Marie Antoinette **** (1938, Norma Shearer, Tyrone Power, John Barrymore, Robert Morley) – Classic Movie Review 9901

Director W S Van Dyke II’s 1938 black and white historical film Marie Antoinette is a lavish, elaborate, years-in-the-making epic from the MGM studio, with Norma Shearer as the French queen Marie Antoinette, who becomes queen of France in her late teens and ends up on the guillotine.

The film was designed to be shot in Technicolor, with all the sets and costumes designed for colour, but at the last minute MGM got cold feet about the huge budget ($2,926,000), and black-and-white cameras rolled instead.

Tyrone Power was borrowed from his studio 20th Century Fox to play her Swedish lover Count Axel de Fersen, but the young Robert Morley easily outclasses him in his credited film debut as the Dauphin, King Louis XVI (in a role once planned for Charles Laughton) and so does John Barrymore as King Louis XV.

Robert Morley and Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (1938).

Morley was Oscar nominated as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, his only ever Oscar smell of success. The film was nominated for four Oscars: Best Actress, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Art Direction (Cedric Gibbons) and Best Music, Original Score (Herbert Stothart), but no wins. Shearer won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival (1938).

Original director Sidney Franklin was replaced by Woody ‘One-Take’ Van Dyke for speed of filming.

It is the last project as head of production at MGM of Irving Thalberg, who died in 1936, and stars his widow, Norma Shearer. MGM’s impressive production under producer Hunt Stromberg produces a wonderfully showy historical pageant, with the painstaking, costly, lavish sets and frocks (gowns by Adrian, costumes by Gile Steele) the main stars.

It is written by Claudine West (screenplay), Donald Ogden Stewart (screenplay), Ernst Vajda (screenplay), Talbot Jennings (dialogue, uncredited) and F Scott Fitzgerald (uncredited), based in part on the book by Stefan Zweig.

The film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles (landscaped for the event) and the Astor Theatre in New York as a reserved seat road show attraction and it then ran 160 minutes, but the current generally available print runs 149 minutes. The extra 11 minutes contained an overture, entr’acte, and exit music, with an intermission. The remnants of the road show presentation are restored on the 2006 Warner Home Video DVD, running just over 157 minutes.

The subject was revisited in Marie Antoinette (2006).

Morley previously appeared as Rich Man (uncredited) in Scrooge (1935).

Shearer’s gown and wig are worn by Lucille Ball in Du Barry Was a Lady (1943) and by Jean Hagen in Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

It is the first time a film crew was allowed to film on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles. MGM’s re-creation of the ballroom at Versailles is twice as large as the original. Location shooting took place at the recently completed Hollywood Park Racetrack in Inglewood, California, with the racetrack’s facade decorated to stand in for the exterior of Versailles.

In another cost-cutting effort, crowd scenes were taken from MGM’s 1935 A Tale of Two Cities.

Also in the cast are Gladys George, Anita Louise, Joseph Schildkraut, Henry Stephenson, Reginald Gardiner, Peter Bull, Albert Dekker, Cora Witherspoon, Barnett Parker, Henry Daniell, Leonard Penn, Alma Kruger, Joseph Calleia, George Meeker, Scotty Becket, Marilyn Knowlden, Robert Barrat, Trevor Bardette, Lane Chandler, Al Bridge, Erville Alderson, Dorothy Christy, Harry Davenport, Cecil Cunningham, Nigel De Brulier, Wade Crosby, Ann Evers, Barry Fitzgerald, Ben Hendricks Jr, Esther Howard, Mary Howard, Ruth Hussey, Olaf Hytten, Frank Jaquet, Claude King, George Kirby, Henry Kolker, Howard Lang, Frank McGlynn Jr, Horace McMahon, John Merton, Helene Millard, Corbet Morris, Leonard Mudie, Moroni Olsen, Rafaela Ottiano, Inez Palange, Herbert Rawlinson, Ivan F Simpson, Phillip Terry, Zeffie Tilbury, Charles Waldron, Walter Walker, Luana Walters, Tudor Williams, Ian Wolfe, George Zucco, Theodore von Eltz and Gustav von Seyffertitz.

Marie Antoinette is directed by W S Van Dyke II, runs 160 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Claudine West (screenplay), Donald Ogden Stewart (screenplay), Ernst Vajda (screenplay), Talbot Jennings (dialogue, uncredited) and F Scott Fitzgerald (uncredited), based in part on the book by Stefan Zweig, is shot in black and white by William H Daniels, George J Folsey (uncredited) and Leonard Smith (uncredited), is produced by Irving Thalberg (uncredited) and Hunt Stromberg, is scored by Herbert Stothart and is designed by Cedric Gibbons.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9901

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