Hollywood and the Invention of England: Projecting the English Past in American Cinema, 1930–2017 9781501305870, 9781501305863, 9781501305856

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: England, Their England
1 The Uses of Literature: Adaptation and Englishness in the 1930s
Sound, censorship and ‘better pictures’
‘Properly English and properly Dickensian’: David Copperfield (1935)
‘The best possible literature’: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)
Literature at war: Wuthering Heights (1939) and Pride and Prejudice (1940)
2 Abstractions of Empire: Filming British Imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s
‘Ruling and protecting these countless millions’: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
‘One of the most distinguished events in history’: The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
‘Delightfully evil in the Fascist sense’: Gunga Din (1939)
Empire films and the Second World War
3 Ideology and Adventure: The Post-War Swashbuckler Film
‘A nation divided’: Ivanhoe (1952)
‘Under banners unknown’: Knights of the Round Table (1953)
4 Cosmopolitanism and the Cold War: Historical Epics in the 1950s and 1960s
‘A show on film’: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
‘The magic of distant places’: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
5 Boom and Bust: The English Past in the Swinging Sixties
‘A living past’: Tom Jones (1963) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)
‘Intimate spectacle’: Becket (1964) and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
Manhattan transfer: My Fair Lady (1964) and Camelot (1967)
6 Intimations of Quality: English Heritage and the ‘Specialty’ Film in the 1980s and 1990s
‘A holiday out of time’: Heritage film and American indies
‘Films of consequence’: Heritage goes to Hollywood
‘An emotional event’: The rise of Miramax
7 Pirates, Wizards and Wardrobes: The English Past in the Contemporary Family Film
Licensing the past: Intellectual property, conglomeration and the franchise boom
Fantastic rebates and where to find them: Global production and incentive schemes
Conclusion: An Available Past
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Hollywood and the Invention of England

Hollywood and the Invention of England Projecting the English Past in American Cinema, 1930–2017 Jonathan Stubbs

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2019 Paperback edition published 2020 Copyright © Jonathan Stubbs, 2019 For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: GEORGIE GLEN JUDI DENCH & BRIDGET MCCONNELL, ‘SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE’ (1998) © AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stubbs, Jonathan, author. Title: Hollywood and the invention of England: projecting the English past in American cinema, 1930–2017 / Jonathan Stubbs. Description: New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018058909 | ISBN 9781501305870 (hardback: alk.paper) | ISBN 9781501305849 (ePub) | ISBN 9781501305856 (epdf) | ISBN 9781501305863 (xml-platform) Subjects: LCSH: Historical films—California—Los Angeles—History and criticism. | Motion picture industry—California—Los Angeles—History. | Great Britain—History—In motion pictures. | England—In motion pictures. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.H5 S783 2019 | DDC 791.43/65842—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058909 ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-0587-0 PB: 978-1-5013-6813-4 ePDF: 978-1-5013-0585-6 eBook: 978-1-5013-0584-9 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: England, Their England 1

2

4

1

The Uses of Literature: Adaptation and Englishness in the 1930s

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Sound, censorship and ‘better pictures’ ‘Properly English and properly Dickensian’: David Copperfield (1935) ‘The best possible literature’: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) Literature at war: Wuthering Heights (1939) and Pride and Prejudice (1940)

18

Abstractions of Empire: Filming British Imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s ‘Ruling and protecting these countless millions’: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) ‘One of the most distinguished events in history’: The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) ‘Delightfully evil in the Fascist sense’: Gunga Din (1939) Empire films and the Second World War

3

vii

22 28 33

41

45 50 56 62

Ideology and Adventure: The Post-War Swashbuckler Film

69

‘A nation divided’: Ivanhoe (1952) ‘Under banners unknown’: Knights of the Round Table (1953)

72

Cosmopolitanism and the Cold War: Historical Epics in the 1950s and 1960s ‘A show on film’: Around the World in 80 Days (1956) ‘The magic of distant places’: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

79

93 98 108

vi

5

Contents

Boom and Bust: The English Past in the Swinging Sixties ‘A living past’: Tom Jones (1963) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) ‘Intimate spectacle’: Becket (1964) and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) Manhattan transfer: My Fair Lady (1964) and Camelot (1967)

6

Intimations of Quality: English Heritage and the ‘Specialty’ Film in the 1980s and 1990s ‘A holiday out of time’: Heritage film and American indies ‘Films of consequence’: Heritage goes to Hollywood ‘An emotional event’: The rise of Miramax

7

Pirates, Wizards and Wardrobes: The English Past in the Contemporary Family Film Licensing the past: Intellectual property, conglomeration and the franchise boom Fantastic rebates and where to find them: Global production and incentive schemes

Conclusion: An Available Past Bibliography Index

119

122 128 134

143 147 153 157

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169 180 191 197 210

Acknowledgements I’ve been thinking about the ideas and issues in this book for some time and my research has benefitted from interactions with various scholars and institutions over the years. It began with work undertaken while I was a student at the University of East Anglia. I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing funding which made this work possible. I’m also very grateful to Andrew Higson and Peter Krämer for their invaluable guidance, expertise and feedback on earlier drafts. Thanks are due to my colleagues and students at Cyprus International University for providing a rich scholarly environment while this book took shape. I’d also like to thank Katie Gallof at Bloomsbury Academic for her enthusiastic support during the writing process. This research would not have been possible without the help of archivists and librarians on both sides of the Atlantic. I’d therefore like to thank the staff at the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles, the USC Cinema-Television Library, the USC Warner Bros. Archives, the UCLA Special Collections and Arts Special Collections Departments, the BFI National Library in London, the National Archives at Kew, the New York Public Library and the British Library. I’m particularly grateful for the expertise of Barbara Hall at the Margaret Herrick Library and Ned Comstock at the USC Cinema-Television Library. Some parts of this book are reworked from material which has appeared elsewhere. Chapter 3 was published in a different form in Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory as ‘Hollywood’s Middle Ages: The Script Development of Knights of the Round Table and Ivanhoe, 1935–53’. The section on Lawrence of Arabia in Chapter 4 reworks material which was published in The Journal of American Studies of Turkey as ‘“A Sword with Two Edges”: Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and the End of Empire’. Chapter 5 contains elements which were published in The Journal of Popular Culture as ‘“Steeped in Tradition, Seized By Change”: Swinging London and the American Reception of Tom Jones (1963)’ and in The Journal of British Cinema and Television as ‘The Runaway Bribe? American Film Production in Britain and the Eady Levy’. I’m grateful to the editors concerned for giving me permission to adapt this material. Finally, I would like to thank my family in Britain and Cyprus for their unstinting support over the years, particularly Alison Stubbs and Joan Love. Finally, for her love and patience, this book is dedicated to Asliye Dağman.

Introduction: England, Their England

What is certainly and consistently true of the history of classical Hollywood as presently written is that the industry’s prestige product has been excluded from the critical canon as criticism seeks to construct a Hollywood cinema worthy – thematically, aesthetically, ideologically – of study.1 Richard Maltby In the spring of 1965, Bob Hope stepped on stage at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for the 37th Academy Awards ceremony. Making his twelfth appearance as master of ceremonies, Hope welcomed the audience to ‘Santa Monica on the Thames’, highlighting a conspicuous trend among the nominated films, actors and other personnel. He proceeded to crack wise about the apparent lack of American representation among the nominees, remarking that ‘Hollywood is handing out the foreign aid’ and advising winners to ‘show their passports’ on their way to the podium. ‘Don’t we deport anybody?’ he quipped after reading out a list of acting nominees. As the evening continued, a majority of the acting awards were duly handed to English performers – first Peter Ustinov, then Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews – and two films came to dominate: Mary Poppins (1964), which took five awards from its thirteen nominations, and My Fair Lady (1964), which won eight of its twelve nominated categories, including Best Picture. Both films were unmistakably English in their content. As Hope put it, My Fair Lady was ‘good, if you like foreign language pictures’. But at the same time, both were unmistakably American rather than British in origin. Although they evoked a manicured, suspiciously clear-skied London of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both were manufactured on soundstages a few miles apart in Burbank, Los Angeles. No British film company of the period could have made films which were so lavish, star-laden or technically elaborate, nor could the British film industry hope to distribute them so extensively. Hollywood’s England had eclipsed the indigenous version, at least in terms of its 1

Richard Maltby, ‘Nobody Knows Everything: Post-Classical Historiographies and Consolidated Entertainment’, in Steve Neale and Murray Smith (eds.), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (New York: Routledge, 1998), 40.

