27/01/2024
Too old to enlist when the First World War broke out, W. Somerset Maugham served in France as a member of the British Red Cross's so-called "Literary Ambulance Drivers," a group of some 24 well-known writers, including the Americans John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings, and Ernest Hemingway. Maugham proofread "Of Human Bo***ge" at a location near Dunkirk during a lull in his ambulance duties.
"Of Human Bo***ge" initially was criticized in both England and the United States; the New York World described the romantic obsession of the protagonist Philip Carey as "the sentimental servitude of a poor fool". The influential American novelist and critic Theodore Dreiser rescued the novel, referring to it as a work of genius and comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. His review gave the book a lift, and it has never been out of print since.
The novel is considered to have many autobiographical elements. Maugham gave Philip Carey a club foot (rather than the author's stammer); the vicar of Blackstable appears derived from the vicar of Whitstable; and Carey is a medic. Maugham insisted the book was more invention than fact. The close relationship between fictional and non-fictional became Maugham's trademark. He wrote in 1938: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."
In 1932, Michael Curtiz showed John Cromwell a print of his recently completed film "The Cabin in the Cotton" because Cromwell was interested in casting its leading man, Richard Barthelmess, in a project he was preparing. Instead of Barthelmess, Cromwell's attention was drawn to Bette Davis, whose portrayal of a femme fatale brought to mind the slatternly waitress Mildred in Maugham's novel. Cromwell knew producer Pandro S. Berman had purchased the rights to Maugham's story for Leslie Howard and when he suggested Davis would be the perfect co-star, Berman agreed. Maugham also supported her being cast in the role.
Davis wanted the role of Mildred Rodgers (below) because she thought it would be her breakout role after years of starring in films that were getting her nowhere. She begged Warner Brothers studio chief Jack L. Warner to let her out of her contract so she could make the film, which was being produced at RKO. He relented because he was sure she would fail; but, when her performance sparked talk of an Oscar, Warner began a spite campaign by encouraging academy members not to vote for her. At the time, the voting campaigns and the tabulation of the results were handled by the heads of the academy (of which Warner had a membership) and it worked in his favor when Davis was left out of the Best Actress competition.
Supporters of Davis, shocked by her omission, petitioned the academy for a write-in vote. She was added to the nominees as a write-in but she lost to Claudette Colbert for her performance in "It Happened One Night" (1934). As a result of this incident, write-in votes were henceforth disallowed. Also, as a result of Warner's coup, the academy decided to change its voting practices and hand over the counting of the results to the independent accounting firm of PriceWaterhouse, who still does the official counting to this day.
Commercial success with high book sales, successful theatre productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could. Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary, and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work. (Wikipedia/IMDb)
Happy Birthday, W. Somerset Maugham!
