my purposes here it is enough to suggest

that the film’s advertising, and many moments in the film itself, play upon the public

fascination with (if not the actual acceptance of) lesbianism. The fan magazines of the

time feature many suggestive articles about Hopkins, and a remarkable number of films

she starred in during the years 1932-37 have explicit or implicit homosexual/homoerotic

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. themes, or moments of masquerade on the part of the actress where she pretends to be

someone, or something, she is not (including a man). These films include Two Kinds o f

Women (Paramount 1932), Trouble in Paradise (Paramount 1932), The Stranger’s

Return (MGM 1933), Design for Living (Paramount 1933), She Loves Me Not

(Paramount 1934), The Richest G irl in the World (RKO 1934), Becky Sharp (RKO

1935), These Three (Goldwyn 1936), and Wise Girl (RKO 1937).

It is surely no accident that much of the “buzz” about Hopkins had to do with

scandal, which seemed to follow Hopkins throughout her early career, certainly until the

late 1930s. Hopkins was the subject of dozens of “features” in the movie magazines.

Even when she was not the feature of an article, possibilities were raised in several cases

of possible guilt-by-association. The February, 1934 issue of Screen Book features

Hopkins on the cover, next to the headline “How the Stars Fight Scandal” (see figure

18). Other covers offer images of Hopkins next to suggestive text such as “Strange

Love Triangle” ( Screen Book Magazine, September, 1932) or beside teasers about

“suspect” actresses; “Tallulah-The Star That Has All of Hollywood Guessing” (Motion

Picture, April, 1932), and “Let Me Tell You About Greta Garbo” (Modern Screen,

March, 1934) (see figure 19). The fact that there is a full-length book on Miriam

Hopkins in the 30s, which features articles and gossip columns culled just from Los

Angeles’ newspapers, suggests something about the sheer amount of scandalous material

that was being generated about Hopkins. The movie magazines and publicity for many

of her films seem to attempt to provide “hints” for the public. But perhaps more than

anything else, it was her eccentricities, her refusal to play the typical domesticated

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 4.18: Screen Book Magazine Feb. 1934.

223

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 4.19: “Let me tell you about Greta Garbo. Modem Screen Mar. 1934.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Hollywood actress role, which formed her reputation.

The public’s “understanding” of Miriam Hopkins can perhaps be traced back

both to Paramount’s 1931 “all-out-blitz” campaign to make her a star and to her

notorious adoption of a child right after she divorced second husband Austin Parker in

early 1932.13 Hopkins was being featured in fashion spreads, interviews and carefully

placed stories in fan magazines, all the while getting a notorious reputation for her

unorthodox behavior, her temper, and her seeming inability or refusal to be

“domesticated.” In 1932 there were several movie magazine articles about her recent

divorce (the second of four) and her adoption of a baby boy. Modem Screen carried a

long article, an “exclusive,” all about Miriam’s adopted son Michael. The covert appeal

in the article, however, is in the way it feeds the public’s fascination with Hopkins’s

“strange” relationship with a woman named Gaby, described in the article as “Miriam’s

French companion.” The article suggests Gaby will be in “charge of the nursery,” but

the unspoken assumption is that the public’s tongues were wagging about this

relationship. Hopkins herself states in the article, “I'm hoping it [this interview] will

serve to forestall some of the raised eyebrows, some of the possible unpleasant gossip”

(Hall, “She Says to Life” 30).

When she was with Austin Parker, the fan magazines note, they “queerly” lived in

separate houses. Articles about Hopkins from that period carry such titles as ‘“Women

Shouldn’t Marry’ says Miriam Hopkins” (Modem Screen, March 9, 1933), “Strange

Love Triangle” (Screen Book Magazine, September, 1932) and “Is it Love at Last for

Miriam Hopkins?” (Photoplay, May, 1937), and reveal seemingly insignificant details

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. such as “She adores people. But all kinds of people.. . . In Paris she sees Gertrude Stein

and her group” (Hall, “She’d Rather Be Dead” 94). It was reported, almost incessantly,

that she did not wear makeup. Much is made of her rental of Greta Garbo’s Hollywood

villa, and as we have seen, several magazine covers implicitly connect Hopkins with

Garbo (see figure 20). Subtly and not-so-subtly, publicity involving Hopkins titillated.

An April, 1932 issue of Motion Picture features the image of Hopkins next to the

headline “The Amazing Life Stories of the Freaks!” (see figure 21). And many publicity

shots, even cigarette cards, from her films seem designed to play upon the power of

cross-dressing to evoke lesbianism (see figure 22).14

Because of the conflation of Faulkner’s (and Sanctuary's) reputations with that

of Hopkins, the advertising and publicity for The Story o f Temple Drake in particular

offers many interesting insights into the ways an actress’s reputation is put into play in

order to draw an audience and to offer these possible lesbian/bisexual readings of both

the actress and the characters she plays. The characterization of Temple goes beyond

promiscuity (although that is the way many critics describe her) and stresses the scandal

surrounding her, an interesting parallel to the actress playing her. The first ten minutes

of the film are devoted to establishing, from several perspectives, Temple’s bad

reputation, one which is never fully defined or explained. This section of the film

operates almost like a montage. After an opening scene featuring an ineffectual Stephen

Benbow (Horace Benbow in the novel) losing a case in court, he visits Temple’s

grandfather, responding with silence to Judge Drake’s statement, “You know, Stephen,

I’d feel better about Temple if I knew she had someone steady and reliable like you to

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Figure 4 20: Photoplay Mar 1932; Silvr Scree* Sept. 1933

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•n rr^ : Figure 4.22: PublicityFigure4.22: still cigaretteandcard from She Loves M e Not e M Loves She take care of her. She’s a good girl, Stephen.” Fade out/in to a close-up of a clock-it is

four a.m.-and a slow track and pan to Temple sneaking in the front door, putting off a

suitor. After she sweet-talks her grandfather into forgiving her for being out so late, we

fade out/in to several men at a bar discussing Temple’s cock-teasing tendencies. “‘Stop

it. Don’t touch me. You don’t know what you’re doing.’ Just when I was going good.”

Fade out/in to a black servant washing Temple’s underwear: “Miss Temple sure is hard

on her things.” Fade out/in to Stephen’s Aunt Jenny: “There’s a wild streak in them.

Every now and then one of them comes along like Temple. With something bad in them.

Something wrong. Maybe Temple will get over it, but not one of them’s had it that

didn’t end up in the gutter. If I were the old judge I’d marry her off quick.”

