Sadie Thompson

Sadie Thompson (1928)

Sadie could storm any barrack she attacked! Magnetism had never been heard of until she hit town! What a woman! You'll say so, too!

A young, beautiful prostitute named Sadie Thompson arrives on the South Pacific island of Pago Pago looking for honest work and falls for Timothy O'Hara, an American sailor who is unfazed by her unsavory past. However, Mr. Davidson, a missionary who arrived on the island at the same time, aims to "save" Sadie from her sinful life and petitions to have her separated from her beau and deported back to San Francisco.

Date of release
1928-01-07
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (41)
Runtime
1h 37m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
Raoul Walsh

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Rain
  • Filmed in: California
  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 2

Sadie Thompson is a 1928 American silent drama film that tells the story of a "fallen woman" who comes to Pago Pago to start a new life, but encounters a zealous missionary who wants to force her back to her former life in San Francisco. The film stars Gloria Swanson, Lionel Barrymore, and Raoul Walsh, and it is one of Swanson's more successful films. Due to the public's apathy towards silent films, a sound version was prepared in the latter half of 1928. While the sound version has no audible dialog, it features a synchronized musical score with sound effects along with a theme song.

Production

In 1927, Swanson released The Love of Sunya her first independent film for United Artists, which was filmed on her terms in New York City, and it was the opening night film of the Roxy Theatre. The production had been a disaster, and Swanson felt it would receive a mediocre reception at best. On the advice of Joseph Schenck, she relented and returned to Hollywood to prepare for a new picture.

Walsh had been known for bringing controversial material to film. At their first meeting, Swanson suggested a film based on the John Colton and Clemence Randolph play Rain (1923), which in turn was based on the story by W. Somerset Maugham titled "Miss Thompson" (1921). Swanson had seen Jeanne Eagels perform the role on stage twice and enjoyed it.

However, because of its content, the play was on the 'unofficial blacklist' and had quietly been banned from being made into a film a year earlier. To try to avoid issues with the code, Swanson and Walsh decided to leave out profanity, rename 'Reverend Davidson' to 'Mr. Davidson', and claim it was for the sake of morality to produce the picture, as Irving Thalberg had produced The Scarlet Letter (1926) at MGM.

Swanson invited Will Hays for lunch and summarized the plot, naming the author and the sticking points. According to Swanson, Hays made a verbal promise that he would have no problem with the making of such a film. Swanson set about getting the rights to the play by having Schenck pretend to buy it in the name of United Artists, never to be used. Thus they were able to get the story rights for $60,000 instead of the original $100,000.

Swanson and Walsh set about writing the script, and discreetly placed an ad announcing the film, thinking no one noticed, as Charles Lindbergh had just made his historic flight. However, the press picked up on it and sensationalized the story. United Artists received a threatening two-page telegram from the MPAA, signed by all its members including Fox (Walsh's studio) and Hays himself.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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