Hail the Woman opens with a lengthy introduction which sets the mood as well as evoking the sentiment of its time.
"It is difficult to understand Man. He loudly proclaims Woman as the most precious of all his gifts from God and yet he busily continues to abuse her.
"Cruelty, injustice, persecution—all these have ever been Woman's lot from the hands of Man. Still she continues to love him with a love which is incapable of understanding.
"This is truly a miracle but Man expects miracles from Woman because he knows there is something of the Divine."
A prelude in Plymouth in 1621 showed how a woman's innocent, natural flirting on the Sabbath could be punished with a dunking by the dour Puritans. Three hundred years later, the tradition lives on in a chauvinistic, Puritanical New England farmer. Oliver Beresford (Theodore Roberts) lives by the creed, "Men and their sons first." His wife "believes whatever her husband tells her to believe." Daughter Judith (Florence Vidor) was withdrawn from high school after her second year to help her mother with the house "and to patiently await 'woman's highest honor--someone willing to marry her.'" Women, Oliver believes, were made to bear children. His son, David (Lloyd Hughes), studies for the ministry at his father's command despite his own wishes.
When David returns home, Nan, the step-daughter of the village odd-jobs man (Tully Marshall), is waiting. She is played by Madge Bellamy, who considered this "Athe best part I ever had ...." At his father's command, David all but ignores her. To Oliver, Nan, who lives in a family shack, is unworthy to be seen with his son. When Nan's father discovers she is hiding her pregnancy, he beats her until she reveals that David is the father, and that they were secretly married. They go to Oliver, who will not allow a legitimate marriage, trying to buy Nan off with a $1,000 check—which her father accepts. Oliver believes that Nan represents corruption from which his son must be distanced. Her father burns her marriage certificate and she flees the town to escape his abuse. Judith is dismayed that the pathetically weak David makes no gesture to help his wife until it is too late and she is gone.
Judith is about to undergo a parallel experience, but since she is a member of a different class, the outcome will be the opposite of Nan's fate. Judith meets a poet at the town's summer hotel, and he reads to her a book about the position of women in the world today. A rejected suitor sees Judith alone in the poet's room, listening, and smoking; Oliver accepts the charge that she is a scarlet woman. Expelled from home, she tells her father that only by forgetting him can she bear to live. David is all that remains as the heir to the family name, despite having most fully corrupted it. The woman is always left to shoulder the blame alone.
At Christmas, 18 months later, Judith is poor but working in a settlement house. She meets a dying prostitute—Nan, who has cared for little David alone. Her letter home returned unopened, Judith adopts David, and her own boyfriend and his mother, active in missionary work, are proud of her—unlike the malice Nan experienced from all sides. Two years later Judith is a successful designer. She serves as a bridge between the women of the past, her mother, and the woman of the future, for whom the maternal role is still important, but also has a career.
The little boy is taken into the church, where his father is about to speak before departing for a Far Eastern mission. The son goes up to his father, instantly aware of the kinship. But the father's expression is awkward, initially confused in a succession of quick shots until he finally sees Nan's face in the boy and embraces him. David confesses to the congregation in a series of intertitles.
"She is dead now, and I am as much to blame as though I had killed her. I wonder that even a merciful god does not strike me down as I stand at his altar. The blind cannot lead the blind and I now resign from the Church I have disgraced. But my life's work is before me—to prove to my son that his father can be a man!"
Even Oliver fully accepts his grandson, and Judith leaves the newly constituted family as the superimposed soul of Nan finally finds peace.
Hail the Woman echoes the theme of patriarchal religious hypocrisy from Thomas Ince's 1918 feature, Keys of the Righteous (even the giant Bible used by Oliver), but for audiences the parallels with Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter led to its acceptance as a modern variation on the classic novel. Hail the Woman is also indicative of Ince's commitment to narrative above all, as outlined in my Ince biography. While the movie could easily have been turned into a starring vehicle, instead the performances and characterization strictly serve the needs of the tale.
John Griffith Wray directed the seven reel melodrama from March 31 to May 28, 1921 at a cost of $171,612; in just over two years it grossed $504,925. C. Gardner Sullivan had provided the story and scenario. Their joint importance was evident in the title lobbycard for the movie, which read, "Thomas H. Ince presents His American Drama of Today Hail the Woman by C. Gardner Sullivan," the author's name in only slightly smaller print than that of the producer.