This “wild streak” is, as we have seen, referred to often in the advertising for the

film, and the “two me’s” alluded to in the publicity also comes directly from the film. In

the next scene, at a high society dance, just before she rides off with a drunken Toddy

Gowan (Gowan Stevens in the novel) on an ill-fated trip to the Old Frenchman’s Place,

Stephen proposes to her as they talk together on a secluded patio. “Honey, will you be

honest with me? Just once?” “Of course,” answers Temple. “Really? Man to man?

Marry me.”

Temple hems and haws, replying that she won’t because she “likes” Stephen too

much, and then in a speech surely designed to reflect on the actress delivering it, goes

into a long explanation of why she cannot get married, why she will not be domesticated,

how she wants to, but something is holding her back. This quasi-monologue is unusual,

and obviously important, in that after a typical two-shot of her and Stephen, we cut to a

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. tight close-up of her face, in shadow, and stay on it for a full minute, never cutting away

(see figure 23).

Temple Drake: “It isn’t you, Steve. It’s me.” Stephen Benbow: “What do you mean?” TD: “I’m no good.” SB: “Don’t be silly.” TD: “Oh, I’m not. Let’s not talk about it anymore.” SB: “But Temple. . . ” TD: “I can’t explain it. It’s just me. It’s something inside me. Stephen, I’ve wanted to marry you since I was little. But I won’t. I can’t.” SB: “Hadn’t you better tell me about it?” TD: “No. But I do love you. Part of me does. It’s like there were two me’s. One of them says ‘Yes, yes. Quick. Don’t let me get away.’” SB: “And the other?” TD: “I won’t tell you. Or what it wants, does, or what will happen to it. I don’t know myself. All I know is I hate it.”

Temple is described in both the film and its advertising as the “half-good girl.” Certainly

promiscuity is being evoked as well, but the emphasis on Temple’s “dual” nature

suggests more is at stake, and it is worth noting the level of self-loathing-“All I know is I

hate it.” We are not talking about a positive portrayal of lesbian sexuality here, but the

concurrent representation and disavowal of a “titillating” element of the film’s

production and the reputation of its star. As Cecil B. DeMille was fond of noting, what

so amused him about the Production Code was that he could bring up all kinds of

“perversions” as long as everything was morally reconciled by the end. Temple is raped

(in the “normal” way)-her momentary “relationship” with Ruby at the Old Frenchman’s

Place proves meaningless, since Ruby cannot, or will not, protect her-and she eventually

shoots Trigger (after protecting Stephen from the same fate). She is eventually

compelled to confess her sins, and after fainting on the witness stand, is carried off by

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Stephen, down the aisle of the courtroom, in what operates visually as a clear indication

of a forthcoming marriage.

This focus on the split personality, on the “part good, part bad” dichotomy within

Temple’s psyche and her “wild” or “bad streak,” combined with her overall personality in

both Faulkner’s novel and Paramount’s film, feeds right into the contemporary discourse

about what lesbianism and bisexuality were, and why they were titillating and troubling

at the same time. According to accepted psychological theories gathered in the early

1930s by Dr. La Forest Potter, homosexuality was rampant, and gaining in popularity:

“Hundreds of thousands of men and women, in all parts of the world, and in every

station of life, have turned ‘queer.’ With these people the reasons are clear

enough-environment, economic conditions, shirking of parental responsibilities, and the

desire to be, so to say, in the ‘modem fashion’” (70). Causes for lesbianism included

narcissism, father fixation, lack of exercise, leisure and boredom, the lack of maternal

supervision (particularly the early death of the mother), and the “bubbling up” of the

“fractions of man” within every woman (140-44). “Homosexuality is not only a flight

from normal sexual, marital and social responsibilities, but that it also lies distinctly in

that no-man’s land, midway between neurosis and crime” (57). Homosexuals were

believed to be the “intermediate” or “third” sex, and had a “streak” of male or female

within them that they could not suppress: “every [gay] woman has so many ‘fractions’ of

‘man’ in her” (117). “Compulsive” lesbians chose lesbianism because of their overactive

sex drive, their inability to control themselves sexually-“sexual precocity is a sign” (164).

Because they feared becoming pregnant, these nymphomaniacs turned to women-sexual

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. precocity was a sure sign of a woman who could easily become lesbian. And some

studies at the time assumed a connection existed between incest and homosexuality.

Of course, Temple Drake has often been described in these very terms-

narcissistic, father fixated, sexually overactive, an incest survivor-but never is she

described as lesbian or as a woman with lesbian or bisexual yearnings, which is

interesting considering how the publicity stills and lobby cards also suggest an emphasis

on the possible erotic attraction between Temple and Ruby (played by Florence

Eldridge). Some stills do feature Trigger and Stephen, but Temple always looks

uninterested, not at all as a titillating young star should, or simply frightened (see figure

24). But the vast majority of stills and publicity materials feature either Temple alone,

Temple with Ruby in the kitchen (see figures 25 and 26) or the bedroom (see figure 27)

at the Old Frenchman place, or Temple with Trigger and Ruby (see figure 28). The

number of these stills and materials is greatly disproportionate to the actual screen time

shared by Temple and Ruby. Figure 28 also highlights the recurring theme of both novel

and film-eroticism and threat. Temple is threatened by Trigger, and gazed upon by

Ruby. The typical romantic triangle we might expect from this still-Temple and Ruby

vie for Trigger-is clearly more complicated. Neither is attracted to Trigger. Ruby seems

for a few moments, perhaps half-heartedly, jealous of the attention her “husband” Lee

devotes to Temple, but there remains an aspect of voyeurism/fascination on Ruby’s part,

as well as the sense throughout the film that heterosexuality is inadequate, or

threatening. Temple’s frequent dates are shown “wrestling” with her, unsuccessfully

attempting to physically “have” her; Stephen is ineffectual and symbolically impotent

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. either one of them. Publicity them. of one still. either Publicity Figure 4 4 24 Figure uninterested in is Temple and bemused, is Trigger glowers. Stephen

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 236

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 4.26: Temple tries to find some normalcy with child. Ruby’s with Production normalcy still. some to tries find 4.26: Temple Figure

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UiRue Jcuk wih Mifiam Hopkins and A A f’tmimmmt r tui Pu "THE STORY OF TEMPIE DRAKE" while the men drink and threaten them and each other. other. each and them threaten and drink the men Production while still Figure 4.27: Ruby and Temple in another domestic sphere, the bedroom, sphere, domestic another in Temple and 4.27: Ruby Figure

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 239

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (Temple does not like to “dance” with him), Toddy is drunk (soon to pass out, then be

knocked out), Trigger is slimy and leering (and an incongruous Chicago-style gangster),

and the only source of protection is Ruby (the “feeb” Tommy is clearly unable to protect

Temple, and is killed for his efforts by Trigger). The publicity surrounding the film

makes the homoerotic attraction between Ruby and Temple manifest not only by

highlighting them in the production stills and lobby cards, but by almost entirely

removing from these materials the possible male objects of desire-Stephen, Lee, Toddy

and Trigger. Lee and Toddy are entirely absent-they figure in no lobby cards or

production stills that I have been able to find. Stephen is always pictured alone, or in

hopeless competition with Trigger, who himself simply represents threat, never the erotic

object of desire.

