The Scarlet Letter (1926 film)

• Lillian Gish as Hester Prynne • Lars Hanson as The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale • Henry B. Walthall as Roger Chillingworth (credited as playing Roger Prynne) • Karl Dane as Master Giles • William H. Tooker as The Governor • Marcelle Corday as Mistress Hibbins • Fred Herzog as The Jailer • Jules Cowles as The Beadle • Mary Hawes as Patience • Joyce Coad as Pearl • James A. Marcus as A Sea Captain • Nora Cecil as Townswoman (uncredited) • Iron Eyes Cody as Young Native American at Dunking (uncredited) • Dorothy Gray as Child (uncredited) • Margaret Mann as Townswoman (uncredited) • Polly Moran as Jeering Townswoman (uncredited) • Chief Yowlachie as Native American (uncredited) • May Boley as Jeering Townswoman (uncredited) ==Production==

The film was the second one Gish made under her contract with M-G-M and a departure from the ingénue roles she had performed in service to director D.W. Griffith. (Her first M-G-M picture was directed by King Vidor, an adaption of La bohème with co-star John Gilbert, in which she played the pathetic consumptive Mimi.) She asked production manager Louis B. Mayer specifically to make The Scarlet Letter: his agreement was reluctant, due to M-G-M's concern that censors would object to a frank depiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne's character, Hester Prynne, whose romantic indiscretions unleash a wave of reactionary bigotry. Director Seastrom disabused these expectations with an opening intertitle "establishing Prynne's [Gish's] ordeal as 'a story of bigotry uncurbed.'" Shooting took under two months. The production cost a total of $417,000 when factoring out $48,000 overhead costs. ==Reception==

The film made a profit of $296,000. Winner of the Photoplay Award for the Best Pictures of the Month (October 1926). The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: • 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – Nominated • 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains: • Hester Prynne – Nominated Hero ==See also==