Today is July 2nd, when the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1776. And with the 4th just two days away, it’s the perfect time to reflect upon the nation’s birth and how the Founding Fathers have been portrayed on the silver screen. In keeping with this patriotic spirit, let’s look at a popular film, based on a critically acclaimed Broadway play, which delved into the political and personal life of soldier, statesman, and revolutionary Alexander Hamilton…
…Dear me, no, not that Hamilton movie. Sorry about that. No, the one I’m talking about is 1931’s Alexander Hamilton, a Warner Bros. release featuring the studio’s first king of biographical drama, George Arliss.
That’s right. Nearly a century before Lin-Manuel Miranda turned the man on the $10 bill into a hip-hop sensation, Arliss beat him to the punch by co-writing and starring in a 1917 Broadway play entitled Hamilton. The four-act drama, authored primarily by Mary P. Hamlin, was well received by critics but only ran about two months. After Arliss won an Academy Award for playing British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in 1929’s Disraeli, Warner Bros. sought to cash in on that film’s success by casting the English-born actor to re-create his stage role.
While Miranda’s musical history lesson covers the title protagonist’s life from his childhood in the Caribbean to his fatal duel with Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton (the movie and the play) focused on his 1790s tenure in President George Washington’s (Allan Mowbray) cabinet. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, the at-times abrasive Hamilton fought to establish a national bank and get the federal government to take on states’ debts incurred during the Revolutionary War.
Hamilton’s obstinance earns him a gallery of foes. Chief among them are a pair of future chief executives: Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (Montagu Love) and U.S. Senator James Monroe (Morgan Wallace). A compromise is eventually reached; the legislation will pass if Hamilton backs Jefferson and Monroe’s plans to move the national capital from New York to an as-yet unbuilt city along the banks of the Potomac River. The controversial accord is sung about in Act II of Miranda’s Hamilton in “The Room Where It Happened.”
More melodrama ensues when Hamilton is embroiled in a scandal over a romantic dalliance with the married Maria Reynolds (June Collyer) and blackmail payments to her husband James (Ralf Harolde). He ultimately admits to the affair, proving himself a man of integrity but damaging his marriage to wife “Betsy” Schuyler Hamilton (Doris Kenyon). This was one of the country’s first sex scandals, and probably came off better with Miranda playing a thirtysomething Hamilton as the guilty lover opposed to the 63-year-old Arliss.
As one might expect from play-adapted pictures of the early talkies era, Alexander Hamilton is very bound to its theatrical origins. By concentrating on banking bills and early party politics it also feels a bit like a history classroom film, lacking in the emotional depth of such later biopics as Paul Giamatti in John Adams or Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln. And let’s face it, George Arliss, fine actor though he was, always looked like George Arliss, whether he was playing Hamilton, Disraeli, Cardinal Richelieu, or the Duke of Wellington.
When it comes to who wins the Duel of the Hamiltons, I’m afraid that modern audiences, after experiencing the Lin-Manuel Miranda spectacle, will come away from the George Arliss version feeling less than “Satisfied.”