The publicity for the film clearly tries to cash in on the popular psychological

explanations for “perverse” female behavior in an effort both to intrigue and to forestall

the expected condemnations from civic and religious groups, transforming The Story o f

Temple Drake into a cautionary tale. In a publicity feature from the film’s pressbook

entitled “Temple Drake Mirror For All Women Now, Psychologist Declares,” Dr. Frank

Payne (“noted Authority”) writes that Temple represents the

typical psychopathic personality which has been molded and forced into being by the repression of religion coupled with eugenic inbreeding . .. undoubtedly formed by an Oedipus Complex situation between Temple and her father. . . . This “Story of Temple Drake” shows what God and Nature do when we do not follow their dictates.

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Paramount, a studio which took seriously the notion that “sex sells,” was also

known in the 1920s and 30s to “cash in” on the purported bisexuality of its

stars-Rudolph Valentino provides a good example of this. While never fully disclosing

the homosexuality or bisexuality of its stars, Paramount was very good at teasing

audiences with sexual ambiguity. Producers at Paramount clearly saw something in

Faulkner’s novel-or perhaps just in his own “perverse” reputation-that was worth

exploiting. It seems unlikely that the scandal-shy studio would take on a “banned” text

otherwise. They also clearly wanted to use a star with her own ambiguous reputation in

the lead role. As I’ve argued, the publicity materials clearly imply something audiences

were expected to pick up on.

We should see by now that the impetus behind such an advertising campaign and

the choices made during the adaptation process cannot solely be explained by Miriam

Hopkins’s purported lesbianism and the buzz surrounding her reputation. And as Dr.

Potter was pleased to point out, “it is now well-known to physicians who practice among

these people, the theatrical and the motion picture profession has gone ‘queer’ to an

almost unbelievable extent. Within the past twenty years a very considerable percentage

of these very charming people have renounced ‘old-fashioned’ methods” (6). There are

obviously dozens of factors to be taken into account-as we have seen with Today We

Live's reception-including screenwriters, the director, producer, and actors. Of course,

the reputations of the novel and Faulkner himself also figure prominently, which I’ll be

examining further in my conclusion.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Examining The Story o f Temple Drake, including all of the nuances of Faulkner’s

reputation(s) at the time, allows us to do several things. It opens to interrogation the

validity of accepted historical narratives, including the arc of Faulkner’s career and

reputation in Hollywood, the place of The Story o f Temple Drake within film history, the

reputation of Miriam Hopkins, and the critical reception of Sanctuary. Both film and

novel are illuminated by placing them together in ways beyond a simple adaptation

approach, or simply in terms of censorship issues. By juxtaposing The Story o f Temple

Drake and Sanctuary we can begin to strip away the layers of critical discourse in order

to complicate our notions of how these texts were received and to illuminate those

critical layers themselves.

So how did this narrative come to be buried? Why isn’t this the Sanctuary, or

the Faulkner, we know? In part, responsibility lies with Faulkner’s “savior,” Malcolm

Cowley. In his enthusiasm for presenting to America a “masculine” Modernism

unencumbered by the taint of homosexuality, Cowley consciously or unconsciously

managed to-with help of course-unqueer Faulkner. The anthology (consisting of short

stories and excerpts from novels) deemed most influential in resurrecting Faulkner’s

career-1946's The Portable Faulkner-favors a coherent “Yoknapatawpha saga” and

avoids Faulkner’s more gender-troubled texts, as well as any works which could be

considered popular culture. As editor, Cowley focuses almost exclusively on the

Yoknapatawpha texts, and avoids any text with any possible homoerotic dynamic. There

is no “Divorce in Naples,” no “Turnabout,” no excerpts from Mosquitoes, ox Absalom,

Absalom!. The Sowuiand the Fury's “Dilsey” section is included. Sanctuary is poorly

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. represented with one of the comic sections of the novel, “Uncle Bud and the Three

Madams,” which features a small boy stealing beer from three ladies as they discuss the

Popeye’s murder of Temple’s lover, Red.

In part, this emphasis on Yoknapatawpha (and “folksier”) texts can be accounted

for by Cowley’s preference for what he considered Faulkner’s more socially-relevant

explorations into Southern class conflict, and for his conception of Faulkner’s works as a

unified mythology that could be charted and reconstructed. But Cowley, a long-time

resident of Greenwich Village, was intoierant-not of homosexuality per se, but of the

perceived association of writers with homosexuality. He was interested in American

literature’s broader appeal to the populace, and feared that an association with

homosexuality would, rather than titillate as it would have 1930s audiences, would

alienate potential readers in the more sexually conservative 1940s. According to George

Chauncey, “Many of leading self-identified male feminists of the Village . .. were

troubled by the insinuation that their unorthodox behavior meant they were ‘queer’ in a

specifically sexual sense” (230). Cowley acknowledged this fear in Exile's Return

(1934):

I came to believe that a general offensive was about to be made against modem art, an offensive based on the theory that all modem writers, painters and musicians were homosexual. . . . I began to feel harried and combative, like Aubrey Beardsley forced to defend his masculinity against whispers. (190)

In a now-famous quote, Cowley also fantasized (in “drunken dreams”) a writers’

revolution. “You would set about hanging policemen from the lamp posts . .. and beside

each policeman would be hanged a Methodist preacher, and beside each preacher a

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. pansy poet” (52). In a later book, 1958's The Literary Situation, he notes “Some Vices

Attributed to Writers.” The first is alcoholism, the second homosexuality. In this

section he argues strenuously that the argument put forth by Dr. Edmund Bergler’s book

The Writer and Psychoanalysis-that there is a “high incidence of homosexuality among

writers”-is unscientific and to his mind inaccurate. “It seems to me that there is a

smaller proportion of homosexuals among writers than in many other professions” (208).

He goes on to make the astonishing claim that there is probably a “high incidence of

homosexuality among would-be writers, as opposed to the professionals” (208, emphasis

mine).

Cowley spent a good deal of his career thinking about writers and homosexuality.