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global visibility. Or as Hope put it, ‘There will always be an England, even if it is in Hollywood.’ As he rang down the curtain, Hope circled back to his theme for the evening, announcing that ‘the winners will proceed to the Beverly Hilton for the victory dinner. The losers will join hands and march on the British Embassy’. Some observers may have recalled that Hope, too, was English by birth, but he did not let this spoil his routine.2 In fact, Bob Hope’s sarcasm masked an important truth. Hollywood’s investments in English culture may have reached a peak of sorts in the mid1960s, but the joint success of Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady was anything but a one-off. Over the past hundred years, films depicting England have been a commercial mainstay for the American film industry. Among the one hundred highest grossing Hollywood films at the North American box-office (adjusted for ticket price inflation) a total of eleven centre on England and English characters.3 As you would expect, the overwhelming majority of successful films produced by Hollywood companies have been set in America, but films depicting England outnumber any other national category by a significant margin. Indeed, no other contemporary nation features more than once among these top grossing films. When prestige is taken into account, the proportion of English-themed films is even higher. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which plays a major role in shaping the public image of the American film industry, has awarded fifteen of its eighty-eight Best Picture awards to films depicting England and the English.4 As Molly Haskell put it in 2002, ‘Anglophilia runs like a low-grade fever through seven decades of Academy Awards, testifying to a chronic American crush on England.’5 This phenomenon might be explained by the high commercial value of Britain as an export market, by the influence of a relatively large number of English personnel working in Hollywood, or by the cultural access provided by a common language. But these factors alone do not tell the whole story. They also do little to explain why a significant majority 2

3

4

5

Much of Hope’s performance can be seen on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ8RjvesnvDP4YEe-yhIRB3yickk9A3y, accessed 23 June 2016. Based on data from www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted/, accessed 23 June 2016. The films are, in descending gross order, 101 Dalmatians (1961), Mary Poppins (1964), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), My Fair Lady (1964), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2002), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). In chronological order, Cavalcade (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Rebecca (1940), Mrs Miniver (1942), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Tom Jones (1963), My Fair Lady (1964), A Man for All Seasons (1966), Oliver! (1968), Chariots of Fire (1981), The English Patient (1996), Shakespeare in Love (1998) and The King’s Speech (2010). Molly Haskell, ‘When Oscar Is Bad, He’s Very Bad’, New York Times, 24 March 2002.

Introduction: England, Their England

3

of Hollywood’s English films have been set in the past, narrating either fictional or actual events in historical settings. Eight of the eleven highest grossing English-themed films and twelve of the fourteen Oscar-winning releases fit this description. For Hollywood filmmakers, England is quite plainly an old country: a nation defined by its past. Hollywood and the Invention of England attempts to explain the prevalence and the apparent popularity of Hollywood films set in England’s past. Very simply, this book asks why Hollywood filmmakers have so frequently drawn on images and narratives depicting English history, and why films of this type have resonated with audiences in America. I address these questions from four interconnected perspectives. The first relates to practices of representation. With significant exceptions, Hollywood films have prioritized England’s past over its present, projecting a national space distinguished by its age. According to Antoinette Burton, the England of the American popular imagination is a land ‘where little distinction between past and present [can] be discerned’.6 But the process of representing English history allows certain images and narratives from England’s past to be legitimized and endorsed at the expense of others. What aspects of England and its history are projected by Hollywood films, and what is excluded? To put it another way, which elements of English culture are given a past, and to what ends? The second perspective relates to historiography, or the process through which history is produced. The historical films discussed in this book may represent the past, but they also reflect the contemporary conditions in which they were made. Rather more bluntly, Pierre Sorlin has argued that historical representation in films ‘is no more than a useful device to speak of the present time’.7 In any case, Hollywood’s engagement with England’s history calls attention to a prominent relationship between the past of one country and the present of another. To what extent, therefore, can Hollywood’s representation of English history be understood as an expression of cultural affinities or continuities between America’s present and England’s past? If the English past has come to function as a reference point for American historiography, to what does it refer? What aspects of the contemporary American experience are privileged in this process of analogy, and what is marginalized or elided?

6

7

Antoinette Burton, ‘When Was Britain? Nostalgia for the Nation at the End of the “American Century”’, Journal of Modern History 75 (2003): 360. Pierre Sorlin, The Film in History: Restaging the Past (Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1980), 208.

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Following on from this, the third perspective adopted in this book concerns the relationship between popular culture and the historical context in which it is produced and circulated. It has been a critical commonplace to seek parallels between historical films and contemporary political events, and even to see the fictionalized past as a premeditated analogy for the present.8 But these approaches are often based on small, purposefully selected groups of films and they do not always account for the causal process which might generate correlations between past and present. Franco Moretti has warned of the dangers in the ‘conclusive welding-together of rhetoric and social history’ and suggests that the resulting generalization might be named ‘the Zeitgeist fallacy’.9 On the other hand, the American film industry has often involved itself in political events on the world stage, particularly during the Second World War and in its aftermath, and it seems plausible that this global outreach would be reflected in the films they produce. As Victoria de Grazia has argued of Hollywood during the post-war era, ‘No American industry was more self-consciously rivalrous about its role in shaping international cultural trends, none more engaged in reaching out, responding to, and shaping consumer tastes abroad.’10 My topic in this book, which concerns both popular films and international relations between two world powers over time, provides an opportunity to put these ideas to the test: to what extent do historical films actively engage with the past as a means to comment on their present, and do these engagements in fact resonate more widely within the political sphere? Finally, the fourth perspective relates to power. Who gains from the American film industry’s projection of England’s oldness? Hollywood’s investment in English history and culture has sometimes been seen as an act of cultural appropriation which has plundered from and distorted English culture. The financial success of many Hollywood English films also underlines the suitability of the English past as a tradable commodity, something which may be packaged and circulated for financial gain. In addition, the high cultural status given to certain representations of English culture has helped to burnish the public image of the American film industry at critical points in its history. Depictions of the English past have therefore been motivated by pragmatism to a large degree, but 8 9

10

See Jonathan Stubbs, Historical Film: A Critical Introduction (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 42–6. Franco Moretti, ‘The Soul and the Harpy: Reflections on the Aims and Methods of Literary Historiography’, in Moretti (ed.), Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms, trans. David Forgacs (London: Verso, 2005), 25. De Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through 20th-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 288.

Introduction: England, Their England

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additional factors can also be observed. It might be argued that Hollywood films project English culture on England’s behalf, upholding the political continuity of the British nation state by circulating images of the English past in the global present. Can Hollywood’s prolific but often fanciful representation of England therefore be seen to enhance the power and prestige of its subject? Carl Freedman has suggested that as the political and economic fortunes of the British state have declined, England’s national standing and perhaps even its sense of national identity have been determined at the level of cultural production.11 What makes the modern representation of England unusual, I would suggest, is that so much of this cultural production takes place outside England’s borders. In this book I have decided to refer to Hollywood films about ‘England’ and the ‘English’ past rather than ‘Britain’ and the ‘British’ past. This requires some elaboration. A discussion of Britain’s past would necessarily include representations of Scottish and Welsh history in addition to the history of England. Of course, there are numerous Hollywood films which have depicted the histories of Wales and of Scotland, although a greater number have taken England as their subject. Nevertheless, to bundle England, Scotland and Wales into a unitary ‘British’ category would stifle and flatten out important specificities which inform their representation. Amid the often confusing nomenclature currently used to refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the terms ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ are often taken to have analogous or at least highly overlapping meanings. This in turn has played a role in shaping the international depiction of English and British identity. As Burton has suggested, American representations have by and large projected Britain ‘as’ England.12 However, it would miss the point to give ‘England’ precedence over ‘Britain’ simply because it is the largest and most recognizable component in the political arrangement which forms the British state. Rather, it is the imperial core of a structure based on England’s historical domination of its adjoining territories. If England is often taken to stand in for Britain as a whole, whether implicitly or otherwise, this is partly because the whole is based on the imperial expansion of its dominant part. According to Andrew Gamble, the term ‘Britain’ has not been used to denote ‘a transnational space or a joint project in which different nationalities could be partners’ but has rather signified England and a national identity which 11

12

Carl Freedman, ‘England as Ideology: From Upstairs, Downstairs to A Room with a View’, Cultural Critique 17 (1990): 79. Burton, ‘When Was Britain?’, 365.

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excluded non-English nationalities.13 The nature of this political arrangement has a defining impact on English identity. ‘Englishness’, as Paul Dave has put it, is not simply a component in a broader British cultural identity, but ‘the historically hegemonic form of Britishness’.14 From a different perspective, Krishan Kumar has suggested that English people have ‘seen their identity in the mirror of the larger enterprises in which they were engaged for most of their history … constructors of Great Britain, creators of the British Empire, pioneers of the world’s first industrial nation’.15 In official discourse, Englishness has generally been downplayed in the effort to contain the population within a collective British identity, an identity which has also extended beyond the borders of Britain itself. Indeed, Britain’s role as an imperial power during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries went some way towards establishing a common national identity for English, Scottish and Welsh people, as well as British overseas settlers. But the sublimation of English identity within a greater Britishness has in fact served to ensure the continuity and implicit dominance of Englishness within Britain. As Clare Westall and Michael Gardiner have argued, England’s hegemony within its union with Scotland and Wales has relied upon ‘keeping Englishness culturally dominant and England politically invisible’.16 As a category for cultural representation, then, Britishness can seem rather hollow, an artefact of England’s political expansion rather than a stable, self-contained or distinctive identity in its own right. Against this, there is some evidence that the term ‘British’ has come to refer to a more modern, more inclusive and less ethnically determined cultural identity than ‘English’. For example, a 2000 report into ‘multi-ethnic Britain’ indicated that a majority of black and Asian Britons preferred to identify themselves as ‘British’ rather than ‘English’.17 It might also be argued that Englishness itself is far from a unified category, given the class and regional divisions which have characterized life in England. However, this book is concerned less with the lived reality of Britain and more with the way England and its past has been mediated and represented in the cinema of a foreign country. As will become 13

14 15

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Andrew Gamble, Between Europe and America: The Future of British Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 44. Paul Dave, Visions of England: Class and Culture in Contemporary Cinema (Oxford: Berg, 2006), xi. Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), ix. Clare Westall and Michael Gardiner, ‘Introduction’, in Westall and Gardiner (eds.), Literature of an Independent England: Revisions of England, Englishness and English Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 5. Runnymede Trust, Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (London: Profile Books, 2000), 38.

