The Taming of the Shrew (1929)

Film: The Taming of the Shrew (1929)

Stars: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Edwin Maxwell, Joseph Cawthorn, Clyde Cook

Director: Sam Taylor

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Shirley Temple: click here to learn more about Ms. Pickford (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Mary Pickford had it all circa 1927.  She was the biggest actress in Hollywood, had a storybook marriage, and thanks to her founding of United Artists, she was an early star who was actually getting the fruits of her labor, even producing some of her successful films like Sparrows we saw last week, making her a very rich woman.  But sound became her undoing.  Like many of the major stars of the era (including Greta Garbo) the studio waited to see if sound was sticking around as a trend before having Pickford in a sound film, not wanting to risk one of their bigger stars on a fad.  When it did prove permanent, contrary to legend, Pickford's first sound film was a success with both audiences & critics.  We oftentimes use a modern lens when we appraise older movies, and Coquette is (by my estimation) one of the worst movies to ever win Best Actress, both in terms of a performance & in terms of the film's overall quality, but at the time critics liked it & audiences did too.  People have accused her of "buying" the Oscar given her stature in Hollywood (she was a founding member of the Academy) and she did campaign, even inviting people to her palatial estate of Pickfair to see it, but honestly given that the Oscars have long been eager to crown the reigning queen of Hollywood (everyone from Audrey Hepburn to Julia Roberts to Emma Stone), she likely would've won anyway.  It wasn't until her next film, our film today The Taming of the Shrew, that Pickford started to see her career unravel in the Sound Era.

(Spoilers Ahead) Despite coming in at about 60 minutes, The Taming of the Shrew is a relatively faithful adaptation of at least some scenes in the Shakespearean play.  We have Petruchio (Fairbanks) challenged to tame the wild, willful Katherina (Pickford), in part so that Katherina's younger sister Bianca can marry.  Katherina & Petruchio marry, largely against her best judgment, and in the process he begins to (to use modern parlance) "gaslight" her into thinking that he's trying to do what's best for her, in the process thinking he's tamed her, and made her obedient.  In reality, she's in on the ruse, having heard him confess his plans to his dog (yeah, that's an actual scene in the movie), and winks at both the other women and the audience when she gives her speech about women needing to "obey" their husbands.

The movie ignores most of the side characters, including Bianca, keeping them only for tertiary parts, and stays focused on the superstar couple at the center.  This makes sense.  Everyone in American in 1929 would've known who Mary Pickford & Douglas Fairbanks were, as they were the first Hollywood marriage to become a tabloid staple, and this is the only film the two ever made together.  It's interesting to look at Taming of the Shrew against some of the other pictures of the era, partially because it's so grand & its look really stand out.  When comedies & gangster pictures were starting to come en vogue, this feels like a tribute to the biblical epics of Cecil B. DeMille or the gargantuan stories of DW Griffith that had started to fade.

Being out of style feels retro today, but at the time probably just read as tired, as the film was a flop.  It wasn't helped by Pickford & Fairbanks being badly miscast in the movie.  Pickford, after seeing her in multiple films this month, strikes me as a good actress, but a limited one who didn't do well getting out of her lane.  That was true here-she's never believable as Katherina, the headstrong woman, given she plays every scene like a pixie.  The only convincing scene she does is the final one, where she's supposed to be in on a joke with the audience, and the sly wink works.  Fairbanks, though, is truly bad here.  He's never believably of his time (while the side characters all feel more authentic to a Shakespearean stage play, he reads as a loudmouthed movie star), and spends half the film laughing boisterously, which initially comes across as a character trait, but, eventually reads as someone trying to remember his next line.  There's lots of future evidence that people who were lovers in real life simply couldn't translate that chemistry in the film itself...this is proof that's happened since Hollywood's beginning.