He was not necessarily being moralistic or conservative, though. Rather, he was, to his

own mind, being practical. Social strictures would ruin artists, and thus American

Modernism, because of the association with homosexuality. Thus, when Cowley decided

to resurrect Faulkner’s reputation, he was making a conscious decision to present to the

1940s American public an important-and untroubling-writer. He felt the need to

vigorously defend Faulkner from 1940s and 50s critics such as Maxwell Geismar and

Irving Malin, who both argued that one could easily identify “latent homosexual

relationships” in Faulkner’s works (Malin 83), although Geismar one-upped that

observation: “Homosexuality is too adult an inversion for Faulkner to deal with directly”

(170).15 Cowley fought, and ultimately won, this particular battle. His Portable

Faulkner, and the myth surrounding the resurrection of Faulkner’s career, continue to

exert an influence on Faulkner criticism Malin and Geismer do not even approach. What

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. got lost along the way was a less established distinction between the author’s high/low

works, a more unsettling Faulkner, a queerer Faulkner. Because a Hollywood film such

as The Story o f Temple Drake disappeared less than a full month after its release-and

film criticism was basically unknown during the period-the interrelatedness of source and

adaptation gradually became lost to public scrutiny, and eventually all that remained was

the novel and its critics. Then Malcolm Cowley. Then Cleanth Brooks. Then Joseph

Blotner.

By considering how Faulkner was understood in the early 1930s, we can arrive at

a greater understanding of how and why “Faulkner” has come to mean what it does to

twenty-first century readers and critics. And we gain greater understanding, in the

process, of the process of literary history-indeed, in the act of distinguishing a literary

history from the rest of the ongoing cultural history, which is, of course, what this

project attempts to untangle. Ultimately, this project illuminates the artificiality of

distinguishing a distinct literary history and illuminates the value of complicating our

understandings of what shapes the texts we examine. Far from “miring” Faulkner or his

reputation in the mud of popular culture, this project recontextualizes the production of

three Faulkner-related texts to reinvigorate our understanding of those texts. The

works-and the idea of “Faulkner”-become more vital, more relevant when we can

understand their participation in popular culture because they become (though this is

apparently counter-intuitive to many critics) more complicated. Recontextualizing

allows the works to more fully illuminate both the contemporary situation from which

they emerged and our own needs and desires as we approach “Faulkner.” Why have we

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Most significantly, what do we lose when we remake Faulkner in our own image,

retroactively remaking or smoothing out the climate of production in which he operated

so that it appears to be an older model of our own?

Finally, this kind of examination also returns us full circle to what some Faulkner

critics might consider the significant text. That is, we can return to Sanctuary better able

to consider the complexities of that text and our engagement with it. What is Temple’s

problem? Why does she get caught up in these events? What are all of the possible

sources of anxiety found in these texts? How does Sanctuary deepen, extend, and play

with the issues that run through the body of work we associate with Faulkner? We can

begin to explore Faulkner’s text not as we expect it to be, but as it might be, a process

that not incidentally has powerful potential for engaging students with this and other of

Faulkner’s works, as we shade in the next decades’ meanings of the term “Faulkner.”

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1. See Sondra Guttman’s “Who’s Afraid of the Corncob Man? Masculinity, Race, and Labor in the Preface to Sanctuary” for a good summary of the most recent and prevalent critical approaches to the Preface.

2. A brief example from 1951 should suffice: “Faulkner wrote it, he declared, to make money. For a time it was considered just that: a gory thriller, one of its author’s less important works” (Rubin 11).

3. In an instance of publicity bravura, Jerry Wald, who had already produced The Long Hot Summer (1958), wrote an article entitled “Faulkner & Hollywood” for Films in Review in order to generate some buzz about his upcoming The Sound and the Fury (1959). In the article Wald takes some liberties with the facts concerning Faulkner’s film career, but the real emphasis is on the difficulties of adapting Faulkner’s works for film, and on how the upcoming film “hews more closely to Faulkner’s story line” (132), a statement that is pretty amusing for anyone who has seen The Sound and the Fury which includes an “inspired” performance by Yul Brynner as Jason and completely writes out the male Quentin Compson. Wald also calls for intrepid filmmakers to take on more of Faulkner’s properties, including Sartoris, Light in August, The Wild Palms and Absalom, Absalom/, a challenge which has thus far gone ignored.

4. Refer to Claudia Roth Pierpont’s recent article on Hammett for The New Yorker. “ The Maltese Falcon may have been the first book to be conceived as a movie before it was written” (70).

5. See also Gerald Langford, who argues that the lure of Hollywood money-and not his desire to “clean up” the novel-convinced Faulkner to “turn a slow-moving psychological study into a streamlined drama ready for the cameras of Hollywood” (7).

6. In an article from Variety entitled “Hays Still on Trail of Dirt,” Sanctuary is singled out: “Hays sent a communication to the various company heads, in which he called attention, particularly, to Paramount’s ‘Sanctuary’ . . . . ‘If a book or play is actually salacious in essence it is almost impossible to develop a proper story from i t . . .. Such a book is ‘Sanctuary’” (April 11, 1933: 5). A few weeks later, this: “Paramount’s ‘Temple Drake,’ derived from the banned book ‘Sanctuary,’ by William Faulkner, finally gets a smile from Will Hays after having been sent back from New York three different times to get the subject in line with the new deal idea in pictures” (“‘Temple Drake’ Finally Jake” 3).

7. This development says a lot about the conflicted nature of the Hays Office, which was designed to allay the fears of the state censors and to help the studios make a profit during these lean years in Hollywood. Thus the Hays Office would help create controversy and then prominently publicize it, all in the name of keeping “unseemly”

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8. In fact, advertising for The Shame o f Temple Drake was being produced remarkably late in the process. A March 3, 1933, issue of The Hollywood Reporter features the image of Miriam Hopkins found in subsequent advertising, but using this earlier title (4).

9. In another indicator of how carefully crafted the publicity surrounding the film was, some have suggested that Raft’s real reason in withdrawing from the film was simply because of a dispute about his salary. A letter from agent PS. Harrison to Adolph Zukor, located in the film’s archives at the Margaret Herrick Library, dated March 9, 1933, supports this claim, though it has never been confirmed. As far as the public was concerned, however, tough guy Raft was worried about the “perversity” of the script, which of course fueled the controversies surrounding the film. An “RKO Newsette” herald plays up the supposed controversy in a small article entitled “Jack La Rue Grabs Chance Refused by George Raft.” And the Hollywood Citizen News reported on February 13, 1933 that “Paramount is going ahead with production on The Story of Temple Drake despite the fact that George Raft refuses to play the male lead opposite Miriam Hopkins. He claims that the role is so repulsive that it will wreck his screen personality” (qtd in Hamann 34). George Raft stuck to this story throughout his life. In his 1974 “authorized” biography of Raft, Lewis Yablonsky writes, “Raft was assigned to play Popeye, a psychotic who rapes a girl with a corncob and then kills her feebleminded son .... As if Popeye’s appearance weren’t horrendous enough, he had a shrunken, nonfunctional penis (an unthinkable condition for George Raft), a result of having been castrated for a previous crime” (92). Note how murky everyone’s memory appears to be on the details of Sanctuary.