Introduction: England, Their England

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clear, archaic, socially exclusive and ethnically homogenous versions of England have proven most resonant for Hollywood filmmakers. In this book, therefore, I will use the term ‘Britain’ when referring to the operations and the institutions of the British state – hence, the British government, the British economy and the British Empire. In terms of trade, including the import and export of films, Britain has generally been treated as a single market and data about audiences and revenues refer to Britain accordingly. But to describe the national category represented in Hollywood films, the terms ‘England’ and ‘English’ will be used. A brief discussion of the term ‘historical cinema’ is also called for. I have addressed the representation of the past in Hollywood cinema much more fully in previous work, but a few key points are worth restating.18 Debates around historical cinema have too often been side-tracked by issues of historical accuracy and authenticity, and too much critical writing on the subject has been preoccupied by the impulse to pass verdict on how well specific films correspond with written accounts of history. As Raymond Williams has suggested, however, accounts of the past are often best studied not in terms of their ‘historical error’ but rather in terms of their ‘historical perspective’.19 Recent critical work on the historical film has to some extent moved beyond debates over accuracy in order to focus on the contributions which films have made to knowledge of and ideas about the past. As Steve F. Anderson has written, ‘We should not look to the media for the truth about the past but instead examine them for clues about the way history is constructed and engaged through cultural products, memories, myths and politics.’20 In similar terms, David Eldridge has described historical films as ‘all films which utilise historical ideas and the past [and] contain and reflect ideas about “history”’.21 On this basis, I define a historical film as one which engages in some way with the past. The nature of this engagement should not be prescribed: some historical films form strong and detailed engagements with the past, while others represent it in a more informal manner. In any case, I regard all of them to be historical films. These engagements with the past can take a number of forms, and they may expand or contract depending on their context. In some cases engagements with the past are established by textual strategies within the films themselves. In other cases the engagements

18 19 20

21

See Stubbs, Historical Film, particularly 9–35. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 10. Steve F. Anderson, Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past (Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2011), 2. David Eldridge, Hollywood’s History Films (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 5.

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are made extratextually, through the promotional and critical discourses which accumulate around films as they circulate among audiences. My definition purposefully embraces a wide array of films and it overlooks the ways in which historical films intersect with other labels and categories which might be available to audiences, critics and producers at any given time. The conceptual breadth of this definition is beneficial for three reasons. Firstly, it does not depend on a distinction between films which are positioned as ‘faithful’ restagings of documented historical events, and films which use historical settings as a backdrop for fiction. Historical films are characterized by a complex interplay between documented historical ‘fact’ and undocumented ‘fiction’, and any attempt to separate them along these lines is tenuous at best. As Jerome de Groot has argued, the ‘presumed binary relationship between history and fiction’ is unhelpful and theoretically flawed.22 Secondly, the definition does not attempt to pin historical films down to a set of unified textual practices in the manner of conventional genre theory. As Jason Mittell argues, films do not ‘determine, contain or produce their own categorization’, but are rather categorized through their circulation and consumption in specific cultural contexts.23 As such, my focus will be on the cultural work of historical cinema rather than the conceptual rules and the borders which might be thought to contain it. Thirdly, this definition puts historical films in a larger tradition of cultural engagements with the past which have occurred in a variety of media over time. In this way, it becomes possible to see the representation of English history in American films not simply as a category of film production, but an element in a larger pattern of engagement with the past. Hollywood and the Invention of England seeks to trace and investigate connections between Hollywood films and the broader cultural, economic and political context in which they have been produced and circulated. As such, I have drawn on a range of methodologies and sources to suit the emphases of each chapter. This book examines histories of film production, distribution and reception, incorporating industrial and aesthetic analysis of selected films and film cycles. Primary sources – particularly materials from studio and governmental archives, plus reporting in newspapers and trade journals – are used to reconstruct the production and circulation of films, while secondary sources are used to elaborate their historical context. In this way, the book 22

23

Jerome de Groot, Remaking History: The Past in Contemporary Historical Fictions (London: Routledge, 2015), 3. Jason Mittell, Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004), 11.

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examines what Vanessa R. Schwartz has called ‘the history of transnational cultural circulation’.24 In a more general sense, this book aims to answer the need for what Perry Anderson has called ‘relational’ histories: histories which ‘study the incidence – reciprocal or asymmetrical – of different national or territorial units and cultures on each other’.25 Similarly, Daniel T. Rodgers has warned against the production of histories which are ‘lopped off at precisely those junctures where the nation-state’s permeability might be bought into view, where the transnational forces do their most important work’.26 As such, I aim to situate and examine the development of American film culture as part of a transnational dynamic of cultural and economic exchange over time. In terms of both production and consumption, the representation of England in film is best understood when recontextualized as a transnational process. Working along these lines, research by Sarah Street and Jeffery S. Miller has examined the export of British films and television programmes to America and what Street calls their ‘cross-cultural reception’.27 In a similar vein, Mark Glancy has examined the history of American film exports to Britain, demonstrating highly diverse patterns of reception among British cinemagoers.28 But in order to understand the American film industry’s engagement with English culture and history in full, it is important to consider not only the commercial movement of media texts between nations but also the American production of images and narratives intended to represent England and its past. This book therefore aims to demonstrate the particular uses and meanings that have been attributed to these historical images and narratives in an American context, as well as their interstitial position within an interconnected system of global exchange. In the process, this book also challenges conventional notions about the malign, voracious influence of American popular culture in overseas markets. Far from the one-way war of attrition that is often understood, the relationship between American and English popular culture is in fact far 24

25

26

27

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Vanessa R. Schwartz, It’s So French!: Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 3. Perry Anderson, ‘Agendas for Radical History’, Radical History Review 36 (1986): 36. See also John Trumpbour, Selling Hollywood to the World: U.S. and European Struggles for Mastery of the Global Film Industry, 1920–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 13. Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 2. Sarah Street, Transatlantic Crossings: British Feature Films in the USA (London: Continuum, 2002), 1; Jeffrey S. Miller, Something Completely Different: British Television and American Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). Mark Glancy, Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain: From the 1920s to the Present (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014).

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more complex and in many ways much more reciprocal, even though the overall process of exchange remains asymmetrical. Hollywood and the Invention of England is structured as a series of more or less chronological chapters centred on prominent cycles of English historical films. Film cycles are provisional, often transient production trends based on the repetition and adaptation of previously successful elements. Whereas film genres are often conceived as being ahistorical, possessing universal features which transcend time and place, film cycles are intimately tied to their historical context, both in terms of industrial practice and patterns of audience consumption.29 As Peter Stanfield has suggested, the study of production cycles allows scholars to ‘examine and explain patterns of reiteration alongside patterns of modification’ in a way which responds to the relationship of films and film culture to the public sphere.30 In this way, I aim to account for the ebb and flow of Hollywood’s representation of the English past in manner which cuts across thematic and chronological categories. However, this book is far from exhaustive in its scope: it considers only a small proportion of the many hundreds of Hollywood films which have depicted the English past. The most significant limitation comes in my decision to begin with films made after 1930. Needless to say, many fascinating and significant representations of the English past were produced before this date, and Chapters 1 and 2 look briefly at some of them. Nor is 1930 a particularly natural break in film history, coming several years after the introduction of the talking film. But for the sake of brevity I have elected to begin in this decade. This allows me to focus on the Hollywood studio system after it had reached a point of industrial maturity, and it excludes silent films, which were sometimes more ambiguous in their representation of specific national spaces. In addition, no television is featured in this study, despite the significant role which serials have played in generating images and narratives based on the English past. Finally, this study prioritizes films which were successful with American audiences, based on the available data about box-office performance (mainly figures published in the Variety newspaper and in-house financial ledgers maintained by individual studios). Of course, the fact that a film sold a large number of tickets does not mean that it was profitable, and it says nothing about the various responses of ticket-buyers once they had paid their money. But given that Hollywood is a hits-based industry, this restriction 29

30

Peter Stanfield, ‘Notes towards a Theory of Cyclical Production and Topicality in American Film’, Illuminace: The Journal of Film, Theory, History and Aesthetics 3 (2012): 155. Peter Stanfield, The Cool and the Crazy: Pop Fifties Cinema (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015).

