FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

From Scientist to Clown – He Who Gets
Slapped
Sjöström’s second film in Hollywood, He Who Gets Slapped, was shot under
the aegis of the newly established MGM company, which launched “Seastrom”
as one of its first directors. After finishing Name the Man, Sjöström was offered
a new script called “A Tree in the Garden”, written by Hjalmar Bergman,
but to Bergman’s great disappointment, he expressed his scepticism towards
this scenario, in which he had himself been involved. It should be noted that
Sjöström had already made four films based on Bergman’s scripts in Sweden,
and it was to a large extent through Sjöström’s mediation that Bergman had
come to Hollywood.
However, “A Tree in the Garden” also had a prehistory. Upon his arrival in
Hollywood, Hjalmar Bergman was asked by Goldwyn Pictures to write a script
for Sjöström based on another novel by Hall Caine: The Bondman: A New Saga
(1890). This project, however, was declined due to financial reasons. Bergman
then took an initiative of his own: to write a synopsis based on Ibsen’s play Bygmester
Solness (The Master Builder)(1892). This project, however, was refused by
Abraham Lehr, head of production at Goldwyn, as it was considered as “not
commercial”. It was only then that he, upon invitation from Goldwyn, undertook
the project based on the novel by Edwin C. Booth, The Tree of Knowledge, which
Bergman turned into the synopsis called “A Tree in the Garden”. By that time, the
new company MGM had taken over from Goldwyn, which considered this new
script to be “not commercial”. Upon Sjöström’s comment that this script actually
was chosen by Goldwyn for commercial purposes, after declining the Bygmester
Solness script for the same reason, Irving Thalberg sarcastically responded that
Goldwyn’s pictures had generally suffered from being “not commercial”. 1
Instead, Sjöström now received the suggestion from Irving Thalberg to film
Leonid Andreyev’s play He Who Gets Slapped. This play had been published in
English translation in 1922 and had been staged on Broadway in the same year.
The Broadway run was a success and, as a result, Thalberg wanted to bring it to
the screen. An original outline for a film script had been written by Albert P.
Lewis as early as September 1922. Sjöström himself was already familiar with
the playwright since one of his most successful interpretations as an actor was
the lead role in Andreyev’s play Professor Storitzyn, which had been staged at
Intiman in Stockholm in 1920.