Mormon Klansmen
(originally posted on IMDb 28 November 2012)

"A Mormon Maid" is a historically interesting, if disturbing, anti-Mormon silent film. It was both a mainstream, commercial production and propaganda against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and a perversion of their history. This dichotomy of "A Mormon Maid" had a strong precedent in the film that it largely imitates, "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), which was the most commercially successful motion picture ever at the time and which was also racist and distorted the history of the Reconstruction era. It seems evident that "A Mormon Maid" was hoped to piggyback on the success of D.W. Griffith's film through the misappropriation of the Ku Klux Klan into the history of the Mormons' trek to Utah—a thesis that has already been made by Richard Alan Nelson ("Commercial Propaganda in the Silent Film: A Case Study of A Mormon Maid (1917)") and others.

In "A Mormon Maid", the Hogue family is rescued from an inept Indian attack (typical of movies back then, the movie also features a bigoted, if brief, portrayal of Native Americans) by the Mormons. Their home ruined, they move to the Mormon community, where the father is forced to take a second wife and a Church Elder, Darius Burr, tries to force the virgin daughter into being his sixth-or-so wife. Of course, one of the most controversial aspects of the history of the Latter Day Saints is the former practice of polygamy, and this film fully sensationalizes it. Additionally, Burr manipulates the Mormon's leader, referred to in the film as the "lion of the lord", but a not so subtle and entirely historically unfounded depiction of the Church's second prophet Brigham Young as a patsy. (Perhaps even the filmmakers thought that depicting the Church's revered Prophet as the rapacious villain would be too unkind—although, reportedly, Young had as many as 55 wives.)

In the movie, the "Avenging Angels" enforce these forced marriages and prevent outsiders from entering the community and stop insiders from fleeing. Likewise, the Avenging Angels have some basis in reality, but their depiction in the film is almost entirely fiction. Otherwise known as the Danites, they were a Mormon fraternal and vigilante organization that, at least, fought for the Church in conflicts in Missouri, from which the Saints left for Utah. Their depiction in "A Mormon Maid", however, as dressing in white gowns similar to those worn by the Ku Klux Klan is reportedly, ahistorical. As Nelson says, there's no evidence for the film's claim that the Avenging Angels costume inspired that of the KKK. To the contrary, it seems more likely that this film's producers adopted the Klan dress so that images of the Avenging Angels here would capture some of the audience that was enthralled by the heroics of the KKK depicted in Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation". I'm guessing the addition of a spike on top of their head may've been taken from the Pickelhaube of WWI-era German military helmets. Also added, the all-seeing eye is used frequently by a different clandestine fraternity, the Free Masons, as well as by others, and although Mormons, allegedly, do have a history with Freemasonry going back to Joseph Smith, I'm unaware of the Eye of Providence having ever had this much of a significance in Mormonism. Thus, the Avenging Angels here becomes a conglomeration of hated, or otherwise secret, groups.

Another similarity between "A Mormon Maid" and "The Birth of a Nation" is the reduction of these historical battles to a fight to preserve the virginity of a young woman in the face of rapacious villains. The star of "A Mormon Maid" and the would-be wife of the film's director, Mae Murray plays the virgin much in the style of Lillian Gish in "The Birth of a Nation". The two actresses even share the distinctive feature of tiny lips. (Others have compared her unfavorably to Mary Pickford.) Unlike "The Birth of a Nation", however, "A Mormon Maid" makes villains out of its Klan.

Stylistically, this is a decent production for 1917 (although that was difficult to discern from the dark 16mm transfer to DVD that I saw). In addition to having some notable character actors from their day in the cast, the film was photographed by one of the best cinematographers of the silent era in Charles Rosher and had one of the best set designers in Wilfred Buckland, who worked regularly for Cecil B. DeMille, who himself supposedly supervised this picture. Yet, unlike "The Birth of a Nation", "A Mormon Maid" is not a groundbreaking epic of filmmaking that changed the industry and the art forever. In absence of the former film's innovations, the melodramatics of "A Mormon Maid" are all the more distracting. The Avenging Angels peering in windows and eavesdropping on conversations to advance the plot especially has a daytime soap opera feel to it, and the entire narrative is sensational. Nevertheless, this is an interesting historical document and a fairly well made production from a time when prejudices against the Mormon religion were prevalent and when even today some disregard the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as a "cult" and when many misunderstandings remain.