Hail the Woman (1921) User Reviews

Impressive, pro-feminist drama

[naillon-2 · 8/10 · 5 April 2008]

Vidor shines as Judith, the only truly strong and compassionate member of a strictly patriarchal family. Her brother, David, is so downtrodden by their father that it's a surprise he's able even to tie his shoes, rather than asking Dad to do it for him.

Other reviewers have already outlined the plot, so I won't rehash it; I will, however, point out that Nan, who is pregnant by David, is also married to him. This is not an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which would have been horrific by 1921 standards. The two are secretly married, but Nan's father, having been paid by David's father, tears up their marriage certificate.

Nan's death scene, with Judith in attendance, is a truly heart-rending experience, and highly charged with emotion. This scene alone is worth watching the movie for, but there's far more to the plot than that; why on earth aren't modern movies made with the same attention to the story?

Classic "wronged woman" melodrama with strong feminist attitudes.

[MAK-4 · 7/10 · 5 September 1998]

Florence Vidor stars as the daughter of a strict bible toting father who throws her out of the house when gossip taints her name. In the big city, she finds the dying wife of her own brother (the two had secretly married) and raises their child on her own. Years later, she goes back home to confront her family.

This old melodrama is heavily larded with fascinating feminist themes (circa 1921, but sounding remarkably modern). Some of it is laid on with a trowel (as the father, Theodore Roberts gives his eyebrows a real workout), but it's well put together dramatically and lovingly composed and shot by cinematographer Henry Sharp.

A Woman's Sufferage

[lugonian · 8/10 · 19 May 2007]

HAIL THE WOMAN (Associate Producers, 1921), directed by John Griffith Wray, is one of few films produced during the silent era to be ahead of its time, considering its then daring subject mater about a pregnant woman believed to be unmarried, and the theme centering upon equality for women.

Following a brief prologue set in the Plymouth colony of 1621, the story moves forward to present-day New Hampshire where it involves two young women of different backgrounds: Nan Higgins (Madge Bellamy), a "lower class" girl, becomes ostracized when town gossip reveals her as pregnant and unmarried. Judith Beresford (Florence Vidor), daughter of a well-to-do farmer, disapproves of her father's (Theodore Roberts) way of thinking, that "a woman's place is in the home." David (Lloyd Hughes), her brother and family heir, returns home from school in the big city. As he is greeted by his father at the train station, Nan remains in the background, unable to greet David, the father of her unborn child. When Jake Higgins (Tully Marshall), better known as "The Odd Jobs Man," learns of his daughter's pregnancy and David being the father, he rushes her over to the Beresford home to break the news, demanding David and Nan be married immediately. Beresford refuses, claiming this news would ruin his son's future in the ministry. To keep matters quiet, Beresford offers Higgins money, and orders David never see Nan again. After Judith hears of this, she tells her father, "What if it had been ME!" Meanwhile, back home, Jake, who is about to punish Nan with a whipping, reveals the secret that she and David are actually married and intended to tell the family following his graduation. After producing the certificate of marriage, Jake tells her it's not valid. He takes away the marriage license and orders her out of the house. Alone and with no place to go, Nan leaves town. As for Judith, she becomes another victim of vicious gossip when Joe Hurd (Vernon Dent) notices her alone in a cabin with Wyndham Gray (Edward Martindel). When her father learns of this, he confronts Judith, who asks, "Are you going to forgive me as you forgave David?" Beresford orders Judith to pack up and never to return, which she does. The paths of Judith and Nan are brought together as they are both living in the same New York City tenement, unaware of each other's existence, until one cold evening when Judith overhears someone crying in an apartment down the hall. She enters to find Nan spending Christmas alone, with her only companion being her newborn son. As Judith comforts Nan, she finds her to be gravely ill. Before Nan dies, Judith promises she'll look after her baby. Two years later, Judith returns home to find her father has disowned her. Upset over his double standard that women should be punished for their sexual acts and not the men, she decides to take drastic steps by fighting for women's rights. How this will be accomplished remains to be seen. Hail the woman!

In synopsis form, HAIL THE WOMAN may appear trite and melodramatic. In retrospect, even with fragments of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel "The Scarlet Letter" added in, it's better than it actually sounds with more to it as described. With excellent performances by all, it's Madge Bellamy as the tragic figure whose restless soul becomes earthbound who gives one of the most sensitive performances ever enacted on screen. Vidor is equally compelling as the stronger character destined to accomplish her goal in life against all odds.

