There’s no doubt that Greta Garbo and John Gilbert had two of the most remarkable acting careers of the 1920s. Individually and as an on-screen duo, they starred in some of the most significant movies of the era and 1928’s A Woman of Affairs stands out as a highlight of both of their silent filmographies.
In A Woman of Affairs, Greta Garbo stars as Diana, who has been in love with Neville Holderness (John Gilbert) since childhood. When Neville leaves the country for work, Diana marries David Furness (John Mack Brown), a close friend of her brother, Jeffry (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) However, the marriage tragically ends when David throws himself out of a hotel room window, which Jeffry blames Diana for. The scandal follows Diana and she becomes notorious for her behavior. When she’s reunited with Neville, he’s engaged to someone else, but past feelings haven’t faded with time.
Before A Woman of Affairs hit theaters in 1928, it had been the bestselling book The Green Hat by Michael Arlen, published in 1924. So how do they compare?
Book & Movie Differences
When The Green Hat was first published, parts of the story were considered a bit scandalous for the time. If you start looking up trivia about the film version, you’ll see that certain things had to be changed for censorship reasons, like the fact that Diana’s hospital stay was related to a miscarriage and that the real reason why her first husband committed suicide on his wedding night because he had syphilis. Also, the title and character names were changed to distance the movie from the book. (Iris is changed to Diana, Gerald is changed to Jeffry, and Napier is changed to Neville.)
By far, the most significant change in the film version is how the story is framed. In the book, the story is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who happens to live in the same building as Gerald. When Iris unexpectedly arrives at their building one evening, driving a swanky car and wearing the titular green hat, she meets the narrator, who lets her in to try and visit her brother. Unfortunately, he’s passed out drunk when they arrive at his apartment. Instead, Iris spends the night at the narrator’s apartment, and he’s immediately captivated by her. Throughout the book, he becomes part of her social circle and eventually learns more about Gerald and Irene’s family life and the truth behind the scandals in their lives. Instead, the movie just focuses on the story between Iris/Diana, Gerald/Jeffry, and Napier/Neville, which is reasonably similar to what it is in the book.
Is the Book Worth Reading?
I’m just going to get right to the point: I did not enjoy this book at all. It has been a long time since I read a book that felt like such a chore to get through. It was a little bit slow in the beginning, picked up a little bit after the narrator meets Iris, but didn’t really keep my interest up for long after that. In this case, I much prefer the film adaptation over the book. The movie mercifully gets rid of the most insufferable part of the book: the narrator. The narrator comes off as someone who thinks he’s much more interesting than he actually is. But, as the movie proves, he is actually so uninteresting that he can be completely left out and not be missed.
The Green Hat is a good example of something being commercially popular when it was first released, but simply not holding up well over time. If someone were to do a new adaptation of it today, either as a new movie or a miniseries, it would be best to approach it more as a remake of the movie rather than going back to the original novel. If you’re really interested in popular literature of the 1920s, you might want to give The Green Hat a read. Otherwise, just stick to the immensely more enjoyable version of the story with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.
This review is part of the 2024 Classic Film Summer Reading Challenge hosted by Out of the Past. For more reviews on books related to classic film, be sure to follow the #ClassicFilmReading hashtag on social media.