10. A few less famous examples include scenes from Cecil B. DeMille’s Sign o f the Cross (1932) featuring Elissa Landi being tempted by “pagan” lesbian Joyzelle in one scene and Claudette Colbert cavorting in a milk bath with a servant girl in another; and Christopher Strong (1933), which stars a somewhat butch, cross-dressing Katharine Hepburn. In fact, one reviewer notes in a June 2, 1933 review how The Story o f Temple Drake was being roundly condemned while DeMille seemed able to get away with anything: “One can readily detect a most persuasive sexual appeal in the milk bath scene or in the Dance of the Naked Moon from Sign o f the Cross, which Cecil B. DeMille peddled safely past the censors by giving it a spurious link to scripture” (Crow BS). It is worth commenting on the fact that Crow is associating the controversy of The Story of Temple Drake with two notorious lesbian-charged scenes.

11. There are several interesting moments in other films as well. In The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), the estranged wife she plays gets advice from her husband’s mistress, Claudette Colbert, who demands, “Let me see your underwear,” and offers as a solution

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12. For one of the few sympathetic accounts of Hopkins, see the chapter “Miriam Hopkins: The Maverick” in George Eells, Ginger, Loretta and Irene Who? (New York: Putnam’s, 1976). This is also the only extended biography of Hopkins. Not insignificantly, it never directly addresses the question of her supposed bisexuality, though it does note her controversial reputation.

13. “Miriam Hopkins has just adopted a baby boy in Chicago .... Miss Hopkins, you will recall, was married to Austin Parker, but is at present unmarried, having secretly divorced him some months ago” (“The Hollywood Times” 14). It is interesting to note that Hopkins had her good friend, Ben Wasson, pick up the child in Chicago. Wasson, of course, was also a close friend of Faulkner’s, which suggests that Hopkins and Faulkner could well have been acquainted, even friends, during their stays in Hollywood, particularly in 1932-33.

14. This publicity shot is to be found on cigarette cards of Hopkins issued by Carreras Limited, an English tobacco company, in 1935, which feature her with butch haircut, gray suit, striped tie and, not surprisingly, a cigarette. But the text on the back seems to want to both raise and deflect possible disturbing connotations-“Loves buying things for her home and all domestic matters. Has an adopted baby son”-failing to mention, of course, that she was divorced at the time.

15. See in particular his July 22, 1944 letter to Faulkner in The Faulkner-Cowley File ( 10).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSION

In The Wild Palms, he [Faulkner] overtly explores the dangers of “pulp fiction ” and the culpability o f those who create them. The Tall Convict, Charlotte, and Harry clearly illustrate the dangers o f following, and in Harry's case constructing, these loveless and exploitative tales. Still, Faulkner must have been aware that The Wild Palms itself was open to the kind o f monumental misreadings his protagonists engage in. To limit the likelihood o f such readings. The Wild Palms would somehow have to be resistant to the very charges which are leveled against pulp fictions in the novel-namely that these fictions are criminally false, authorize the reader’s own romantic illusions, and, ultimately, are little more than the products o f a sterile cunning. Vincent Allan King, “The Wages of Pulp” (522-23)

Shakespeare keeps going because these strategies keep him going; he is relevant because he is perpetually interfered with. Somewhat strangely, it is supposed that it would be better for literature if it were otherwise-if writers such as Shakespeare manifested a static and unchanging truth. But literary writing is interesting when it is in the thick o f cultural production, along with movies, soaps, anthropology, religion, science fiction. Alan Sinfield, Cultural Politics- Queer Reading (5)

Alan Sinfield’s passage above returns us, with difference, to the quotations that

open this dissertation. In the earlier passage Michael Kreyling suggests that Faulkner is

“our Shakespeare” (“our” presumably meaning 20th century American literature’s). Yet

what Sinfield’s observations, in concert with the body of this dissertation, suggest is that

Faulkner’s reputation operates nothing like Shakespeare’s. The latter has not had the

burden of “authority” closing off interpretive possibilities. Some might debate whether a

man named William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays and poems,

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we know as “Shakespeare.” Today no one blinks when you say “Shakespeare” and

“homosexuality” in the same sentence. Such a situation does not hold for Faulkner. We

find it difficult, to use Sinfield’s phrase, to “interfere” with Faulkner, and scholarship and

teaching are the worse for it. Shakespeare texts are constantly being reimagined,

updated, and staged in interesting, provocative ways. Try to imagine Hollywood

offering us a futuristic As I Lay Dying, or Light in August set in modern-day Atlanta.

While Hollywood brings us fascinating “period” adaptations of Jane Austen and Henry

James, by and large the film industry will no longer touch Faulkner. This surely has

something to do with his reputation as a “tough” Modernist (and a “gloom and doom”

one at that) and his placement squarely on the literature side of the literature/fiction

divide.

The last Faulkner work to be made into a Hollywood film was a little-known

story titled “Tomorrow” (published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1940). It became

Tomorrow (Filmgroup, 1972), a low-budget, independently produced film directed by

Joseph Anthony and starring a little-known Robert Duvall. The previous Faulkner

adaptation was another low-budget film which did have one big star, The Reivers

(National General, 1969), directed by Mark Rydell and starring Steve McQueen. The

last time there was a big-budget Hollywood adaptation of a Faulkner text that proved to

be any kind of a success was the Cinemascope melodrama The Long Hot Summer (20th

Century-Fox 19S8), directed by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman, Joanne

Woodward and Orson Welles. As Faulkner’s status as Nobel Prize winner and (New)

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For a large number of Faulkner critics, that is just fine. Although popular culture

is making its way into the criticism, the attitude of disavowal, of dismissal, remains. The

King quotation that begins this conclusion exemplifies the kind of “rescuing” that

continues to take place when the issue of popular culture rears its ugly head. I have

argued that as a collaborator on Today We Live Faulkner may have gained some insight

into how to create (or at least approximate) female desire and to incorporate the

melodramatic into his texts in more complicated ways, to think about storytelling as a

collaborative and contextualizing act, and perhaps he initially found in the high/low

divide-however uncomfortable it ultimately made him-a more complicated

understanding of how audiences seek pleasures in texts. One example of a text that

might have benefitted from and been shaped by this experience was The Wild Palms

(1939). King, in his 1998 postmodern reading of the novel, ultimately reconciles

Faulkner’s use of “pulp fiction” (i.e. sensationalistic and melodramatic) situations and

intertextual references and allusions with a more “subversive” strategy:

