Friendly Persuasion (film)

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Friendly Persuasion

Poster
Directed by William Wyler
Produced by Robert Wyler
William Wyler
Screenplay by Michael Wilson
Based on The Friendly Persuasion 
by Jessamyn West
Starring Gary Cooper
Dorothy McGuire
Anthony Perkins
Richard Eyer
Robert Middleton
Phyllis Love
Peter Mark Richman
Marjorie Main
John Smith
Music by Dimitri Tiomkin
Editing by Robert Belcher
Edward A. Biery
Robert Swink
Studio Allied Artists Pictures Corporation
Distributed by Allied Artists (USA)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (foreign)
Release dates
  • November 25, 1956 (1956-11-25)
Running time 137 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $3 million[1][2]
Box office $8 million (as of 1960)[3]

Friendly Persuasion is a 1956 Civil War film starring Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins, Richard Eyer, Robert Middleton and Phyllis Love. The screenplay was adapted by Michael Wilson from the 1945 novel The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West, and was directed by William Wyler. The film tells the story of a pacifist Quaker family in southern Indiana during the American Civil War. The father of the family is gradually converted to supporting the war.

The film was originally released with no screenwriting credit[1] because Wilson was on the Hollywood blacklist. His credit was restored in 1996.

Plot

Jess Birdwell (Gary Cooper) is a farmer and patriarch of the Birdwell family whose worldliness is forever coming in conflict with his being a Quaker. Jess's wife Eliza (Dorothy McGuire) is a deeply religious woman and is steadfast in her refusal to engage in violence of any sort. Jess's daughter Mattie (Phyllis Love) wants to remain a Quaker but has fallen in love with dashing cavalry officer Gard Jordan (Peter Mark Richman), a love that is against her mother's wishes. Jess's youngest child "Little" Jess (Richard Eyer) is a feisty child whose comical feud with his mother's pet goose causes her nothing but heartache. Jess's elder son Josh (Anthony Perkins) is a young man torn between his hatred of violence and a conviction that to protect his family he must join the home guard and fight the invaders.

We are introduced to the family via its youngest member, "Little" Jess, who is forever at war with his mother's pet goose. The story begins as an easygoing and humorous tale of Quakers trying to maintain their faith as they get ready and then go to meeting on First Day (Sunday). The mood shifts dramatically when the meeting is interrupted by a Union officer who asks how the Quaker men can stand by when their houses will be looted and their families terrorized by approaching Confederate troops. He questions various young men specifically, doubting their courage and suggesting that they are hiding behind their religion out of fear. When directly confronted with the question of his being afraid to fight, Josh Birdwell responds honestly that it might be the case. His honesty provokes the wrath of Purdy, a Quaker elder who is quick to condemn people who don't believe as he does.

The film returns to its lighter tone as the Quakers try to maintain their ways, but one is always reminded throughout that the Confederate Army is drawing closer every day. When the Confederate raiders finally arrive, the situation turns deadly serious. Jess is cultivating his fields when he notices an immense cloud of smoke on the horizon, the kind that can only be produced by the burning of buildings. Josh soon arrives and tells them the neighboring community has been reduced to a land of ash and corpses. Josh believes that he must fight, a conviction that threatens to destroy the family. Eliza tells him that by turning his back to their religion he's turning his back on her, but Jess sees things a different way, explaining to her: "A man's life ain't worth a hill of beans except he lives up to his own conscience." Josh finds himself on the front line of the battle to stop the advance of the raiders, and ultimately fires his gun and is injured by the Confederates.

When Confederates arrive in town, they loot the farm for food when only Eliza and the younger children are present. The Birdwell's neighbor Sam Jordan (Robert Middleton) is bushwhacked by a "Reb" and Jess struggles with the Confederate soldier and takes away his gun, but ultimately lets him go free and unhurt. Ultimately, each member of the family is compelled to face the question of whether or not it is ever right for a Christian to engage in violence.