Introduction: England, Their England

11

allows me to focus on those films which were most central to its activities and which reached the widest audience in their primary market. Chapter 1 looks at Hollywood films adapted from English literary sources during the mid- to late 1930s. More generally, it considers the factors which motivated Hollywood’s engagement with prestigious literary texts and the transformations which occurred as they were adapted within new cultural contexts. It argues that films such as David Copperfield (1935) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) served to bolster the public image of the American film industry at a time when its moral standing was under scrutiny and calls for external censorship were rife. However, their box-office success also underlined the commercial potential of literary adaptation. Towards the end of the decade, adaptations of Wuthering Heights (1939) and Pride and Prejudice (1940) reengaged with English literature as conflict in Europe escalated. At a time when America’s involvement in the Second World War was subject to fierce debate, the cultural capital embodied in these literary texts was used to shape popular opinion of Britain as a potential wartime ally for America. Chapter 2 addresses the other dominant English-themed production cycle in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s: the British Empire film. Hollywood studios had produced melodramatic narratives dramatizing nineteenth-century colonialism since the 1910s, but the popular success of Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) established a new template in which the British Empire was represented as a spectacular, exotic backdrop for heroic masculine adventure. Several films cut from similar cloth followed, culminating in the release of Gunga Din in 1939. But despite their success, the ambiguous pleasures of the Empire cycle came with significant political risks, and Hollywood’s representation of Britain’s Empire was frequently at odds with British imperial policy and the colonial nationalist movement in India. These conflicts became more pronounced after America entered the Second World War, leading Hollywood studios to reassess their escapist conception of Britain’s Empire. Chapter 3 examines the representation of England in Hollywood’s medieval adventure or swashbuckler film cycle in the early 1950s. As a generic setting, the Middle Ages has a long history of service in American contexts. This chapter focusses on the long production histories of the MGM films Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953), which are uncovered through archived studio notes and draft screenplays. Both films were originally conceived in the late 1930s amid tensions over the looming conflict in Europe and rewritten

12

Hollywood and the Invention of England

in the early 1950s to reflect the ideological climate of the Cold War and the HUAC investigation into communist influence in the American film industry. The gradual transformation of these two films illustrates the ways in which the English past has been used in Hollywood film to reflect shifting concerns in contemporary American society. Chapter 4 addresses the place of the English past amid the escalating budgets and technical innovations of ‘epic’ filmmaking in the late 1950s and 1960s. While many of the highest-profile Hollywood epics from the period focussed on Ancient Rome and the Holy Land, Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) demonstrated that the production values and exhibition strategies of the epic mode were also suited to the representation of the English past. The chapter also considers the influence of ‘runaway’ production on Hollywood’s representation of English history and the rising number of English-themed Hollywood films which were outsourced to British production facilities. Finally, this chapter addresses the connection between the depictions of British Empire in these films and their historical context at a time when American foreign policy began to adopt an increasingly internationalist outlook. Chapter 5 examines the rapid growth of English-themed films in the mid1960s and their rapid decline following a slew of box-office failures at the end of the decade. In the absence of a single dominant cycle, the chapter consists of case studies featuring three highly successful films made in the early 1960s and three less successful films from the end of the decade. Tom Jones (1963) is paired with The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) – formally innovative films produced by the small British production company Woodfall with financing from United Artists. Becket (1964) is paired with Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) – theatre adaptations depicting royal intrigue filmed in Britain under the aegis of veteran producer Hal Wallis. Finally, My Fair Lady (1964) is paired with Camelot (1967) – lavish adaptations of hit Broadway musicals produced by Warner Bros. in America. In this way, the chapter examines how Hollywood’s depiction of English history developed over the decade and how films of this type fell from prominence in the period which followed. Chapter 6 traces the American film industry’s reengagement with the English past during the 1980s and 1990s. The revival of English historical films can be attributed in part to the success of modestly budgeted, carefully marketed ‘heritage’ films, notably A Room with a View (1985) and Howards End (1992). These films were integral to the growth of independent distributors and the rise

Introduction: England, Their England

13

of ‘specialty’ film divisions within the American film industry. Later on, The Remains of the Day (1993) and Sense and Sensibility (1995) showed how prestige filmmaking of this type could be adopted by major studies to differentiate their output at a time when American film production was dominated by action and science fiction films. Finally, an analysis of The English Patient (1996) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) examines the ways in which the production company Miramax adapted the prestigious tropes of the heritage film to a more marketable format suitable for larger audiences. Finally, Chapter 7 addresses the commercial resurgence of English-themed films in Hollywood in the form of multi-film fantasy franchises derived from pre-sold media properties and aimed at family audiences. The Harry Potter films, produced over a ten-year period between 2001 and 2011, are the most prominent and influential example of this blockbuster strategy, but attention is also given to Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (2003–17) and the Narnia series (2005–10). In all these films, the English past serves as a point of departure for the creation of fantasy spaces, generating globally marketable entertainment products rooted in English historical culture. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of intellectual property in the management and extension of these film franchises, and their dependence on globalized systems of production as a means to limit expenses and to obtain international production subsidies. These chapters address a small sample of all the films produced by Hollywood studios centred on England’s past, but they provide evidence for a complicated and nuanced relationship between past and present across two largely separate cultures. As I will argue, Hollywood’s engagement with English history has been both consistent and highly varied, and an appreciation of this engagement is crucial to a full understanding of how Hollywood cinema has operated over the past hundred years. English history has been given a life of its own in Hollywood: this book is my attempt to explain what the English past has meant for Hollywood, and what Hollywood has meant for the English past.

1

The Uses of Literature: Adaptation and Englishness in the 1930s

The representation of the English past in Hollywood cinema has strong links to the adaptation of English literary texts. Films of this type have a long history in American cinema, but this chapter focusses on a small but high-profile cycle of films from the 1930s. The conventional approach to studying literary adaptation in cinema has been based on the textual comparison of film adaptations and their source material. As a result, much work in this vein has sought to determine the ‘fidelity’ or ‘faithfulness’ of the adaptation in question, appraising films in terms of their success or failure at transplanting the essence of literary source material into a new medium. This line of thought implicitly places literature and cinema at opposite ends of a cultural spectrum: when a book is adapted for the screen, art and authorship are set in conflict with commerce and mass production. The limitations of this approach have been highlighted by various scholars. Perhaps most forcefully, Simone Murray has reproved adaptation studies for its reliance on comparative textual analysis, a practice she derides as ‘intellectual tailchasing’ and ‘a formalist textual fetish’.1 From a post-structuralist perspective, Robert Stam has questioned the notion that adaptation films are necessarily descended from an ‘original’ text at all, suggesting instead that they be seen as ‘caught in the ongoing whirl intertextual reference, of texts generating other texts … with no clear point of origin’.2 Similarly, Brian McFarlane argues that ‘the precursor literary work is only an aspect of the film’s intertextuality, of more or less importance according to the viewer’s acquaintance with the antecedent work’.3 Adaptation is therefore not a linear process in which an ‘original’ text 1

2

3

Simone Murray, ‘Materializing Adaptation Theory: The Adaptation Industry’, Literature/Film Quarterly 26, no. 1 (2008): 4–5. Robert Stam, ‘Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation’, in James Naremore (ed.), Film Adaptation (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 66. Brian McFarlane, ‘It Wasn’t Like That in the Book…’, in James M. Welsh and Peter Lev (eds.), The Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2007), 9.

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Hollywood and the Invention of England

descends from one medium to another, nor should this conversion be regarded as the appropriation and debasement of an artistically pure creation by an industrialized mass culture. Rather, it can be understood as a facet of the wider circulation and intersection of cultural material between and within various forms of media. At the same time, the relationship between precursor and antecedent works (to use McFarlane’s terms) has plainly been of great significance for filmmakers and it has frequently been centralized in the marketing and promotion of films adapted from literature. As Hollywood studios embarked on a new cycle of literary adaptations in 1934, the Los Angeles Times published an article entitled ‘Why the Movies Change Your Favorite Books’. Presented as the ‘composite opinion of several film producers’, the article engaged with issues of adaptation directly, from a film industry perspective. According to one unnamed producer, When we secure a literary property of great traditional value, it is only a matter of good business that we start out with the sincere intention of giving it to the public with all faithfulness. … Our greatest sales value lies in the fidelity with which we adhere to the original plot.4

Fidelity, or at least the impression of it, was desirable for marketing purposes. But the article also explained at length why it was necessary for films to depart from their source material. The main reasons cited were the comparatively shorter length of films and the need for audiences to identify with protagonists. To illustrate the ‘pictorial method’ used by Hollywood screenwriters and to highlight the diligent labour which the adaptation process entails, draft pages from the Treasure Island (1934) screenplay were reproduced in the newspaper. As this account suggests, adaptation in this era involved a careful negotiation between the perceived cultural value and popular status of a literary text, the specific practices of the medium, the prerogatives of the filmmakers and the expectations of a heterogeneous mass audience. As Jeffrey Sconce has put it, the adaptation of literature ‘involved assigning the economic capital of the studio to convert the cultural capital of the novel back into the economic capital of a successful motion picture’.5 In this transmission, fidelity to the source material is important in as much as the audience feels (or is led to feel) that it is important. The status of the literary author in this process depends on the commodity 4 5

E. C. Van Aiken, ‘Why the Movies Change Your Favorite Books’, Los Angeles Times, 2 September 1934. Jeffrey Sconce, ‘Narrative Authority and Social Narrativity: The Cinematic Reconstitution of Bronte’s Jane Eyre’, Wide Angle 10, no. 1 (1988): 47.

The Uses of Literature

17

value which is assigned to him or her. As this chapter will demonstrate, the promotional discourses which surround adaptation films frequently evoke the prestige associated with literature and the cultural authority of English authors such as Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare and Emily Brontë. The process of adapting literature does not simply transfer a written text into a visual medium; it also aims to transfer the cultural cachet which surrounds the written text. This chapter argues that adaptation, specifically the adaptation of English literature in the 1930s, can most usefully be seen as an industrial strategy employed for several specific and related purposes. Adaptation has often been convenient for Hollywood studios: an undeveloped literary text provides a fixed and predictable starting point for which copyright status is clearly established and, in the case of older literary works, does not incur royalty payments.6 For risk-averse producers, the familiarity of many English plays and novels gives adapted films immediate name-recognition, thus simplifying the process of marketing them to a mass audience. In addition, the cultural capital associated with English literature can be leveraged to raise the legitimacy, prestige and moral standing of individual films and perhaps the film industry as a whole. This cultural capital also aligned Hollywood with educational practices, allowing its film adaptations to be marketed within the American school system. This chapter assesses these adaptation strategies firstly by examining the influence of the film industry’s self-regulation and the public campaign for ‘better pictures’ on literary adaptations in the mid-1930s. In particular, I will examine David Copperfield (1935) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) as manifestations of a campaign to raise the moral standing of the film industry and of the invocation of fidelity in the marketing of adaptation films. I will then turn to the later literary adaptation films Wuthering Heights (1939) and Pride and Prejudice (1940) to examine how the English literary film was adjusted to suit the shifting political climate as Europe went to war. In all of these adaptation films, representations of Englishness and the cultural status assigned to English literature were aligned in different ways to the culture of modern America.

