ABSTRACT
Wilkie Collins eventually won the acclaim and esteem that had eluded him in America on his 1873 reading tour, albeit posthumously. In the 1910s, Collins's readers could literally merge with the crowd in the nickelodeon, encountering en masse The Woman in White's textual thrills anew through the marvels of motion picture technology. Many of the actors cast in the 1912 Thanhouser adaptation of The Woman in White had transitioned into motion pictures from the theatre. Thanhouser's leading lady was so famous at the time of filming that The Woman in White was touted as 'The new La Badie feature'. The reviews of Thanhouser's 1917, The Woman in White speak to changing attitudes towards melodrama itself. By eliminating Count Fosco's symbolic conquest of Marian, Thanhouser's film adaptation exonerates the villain. The erotic suggestions of Collins's novel are rendered more overtly in the film in sexually candid scenes.
