Society for Cinema & Media Studies Masculinity on the Front: John Huston's "The Red Badge of Courage" (1951) Revisited Author(s): Guerric DeBona Source: Cinema Journal, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Winter, 2003), pp. 57-80 Published by: University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566516 Accessed: 09-05-2018 09:34 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566516?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms University of Texas Press, Society for Cinema & Media Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Cinema Journal This content downloaded from 62.18.253.91 on Wed, 09 May 2018 09:34:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Masculinity on the Front: John Huston's The Red Badge of Courage (1951) Revisited by Guerric DeBona John Hustons Red Badge of Courage (1951) is a marvelous example of literary capital under the strain of Cold War politics, the changing face of MGM, and a maverick director. Archival material reproduced and explicated in this essay sug- gests what might have been. John Huston's original version of Stephen Crane's nineteenth-century naturalistic Civil War novella, The Red Badge of Courage, had every chance of becoming one of the finest prestige pictures in the late studio era. A fruitful discussion of the film has already been provided in Lillian Ross's shrewd production history, published in the New Yorker in 1952.1 But a distance of fifty years gives us further insights. In retrospect, the film clearly belongs to one of the more turbulent periods in the history of entertainment; it was made during the Korean War, at the height of the Red Scare, when the old studio system was in deep economic trouble because of the rise of television. Thus, The Red Badge of Courage straddles two important cultural movements, one identified with New Deal politics and the other with Cold War anxiety about the Russian acquisition of the atom bomb, leading to what William Graebner calls "a more sober and conservative male look."2 The former attitude guided Huston's director's cut of Red Badge; the latter informed MGM's revision. Interestingly, the film arrived on a fault line beneath very shaky political ground-indeed, it was literally broken up and reconstructed by the producers. Huston's premier release print-which will be partially reconstructed here from archival script material-exemplifies the liberal, communal attitudes of the thirties and forties, while also offering a strong indictment of war and an ironic treatment of martial heroism. The revised (studio) version displays the conserva- tive politics of the early fifties, it presents the enemy other as fearful, and it uses the literary canon to reinforce patriarchal values. Stephen Crane and Cultural Capital. Jim Cullen has argued that there has long been a connection between American popular culture and the Civil War, which he describes as a very "reusable past."3 Stephen Crane's 1895 novella about a young soldier facing cowardice during the heat of the Battle of Chancellorsville, in May 1863, was undergoing a popular rediscovery by the early 1950s. By the time Huston proposed adapting the book to producer Gottfried Reinhardt in 1950, the novel had attained canonical status in the academy. Guerric DeBona, OSB, is an assistant professor of homiletics at Saint Meinrad Seminary in Indiana. He is currently completing a manuscript on cultural politics and literary adaptation. ? 2003 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819 Cinema Journal 42, No. 2, Winter 2003 57 This content downloaded from 62.18.253.91 on Wed, 09 May 2018 09:34:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms It is well known that canonical fiction like The Red Badge of Courage was long esteemed as literary capital in Hollywood, even as a potential prestige motion pic- ture for MGM, a studio that was attempting to alter its direction under a new administration. "We must sell this picture as an important picture, in the great tradition," Reinhardt said. "Like Mutiny on the Bounty. Like The Good Earth."4 Crane's realism and penetrating interest in the human psychology of a young soldier were also appealing to the liberal Dore Schary, who had made his reputa- tion by writing and producing social problem movies at MGM, then briefly at RKO (as executive vice president in charge of production). Now back at Metro, this time as vice president, Schary had paid Howard Hughes $100,000 for the rights to produce a project he had already begun at RKO. The film, William Wellman's Battleground (1949), was hugely successful for Metro. According to Thomas Schatz, from Schary's point of view, Red Badge was the natural successor to Battleground.5 Certainly, Schary was no longer interested in Louis B. Mayer's dream machine, with its glossy reputation for glamour and stars. And Crane's fic- tional depiction of the psychological events of battle functioned as symbolic capi- tal for a certain American audience who may not have been familiar with Crane but was with the kind of noir realistic style that the novel evoked. Shortly after Red Badge went into production, Mayer was out of the studio, in "retirement" and replaced by Schary. As Huston would later tell Reinhardt, "We combined our efforts not only to reenact the Civil War ... but we unleashed a civil war of our own at MGM. Louis B. Mayer was the first casualty."6 But far from initiating what Schary and others hoped would be a new, liberal trend for Metro, Red Badge proved Mayer correct that there was a deeply conservative mood in the country and the American audience would lack interest in an antiwar version of the Civil War. Schary had not counted on the problem of releasing a potentially allegorical period piece about the northern and southern conflict in America when a civil war was raging in Korea with American troops at the helm. Thus, Schary, as well as Huston and almost everyone else, were crushed at the preview at the Pickwood Theater: When "The Red Badge of Courage" flashed on the screen, there was a gasp from the audience and a scattering of applause. As the showing went along, some of the preview- goers laughed at the right times, and some laughed at the wrong times, and some did not laugh at all. When John Dikes, in the part of the Tall Soldier, and Royal Dano, in the part of the Tattered Man, played their death scenes, which had been much admired before, some people laughed and some murmured in horror.7 Bowing to economic interests and conservative cultural tastes, Schary swiftly set about making changes. The film was recut then released while Huston was in Africa shooting The African Queen (1951). The original footage has been lost for- ever.8 Along with the removal of key scenes (such as the death of the Tattered Man and the second battle scene), Schary and MGM made significant modifications, including adding a voice-over narration that not only contained portions of the novel but that also introduced Stephen Crane as an omniscient author with mythic, masculine superiority. According to the new framing narration, the publication of 58 Cinema Journal 42, No. 2, Winter 2003 This content downloaded from 62.18.253.91 on Wed, 09 May 2018 09:34:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms the novel The Red Badge of Courage "made [Crane] a man." The story we see on the screen is of a conventional initiation into manhood, guaranteed by the canoni- cal author himself. By contrast, Huston had imagined the picture would be the story of the human subject in crisis. Only sixty-nine minutes of Huston's original film have survived from its origi- nal length (approximately two hours and fifteen minutes). And when the movie was finally released with all its changes in the summer of 1951, it vanished in a matter of weeks. In the context of the 1950s, Huston was a better match to adapt Stephen Crane's novel than he was to conform to MGM's changing politics. Major John Huston had experience both editing and writing cinema verite-style films for the War Department, whose focus, like that of Crane's young Henry Fleming, was the mental plight of soldiers. According to Lillian Ross, "Huston, like Stephen Crane, wanted to show something of the emotions of men in war, and the ironically thin line between cowardice and heroism."9 The world Crane shares with Huston and American culture was a noirish one in which "dread and fascination are to a considerable degree shared by the narra- tor and reader."'0 Thus, Huston and Crane formed an important relationship in postwar America, precisely because they were able to explore the gritty realistic conditions behind human psychology and what produced them. Trained as a journalist, Crane had written The Red Badge of Courage thirty years after the Civil War and three years before the Spanish-American War, dur- ing the height of the militarization of the 1890s.