When Denise Herd and I ran a four-night "Alcohol Images in American
Film" series with the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley in 1982, The Wet
Parade was available from Films, Inc.
   I found The Wet Parade really fascinating; more of it stuck in mind than
from any other film in the whole series.  It's 2 hours long, and others
tended to find it boring.  It's a fascinating melange: no fewer than three
drunkards' progresses; one of the very first gangster movies; and a little
of Sinclair's politics showing through, with the camera drawing back to
show the fat cats behind the front-line bootlegging operations.  It's the
only one of Sinclair's novels to have been filmed.  And it was made in the
summer of 1932, just when the whole country was tipping against
Prohibition, as Herbert Hoover wrote in his memoirs. So the anti-alcohol
message has a very uncertain tone, indeed.  At the fade-out, as the
teetotaling hero (a straight-arrow prohibition agent) exclaims how pink
his newborn son's hands are, his lost-generation blinded-by-hooch
brother-in-law adds, "And I bet he has a blue nose".
   Our notes on the series and the films in it can be found in: Denise Herd
and Robin Room, "Alcohol images in American film 1909-1960", Drinking
and Drug Practices Surveyor 18:24-35, 1982.  See also my "The movies
and the wettening of America", British Journal of Addiction 83:11-18,
1988.  There's a bit about the movie as a gangster movie in C. Clarens,
Crime Movies: An Illustrated History, New York & London: WW Norton,
1980.  And I think Sinclair's autobiography has a little about his relations
with Hollywood over the movie.
   I remember when I read the novel after seeing the movie, I was
surprised at how faithful the movie version was -- the novel's tone is
also a bit uncertain.  Sinclair was clearly puzzled by the "wet generation"
of writers which followed his generation, and seemed to be trying to
understand what made them tick (and drink) in writing the novel.
  Robin
 
>>> K. Austin Kerr <[log in to unmask]> 11/08/96
08:57am >>>
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I would love to know more about the movie "The Wet Parade."  Is it
generally available for any distributor?
This is in reference to
 
I am doing research on Upton Sinclair and his temperance work.  I am
interested in learning more about the movement in the early twentieth
century.  I have a copy of The Wet Parade, a film made in l93l based on
his novel, that is both a history of the temperance movement and a
justification for it.  If anyone has recommendations to make, or websites,
I'd appreciate hearing from you. [log in to unmask] (Lauren Coodley)
 
 
 
K. Austin Kerr                   e-mail [log in to unmask]
Professor of History             office (614)292-2613
Ohio State University            department  292-2674
Columbus, Ohio 43210 USA         fax    (614)292-2282