Anne of Green Gables was a feature film that was produced by RKO Radio Pictures and released on 21 December 1934.
Contents
Overview
Details
Merchandise
Further Reading
Full Credits
Overview
Fifteen years after Realart’s silent film based on Anne of Green Gables was released, RKO Radio Pictures of Hollywood purchased the “talkie” rights to the book from L.C. Page & Co. Again, Montgomery received no royalty for the film and had no input in it, although she was sent a copy of the script (“Is This My Anne” 22). Anne is fourteen at the beginning of the film, and it is she who gives Green Gables its name (Matthew explaining that they call it “just a house”). The first two-thirds are a satisfying adaptation of several key plot points of the original novel, although some crucial elements of the novel are abandoned: as Theodore F. Sheckels remarks, Montgomery’s novel “places the story of an orphan girl in a female-gendered context,” whereas the film “virtually eliminates this context” (183). Anne brags to Diana that she can wrap Gilbert around her little finger and is motivated to confess to losing Marilla’s brooch so that she can go on the hayride and “make Gilbert Blythe eat right out of my hand.”
During the last third of the film, however, the book’s plot is abandoned completely in order to recentre the story entirely on Anne and Gilbert, to the point that Sheckels calls the film “Romeo and Juliet superimposed upon Anne of Green Gables” (185). In order to make Gilbert jealous, Anne tells him that she has been corresponding with one of Mr. Phillips’s former pupils, who has just been awarded a prize for a groundbreaking essay on Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott.” Humiliated as a result, she is in the depths of despair until she plunges down rapids in Matthew’s fishing boat during her fantasy of being Tennyson’s famous character. Gilbert saves her and asks her to “be my girl.” Because Gilbert’s father ran away with the woman Matthew was to marry and because Marilla still holds a grudge over this all these years later, the pair meet in secret for three years until they are found out and separated. They become reunited at the film’s end when Gilbert’s influence saves Matthew’s life. Although she found the resolution “a silly sentimental commonplace end tacked on for the sake of rounding it up as a love story,” Montgomery was mostly satisfied with the film: “On the whole, it was not a bad picture” (Montgomery, 29 November 1934, in Selected Journals, 4: 325).
Nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for the 1937 film Stella Dallas, Anne Shirley retired from acting after the release of her final film, Murder, My Sweet, in 1945. She died of lung cancer in 1993.
Details
Company Credits
Produced by RKO Radio Pictures.
Release Date
21 December 1934
Runtime
79 minutes
Cast
Anne Shirley as Anne, Tom Brown as Gilbert, O.P. Heggie as Matthew, Helen Westley as Marilla, Sara Haden as Mrs. Barry, Murray Kinnell as Mr. Phillips, Gertrude Messinger as Diana, Charley Grapewin as Dr. Tatum, Hilda Vaughn as Mrs. Bluett, and June Preston as the Bluett Little Girl.
Source Material
From the book Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.
Credits
Radio Pictures presents. Produced by Kenneth Macgowan. Screen play by Sam Mintz. Directed by George Nicholls, Jr.
IMDB
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024831/
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Green_Gables_(1934_film)
Merchandise
VHS Release(s)
Anne of Green Gables. Allied Artists Classic Library, n.d.
DVD Release(s)
Anne of Green Gables. Allied Artists Classic Library, n.d.
Further Reading
Dickinson, Peter. “Introduction: Reading Movies.” In “Literatures, Cinemas, Cultures,” edited by Peter Dickinson. Special issue, Essays on Canadian Writing 76 (Spring 2002): 1–45.
The Globe (Toronto). “Film Preview of Noted Novel Honors Canadian Woman Writer.” 13 November 1934, 5.
Also in Scrapbook of Reviews, 394.
Also, with minor variations, as “Author of ‘Anne of Green Gables’ Approves Version,” The Calgary Herald, 14 November 1934, 8.
Also in The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 320–22. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442668560-065.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto). “Actress Took Green Gables Name.” 8 July 1993, C1.
Karr, Clarence. Authors and Audiences: Popular Canadian Fiction in the Early Twentieth Century. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773568600. [See pp. 173–74]
Lefebvre, Benjamin. “Stand by Your Man: Adapting L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.” In “Literatures, Cinemas, Cultures,” edited by Peter Dickinson. Special issue, Essays on Canadian Writing 76 (Spring 2002): 149–69.