"It is difficult to understand Man. He loudly proclaims Woman as the most precious of all his gifts from God and yet he busily continues to abuse her.
"Cruelty, injustice, persecution—all these have ever been Woman's lot from the hands of Man. Still she continues to love him with a love which is incapable of understanding.
"This is truly a miracle but Man expects miracles from Woman because he knows there is something of the Divine."
A prelude in Plymouth in 1621 showed how a woman's innocent, natural flirting on the Sabbath could be punished with a dunking by the dour Puritans. Three hundred years later, the tradition lives on in a chauvinistic, Puritanical New England farmer. Oliver Beresford (Theodore Roberts) lives by the creed, "Men and their sons first." His wife "believes whatever her husband tells her to believe." Daughter Judith (Florence Vidor) was withdrawn from high school after her second year to help her mother with the house "and to patiently await 'woman's highest honor--someone willing to marry her.'" Women, Oliver believes, were made to bear children. His son, David (Lloyd Hughes), studies for the ministry at his father's command despite his own wishes.
When David returns home, Nan, the step-daughter of the village odd-jobs man (Tully Marshall), is waiting. She is played by Madge Bellamy, who considered this "Athe best part I ever had ...." At his father's command, David all but ignores her. To Oliver, Nan, who lives in a family shack, is unworthy to be seen with his son. When Nan's father discovers she is hiding her pregnancy, he beats her until she reveals that David is the father, and that they were secretly married. They go to Oliver, who will not allow a legitimate marriage, trying to buy Nan off with a $1,000 check—which her father accepts. Oliver believes that Nan represents corruption from which his son must be distanced. Her father burns her marriage certificate and she flees the town to escape his abuse. Judith is dismayed that the pathetically weak David makes no gesture to help his wife until it is too late and she is gone.
Judith is about to undergo a parallel experience, but since she is a member of a different class, the outcome will be the opposite of Nan's fate. Judith meets a poet at the town's summer hotel, and he reads to her a book about the position of women in the world today. A rejected suitor sees Judith alone in the poet's room, listening, and smoking; Oliver accepts the charge that she is a scarlet woman. Expelled from home, she tells her father that only by forgetting him can she bear to live. David is all that remains as the heir to the family name, despite having most fully corrupted it. The woman is always left to shoulder the blame alone.
At Christmas, 18 months later, Judith is poor but working in a settlement house. She meets a dying prostitute—Nan, who has cared for little David alone. Her letter home returned unopened, Judith adopts David, and her own boyfriend and his mother, active in missionary work, are proud of her—unlike the malice Nan experienced from all sides. Two years later Judith is a successful designer. She serves as a bridge between the women of the past, her mother, and the woman of the future, for whom the maternal role is still important, but also has a career.
The little boy is taken into the church, where his father is about to speak before departing for a Far Eastern mission. The son goes up to his father, instantly aware of the kinship. But the father's expression is awkward, initially confused in a succession of quick shots until he finally sees Nan's face in the boy and embraces him. David confesses to the congregation in a series of intertitles.
"She is dead now, and I am as much to blame as though I had killed her. I wonder that even a merciful god does not strike me down as I stand at his altar. The blind cannot lead the blind and I now resign from the Church I have disgraced. But my life's work is before me—to prove to my son that his father can be a man!"
Even Oliver fully accepts his grandson, and Judith leaves the newly constituted family as the superimposed soul of Nan finally finds peace.
Hail the Woman echoes the theme of patriarchal religious hypocrisy from Thomas Ince's 1918 feature, Keys of the Righteous (even the giant Bible used by Oliver), but for audiences the parallels with Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter led to its acceptance as a modern variation on the classic novel. Hail the Woman is also indicative of Ince's commitment to narrative above all, as outlined in my Ince biography. While the movie could easily have been turned into a starring vehicle, instead the performances and characterization strictly serve the needs of the tale.
John Griffith Wray directed the seven reel melodrama from March 31 to May 28, 1921 at a cost of $171,612; in just over two years it grossed $504,925. C. Gardner Sullivan had provided the story and scenario. Their joint importance was evident in the title lobbycard for the movie, which read, "Thomas H. Ince presents His American Drama of Today Hail the Woman by C. Gardner Sullivan," the author's name in only slightly smaller print than that of the producer.