Sir Walter Scott in the Cinema

For many of you, perhaps most, the topic of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) will be deemed the ultimate snooze. There’s nothing for it, he was important. If he has fallen out of favor as a literary figure (what aspiring novelist would study him for style nowadays?) he remains extraordinarily influential to the culture in terms of genre. Not in a literal way, although interest in the kinds of Medieval Romances he specialized in still occasionally re-asserts itself in a minor way, though with nothing like the mania of the 19th and early 20th centuries. But I find his mark transposed to other genres. I see it in the classic Hollywood western, and in fantasy works like The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars,and Game of Thrones.

As a fellow Scot (if not a fellow Scott) I feel duty-bound to at least take an informed interest in his work. In what is surely the uncoolest thing anyone has ever said or done, here I am showing off my 124 year old copy of Rob Roy:

An Edinburgh native, Sir Walter Scott studied for the law, and practiced it in a variety of capacities throughout his life. But from his boyhood, he also loved literature. He was especially inspired by the German authors of his day (Goethe et al), and Gothic Romances. He was a compulsive lover of history and folklore, and channeled that enthusiasm into scores of novels, poetic works, plays, and works of non-fiction. Early in his career he edited editions of Dryden and Swift. Most of his earlier books were written in verse. The most celebrates of these were The Last of the Lay Minstrel (1805), which was set to the same meter as Coleridge’sChristobel, and The Lady of the Lake (1810). Then came his Waverly novels, the best remembered of which are surely Ivanhoe (1819), Rob Roy (1817), and The Bride of Lammemoor (1819), in that order. His non-fiction works include a nine volume biography of Napoleon (1827), numerous book on the history of Scotland, and (probably of the greatest interested to modern readers), Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830).

His monument in Central Park

Scott’s admirers included Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, Hugo, Dumas, Balzac, Flaubert, the Brontes, Robert Louis Stevenson, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and even (with qualifications) Thomas Hardy, and Henry James. A notable detractor of both Scott and James Fenimore Cooper was Mark Twain, who detested the Romantic style in spite of exploring Medieval subject matter (and rather imperfectly, I might add) in works like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, The Prince and the Pauper, and Joan of Arc. Twain laid special blame at the feet of Scott for the Southern cult of chivalry that led ultimately to the Civil War. Twain exaggerated but slightly on this score. Scott’s novels indisputably fanned the fire of imaginative fantasy in the heads of those misguided people, who thought that the universe was laid out in a hierarchy and that “gentlemen” were doing God’s work when they resorted to violence in order to preserve their ancient social codes.

In the 20th century, scholarship and literary art both combined to eclipse a reputation considered unassailable just a few decades before. All historians and biographers must live with the knowledge that it is only a matter of time before new information and new perspectives will make their work obsolete, or at the very least diminished. And there was no way his novels were going to survive the subsequent onslaughts of realism and modernism unscathed.

But there’s always the cinema. It’s stating it baldly to observe that American movies have never been driven by a need to be sophisticated. As a general rule, Romance is evergreen. Scott’s creaky old vehicles are not. However, there have been periods when screen adaptations of his works were in vogue.

The first, quite naturally was the silent era, especially prior to the Jazz Age, the earlier period I have come to think of as “Victorian Cinema”. There were scores of pictures made of his works during that period. J. Stuart Blackton’s Vitagraph made several of them, including The Bride of Lammermoor (1909) Annette Kellerman and Maurice Costello; Kenilworth (1909) with Costello and Florence Turner; and The Lady of the Lake (1911). Herbert Brenon directed a version of Ivanhoe for IMP (Universal) in 1913 with King Baggott. Richard the Lion Hearted (1923) with Wallace Beery was based on Scott’s The Talisman.

The better remembered stretch came in the early 1950s. Robert Taylor starred in Ivanhoe (1952) and Quentin Durward (1955), the former with Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, and Finlay Currie; the latter with Robert Morley and Kay Kendall. In between there were also Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue (1953) with Richard Todd and Glynis Johns; and King Richard and the Crusaders (1954), with Rex Harrison, Virginia Mayo, George Sanders, and Laurence Harvey. There was a lot of this sort of thing at the time. For example, the screen version of Prince Valiant(1954) came out at the same time, and during those same years there was a revival of Robin Hood related pictures. Danny Kaye’s The Court Jester, which parodied the genre, came out in 1956. This was also the age of Classics Illustrated Comics, which I think may have played a modest role in expanding audience interest (among young people anyway) in adaptations of works of literature. Mostly, I chalk it up to the prevalence of color at the time. Biblical and Roman epics were flourishing during these years, too. It was the novelty of seeing all these stories, most of which had already been adapted during cinema’s early years, in the gorgeous feast of screen hues we now take for granted. Nowadays, they seem like pretty dreary spectacles, but for a minute they excited people 70 years ago.

Unsurprisingly, the British have been much more active in adapting Scott for the screen in all the decades since the ’50s, mostly for television. There have been numerous British tv series made of Ivanhoe for example. One of them (1958) starred young Roger Moore, before either The Saint or the Bond movies). The most notable recent Ivanhoe was made in 1982, and starred Anthony Andrews, James Mason, Sam Neill, and Olivia Hussey. Ciaran Hinds starred in another one in 1997.

For more on early film please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.