If I followed the Alabama connection in this film into other movies, I would never have to find other topics for this blog. Late in his career Henry B. Walthall, a major star in silent films, appeared in this 1933 crime drama. Walthall was a Shelby County native and made dozens and dozens--and dozens--of films between 1909 and 1936. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
As The Sin of Nora Moran opens we learn that Nora, lover of a married Governor, sits on death row convicted of a murder that the District Attorney, the Governor's brother-in-law, helped her cover up. She has refused to tell the truth about the crime in order to save people she loves. We can sympathize because she had killed a man who raped her. We eventually learn she claimed to have murdered him to cover the accidental death actually caused by her lover--the Governor. Got that?
Early in the film we follow Nora as she unsuccessfully looks for a job until she's hired as the assistant to a circus lion tamer. He eventually rapes her, and Nora leaves the circus for New York City. Before that we get to see an incredible wrestling match between the tamer and one of the lions.
This film is a strange amalgam of scenes set in the present as Nora awaits her fate and flashbacks--and flash forwards within those flashbacks-- to various periods as we learn about her earlier life. There are visions of the dead and from the soon-to-be-dead. District Attorney John Grant narrates the tale to his sister, the wife of Governor Dick Crawford, who is Nora's lover. There are also interesting tracking shots, montages, and at one point a rather lingering focus on the backsides of some young ladies in a chorus line.
Zita Johann who plays Nora was an Austrian-American actress with some credits in Broadway productions and a few films. In addition to this one, she's also remembered for her role in the classic 1932 horror film The Mummy.
Walthall has a small role as Father Ryan, who has known Nora since her days as a little girl in his orphanage. By this time, three years before his death, Walthall was acting in smaller roles but many of them. He finished his final film only three weeks before he died of an intestinal illness at age 58.
We can find Walthall listed in the 1880 U.S. Census at age two. His parents, Junius L. and A.M. Walthall, were living on their farm near Harpersville with young Henry, an older sister, and his father's mother. By 1900 they were living in Columbiana, and Henry, then 22, was a deputy sheriff. He had been educated mostly at home, but attended Howard College for six months. Walthall served in the military during the Spanish-American War, but caught malaria and was not deployed overseas before the end of hostilities.
At some point he left Alabama for New York and began a career on the stage. By 1909 he had made his first film for D.W. Griffiths' Biography Studios. His role in Griffith's infamous 1915 film Birth of a Nation made him a star. I'm planning a blog post on Walthall in the near future and will explore his career on the stage and in the movies.
You can read appreciations of the film here and here. Nora Moran was the product of Majestic Studios, a Poverty Row outfit that operated from 1930 until 1935. This crisp 65-minute film is a strange one, but well worth watching. You can find it online at the Internet Archive.
This film is known as a pre-code Hollywood film, meaning it was made before the implementation of strict content rules for motion pictures rigidly enforced from 1935 until the mid-1950's. The rules are widely known as the Hays code after the man who developed them. I've written about another pre-code film with Alabama connections, the very strange--and I mean very--1934 production, Murder at the Vanities.
More comments are below some of the images.
One of the film's original posters, designed by Alberto Vargas. This same image was used on the 2013 DVD release.
Born in Peru, Vargas moved to the U.S. as a young man after art studies in Europe. He soon began poster designs for the Ziegfield Follies and then Hollywood studios. He is most famous for the many pin-up paintings he did for Esquire during World War II and later for Playboy.
We learn that Nora was a resident at the orphanage run by Father Ryan. She was adopted by a couple who are soon killed in a car wreck.
In this fantasy sequence three men gather around Nora's casket to talk about her execution, which has not yet taken place. Father Ryan is there, along with the District Attorney and the Governor. Her former lover, on the right in the photo below, notes that he doesn't like the way they've fixed her hair. His companion the district attorney replies that they shaved part of it so the current would go through her body. Her lover insists that's not true....Father Ryan remains silent and stoic.
In another of several fantasy sequences in the film, an adult Nora visits Father Ryan in his office at the orphanage.
Walthall did make it into the main credit sequence, but his role is rather small.
Henry B. Walthall [1878-1936]
Source: Wikipedia
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