Faulkner isn’t doing anything as mundane as simply making a distinction between fiction and reality; he is subverting the notion that any one fiction may be read as a totalizing narrative. This assertion relieves Faulkner’s concern over the effect and reputation of his fictions. First, by using the novel’s structure, theme, and language to remind the reader of the novel’s fictional status, readers cannot claim-as the Tall Convict does-that they are the victims of a false authority.. . . By using the plot to explore the dangers of (mis)reading fiction, readers must themselves enter this debate over the use and abuse of fiction. Faulkner, then, eases his concerns about pulp fiction by giving them to readers, who must decide if the protagonists are duped by pulp fictions or simply surrender control of their lives to books with soft covers and lurid pictures. . .. Once readers accept the task of answering these (and other) questions for themselves,

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Setting aside the problematic notion of “sham” Modernism (and the question, “If

Faulkner isn’t Modernist, who is?”), it is worth considering how King raises the specter

of Faulkner’s “audience,” but never explains what he means by that term. The Wild

Palms was written by a Faulkner less than a decade removed from the Faulkner whose

notoriety came from Sanctuary, a novel which borrows heavily from pulp

fictions-gangster, detective and flapper stories-as well as other pop culture texts such as

cartoons and dirty jokes. Surely the context surrounding the publication and reception

of The Wild Palms is more complicated than King suggests. If, as most accounts would

have it, Faulkner’s “major” Modernist works published in the years between Sanctuary

and The Wild Palms {Light in August, Pylon and Absalom, Absalom!) were critically

ignored, and his (“rightful”) literary reputation was not yet established, what reader is

King imagining? Faulkner’s reputation was still surely shaped by Sanctuary, his

Hollywood output and the movies associated with him -Today We Live, The Story o f

Temple Drake, The Road to Glory (1936), Slave Ship (1937)-and the popular short

stories he was publishing in magazines such as Scribner's, The Saturday Evening Post,

Harper's, American Mercury.

King’s canny reader is clearly our contemporary, one who has the benefit of

postmodern theoiy and an understanding of Faulkner as an artist who eschewed the

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him (and continue to do so): “The recent tendency of critics to make heroes out of the

Tall Convict, Charlotte, and Harry indicate that Faulkner’s efforts to shape a new kind of

audience were hardly foolproof’(525). Things get slippery here-recent critics reflect

Faulkner’s contemporary readers? Critics who see in Charlotte a strong-willed female

character indicate to King that audiences of the time simply bought into the value of the

pulp fiction aspects of the text?

It is this kind of ahistoricization of Faulkner’s audiences that this dissertation has

sought to redress. We need to attempt to recapture the cultural moment of the text, to

investigate how audiences did/might have reacted to those high, low and in-between

works, and to see how the lines of division between those categories might be

misleading. The early 1930s were characterized by less fully delineated divisions

between popular and literary, low and high culture. Faulkner’s works and reputations

during the period between 1931 and 1933 in particular, I believe, encourage us to

explore the fluidity of those boundaries. I think we need to seek out the possible

“unofficial interpretive culture” for 1930s audiences, to see what discourses they had at

hand, in order to give our own students some contextualization and a sense of how and

why these textsmattered , or didn’t, for audiences at the time. This does not mean we

throw out the criticism. Far from it. We need to historicize the criticism as well, to see

how and why it developed in the ways it did, and how it is we got to the Faulkner we

know today. We should emphasize how literature, popular culture and criticism speak to

one another, shape one another, and overlap-and how we might learn valuable lessons

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These are the lessons I learned in part from a teaching experience I would like to

share, one which brings us full circle back to Sanctuary. I have taught the novel several

times, and without doubt the most interesting (sometimes distressing) subjects raised

concern Temple Drake. Many of my male students think she is a cock-tease who gets

what she deserves. To most of my female students, she is a terrorized young woman

forced by every man in her life to conform to his desires. But the disagreements about

the “true” nature of Temple’s character go well beyond classroom experiences. To

assert that Temple Drake’s character inSanctuary has been the subject of intense critical

opinion is a considerable understatement. I would be hard-pressed to think of another

female character in American literature, with the exception perhaps of those other

dangerously transgressive women, Hester Prynne or Brett Ashley, who has elicited such

a confusing proliferation of responses in readers and critics. Anyone who has researched

or taught the novel for a graduate or undergraduate course knows what I mean. Allow

me to give you a quick, somewhat random sample of different critical takes on Temple.

She has been described as “a powerful life force,” “a siren,” “a damned character,” “a

sexual lure who keeps men from salvation,” “a hot-house rose of Southern

womanhood,” “a treacherous whore-woman,” “a predator,” “a sex bomb,” “a flirt,”

“spiritually rotten,” “evil,” “an unholy innocent,” “a powerless slave,” “a blank character

empty of subjectivity,” “a true killer of men,” “sexually ambivalent,” “a dangerous sexual

tease,” “a goddess of death,” “a perverted virgin,” “amoral in her animal lust,” “an

impudent coquette,” “a compulsive bitch whose perverted sexuality wreaks destruction,”

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woman,” “a hermaphrodite,” “androgynous,” and a “feather-brained bitch.” As we have

seen from the previous chapter, several of Temple’s supposed

characteristics-narcissistic, promiscuous, father-fixated, violent-were popularly

associated in the 1920 and 1930s with “inverts.”

Perverted, psychotic, lustful, ambivalent, rotten, hermaphroditic, androgynous.

This simple list surely says something about the anxieties put into motion by a

transgressive female character such as Temple. But what is surprising is that no one

explores the possibility that Temple’s representation might locate its transgressive force

in lesbianism or bisexuality. That particular reading of her character, due to

circumstances we have already traced, quite easily made it into the casting, publicity and

production of The Story o f Temple Drake. As I have suggested, because of the novel’s

reputation for “perversity,” the nature of medical and sexological discourse of the time,

the reputation of star Miriam Hopkins, and the emphasis on the Temple-Ruby

relationship in publicity materials, the film definitely opens itself up to a reading of

Temple as nascent lesbian, or at least raised the issue of homoeroticism for audiences

who saw it. The film and its ensuing censorship battles also raise the question of what

did the audience already know about Sanctuary and its disturbing heroine?

