A Bill of Divorcement - Katharine Hepburn's First Film - done crazy late nite TV style
Katharine Hepburn and Hilary Fairfield star in A Bill of Divorcement.
We'll rewrite this as a backstory to African Queen, someday, perhaps.
Poster "A Bill of Divorcement"
Act One
The Hilary Fairfield character becomes a devout Christian.
He collects lots of Bibles, reads a lot of books from Africa and the Middle East.
University of Illinois is the Gothic Bible Gothic
Internet archive.org Greek Orthodox New Testament
Divine Liturgy St John Chrysostom English and Slavonic
Thousands of Bible study videos
Internet Archive Bible Old Testament Urdu
Word Project Index to Bible in Czechoslovakian
Book of Jude in a language of the Phillipine Islands
(This is just a modernized shelf of a few suggestions - used book stores sell lots of old Bibles Even a curbside alert Scot like myself who is trying to retire from being curbside alert could infrequently afford a few new odd New Testaments. Evidently the family money manager wants me to get an advance prior to buying any more shelves of odd Christian literature. There's probably a reason for this.)
Katharine Hepburn's character sells Christian greeting card ideas, prayer books, works at a church.
The Depression happens, the Great Depression of course.
Despite his best efforts, Hilary Fairfield, played by John Barrymore goes into debt.
He goes into acting. One of his backers, a female wants him.
One fine weekday, Hilary Fairfield goes to a market at a church and does the Jesus thing.
"The Cleansing of the Temple" a Bible narrative in all four Gospels of the New Testament.
Wikipedia narrative of the Cleansing of the Temple
He thinks that it is a film, the video cameras are rolling.
The law is called in, Katharine Hepburn's character loses her job, and her husband is incarcerated.
Unlike the story in the Epistles of Paul, this John Barrymore character is not set free by an earthquake.
Act Two
Katharine Hepburn is forced to sell everything in her house in order to pay expenses.
Her prayer books and greeting cards are selling, it isn't enough to cover everything.
She sends money to her husband every chance she gets.
His backer is one of her biggest customers at her tag sales or yard sales.
She is forced to take on boarders in order to pay her bills.
She does bookkeeping for the county, she works at a local church on Sunday for coffee hour.
Her boarders enjoy free doughnuts every Sunday.
The local church offers her a job, managing the church.
Between the bookkeeping for the county and the church work, she is rarely home.
She visits her husband as often as she can do.
Her husband is released from prison on the usual day that she goes to visit him, unexpectedly.
She arrives at the prison, only to be turned away.
Act Three
The husband, Hillary Fairfield, arrives at his home - nothing is as it was.
John Barrymore's character searches for his beloved wife, who is nowhere to be found.
The boarders are not about to tell him anything. He waits for days.
He finds his wife's sponsor in their bedroom, alas he is drunk.
They run off together to Mexico before he realizes that that is not his wife.
It ends with a reading of Voltaire in French, "Life Under the Sun" at an Acapulco resort.
If that Act Three is not to your liking, not modern enough, too stiff, see next post, please.
If you really like this post, please donate a few pennies to the Internet Archive or Wikipedia.
Comments
Post a Comment