Vermont in Film

By Jennie Shurtleff

Although Vermont is far from Hollywood, both in terms of geographic proximity and sensibilities, it has captured the eye of many film makers.

One of the earliest movies to use Vermont as a filming location was the silent movie Way Down East. This 1920 romantic melodrama from was directed by D.W. Griffith and starred Lillian Gish, who was one of the best-known actresses in early film.

The plot of Way Down East involved a young, naïve girl, Anna Moore, getting tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, who then leaves her when she becomes pregnant. Ultimately Anna’s baby dies, and she manages to rebuild her life by getting a job working for the Puritanical Squire Bartlett. Squire Bartlett’s son, David, meets and falls in love with Anna; however, Anna draws away from him because she believes herself unworthy of his affection. Eventually, Squire Bartlett learns about Anna’s prior liaisons with the lecherous playboy, and banishes her from his home. As luck would have it, the timing for Anna’s departure is in the middle of a snowstorm. As Anna flounders around lost in the storm, she becomes increasingly cold, lost, and exhausted and eventually falls unconscious on an ice floe that breaks off and starts floating down the river headed for a huge waterfall. Tragedy seems imminent; however, luckily for Anna, the Squire’s son, David, went out looking for her and the rest is history...

The movie’s climactic scene on the ice floe was filmed in White River Junction, Vermont, and an actual waterfall (albeit a small one) was used. The shot that shows the forbidding drop of the waterfall from a distance was filmed in Niagra Falls.

Way Down East is not the only movie to be made in this area. Two other, more recent films, Dr. Cook’s Garden and Ghost Story, were actually filmed right in Woodstock.

Dr. Cook’s Garden was a 1971 made-for-television movie starring Bing Crosby. It told the story of a small town physician, Dr. Cook, who was maniacal about caring for his town and his garden. The way that he kept his garden healthy and beautiful was by removing all the sickly and imperfect plants. When Dr. James Tennyson, one of the doctor’s young protégés, returns to his hometown, James reconnects with Dr. Cook, whom he has admired since childhood. As a doctor himself, James soon becomes suspicious of Dr. Cook when he notices a cabinet full of poisons and that certain groups of undesirable people in the town have a disproportionately high mortality rate, and he questions whether Dr. Cook has been applying his horticultural practices outside the realm of his garden.

In Ghost Story, the other movie that was partially filmed in Woodstock, there are also a lot of people dying. Ghost Story was a horror movie that was based on a novel written by Peter Straub and was released in December of 1981. It featured an all-star cast that included Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Houseman, Craig Wasson, Patricia Neal, and Alice Krige. The movie’s title reflects a pastime of four elderly friends who have formed a group called the Chowder Society, in which they meet regularly to share ghost stories. None of their ghost stories, however, can match a shared experience from their youth in which a young woman died. At the time, they decided not to come forward and tell authorities the truth surrounding the woman’s death – a decision that haunts all four of them and is only resolved after the truth comes to light.

During the filming of Ghost Story, much of Woodstock’s commercial district, including the Village Square which had its dummy replaced with a Revolutionary War statue, was transformed into a movie set for the town of Milburn. A number of other sites in Woodstock, however, such as Bond Street, the Elm Street Bridge, College Hill, and the interior of the North Universalist Chapel Society were less altered. Still, Peter Jennison, author of History of Woodstock, estimates that 90 percent of the footage filmed in Woodstock ended up being cut from the film.

While a drama and horror movie were both ostensibly embraced in the 1970s and 1980s, in 1957, some twenty-odd years before Ghost Story, it appears that scandal and moral turpitude were not. When 20th-Century Fox pitched the idea of filming Peyton Place (a scandalous novel filled with sordid deeds and affairs) in Woodstock, the community was divided. According to Jennison, “indignant opposition was aired by those who feared ‘immoral’ influences on youth (who would ‘bear a moral stigma’) and who warned that ‘undesirable people might be drawn here during the filming.’ This faction was supported by the Board of Education, which announced that it would not let any school property be used for filming. An articulate majority of the Chamber of Commerce, however, made it clear that they welcomed the idea, anticipating a $300,000 windfall in trade. Robert Summers, then manager of the Woodstock Inn, went so far as to wire the producers inviting them to use the Inn as their headquarters.”

The Chamber began efforts to solidify public opinion in favor of hosting the film, and according to Jennison, petitions were “running four to one” in favor of filming; however, by that time, 20th Century Fox had found an alternate site in Maine to do the filming. Still, Jennison notes, the experience left “many townspeople troubled by the question of who was really responsible for making such decisions.”

That question, at least according to playwright S.N. Behrman and a local businessman, had an answer: The Ladies on the Green. According to Behrman, Frederick Doubleday had told him “of the bitter rivalries among the local hierarchies; they were intricate and fierce. He had an animus against a special hierarchy which he always referred to as ‘the Ladies on the Green.’ These ladies owned the beautiful houses… They were very rich, they came from Chicago, Boston, and Detroit. They were a power, in fact they were the power. A Hollywood company had proposed shooting a film in the village [Peyton Place]. Everybody was very excited, the drugstore man, the Inn people. Everyone thought how great it would be for the village. But the shoe man was skeptical. He had told them, at their Rotary meetings, not to let themselves get excited. ‘The Ladies on the Green,’ he insisted, ‘will never allow it.’ And they didn’t. The film offer was refused. Another town grabbed it. You could do nothing against The Ladies on the Green.”

The properties on the Green have switched owners many times since the 1950s when the Ladies on the Green ostensibly held sway over the decision making in the town. Perhaps Hollywood will return again in the future, and Woodstock will once again be on the “big screen.”