Cast

Production

The film was in development for eight years; producer-director Wyler brought the project to Allied Artists from Paramount; Allied agreed to a $1.5 million budget for what was Wyler's first film in color, though after the film's shooting location was moved from southern Indiana to a combination of a Republic studio and a San Fernando Valley estate,[3] it ending up costing over $3 million.[1] The film went over budget to the point that Allied sold the foreign distribution rights to MGM to raise more funds.[4]

Jessamyn West spent a year with the production as both story writer and as technical adviser (credited). Her novel covered a forty year span of the Birdwell family history and was essentially plotless, so to make the movie effective, she arranged the sequences selected for filming around the Civil War vignette from the novel (altering it significantly for dramatic action) and compressed the whole into a single year, 1862, using the war as the central plot conflict. She created new characters (primarily the Jordans) to fill in for others that had to be deleted, and entirely wrote out Laban, the second eldest son of the novel, substituting a new character, Josh's friend Caleb Cope (John Smith), as a surrogate.

Cooper expressed initial reservations to West about his character, noting that since in his previous roles "'action seems to come natural to me,' the father should be shown joining the fight. 'There comes a time in a picture of mine when the people watching expect me to do something,' he said. West responded he would do something: 'Refrain. You will furnish your public with the refreshing picture of a strong man refraining.'"[3] Cooper followed West's advice. Cooper had not wanted to play the father of grown-up children, although he was 55 in real life. He hated the finished film and his own performance.

Dorothy McGuire was cast as Cooper's wife after Wyler's choice, Katharine Hepburn, declined.[5] It was Perkins' second film, after his debut in the 1953 film The Actress; his Broadway success with Tea and Sympathy in the meantime tempted him to remain on the stage, though ultimately he decided to do the film.[3]

Reception

According to Bosley Crowther, "thee [sic] should be pleasured by this film", noting it is "loaded with sweetness and warmth and as much cracker-barrel Americana as has been spread on the screen in some time." Crowther called Cooper and McGuire "wonderfully spirited and compassionate in their finely complementary roles" and said a "great deal of admiration must go to Anthony Perkins" for making "the older son of the Birdwells a handsome, intense, and chivalrous lad."[6] Variety magazine called it "the simple story of a Quaker family in Indiana back in the 1860s" with "just about everything in the way of comedy and drama, suspense and action"; they also said "figuring importantly in the way the picture plays is Dimitri Tiomkin's conducting of his own score."[1]

The film earned $4 million at the North American box office in 1956.[7]

MGM distributed outside the US and Canada. According to their records the film made $732,000, earning the studio a profit of $582,000.[8]

The movie also received mild criticism for certain inaccurate portrayals of Quaker views, such as a misunderstanding that although Quakers disliked programmed music they did value individual original expressions of music, and in meetings, Bible passages are not read verbatim but speakers recite scripture from memory and express its meaning in their own words.[9] Also, the original screenplay by Michael Wilson was changed significantly in the wake of McCarthyism (and he had taken some liberties himself with the book by Jessamyn West) (see discussion below).

Connection with House Un-American Activities Committee testimony

The movie script was discussed in 1951 by Michael Wilson in his testimony as an "unfriendly witness" at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and by director Frank Capra, who was seeking to dissociate himself from Wilson, who was ultimately placed on the Hollywood blacklist.

Capra, who had originally contracted Wilson to write the screenplay just after the war but then dropped the project, said that although he thought Wilson did "a swell job" adapting West's book, the movie was not produced because he felt "it would be a bad time to produce a picture that might be construed as being antiwar. But we let Wilson work on it until he had finished with it."[10]

Wilson told HUAC in 1951, "I feel that this committee might take the credit, or part of it at least, for the fact that The Friendly Persuasion was not produced, in view of the fact that it dealt warmly, in my opinion, with a peace-loving people."[10]

"What happened to Wilson's pacifist script after Capra dropped it," notes film historian Joseph McBride, "reflected the political climate of the Cold War. When William Wyler directed the film for Allied Artists in 1956 as Friendly Persuasion, he had the story changed to make the Quaker youth (played by Anthony Perkins) become a killer. The Quakers in Wyler's version, as Pauline Kael observed, 'are there only to violate their convictions.' But some of the strength of Wilson's conception remains, as in a scene of a crippled Union Army officer respectfully challenging the steadfast Quakers about pacifism in their meeting house."[11]