6

Richard Maltby, ‘“To Prevent the Prevalent Type of Book”: Censorship and Adaptation in Hollywood, 1924–1934’, American Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1992): 560.

18

Hollywood and the Invention of England

Sound, censorship and ‘better pictures’ Films based on English literature can be traced to the earliest days of filmmaking in America. In 1897, for example, the American Mutoscope Company released The Death of Nancy Sykes, a brief sketch adapted from Oliver Twist with the popular stage actors Charles Ross and Mabel Fenton. In 1905 the same company adapted another literary excerpt entitled Duel Scene from Macbeth, featuring three costumed actors and a painted theatrical backdrop. As Lawrence Levine has argued, canonical English literature, particularly Shakespeare, enjoyed a high profile in the popular culture of nineteenth-century America and was commonly adapted in a range of media, including film.7 But it was not until around 1907, as methods of narrative construction became more sophisticated, that English literary material assumed a more prominent place in American cinema. Film producers in this period looked increasingly to the literature of Western Europe for subject matter. As Jim Collins has put it, ‘The maturation of the industry from sideshow curiosity to solid middle-class entertainment was to a great extent accomplished through a series of artistic and exhibition strategies spearheaded by the adaptation film.’8 At a time when the moral direction and artistic value of cinema was in dispute, many commentators welcomed this turn towards literature. In October 1909 The New York Times, which had previously shown little interest in cinema, was moved to observe: Since popular opinion has been expressing itself through the Board of Censors of the People’s Institute, such material as ‘The Odyssey’, The Old Testament, Tolstoy, George Eliot, De Maupassant and Hugo has been drawn upon to furnish the films, in place of the sensational blood-and-thunder variety which bought down public indignation upon manufacturers six months ago.9

Similarly, albeit with rather more vested interest, the vice-president of the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), which was established in 1908 as a cartel of the larger film producing firms, declared, When the works of Dickens and Victor Hugo, the poems of Browning, the plays of Shakespeare and the stories of the Bible are used as a basis for moving

7

8

9

Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 11–82. Jim Collins, Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 123. ‘Browning Now Given in Moving Pictures’, New York Times, 10 October 1909.

The Uses of Literature

19

pictures, no fair-minded man can deny that the art is being developed along the right lines.10

Others greeted this sudden vogue for high-brow adaptation with sarcasm and condescension. As one commentator speculated in 1909, ‘There seems to be no reason why one may not expect to soon see the intellectual aristocracy of the nickelodeon demanding Kant’s “Prolegomena to Metaphysic” with the “Kritiek of Pure Reason” for a curtain raiser.’11 Films adapted from published material continued to occupy a prominent place in production as the American film industry adjusted to the challenges of producing and exhibiting movies with synchronized sound. In the 1933–4 season, for example, Hollywood companies spent a combined sum of $2 million on the rights to some 200 fiction and non-fiction books.12 Among English authors, adaptations of work by of Noël Coward proved particularly popular. Coward’s play Private Lives was adapted by MGM as a talking film in 1931, and two years later Fox Films released a close adaptation of Cavalcade (1933). The latter film, depicting the ‘cavalcade’ of British history between 1899 and the early 1930s as experienced by two London families, was calculated to appeal to audiences in Britain and its overseas territories.13 Indeed, it concludes with a toast to ‘the hope that this country, which we love so much, will find dignity, greatness and peace again’. The scene might have seemed unpatriotic were it applied to any other foreign nation, particularly as it was followed by the British national anthem. Cavalcade proceeded to earn a handsome international gross of $4 million, the bulk of which came from the British and British Empire markets, and won an Academy Award for Best Picture.14 This success demonstrated the value of the British and British Empire market, providing a clear financial incentive for films which appealed to British audiences. By the mid-1930s it was estimated that Britain alone provided 30 per cent of the American film industry’s foreign gross.15 The early 1930s was also a period of relative moral conservativism in America, fuelled in part by worsening economic conditions. The cost of converting cinemas

10

11 12 13

14 15

Quoted in William Uricchio and Roberta E. Pearson, Reframing Culture: The Case of the Vitagraph Quality Films (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 48. ‘Browning Now Given in Moving Pictures’. Maltby, ‘To Prevent the Prevalent Type of Book’, 560. Ruth Vasey, The World According to Hollywood, 1918–1939 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997), 162. Joel W. Finler, The Hollywood Story, 3rd ed. (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), 357. Vasey, World According to Hollywood, 145.

20

Hollywood and the Invention of England

to sound and the loss of business due to the Great Depression led to a marked decline in the economic health of the American film industry. It was in this economic bind that demands to regulate and censor film production grew in volume. By 1932, almost forty religious and educational bodies had passed resolutions calling for the government to regulate the film industry.16 The Hollywood studios strongly opposed such measures, and so they looked to the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) to adopt a greater regulatory role from a position within the film industry. Founded in 1922 under the leadership of prominent Republican politician Will H. Hays, the MPPDA was a trade association dedicated to protecting the American film industry’s political and economic interests. It was initially concerned with lobbying government to evade antitrust legislation, but it soon became involved in limiting the proliferation of local censorship boards.17 Seeking to ward off external intervention, the MPPDA promoted industrial self-regulation as a viable alternative to state and municipal censorship. In addition to vetting scripts from the studios, Hays proposed that the social role of cinema would improve if the tastes of the public were properly cultivated. In his annual report of 1932, Hays argued that ‘the stimulated desire for better entertainment on the part of the public’ would allow Hollywood films to become ‘a socially useful product’.18 To this end, he appealed to producers to invest money in more prestigious projects. As had been the case at the beginning of the century, the MPDDA regarded the cultural capital of literary adaptations as a means to counteract criticism of the film industry. Evidence of the special status granted to literature can be seen in the MPDDA’s treatment of Paramount’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931), based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. The film was part of an emerging cycle of horror films, but the MPPDA felt that its literary pedigree would override potential objections to the violence and sensuality of its subject matter. A report made shortly prior to its release described Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as a ‘horror story’ but added ‘the fact that it is based on one of the best known literary subjects in English will probably prevent any considerable opposition’.19 Jason S. Joy, who headed the 16

17

18

19

Richard Maltby, ‘Censorship and Self-Regulation’, in Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (ed.), The Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 242–3. Maltby, ‘To Prevent the Prevalent Type of Book’, 559; Richard Maltby, ‘The Production Code and the Mythologies of “Pre-Code” Hollywood’, in Steve Neale (ed.), The Classical Hollywood Reader (London: Routledge, 2012), 239. Will H. Hays, President’s Report to the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. (New York: MPPDA, 1932), 16–17. Lamar Trotti, Report on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1 December 1931. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931), PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study, Los Angeles.

The Uses of Literature

21

MPPDA’s Studio Relations Committee, reiterated the point in a letter to the film’s producer, writing, ‘because it is based on so well established a literary classic the public and the censors may overlook the horrors’.20 Paramount marketed Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as a horror film rather than a literary adaptation, but its release highlighted the re-emergence of nineteenth-century English novels in the American film industry. In 1933 the ‘poverty row’ studio Monogram produced a profitable version of Oliver Twist and in the following year they aimed to repeat their success with a slate of adaptations including Jane Eyre, Black Beauty and The Moonstone. These films had budgets roughly five times larger than Monogram’s average, making them lavish productions by B-film standards.21 At the larger studios, MGM found success with their adaptation of Treasure Island in 1934, which earned $2.3 million internationally.22 However, the strongest indication of the growing market for literary films came with the adaptation of an American novel: Little Women, released by RKO in 1933. Supervised by David O. Selznick and featuring a glamorous ensemble cast, Little Women was RKO’s highest earning film of the year.23 It also proved popular with reform groups, who endorsed it as a model of responsible entertainment.24 Public criticism of Hollywood’s moral decrepitude nevertheless came to a head the following year. The loudest voice in these protests was the Legion of Decency. Formed in 1934 by a committee of Catholic bishops but furtively supported by Catholic factions within the MPPDA, the Legion of Decency aimed to mobilize America’s Catholic population to pressure Hollywood into more stringent standards of self-regulation.25 Buckling under the weight of the Legion’s negative publicity, the MPPDA began to regulate the film industry more intensively. In 1934 Hays transformed the Studio Relations Committee into the Production Code Administration (PCA) and gave it new powers to enforce the Motion Picture Production Code, an elaborate censorship document which had been published in 1930 but only intermittently enforced. Discussion of the MPPDA and the Production Code and during this era has tended to dwell on their prudishness and highlighted the material which they 20

21 22 23

24

25

Jason S. Joy, Letter to B.P. Schulberg, 1 December 1931. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931), PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library. Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System (London: BFI, 1986), 181. The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study, Los Angeles. Richard B. Jewell (ed.), ‘RKO Film Grosses, 1929–1951: The C.J. Telvin Ledger’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 14, no. 1 (1994): microfiche. Martin Rubin, ‘Movies and the New Deal in Entertainment’, in Ina Rae Hark (ed.), American Cinema of the 1930s: Themes and Variations (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 113. Maltby, ‘To Prevent the Prevalent Type of Book’, 572.