Released during the woman's suffrage movement, HAIL THE WOMAN is surprisingly timely. A movie like this might have served as a possible remake in the 1930s with Katharine Hepburn and Anne Shirley, for example, enacting the roles originated by Vidor and Bellamy. One reason HAIL THE WOMAN is virtually forgotten in cinema history is because for decades no prints were known to exist. Fortunately a print was discovered in Czechoslovakia, restored and served as the second film premiering July 1, 1978 on "Lost and Found," an eight-week public television series that aired during the summer months in 1978 on WNET, Channel 13, in New York City, with Richard Schickel as host. As the movie begins, it's preface reads as follows: "HAIL THE WOMAN has been restored by the Department of Film of the Museum of Modern Art from the materials acquired by the Czechoslovakian Film Archive, American Film Archive, Motion Picture Section of the Library of Promance with the cooperation of Miss Nancy Ince Probert." After the film's conclusion, Schickel and guest host, Eileen Bowser, film historian of New York's Museum of Modern Art, discuss HAIL THE WOMAN and other lost movies using the same subject matter, including MAN, WOMAN, MARRIAGE and MISS LULU BETT (both 1921). Schickel then comments on Thomas H. Ince, presenter of HAIL THE WOMAN, to be one of the Hollywood's greatest lost figures, who died mysteriously in 1924.

HAIL THE WOMAN, accompanied with piano score, with the running time of 78 minutes, is by far the best movie presented in the "Lost and Found" series. While it may never become relatively as well known as other blockbusters of the silent era, let's hope that if or when HAIL THE WOMAN is revived, whether it be on DVD or cable television, that it'll become a sort-after classic it deserves to be. (***)

Impressive drama deals bravely with unpopular subject matter.

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 9/10 · 24 March 2007]

I'm impressed that 'Hail the Woman' was made at all; released just one year after American women got the vote, this turgid drama makes an earnest plea against the sexual double standard which judges women's sexual behaviour more harshly than men's.

SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD. A prologue, set in the Plymouth colony in 1621, shows a Pilgrim girl sentenced to the ducking stool for flirting with a boy; the boy is not penalised. Now we come to Flint Hill, New Hampshire in the present (1921). Oliver Beresford (Theodore Roberts) is a bombastic bible-thumper: what we call in Britain and Australia 'a God-botherer'. Beresford is determined that his son David (Lloyd Hughes) become a preacher, regardless of how David feels about it. As for Beresford's daughter Judith ... well, Beresford is confident that women aren't important enough to be anything more than wives and mothers. Apparently, God told him this personally.

David's evangelical career is compromised when he impregnates Nan Higgins, the stepdaughter of the local odd-jobs man. (Tully Marshall's character is identified in the credits solely as the 'Odd Jobs Man', but a close-up of a cheque reveals his name to be Jake Higgins. The prejudices of 1921 require that he be merely Nan's stepfather, not her biological parent.) To save his son from scandal, Beresford buys off Nan's stepfather with a cheque. Nan goes off to the big city, to melt into oblivion as one more unwed mother.

Judith is naturally dismayed by the limitations imposed upon her by her gender. (Or rather, by other people's perceptions of it.) She meets Wyndham Gray (excellent performance by Edward Martindel), an author who encourages her to transcend sexist stereotypes. But Judith is informally engaged to local lout Joe Hurd, who won't put up with such nonsense. Hurd is played by Vernon Dent, a burly performer now remembered solely for comedy roles (as a second banana to Harry Langdon, and as a villain in Three Stooges movies). He gives an excellent performance here, in a role outside his usual range. Sadly, in real life Dent spent his final years in poverty and total blindness due to diabetic retinopathy.

Eventually, Judith ends up working at an orphanage. This being 1921, I expected the orphanage to be whites-only, so I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to include one Chinese boy. (And unpleasantly surprised when he's used as the butt for a racial joke.) The movie makes one odd error here. In a Christmas sequence, we see the orphanage mistress reciting 'A Visit from Saint Nicholas' ... but (in a dialogue title) she credits Santa Claus with SIX reindeer rather than eight. This is followed by a brief animation sequence, showing Santa with six reindeer hitched to his sleigh. I assume that the animators (either by accident, or to save money) left out two reindeer, and the title card revised the poem to match the error.

Lloyd Hughes was generally a bland and unimpressive actor. His most famous performance is his role in 'The Lost World', where he's easily upstaged by a rampaging brontosaurus. For his climactic scene in 'Hail the Woman', Hughes gives a memorable performance as he finally rebels against his father's tyranny. In his performance as the gospel-shouting father, Theodore Roberts has been accused of overacting to the point of making his role a caricature. I disagree: sadly, decades after this film was made, I continue to encounter 'holy' fools exactly like this man ... willing to destroy the lives of everyone around them, and firmly convinced they have God's authority to do so.

In the central role of Judith Beresford, Florence Vidor gives a sensitive, realistic and intelligent performance. I normally dislike Vidor, who tended to be cast in glamour roles but wasn't pretty enough to justify them. Here, her character's physical appearance is less relevant than usual.

This entire film is impressively directed by John Griffith Wray, a director who deserves to be much better known. Sadly, Wray died at the onset of the talkies era, in his mid-thirties: had he lived another ten years, he would surely have helmed several early sound classics. In 'Hail the Woman' there are several extremely beautiful screen compositions: I was especially impressed by a scene in the New England forest, when Vidor and Dent have a quarrel in front of an enormous uprooted tree. (I wonder where this was actually filmed.) 'Hail the Woman' deals with unpleasant subject matter, but it deserves to be much better known, and I'll rate this ambitious drama 9 out of 10.

