DIRECTOR: W.S. Van Dyke II

MAIN ACTORS: Norma Shearer (Marie-Antoinette), Tyrone Power (Count Axel de Fersen), John Barrymore (Louis XV), Gladys George (Madame du Barry), Robert Morley (Louis XVI), Anita Louise (Princesse de Lamballe), Joseph Schildkraut (Duke of Orleans).

PLACE AND YEAR: USA, 1938

Metro had an investment exceeding four hundred thousand dollars on Marie Antoinette, based on Stefan Zweig's book which was scheduled as Shearer's next film. Thalberg had been planning to film it since 1933 when rights were authorized while he was vacationing in Europe and had hoped to produce it prior to Romeo and Juliet. Over two months had been spent in preparing the script. But Thalberg was dissatisfied with the way it was progressing and decided to go to work on it himself. Despite the energy he applied to it and some fresh slants he may have added, he felt that it was still in need of much polishing and thought it best to relinquish the project, at least temporarily. A few more postponements were to flollow.
Miss Shearer's decision to leave the screen worried Nicholas Schenck and Louis B. Mayer who wanted her badly for Marie Antoinette, which had been written to her specifications. They also wished she would go on with her carrer. But there was too much at stake, with the estate yet to be settled and the fact that she had lost her enthusiasm. An agreement was then reached whereby she would pay a sum of fifty thousand dollars and she would be released from her contract.
A problem posed itself as to the financial settlement concerning Thalberg's lawyers, who also represented his partners and Loews Inc., had discovered that a diversity of percentage contracts repeatedly drawn through the years were cryptic. This was debated over for several months. The lawyers for Thalberg insisted that the late producer's estate was entitled to a gross share of the profits. The Mayer group lawyers contended that it should receive nothing. At long length, Nicolas Schenck learned that the company was cold-shouldering Norma Shearer and attempting to do her in. He suspected that it was arousing the ire of Thalberg's friends and soon arranged for a compensated with a completed allotment of all profits paid to the Mayer group upon the expiration of its contract at the end of 1938. On this basis, which was quite liberal, Miss Shearer resumed her affiliations with MGM and signed a special contract calling for six films over a three-year period at $150,000 a picture. She had been receiving the same amount before Thalberg's death.
Exhausted by it all, Shearer took her children and went to Arizona for an extended rest. When she returned, she felt rejuvenated about ready to start work on "Marie Antoinette".
"Antoinette" was MGM's most ambitious and costly undertaking in years and required painstaking preparation. The research on it was said to be a romance in itself. Top studio technicians were sent abroad to uncover actual possesion of Antoinette, such as her jewels belonging to her friends. The late grown design, Adrian, was credited with unearthing these tiems and he also descovered material from which he reproduced gowns worn during the reign of Louis XVI. Voluminous biographical data on Louis and the somptuous courts of that period were compiled, the contents of which were most intimate, revealing particulars related to each of the sixty historical characters of appear in the film.
One of the most interesting and quaintest discoveries was the fact that Louis XV took a bath only seventeen times from the day he was born to the day he died. Another was Louis XVI's life's ambition to set off twenty clocks striking concurrently, and the touching discovery that Antoinette's slippers had holes in them as she knelt before the guillotine.
Hunt Stromberg, who was in charge of production, had talked the French government into permitting his camera unit to photograph the royal chambers in the Palace at Versailles, which was ordinarily prohibited.
An excellent cast was assembled to support Miss Shearer. Tyrone Power was selected to play the handsome Swedish peer who has a brief romance with Antoinette; Robert Morley, who had been brought over from England, was cast as Louis XVI. (The part was originally been offerd to Charles Laughton, but commitments in London prevented him from accepting the role). And John Berrymore made something of a modest comeback in the small, thought impressive role of Louis XV.
Shearer's costume fittings were an arduous task in themeself. Her day was said to require fifty-two pounds of wardrobe with a ten-hour working schedule. Her fittings alone took three months. Her diligence inpreparing for the part was indeed remrakable. She read and reread Zweig's biography of the queen and was rarely without the book.
In January of 1938, "Marie Antoinette" finally started shooting. For awhile there was much tension on the set that almost unnerved Miss Shearer to the breaking point. But when she saw the first rushes she was greatly consoled.
The final results of "Marie Antoinette", unfortunately, were uninspiring. It was a sumptuous and entertaining production to be sure, and done in the grand manner as only MGM could executed it, but the screenplay lacked a certain depth and power, though historically it was fairly accurate. Miss Shearer was competent and sincere, and in one or two scenes, particulary the banishment of the royal family and their awaiting execution on the guillotine, she managed to convey some poignant moments. The critics were very much impressed with her performance and film as a whole.
Miss Shearer was expected to attend the opening of "Marie Antoinette", which had premiered at the Astor in New York City on August 16, 1938, but it wasn't illness that prevented her from attending, as was first reported. Her excuse was this: "I was perfectly well and I looked forward to it with a sort of embarassed egotism-pride in the picture which I think is wonderful, even if in the metropolitan press isn't entirely in accord with me, and embarassment because it takes something like conceit to ogle one's efforts in company with a theatre audience. But I've been planning to go. I had never before attended the New York opening of one of my pictures and I meant to this time. Then I received a telegram informing me that the Astor was being picketed and would I please not pass through the picket lines. So I didn't. You'll recall in the picture, Marie Antoinette is warned not to go to the opera, but she does anyhow and that's where all the trouble begins. I'm not one to chance trouble."
In September of that year, Miss Shearer recreated her role of the queen on the "Maxwell House Coffee Radio Hour", and she contributed a highly sensitive bit of reading from "Marie Antoinette". In 1938 Norma Shearer won a Coppa Volpi at Venice Festival.
(From The films of Norma Shearer, by Jack Jacobs and Myron Braum)