22

Hollywood and the Invention of England

were able to supress. However, the MPPDA also expended a great deal of effort promoting what they referred to as ‘better pictures’, films which they believed would counter the industry’s taint of dissipation with the impression of moral and cultural respectability. Before 1934 Hays had not been particularly successful in his efforts to lobby the film industry to invest resources in the production of respectable and prestigious films. As the power of the censors grew and the public image of the film industry faced greater scrutiny, however, the studios came to regard the production of ‘better pictures’ as a more significant priority. In January 1934 Hays predicted that the industry ‘would soon be ready for the treasure house of great comedy and drama that lies in a possible Shakespearean cycle on the screen’.26 Adaptations of Shakespeare came soon enough, but the key film in this industrial counter-offensive was MGM’s David Copperfield, a lavish and star-laden adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel. Produced by David O. Selznick, who joined MGM following his success with Little Women, the film was borne out of Selznick’s conviction that ‘the public has finally decided to adopt the classics as screen fare’.27

‘Properly English and properly Dickensian’: David Copperfield (1935) As Guerric DeBona has suggested, Charles Dickens held an ‘almost folkloric appeal’ in America during the early twentieth century. His novels appealed to middle-class readers and were an established part of high school curricula, but he was also recognized for his ‘common man-aura’ and his reformist ideas about poverty.28 Dickens’s fiction was not only widely read but also widely seen: it provided source material for American filmmakers from the very early days of the cinema and was adapted for stage long before this. David Copperfield was among the most popular of these novels in America and it stood to reason that MGM would select it for a high-profile adaptation, particularly at a time when the public reputation of the film industry was under fire. According to Jeffrey Sconce, ‘Dickens possessed perfect balance of popularity and prestige 26

27 28

Quoted in Letter from Hays to A.S.W. Rosenbach, 25 September 1935, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (hereafter MND) Publicity Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema–Television, University of Southern California Library. Hays is quoting one of his own earlier letters. ‘David Copperfield’, New York Times, 2 September 1934. Guerric DeBona, Film Adaptation in the Hollywood Studio Era (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 39–40.

The Uses of Literature

23

for maximum exploitation by Hollywood.’ For American audiences, moreover, Dickens provided ‘the most familiar and accessible pathway into a semiotic state of “Britishness”, a culture regarded … as inherently more cultivated, civilized and refined’.29 Work on the David Copperfield screenplay began in early 1934 when Howard Estabrook, best known for his adaptation of Edna Ferber’s novel Cimarron (1931), was assigned as screenwriter.30 Memos between Selznick and Estabrook highlight the close involvement of the producer in the writing process and his desire to oversee a faithful adaptation of the novel. Selznick argued against Estabrook’s attempt to give the film’s protagonist ‘more vitality or a stronger initiative’ or to invest him with ‘charm as a lover’, stating that David should be left ‘as Dickens drew him’, even if this meant that he would be overshadowed by other characters in the film.31 Even at this early stage, the MPPDA regarded the film’s development as a vindication of their public relations campaign to improve the standing of the industry. Just weeks after Estabrook began work on the screenplay, Hays declared that ‘it is a significant phase of the screen’s upward progress that rival producers should contend … for priority claims to the production of one of the classic works of Charles Dickens’.32 Hays also connected David Copperfield to both his ongoing campaign to cultivate the tastes of the American audience and to his efforts to persuade reform groups of the MPDDA’s ability to positively influence the film industry, stating ‘the fact that the level of public taste for pictures of the better kind has been rising continually is a tribute to the character of social and educational leadership now cooperating with the industry in the better films movement’.33 When the completed screenplay was submitted to the MPPDA’s PCA for approval later in the year, their response was much more supportive than usual. Writing a memo to MGM head Louis B. Mayer, Joseph Breen stated, ‘This is a grand story and we hope you have the best of luck in shooting it.’34 From the outset, Selznick and MGM treated the Englishness of David Copperfield as a key element in its successful realization, and they initially planned to produce the film in London using an entirely English cast. In a 29

30

31

32 33 34

Jeffrey Sconce, ‘Dickens, Selznick and Southpark’, in John Galvin (ed.), Dickens on Screen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 174. Howard Estabrook, ‘Structural Digest of the Novel’, 24 February 1934, Turner/MGM Scripts, f.D208, Margaret Herrick Library. David O. Selznick, Memo to Howard Estabrook, 4 June 1934, Howard Estabrook papers, f.57, Margaret Herrick Library. ‘Hays Sees Era of Literary Films’, New York Times, 27 March 1934. Ibid. Joseph Breen, Memo to Louis B. Mayer, 10 September 1934. David Copperfield, PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library.

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Hollywood and the Invention of England

memo to Arthur Loew, Selznick suggested that basing production in England would ‘add $100,000 to the British Empire gross while still giving us a picture that would be as good for this country’. Selznick added that the film could be shot back to back with a second English-themed film, possibly a biopic of the eighteenth-century colonist Robert Clive.35 MGM also prepared an eleven-page list of all-English casting suggestions, including Noël Coward and Ivor Novello as the adult David, as well as names less familiar at the time, such as John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Anna Neagle and Madeleine Carroll.36 In the end, MGM elected to produce David Copperfield in studios and locations around Los Angeles. Selznick did send a second unit to film in England, but only one shot – an image of David walking to Canterbury – made it into the film. Indeed, George Cukor, who was assigned to direct the film following his success with Little Women, later joked that the Malibu coastline seen in the film outside the house of Betsey Trotwood provided a backdrop that was ‘whiter and cliffier’ than the Dover location it was meant to evoke.37 However, the principle that David Copperfield would require an English cast remained in place, both for reasons of authenticity and to maximize the film’s appeal in Britain. When MGM faced problems importing an English actor to play the young David, Selznick complained that ‘the English public would certainly resent seeing an American child as David Copperfield’.38 Cukor later claimed that MGM had developed David Copperfield due to ‘its inherent appeal to the British market’.39 Nevertheless, a successful British performance was unlikely to put David Copperfield into profit on its own. MGM was therefore eager to ensure that while the Englishness of the cast was recognized as a production value, it would not alienate audiences in America. An internal memo highlighted the fact that ‘with only three exceptions, cast members are English-born or of direct English descent’. Sounding a note of caution, however, the memo continued, ‘For American audiences, there will not be a Broad “A” in the picture – Oxford dialect barred. Clear, pure English only to be spoken.’40 These concerns were raised again when MGM tested the completed film with American audiences. 35

36

37 38 39

40

Selznick, Memo to Arthur Loew, 17 March 1934, in Rudy Behlmer (ed.), Memo from David O. Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972), n.p. David Copperfield casting suggestions, 15 March 1934, Turner/MGM Scripts, f.D-230, Margaret Herrick Library. Gavin Lambert, On Cukor (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 67, 83–4. Selznick, Memo to Sol Rosenblatt, 17 August 1934, in Memo from David O. Selznick, n.p. Quoted in Patrick McGilligan, George Cukor: A Double Life (New York: St Martin’s Griffin Press, 1997), 100. Undated, Memo, Howard Estabrook papers, f.63, Margaret Herrick Library.

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25

As a result, scenes featuring Mrs Micawber (played by English actor Jean Cadell) were cut from the picture after Louis B. Mayer found that they ‘had no appeal to Americans’ who ‘cannot understand more than 10% of what she says’.41 The Englishness of David Copperfield also came to the fore when Selznick, Estabrook and director George Cukor undertook a long and well-publicized visit to England in May and June 1934, several months before photography began. The expedition was promoted as a quest for suitable English actors, but Selznick’s main interest was generating pre-release publicity for his film. According to press reports, the visit included a ‘personal pilgrimage to the Dickensian shrines’ and consultations with various Dickens experts.42 Among other publicity events, Selznick, Cukor and Estabrook participated in a public conference in London with the board of the Dickens Fellowship, plus representatives of the British film industry, to determine the ideal cast for film. The event was sponsored by the News Chronicle of London, who held a competition for readers to match casting picks made by a panel of experts.43 The sense of cultural legitimacy bestowed by the Dickens Fellowship was extended when Selznick recruited its vice-president, the novelist Hugh Walpole, to return with him to Los Angeles to work on the film. Walpole was relatively well known in America at the time – his novel Rogue Herries was the seventh bestselling work of fiction of 1930, according to Publishers Weekly – and his employment generated considerable media interest.44 Reports on David Copperfield in The New York Times made particular note of Walpole’s appointment, describing his role as ‘making sure that the English flavour of the book is preserved’ and, more cynically, ‘insuring the film against critical barbs of Dickens lovers’.45 Shortly before the film was released, the newspaper published a profile of Walpole, relating his experiences in Hollywood and describing his responsibilities at MGM as ‘to see that the film was properly English and properly Dickensian’.46 At the other end of the media spectrum, Walpole was treated to a four-page feature in the popular fan magazine Photoplay. In what may have been the most rapturous appraisal he ever received, the magazine announced that ‘a great writer has come to Hollywood. … He has achieved the stature of an immortal. He is the first classicist to be actively engaged in the formation of a 41 42 43 44

45

46

Mayer, Memo to W.C. Fields, 9 January 1935, W.C. Fields papers, 3-f.39, Margaret Herrick Library. ‘David Copperfield’, New York Times, 2 September 1934. Sconce, ‘Dickens’, 171. ‘The 20th-Century American Bestsellers Database’, University of Virginia, http://bestsellers.lib.vi rginia.edu/decade/1930, accessed 8 December 2016. ‘Mr. Selznick’s Fruitful Trip’, New York Times, 17 June 1934; ‘Walpole Here to Aid Filming of Dickens’, New York Times, 13 June 1934. ‘Personal Appearance’, New York Times, 9 December 1934.