A Spiritual Masterpiece

[overseer-3 · 10/10 · 6 November 2003]

"Hail The Woman" is one of the most moving films I have ever seen in my entire life. I watched it twice in a row and sobbed my eyes out.

This silent film masterpiece deserves a much wider viewing audience; unfortunately the sole surviving print is so badly scratched that most people won't watch it all the way through, and they will miss the gem shining underneath the rough. This film could use a digital restoration, to help bring out its beauty, but I doubt it will get it from anyone, since its main theme is Spiritual restoration before Christ of the family unit, and this is not politically correct these days. However it remains a powerful theme for those whose hearts are hurting from the pain of broken family relationships.

The cast is magnificent, especially Florence Vidor, who literally glows as Judith, the daughter; ethereal Madge Bellamy as Nan, the poor girl who gets pregnant and is cast aside; Theodore Roberts as the crotchety old domineering father who destroys everyone around him through pride; and handsome Lloyd Hughes, as the son David, afraid of his father, but really of life itself.

This is a nice film to watch at Christmas, especially. You will not regret being patient and viewing it in its entirety despite its deterioration.

The spirit of Christ is a loving one not a judgmental one...

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 15 August 2017]

...seems to be the lesson of this film from almost a century ago. However, there were several themes woven into the script besides this including the virtues of the emancipation of women.

The film involves a family (the Berefords) descended from the Puritans whose joyless father rules the roost with an iron fist so absolutely that his wife has become a frightened shadow of her original self, the son, David, is bullied into becoming a minister just to keep dad happy, and the daughter, Judith, is forced to drop out of high school because dad figures she is going to get married anyways and that more education will just make her a bad wife. And besides, dad has picked out a husband for her anyways, self-righteous buffoon Joe Herd (Vernon Dent), who looks like he has it in him to be every bit the bully Judith's dad is and then some. If you don't remember Vernon Dent, he is probably best known as the exasperated straight man for the Three Stooges in the Columbia shorts that they made.

But all is not as it seems. David has secretly married the town handyman's daughter, Nan. Judith visits the home of an author who shows Judith that woman is on the verge of emancipation in the U.S. and that many doors are open to her. When Joe catches her at the author's house he believes the worst, quickly runs to her dad, and dad has her ejected from their home for being alone with a man and smoking! Oh the horror!. She willingly goes. Meanwhile, though Nan and David had wanted to keep their marriage secret, Nan becomes pregnant, her stepdad finds out, and David's dad pays off the stepdad to send Nan away. David's dad assumes the worst, figures the girl is "a wanton", and David does not dare tell dad about the marriage. Don't get the wrong idea about David. He badly wants to do the right thing, but he is a coward.

In the meantime, years pass, Judith becomes a successful fashion designer, but even when she was just a poor shop girl she'd skip lunches to buy presents for the orphans at "Settlement House". She also runs into Nan in the city, by chance, as she is dying of malnutrition and neglect, and Nan entrusts her baby by David to her, the child's aunt. Judith and a wealthy fellow who doubles for Santa at the orphanage fall in love, and it looks like Judith's happy path will never cross the path of the dysfunctional family she left behind. Well life is what happens when you're making plans. I'll let you see if and how this all works out.

It has some tried and true melodramatic moments in it, but it is an original too. Like I said, I don't think I've ever seen female emancipation and a message on the true spirit of Christ worked into the same film in quite this way before.

Best line: Before Judith leaves home she runs into the author and asks him "What has God got against women?". The author's response: "Maybe it is because they filled the earth with men!". Priceless.

The Suffering and Suppression of Women Under Patriarchy

[briantaves · 30 October 2011]

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.

Melodrama for Change

[Maliejandra · 8/10 · 30 August 2017]

Oliver Beresford (Theodore Roberts) is a fanatical Christian, a man who judges exponentially more than he forgives and wields his power as head of the household over his meek family. Judith (Florence Vidor) is powerless to carve out her own life because she is a woman, and her brother David (Lloyd Hughes) is too afraid to speak up, although he does secretly act out. His rendezvous with his sweetheart (Madge Bellamy) ends poorly, especially for her.

Although Bellamy has always impressed me because of her outstanding beauty, I never thought of her as much of an actress until I saw this film. Vidor carries the film nicely, a good girl to the core.

The films artistry is evident in the beautiful outdoor scenes and the intricate title cards, especially those outlining the Christmas Eve scenes.

This is melodrama at its finest, the kind that uses hotbed topics to conjure ire, heroes and villains. It focuses heavily on inequality for woman at a time when women were rallying for votes and emancipation.

I saw this film screened at Capitolfest in 2017. It riled the crowd's emotions and provoked spontaneous clapping during a few scenes.