Somehow some of the possibilities raised by the film were closed off in

considerations of the novel, in much the way the film itself was shut away from public

view. The novel features scenes which feature the women “bonding” in the sanctuary of

the kitchen away from the threatening men, the arguably masculinized Ruby (with her

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order to protect her from the men) and eventually grabbing and shaking her (as several

of the men have already done), Ruby’s frank and disturbing sexual advice, and Temple’s

imagined growing of a penis. While certainly not definitive, these moments in the novel

are surely suggestive. But for a novel that has been picked apart so carefully, with such

an emphasis on the breakdown of gender categories (just what is Popeye?), and one with

such a negative vision of heterosexual union, it is surely significant that the possibility

has not been entertained.

Vet such a statement demands that I make a confession: Before I taught my class

on Faulkner and Film, I had never entertained this particular reading either. Whether due

to my own ignorance about the culturally-accepted “signs” of lesbianism in the 1920s

and 1930s, or because none of the criticism I had read had ever so much as mentioned

lesbianism or bisexuality, my own reading of the novel did not allow for this possibility.

About midway in the quarter, one of my female undergraduate students (I will call her

Jane) wrote in a one-page response paper on Sanctuary, “I did question the way the

woman (Lee’s wife?) seemed distraught and mad [at] Temple, yet seemed to be intrigued

by Temple in a strange way. Was the woman watching Temple sleep to protect her or

was Faulkner implying that she too was aroused by Temple just as the men had been?”

I was intrigued, but skeptical. We had not broached the subject of homosexuality

in Faulkner at all, and at that point in my scholarship and teaching I had not really made

it part of my own emphasis. Nevertheless, we opened up discussion about that topic,

and the results were extremely interesting. Several students who had been heretofore

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others agreed with Jane and said that they had made observations similar to hers.

Several of my students then objected that these students were bringing “90s values” to

an understanding of a “work of classic literature.” We talked a little bit about what that

meant, and if understanding more about 1920s and 1930s culture would help them make

sense of the novel, but most of the students were convinced that lesbianism or bisexuality

was surely an inappropriate subject for the Faulkner they had come to know, largely

through Blotner’s “Faulkner in Hollywood” and excerpted material from Kawin and

Gene Phillips. We had not yet done much to contextualize the novel. Others students

seemed a bit uncomfortable, and were simply silent during the discussion. Jane, I’m

sure, felt extremely unsupported in her interpretations and let it drop. What she did not

know was that after that class, two students wrote response papers about Temple’s

imagining growing a penis, no doubt influenced in part by our earlier discussion. This

line of questioning, this foregrounding of gender and sexuality, also led to an interesting

discussion about Horace’s dream when he “becomes” Temple as she is being raped.

When we watched The Story o f Temple Drake a few weeks later, having

discussed the varied responses to the novel, several students found, to their surprise, that

they detected a lesbian dynamic (at least a visually, if not thematically, coded one) in the

film. Some felt that there was certainly more “heat” between actresses Miriam Hopkins

and Florence Eldridge than between Hopkins and Jack LaRue or William Gargan.

Seeing Ruby and Temple together, as well as the scenes which stress the voyeurism of

the situation, such as when Ruby waits in the dark beside Temple’s bed as the other men

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might have been implying.

When we began to analyze the “cultural artifacts” surrounding the film’s

advertising and production-newspaper ads, lobby cards, publicity stills, censorship

files-many fascinating avenues of discovery opened up as the students considered the

film and novel in concert with one another. They quickly picked up on the fact that

Ruby and Temple as a pair figure disproportionately in the publicity materials, since they

appear together on-screen only for a very short time. They noticed that Temple is never

featured in a “clinch” or gazing at a man in the production stills and lobby cards and

posters. They realized that Temple appears in the newspaper advertisements alone. And

one student finally asked that one question that has inspired so much of my

research-4Well, did anyone at the time think the actress playing Temple was gay?” At

the time I had not even thought about it, since Miriam Hopkins is not usually mentioned

in discussions of the Hollywood stars who were reputedly gay or bisexual, and I had no

sense that she might have any status at all as a gay icon. When I mentioned this to my

dissertation adviser, she led me to an obscure Bette Davis biography, and off I went.

The result is this dissertation.

It could be argued that my students had been “coerced” into seeing a lesbian

subtext, that our previous discussion had made them look at the film differently. This is

exactly my point. Many of them saw this possibility because the burden of the

“Faulkner” they thought they knew had been lifted. If we had left it at the one day’s

discussion of Sanctuary, I do not think most of my students would have seen further

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Sleep, where the censoring of certain elements from Chandler’s novels was an important

topic of discussion). But with the addition of The Story o f Temple Drake the novel

became a more interesting, even more challenging, work to discuss. Everyone wanted to

go back to it and look at certain passages again. We talked about how Temple and Ruby

in the film did or did not fit with their conceptions of those characters from the novel,

and these discussions inevitably led to more attention to the gender roles, to the concepts

of “masculinity” and “femininity” being enacted on film and in the novel.

The focus of the class shifted mid-quarter. We moved from a fairly standard

adaptation approach (with the addition of some “cultural artifacts”) to an exploration of

how the literary critical profession created the “Faulkner” the students knew (or

“sensed”) coming into the course. What narratives have developed around that name,

and which narratives have yet to be told? Which Faulkners got edited out? What might

the value be of reevaluating the less canonical, popular works, not simply to reverse the

binary and valorize the “low” and devalue the “high,” but to try to understand how they

are inevitably intertwined, how they enrich each other? The students and I began to think

about cultural constructs of gender and sexuality, about the adaptation process beyond

the usual “fidelity” model, about the distinctions we make between high and low culture,

particularly in literature classrooms. The distinctions between “fiction” and “literature”

that they brought with them to class broke down considerably. And on the most

pragmatic of levels, The Story o f Temple Drake helped them make sense of Sanctuary

despite the obvious alterations in plot, character and theme. They got a better “feel” for

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presence of African-Americans in the story became a topic of discussion. Faulkner

began to make more sense to them, to matter culturally, historically, as well as in terms

of literature and American literary history. Sanctuary became a “sexier” novel to read

and analyze. The ending of the novel, which most of the students were ready to dismiss,

now seemed “truer” to them in comparison to the tacked-on courtroom confession and

implied ultimate romance with Stephen Benbow in the film. Without a doubt, when I

teach the novel in tandem with the film, our discussions are richer, fuller, more complex,

than when I teach either text alone.