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motion picture.’ Claiming that no other writer of similar standing ‘has ever seen fit to lend the dignity of his presence and his talent of the actual application of screen technique’, the article declared that his participation in David Copperfield was ‘an epic event in the history of pictures’.47 Walpole was initially described as a ‘story supervisor’, ‘literary advisor’ or ‘technical expert’, but after arriving in Los Angeles he began to collaborate with Estabrook to prepare the final version of the screenplay. In keeping with his profile, reviews tended to credit him as David Copperfield’s sole screenwriter. However, Walpole’s greatest contribution to this film may have been off the page. As a custodian of Dickens legacy and a novelist in his own right, his visibility in Hollywood and his authorship of the screenplay served to validate the honourable intentions behind Selznick and MGM’s adaptation. In a sense, he was assigned the status of authorial surrogate for Dickens, allowing the film to form a more tangible connection to the English literary heritage which he was seen to embody. Walpole’s cultural authority was most evident in the role he took in the film’s trailer. In a rather crudely edited mock-up of an afterdinner speech, actor Lionel Barrymore (who played Dan’l Peggotty in the film) introduces ‘the distinguished author’ Hugh Walpole. Dressed in a dinner jacket, Walpole declares his ‘honour to be connected with putting David Copperfield on to the screen for the first time in history’ and assures the audience that the characters are ‘wonderfully lifelike and human’.48 It is only after this testimony that images from the film are shown. Walpole’s uncondescending enthusiasm for David Copperfield and his willingness to participate in these promotional activities served to legitimize the entire project. His public involvement in David Copperfield even extended to a cameo role as a parish vicar, deepening the impression that he had placed his imprimatur on the film itself (see Figure 1.1). Selznick later acknowledged the value which Walpole brought to the film, claiming that David Copperfield would have lost money were it not for his England trip and the ‘ballyhoo that attended’ his bringing Walpole to America.49 As Jeffery Sconce has suggested, these events and the publicity they generated were in themselves part of the adaptation process, enabling Selznick and MGM

47

48 49

Ruth Rankin, ‘Hollywood Teaches Hugh Walpole How to Write’, Photoplay, November 1934. These claims are obviously hard to verify, but Walpole was certainly not the first high-profile English writer to sign a contract in Hollywood: P.G. Wodehouse joined MGM in 1930 and R.C. Sherriff adapted The Invisible Man for Universal in 1933. Of course, the 1935 film was certainly not the first film adaptation of David Copperfield. Selznick, Memo to Joseph M. Schenck, 3 October 1935, in Memo from David O. Selznick, n.p.

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Figure 1.1 Hugh Walpole makes a cameo appearance in David Copperfield.

‘to signify through a variety of extratextual venues the proper air of respect and reverence, necessary prerequisites to deriving an authority of adaptation’.50 The promotional campaign devised for David Copperfield attempted to balance its accessible entertainment value with its Englishness and literary pedigree. According MGM’s promotional ‘manual’ for the film, ‘David Copperfield will appeal to every reader of Dickens, to every Copperfield enthusiast … to the millions who have read the book. This is a foregone conclusion. … However, David Copperfield the picture is Grand Entertainment to the shopgirl who has never heard of Dickens, to the cake-eater who never read the story.’ The guidelines in the manual also emphasized the value of the film as means to challenge opponents of the film industry as a whole: There has been considerable agitation in the past six months for better pictures, cleaner pictures. … Every exhibitor who plays this film should capitalise on this sentiment. He is in a position to say to the Parent-Teachers’ Associations, the Women’s Club Federations, the Ministerial Associations, the Civic and Artistic Organisations: Here is a picture worthy of your active support. If you DO NOT support such pictures, how can you hope to encourage the making of more?51 50 51

Sconce, ‘Dickens’, 175. David Copperfield Manual, Turner/MGM Scripts, f.D-229, Margaret Herrick Library.

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Although the ‘better pictures’ movement was largely an American phenomenon, the British pressbook advised exhibitors to promote the film along similar lines, stating, So few of your pictures escape criticism of some sort from publicity-seeking people that when you get a chance to do some shouting yourself – make it long and loud. Dickens is a mighty name among all intelligent peoples, in every class of life.52

Many American press reviews responded to these promotional cues. Motion Picture Daily obligingly described the film as ‘so much an educational feature (while being thrilling in its entertainment) that seeing it practically becomes a duty’.53 Reviewers also highlighted the fidelity of the adaptation: the Los Angeles Times called it ‘faithful to its subject in the largest respects’ while the Chicago Tribune claimed that Walpole had ‘kept complete faith with the author’.54 More importantly, perhaps, the response from religious and civic reform groups, which the MPDDA had worked so hard to win over, was also positive. Underlining the promotional value of their support, MGM compiled a list of congratulatory statements from various educators and religious organizations, including such groups as the National Council of Catholic Women and the Daughters of the American Revolution. In a letter to Selznick, the Bishop of Los Angeles wrote that ‘it augers well for the industry if such excellent films of the classics can be produced’.55 As an adaptation, then, MGM’s David Copperfield transferred not only the plot of the Dickens novel to the screen but also the author’s prestige and cultural respectability. At a time of economic uncertainty and moral conservatism, David Copperfield provided a nostalgic embodiment of England’s past which also flattered the cultural aspirations of the film industry and its audience.

‘The best possible literature’: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) David Copperfield proved to be a significant success: against a production cost of $1.07 million, the film earned $1.62 million domestically and $1.35 million 52 53 54

55

David Copperfield Pressbook, Pressbook Collection, British Film Institute National Library, London. ‘David Copperfield’, Motion Picture Herald, 19 January 1935. Edwin Schallert, ‘David Copperfield Real Screen Achievement’, Los Angeles Times, 9 February 1935; Mae Tinée, ‘Copperfield Grand Job of Film Making’, Chicago Tribune, 13 February 1935. ‘Comments on MGM’s David Copperfield’, typed memo, n.d., Turner/MGM Scripts, f.D-232, Margaret Herrick Library.

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overseas, the latter figure indicating that it had performed strongly in the British and British Empire markets.56 More importantly, the film demonstrated that MGM’s high-budget approach to adapting classic English literature could enhance the social standing of their company and the film industry in general while still entertaining filmgoers in America. The success of David Copperfield emboldened MGM’s competitors to produce their own adaptations of classic English texts. The most prominent of the ‘better pictures’ to follow in its wake was Warner Bros.’ lavish adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, released in late 1935. The film derived from Austrian theatre director Max Reinhardt’s spectacular staging of Shakespeare’s play, which was performed at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 1934. The Warner Bros. film was in many respects an attempt to transfer this theatrical production to film: Reinhardt was hired to direct (with William Dieterle) and two of his principal actors, Olivia de Havilland and Mickey Rooney, reprised their roles. The Shakespeare play is ostensibly based in Athenian rather than English antiquity and many of Reinhardt’s creative decisions reflected his background in German theatre, but as with many Hollywood adaptations of Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was also grounded in English culture. To this effect, English accents were used by the majority of the cast (including James Cagney, cast as Bottom) and the costumes of the human characters drew on the fashions of the Elizabethan era. In the run-up to its release, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was cited as further evidence for the successful efforts of the film industry and the MPPDA to reform American filmmaking. Film Daily described the film as follows: Another answer, complete and convincing, of the capabilities and of the intentions of the industry to fashion its wares in good taste and in keeping with the highest possible standards in the motion picture or in any other art form.57

Just as MGM had appealed to Dickens societies to publicize and legitimize David Copperfield, the marketing effort mobilized behind A Midsummer Night’s Dream also obtained the approval of Shakespeare’s modern custodians. In an exchange which was widely publicized by both Warner Bros. and the MPPDA, the president of the Shakespeare Association of America informed Will Hays that ‘this screen version will arouse in the youth of today … a desire for a finer type of film’.58 In reply, Hays described the film as follows: 56 57 58

The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Margaret Herrick Library. Red Kann, ‘Star on the Horizon’, Film Daily, 24 July 1935, 1. Letter from Rosenbach to Hays, c. September 1935. MND Publicity Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives.

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Hollywood and the Invention of England A challenge to that public opinion which has demanded the greatest possible entertainment, the best possible literature and the highest artistry from the motion picture screen. The production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an event of major importance not only to the motion picture industry but to all those who have cooperated and are now helping with the better picture movement in the United States.59

Similarly, the pressbook prepared to aid the promotion of the film included an article for exhibitors to place in local newspapers headlined ‘Noted Educators Endorse Dream’.60 In this way, the act of adapting Shakespeare was used as evidence for the constructive influence of the MPPDA and civic reform groups on the film industry, and for the positive and uplifting effect of the film industry on its public in general. A Midsummer Nights’ Dream thus became a kind of apotheosis for the ‘better pictures’ movement, demonstrating an apparent alignment of interests shared by the studios and their regulators. If anything, Will Hays ambitions for the MPPDA became even grander during this period. In a March 1936 report he opined that the progress recorded by the industry … has raised the stature of the art, brought greater dramatic themes to the screen and moved up the level of public appreciation to the point where the best in literature, in music and in drama is within the province of the universal entertainment service of motion pictures.61

Guided by the MPPDA, Hollywood was to be charged with a new cultural function, in which the most worthy texts from other media were adapted and incorporated into a mass-produced ‘entertainment service’ for the public. Pages of press quotes supporting Hays’s vision were included in the report, attesting to the effectiveness of the film industry’s self-regulation, the ‘social progress of the screen’ and ‘the encouraging rise in public taste’.62 Of course, not everyone accepted that the MPPDA (and the reform groups which stirred it into action) had regenerated the film industry and made it safe for the mass consumption of high culture. Shortly after the release of David Copperfield, The New York Times critic Andrew Sennwald suggested that the ‘distortion’ propagated by the 59

60 61

62

Letter from Hays to Rosenbach, 25 September 1935. MND Publicity Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives. A Midsummer Night’s Dream Pressbook, MND Publicity Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives. Will H. Hays, Annual Report to the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. (New York: MPPDA, 1936). 3. Ibid., 26–30.

