L.M. Montgomery Research Group

Anne of Green Gables (1919)

Cast and Credits

Produced by Realart Pictures Corporation. Running time: Six reels. Release date: 23 Nov. 1919. B&W.

Mary Miles Minter (Anne Shirley), Paul Kelly (Gilbert Blythe), Marcia Harris (Marilla Cuthbert), Frederick Burton (Matthew Cuthbert), F.T. Chailee (Abednego Pie), Leila Romer (Mrs. Pie), Lincoln Stedman (Jumbo Pie), Hazel Sexton (Josie Pie), Russell Hewitt (Anthony Pie), Albert Hackett (Robert), Laurie Lovelle (Diana Barry), Carolyn Lee (Mrs. Barry), and Jack B. Hollis (Reverend Figtree).

Written by Frances Marion. Directed by William Desmond Taylor.

Commentary and Synopsis

Six months after Montgomery sold all rights to her first seven books to publisher L.C. Page & Co. for $18,000, Page turned around and sold the silent film rights to Anne of Green Gables and its first three sequels to the Realart Pictures Corporation of Hollywood for $40,000; consequently, Montgomery had no creative input in the film and received no royalty. No copies of the film are known to exist today, but the plot appears to centre wholly on Anne’s relationship with Gilbert Blythe. In her 1935 article “Is This My Anne,” Montgomery makes reference to a scene in the silent film with “Anne at the door of her school, a shotgun in hand, standing off a crowd of infuriated villagers who were bent on mobbing her because she had whipped one of her pupils!” (18). In addition, the film’s inclusion of skunks and an American flag on the schoolhouse irritated her to no end: “I could have shrieked with rage over the latter. Such crass, blatant Yankeeism!” (Selected Journals II [22 Feb. 1920] 373). To her correspondent Ephraim Weber, she concluded: “So much of my story was left out and so much stuff put in that I really didn’t feel that it was mine at all” (After Green Gables [29 Sept. 1920] 82-83).

In 1929, Montgomery came across a book titled Twelve Unsolved Murders and discovered the scandal that caused the silent film to fade out of existence. In 1922, director Taylor was shot to death, and although Minter was never a suspect in the crime, the discovery of a packet of love letters from her to Taylor damned her in the eyes of the American public (Selected Journals IV [13 Oct. 1929] 20; see also After Green Gables [30 June 1930] 175). Despite a long list of suspects and a tremendous amount of publicity, no one was ever charged with the crime. In 2000, the Taylor murder ranked ninth in E! Online’s list of the twentieth century’s greatest scandals.

Selected Further Reading

L.M. Montgomery’s Responses

Montgomery, L.M. After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916-1941. Ed. Hildi Froese Tiessen and Paul Gerard Tiessen. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2006. [See pp. 82-83, 175]

—. “Is This My Anne.” Chatelaine Jan. 1935: 18, 22. Reprinted (abridged): The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album. Comp. Kevin McCabe. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1999. 333-35.

—. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921. Ed. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1987. [See pp. 286, 358, 373]

—. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume IV: 1929-1935. Ed. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1998. [See p. 20]

Scholarship

Hammill, Faye. “‘A new and exceedingly brilliant star’: L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, and Mary Miles Minter.” Modern Language Review 101.3 (2006): 652-70.

Karr, Clarence. Authors and Audiences: Popular Canadian Fiction in the Early Twentieth Century. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2000. [See pp. 173-74]

Lefebvre, Benjamin. “Stand by Your Man: Adapting L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.” Essays on Canadian Writing 76 (2002): 149-69.