Lest one fear that this particular instance of one student raising the issue of

homosexuality was anomalous, consider what happens when I teach the Faulkner work

most often anthologized, and arguably the work most often taught at the high school and

college level, “A Rose for Emily” (1930). In my experience, every time I teach this short

story I will have at least one student-usually several-who thinks that Homer Barron is

gay, and that this is the reason Miss Emily kills him. An informal survey of several of my

university colleagues and friends who teach high school English confirms this experience,

as does James Wallace’s article “Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’”:

From the lack of critical commentary on Homer Barron’s sexuality, we might conclude that scholars are ignoring a question often raised and vigorously answered by undergraduates, who can be homophobic or just fascinated with even mild sexual references in literature: Homer Barron, they insist, is homosexual. (105)

The reasons for this assumption vary-I think it goes deeper than homophobia or the

fascination with sex-but the usual suspect is the phrase “Homer himself remarked-he

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he was not a marrying man” (CS 126). What this suggests is that because most students

do not understand what “he liked men” would probably suggest to Faulkner’s 1930s

readers, or what not being a “marrying man” means within the context of 1920s and

1930s Southern culture, they immediately associate Homer with homosexuality, and try

to make sense of the story using that framework.

Hal Blythe argues that “The dramatic irony of having the swain a homosexual

undercuts the Southern chivalric ideal and offers a logical motive for one of the most

intriguing murders in literature” (SO). I do not initially find the idea of Homer as a gay

character particularly compelling, and feel it raises more questions than answers. Does

the undermining of the Southern chivalric ideal need this Northern outsider to be gay?

Does the narrator understand the implications of his description of Homer, or is this a

case of dramatic irony? And if our “town voice” narrator knows this about Homer, how

might this knowledge possibly undermine other themes Faulkner might be working with?

But I make it clear in my classes that Homer’s homosexuality is of course a possibility. I

have found that it is valuable to sketch in the possible influences on Faulkner (but usually

after we read “A Rose for Emily”). Not just the literary ones (Conrad, Dostoevsky,

Joyce, Woolf, Wilde) or his writer friends and associates (Sherwood Anderson, Dashiell

Hammett), but also that clique of Southern gay men he was so familiar with-Stark

Young, Lyle Saxon, William Spratling and Ben Wasson among them. But the question I

then end up asking of them is, “Does that reading make the story more, or less,

interesting? And if the latter, why do you think Faulkner would want to do it that way?”

262

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Homer-is-gay interpretation ends up, I think, relying on too rigid a definition of

homosexuality, as well as that of the courtship ritual. But I now find myself questioning

my initial reactions to such suggestions from my students, and feel that if I were to trace

the creation of “A Rose for Emily” the same way I did “Turnabout,” I might just be

surprised by what I find.

Opening up Faulkner to queer readings raises, of course, the new possibilities I

have suggested about Sanctuary. In a novel where there is so much anxiety about the

female body, the reintegration of the transgressive female back into the (comforting)

patriarchal Law of the Father, and gender slippage, I do find the possibility of

lesbian/bisexual dynamics intriguing. Thinking about the relationship between Ruby and

Temple in this light raises interesting questions about class-how might the lower-class

“invert” be represented differently from the society invert? In what ways do these

women both “mount a radical attack on middle-class southern . . . ‘morality’” (Roberts

132). In their shared experiences of male domination and violence, a space is opened up,

I would think, for considering the possibilities that have been raised by The Story o f

Temple Drake. The novel is about sexual violence, boundaries crossed, definitions

blurred, sexual polarities denied. What my students concluded, and I tend to agree with

them, is that neither the novel nor the film ultimately presents a fully-realized lesbian

character in either Ruby or Temple. But the shadow of alternative sexualities remains,

and an inherent critique of “normalized” sexual relations is surely a plausible reading of

the novel.

263

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. My students became convinced that The Story o f Temple Drake was not, due to

Hollywood conventions, the Hays Office, and the intended audience, able to present such

a critique. And why would it want to? But they certainly believed that the film intended

to titillate, to evoke the lesbian eroticism while simultaneously disavowing the possibility,

and to cash in on the reputation of Miriam Hopkins in the advertising and publicity. The

film also clearly made use of the novel’s “perverse” reputation, and surely with regard to

more than just Temple’s corncob rape. The students began to take more seriously the

concept of reception and the importance of cultural context in making these seemingly

dry and arid texts come alive.

Did my humble eleven-week course single-handedly make Faulkner relevant for

my students? Of course not. Several students still hated Faulkner at the end of the

quarter, found even Sanctuary and “Bam Burning” too difficult and unnecessarily

convoluted. But for the majority of my class, and particularly for several of the openly

and closeted gay students, their new understanding of the many Faulkners, literary and

Hollywood, was a revelation. And it was a revelation to me as well. Because we had

lessened the burden of having to approach Faulkner only as literary icon and great

American Modernist, my students felt more comfortable trying to make Faulkner more

relevant to their own lives. I do not think I would have ever embarked on this project

had I not been teaching Faulkner and Film, and if I had not been forced to look in an

entirely different way at a text that was very, even too, “familiar” to me.

In the updated preface (from 1981) to his 1968 book on Howard Hawks, Robin

Wood nicely encapsulates the ideas I have been formulating and expressing throughout

264

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this dissertation. Wood, after a period in which he was exposed to new critical

discourses, political movements, as well as his own personal sexual awakening (coming

out publicly as gay), discovered a new Hawks, and a new understanding of authorship:

I now see Hawks’s films from a different perspective (in which Gay Liberation and Feminism have major roles); accordingly, the films change, reveal new aspects, new implications, new uses. This is not, I think, to distort the films, to twist them to particular ends. In a sense, any interpretation distorts, since no reading can escape particular personal/cultural emphasis. But semiology has confirmed what the more intelligent traditional criticism has always observed: that a given work of art, or given artist, does not have a single, finite meaning that can be fixed for all time, but is the point of intersection of a multiplicity of interacting codes, hence capable of surrendering a range of meanings, the choice of which will be determined by the requirements of the situation within which the work or artist is perceived. (174)

Like Wood, I find myself at the end of a process that has made me deeply appreciative of

both the power of the critical tools and cultural information at my disposal and of the

slippery, transformative nature of the texts I have been using them to examine. The

Faulkner I have discovered at the end of this critical and pedagogical journey is more

problematic, complicated, compelling, and vital than the Faulkner I once somewhat

blindly revered, and I hope to continue to “interfere” with him and his works for years to

come. It is this “stranger,” more nuanced Faulkner that I hope we can introduce our

students to, one with an appeal to Modernist sensibilities and popular culture tastes, and

one who complicates the distinctions between the two. It is time for a revival-not just of

Faulkner’s movies, but of Faulkner’s various reputations as well.

265

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