Also in Children’s Literature Review, Volume 145, edited by Tom Burns, 143–54. Detroit: Gale, 2009.
—. “What’s in a Name? Towards a Theory of the Anne Brand.” In Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables, edited by Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre, 192–211. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442690233-013.
Montgomery, L.M. After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916–1941. Edited by Hildi Froese Tiessen and Paul Gerard Tiessen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. [See pp. 222–23]
—. “Business and Lawsuit Correspondence Including Much on Movie Contracts, 1928–[1940].” XZ1 MS A098011, L.M. Montgomery Collection, University of Guelph archives.
—. “Is This My Anne.” The Chatelaine (Toronto), January 1935, 18, 22. Scrapbook of Reviews, 408–9.
Also in abridged form inThe Lucy Maud Montgomery Album, compiled by Kevin McCabe, edited by Alexandra Heilbron, 333–35. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1999.
Also in The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 273–82. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442668560-066.
—. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 2: 1910–1921. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987. [See pp. 286, 358, 373]
—. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 4: 1929–1935. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998. [See pp. 260, 291, 295, 323, 325–26]
—. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 5: 1935–1942. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2004. [See pp. 41–42, 60, 314]
Nickel, Eleanor Hersey. “‘The World Hasn’t Changed Very Much’: Romantic Love in Film and Television Versions of Anne of Green Gables.” In 100 Years of Anne with an “e”: The Centennial Study of “Anne of Green Gables,” edited by Holly Blackford, 105–21. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781552384886-008.
Sennwald, Andre. “Anne Shirley and ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ at the Roxy—‘Here Is My Heart,’ at the Paramount.” The New York Times, 22 December 1934, 21.
Sheckels, Theodore F. “Anne in Hollywood: The Americanization of a Canadian Icon.” In L.M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture, edited by Irene Gammel and Elizabeth Epperly, 183–91. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
The Toronto Daily Star. “‘Anne of Green Gables,’ Screened, Author Cries a Little Herself.” 13 November 1934, 19.
The Toronto Daily Star. “Author to Get No Profit as ‘Green Gables’ Filmed.” 8 September 1934, 27.
Also in Scrapbook of Reviews, 377, 379.
Also in L.M. Montgomery: The Norval Years, 1926–1935, by Deborah Quaile, 151–53. N.p.: Wordbird Press, 2006.
Also as “Author to Get No Profit as Green Gables Filmed” in The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 316–19. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442668560-064.
“Vintage Anne of Green Gables Movies.” The Avonlea Traditions Chronicle 1, no. 4 (Summer 1992): 1–5.
Full Credits
Opening Credits
RADIO PICTURES presents
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
With
ANNE SHIRLEY [Anne] TOM BROWN [Gilbert]
O.P. HEGGIE [Matthew] HELEN WESTLEY [Marilla]
Produced by KENNETH MACGOWAN
Copyright MCMXXXIV RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Directed by GEORGE NICHOLLS, JR.
Screen Play by Sam Mintz
From the Book “Anne of Green Gables” by L.M. Montgomery
Published by L.C. Page & Co. Inc.
Photographed by Lucien Andriot, A.S.C.
Musical Director: Max Steiner
Photographic Effects: Vernon Walker, A.S.C.
Art Directors: Van Nest Polglase and Al Herman
Costumes by Walter Plunkett
Recorded by George D. Ellis
Edited by Arthur Schmidt
Recorded by RCA Victor System
The Players
Anne Shirley
Tom Brown
O.P. Heggie
Helen Westley
Sara Haden
Murray Kinnell
Gertrude Messinger
Charley Grapewin
Hilda Vaughn
June Preston
Ending Credits
The Cast of Characters
Anne: ANNE SHIRLEY
Gilbert: TOM BROWN
Matthew: O.P. HEGGIE
Marilla: HELEN WESTLEY
Mrs. Barry: SARA HADEN
Mr. Phillips: MURRAY KINNELL
Diana: GERTRUDE MESSINGER
Dr. Tatum: CHARLEY GRAPEWIN
Mrs. Bluett: HILDA VAUGHN
The Bluett Little Girl: JUNE PRESTON