Reagan Gift of Movie to Gorbachev

Friendly Persuasion also became a footnote to world history in the 1980's when United States President Ronald Reagan made a gift of the film to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev at one of their five summit meetings, suggesting that he view the film as symbolic of the need to find an alternative to war as a means of resolving differences between peoples. One Quaker commentator stated: "Friendly Persuasion seems to me to come about as close to truth and fairness as I expect to see Hollywood get in a treatment of Quakerism; I recommend it to every Quaker parent, as projecting images their children ought to see and imitate...I believe (critics have) woefully misjudged the film, on several counts: its place in American cinema, the characters and their roles, its historicity, and, not least, its value as an expression of the Peace Testimony. Here, for perhaps the only time, I think Ronald Reagan was closer to the truth when he commended the film to Gorbachev because it 'shows not the tragedy of war, but the problems of pacifism, the nobility of patriotism as well as the love of peace.'"[12]

Awards

Only a week before the year's Oscar nominations were announced, the AMPAS Board of Governors introduced a rule denying an Oscar to anyone who refused to talk to a United States congressional committee; after the Writers Guild of America protested the new rule to no avail, they gave Wilson a Writers Guild of America Award for "Best Written American Drama."[3]

At the 29th Academy Awards, Friendly Persuasion was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Anthony Perkins), Best Music – Song (Dimitri Tiomkin and Paul Francis Webster for "Friendly Persuasion (Thee I Love)"), Best Writing – Screenplay (Adapted) (unnamed),[1] and Best Sound Recording (Gordon R. Glennan and Gordon E. Sawyer).[13] Wilson's name could not appear on the Oscar ballot because he was blacklisted.[14] Wyler also had wanted his brother Robert and West to receive credit for rewriting the script, also including Wilson, but the WGA ruled Michael Wilson deserved sole credit for his screenplay.

It was among the "Top Ten Films" at that year's National Board of Review Awards, where Dorothy McGuire was also awarded "Best Actress." The film won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.[15]

Other adaptations

Another adaptation of the novel was made for television in 1975, starring Richard Kiley, Shirley Knight, Clifton James and Michael O'Keefe. It was adapted by William P. Wood and directed by Joseph Sargent. This version also included material from Jessamyn West's sequel novel, Except For Thee and Me.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "Friendly Persuasion". Variety. 1956. Retrieved 2011-10-06. 
  2. ↑ Ballio, Tino (1987). United Artists: the company that changed the film industry, page 164. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin. ISBN 0-299-11440-6. Retrieved April 21, 2011.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Nixon, Rob. "Friendly Persuasion (1956)". 150th Anniversary of the Civil War. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2011-10-06. 
  4. ↑ Mirisch, pp. 80-81
  5. ↑ Mirisch, p. 80
  6. ↑ Crowther, Bosley (November 2, 1956). "Friendly Persuasion". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-10-06. 
  7. ↑ 'The Top Box-Office Hits of 1956', Variety Weekly, January 2, 1957
  8. ↑ The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study .
  9. ↑ Miller, Richard B. (August 22, 2005). "Quakers/Friendly Persuasion". AllExperts. Retrieved 9 February 2013. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 McBride, Joseph (February 2002). ""A Very Good American" The undaunted artistry of blacklisted screenwriter Michael Wilson". Written By Joseph McBride. Retrieved 9 February 2013. 
  11. ↑ McBride, Joseph (February 2002). ""A Very Good American" The undaunted artistry of blacklisted screenwriter Michael Wilson". Written By Joseph McBride. Retrieved 9 February 2013. 
  12. ↑ Fager, Chuck (1991). "Filming the Reputation of Truth: Quakers in the Movies". A Friendly Letter. Retrieved 10 February 2013. 
  13. ↑ "The 29th Academy Awards (1957) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-08-21. 
  14. ↑ Heldenfels, Rich (2012-05-31). "Mailbag: Screenwriting saga, Dexter’s return, McCarthys mixed". Akron Beacon-Journal. Retrieved 2012-06-01. 
  15. ↑ "Festival de Cannes: Friendly Persuasion". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-02-08. 

Further reading

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Films directed by William Wyler
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