Scarlet Letter 1950-Current

From 1850s

1 The Scarlet Letter- 1950-Current

[edit] The Scarlet Letter- 1950-Current

[edit] By Mariah Esterly

[edit] Information

   "Since its publication in 1850, The Scarlet Letter has had an edition almost every year and has never been 
    out of print(pg. 62)."
           -Baym, Nina. Hawthornes "Scarlet Letter:" Producing and Maintaining and American Literary Classic. 
            Journal of Education, Vol. 30, No 2, Special Issue: Distinguished Humanities Lectures II.
            Summer,1996), pp.61-75

   "The Scarlet Letter was also one of the first mass-produced books in America. Into the mid-nineteenth 
    century, bookbinders of home-grown literature typically hand-made their books and sold them in small 
    quantities. The first mechanized printing of The Scarlet Letter, 2,500 volumes, sold out within ten days,
    and was widely read and discussed to an extent not much experienced in the young country up until that time.
    Copies of the first edition are often sought by collectors as rare books, and may fetch up to around 
    $6,000 USD."
           -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Dimmesdale

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

1917: A black-and-white silent film directed by Carl Harbaugh with Mary G. Martin as Hester Prynne
1926: A silent movie directed by Victor Sjostrom and starring Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson.
1934: film directed by Robert G. Vignola and starring Colleen Moore
1973: Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe a film directed by Wim Wenders in German
1979: PBS version starring Meg Foster and John Heard
1995: The Scarlet Letter, a film directed by Roland Joffé and starring Demi Moore as Hester and Gary Oldman
as Arthur Dimmesdale. This version is "freely adapted" from Hawthorne according to the opening credits
and takes liberties with the original story.
1996: The film Primal Fear references The Scarlet Letter.
The Red Letter Plays (In The Blood produced in 1999, and F--ing A, produced in 2000) by playwright Suzan-Lori
Parks, rewrote the story placing it in contemporary New York and Houston.
2001: A musical stage adaptation which premiered at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, by Stacey Mancine,
Daniel Koloski, and Simon Gray.
2004: The Scarlet Letter is a Korean noir-thriller featuring an adulteress' monologue, that mentions a plan to
raise her unborn child as Pearl in America, in a desperate plead to exit her obsessive affair.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter#Publication_and_response

Adapted into 12 movies and 1 TV miniseries, Starting in 1908 and including Juhong Geulshi (2004) a film from
South Korea, and Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe (1977) from West Germany.
http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=The+Scarlet+Letter