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Legion of Decency and others threatened to ‘relegate the screen to the inferior position of an idiot peepshow for the kindergarten’.63 Nevertheless, the impact of the MPPDA’s campaign for better pictures was clear and, according to Maltby, the perception that the PCA and the Legion of Decency had collectively rescued the film industry from its moral nadir in 1934 came to be largely accepted by the public.64 Hays and the MPPDA also promoted the idea that the production of literary adaptations enabled the film industry to appeal to what Hays referred to as ‘a new movie-going public recruited from the higher income earning classes’.65 A 1936 article in the Motion Picture Herald (a publication with close ties to the PCA) suggested that the cycle of literary adaptations had enabled the film industry to reach an audience of thirty-six million, of which ‘50 to 75 percent are not film “fans”’.66 Aligning these film adaptations with the ‘better pictures’ campaign, the article stated that ‘producers and exhibitors are at last starting to reap a fruitful harvest from a field fertilized and ploughed by intensive and large scale campaigns of education, research and organization’.67 The commercial prospects of these literary adaptations were also enhanced by the involvement of educational organizations in promoting these films in schools through tie-in educational material. RKO’s marketing strategy for Little Women in 1933 involved direct-mail advertising to school teachers, and in 1934 the National Council of Teachers of English devised courses based on ‘literary classics’ in order to educate audiences in the appreciation of cinema.68 The same organization later became involved in the promotion of David Copperfield at American schools by publishing a study guide for teachers and students which aimed to ‘foster a critical appreciation’ of the film.69 With the support of the MPPDA, these study guides were sold to schools in packets of thirty for a dollar.70 Educational study guides also played a role in the promotion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, again with the assistance of the MPPDA: Warner Bros. claimed that half a million 63 64

65 66 67 68 69

70

Andre Sennwald, ‘Epitaph for the Old Year’, New York Times, 6 January 1935. Richard Maltby, ‘The Production Code and the Hays Office’, in Tino Balio (ed.), Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 66. Quoted in Ibid., 62. ‘Producers Aim Classics at 36,000 Audience’, Motion Picture Herald, 15 August 1936, 13. Ibid. William Lewin, ‘Higher Screen Standards for Youth’, New York Times, 15 July 1934. Maltby, ‘The Production Code and the Hays Office’, 63; Steve J. Wurtzler, ‘David Copperfield (1935) and the US Curriculum’, in John Galvin (ed.), Dickens on Screen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 159. Greg M. Colon Semenza and Bob Hasenfratz, The History of British Literature on Film, 1895–2015 (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 181.

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study guides and teachers’ manuals were made available to schools in order to promote the film.71 The opportunity to market certain films in schools had a clear short-term benefit for the studios, but the association of their work with educational practices also served to elevate the film industry as a whole. As Steve J. Wurtzler has suggested, films such as David Copperfield possessed a pedagogical cachet derived from their source material which allowed educators to ‘recuperate commercial leisure as a socially redeeming activity’.72 Although their social impact was substantial, the commercial performance of English-themed literary adaptations was not sustained in the long-term. A Midsummer Night’s Dream yielded worldwide earnings of $1.2 million, but once its hefty production costs of just under $1 million taken were taken into account the financial returns are likely to have been minimal at best and certainly fell short of David Copperfield.73 As one reviewer put it, the film was ‘an artistic achievement’ but provided ‘entertainment only for class audiences’.74 MGM and producer Irving Thalberg turned to Shakespeare the following year with Romeo and Juliet (1936), but the film proved to be an outright failure, recording a loss of over $900,000 and putting an end to Hollywood’s flirtation with big-budget Shakespeare adaptations. David O. Selznick announced his resignation from MGM shortly before the release of David Copperfield, but he remained with the company to supervise the production of a follow-up Dickens adaptation, A Tale of Two Cities (1935). While the film was in production Selznick predicted that ‘Hollywood is going to go overboard on the classics’ and announced plans to follow A Tale of Two Cities with adaptations of Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers.75 However, his enthusiasm soon dimmed. This was partly due to what he felt to be the book’s ‘melodramatic construction’ and its lack of ‘living breathing characters’ and partly due to his belief that MGM was not expending sufficient effort to market the film.76 Released eleven months after David Copperfield in the last week of 1935, A Tale of Two Cities made profits of just $133,000. Neither of Selznick’s projected follow-up adaptations came to fruition.77

71 72 73

74

75 76 77

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Pressbook, BFI Pressbook Collection. Wurtzler, ‘David Copperfield’, 160. H. Mark Glancy (ed.), ‘The William Schaefer Ledger’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 15, no. 1 (1995): microfiche supplement. Quoted in Russell Jackson, Shakespeare Films in the Making: Vision, Production and Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 67. ‘Crystal-Gazing with Mr Selznick’, New York Times, 26 May 1935. Selznick, Memo to Kate Corbaley, 3 June 1935, in Memo from David O. Selznick, n.p. Eddie Mannix Ledger, Margaret Herrick Library.

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In the mid-1930s, then, conservative civic groups and the film industry’s trade organization exerted considerable influence over the content of American films and more broadly over the cultural function of cinema as an institution. High-profile adaptations of English literature such as David Copperfield and A Midsummer Night’s Dream emerged in this context, but it would be wrong to regard them simply as products of reformist and censorship pressure. The literary cycle of the 1930s would not have been so prominent if there had not been a sizable audience for them. These films also benefitted from the increasing financial confidence of the film industry and their audience. As Balio points out, the prestige-laden 1934–5 season coincided with America’s recovery from the Depression and the subsequent loosening of purse strings among the filmgoing public.78 Instead, we might say that David Copperfield and A Midsummer Night’s Dream succeeded because they appealed to middle-class notions about the role mass entertainment ought to play in American society while on the whole proving genuinely popular. They appeared to be educational, they made literature and history accessible and they upheld standards of public morality, but they also provided escapist entertainment in the conventional Hollywood mould.

Literature at war: Wuthering Heights (1939) and Pride and Prejudice (1940) The adaptations of Wuthering Heights (1939) and Pride and Prejudice (1940) marked a renewed engagement with classic English literature at a time when war was escalating in Europe. According to a report from the set of Wuthering Heights, the film’s mainly English cast and its German-Jewish director ‘sprinted to the radio corner’ between takes to listen to Hitler’s speeches, which were translated by a German crew member..79 The film arrived in American cinemas just days after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. Months later, after Britain had declared war on Germany, the production of Pride and Prejudice coincided with the expansion of German forces across Western Europe. Actor Karen Morley recalled that anxious cast members had ‘cornered’ the film’s German cinematographer on set to ask how his compatriots could have been 78

79

Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 189. Frank S. Nugent, ‘The Not-So-Prim Victorians’, New York Times, 16 April 1939.

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‘taken in’ by Hitler.80 The American government remained officially neutral throughout this period and the prospect of their involvement in the Second World War was highly contentious, as was the question of whether Hollywood films were actively propagandizing against American neutrality. In this context, the adaptation of English literature and the representation of England’s past acquired a new dimension. Neither Wuthering Heights nor Pride and Prejudice drew on English history to lobby against American isolationism, as The Sea Hawk (1940), which was released in the same month as Pride and Prejudice, had done,81 nor were they directly charged with the responsibility to represent Britain as a suitable ally for America, as would be the case in films made after America entered the war. However, both films adapted their source material in ways which sought to challenge the notion that English culture was antithetical to American egalitarianism, and in this way they worked to soften the anglophobia which impeded wartime collaboration between the two nations. Work on both Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice began in 1936, although studio interest in adapting the novels can be traced back slightly further. The MGM script department prepared a synopsis of Pride and Prejudice in 1933, and in a brief report they pronounced the novel unsuitable for screen adaptation: Since when have novels and comedies of manners been screen stuff ? There has been some talk, with some reason but to no purpose, of ‘Whuthering (sic) Heights’ and ‘Jane Eyre’, roughly in this same period: they are dramatic and ‘PP’ isn’t.82

Pride and Prejudice nevertheless remained in the public eye: in 1934 an American survey named it the book English instructors recommended most frequently to college students.83 The following year, Pride and Prejudice appeared on Broadway in a stage adaptation by the Australian playwright Helen Jerome. The play was well reviewed and ran for over six months and in 1936 the prominent MGM producer Irving Thalberg purchased the rights to Jerome’s adaptation for $50,000,

80

81

82

83

Kenneth Turan, ‘Interview with Ann Rutherford (Lydia), Marsha Hunt (Mary) and Karen Morley (Charlotte Lucas)’, Persuasions 11 (1989): 143. For discussions of The Sea Hawks’s anti-isolationist allegories, see H. Mark Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ Film, 1939–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 100–5 and M. Todd Bennett, One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, the Allies, and World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 71–4. Edward Hogan, synopsis of the novel Pride and Prejudice, 25 February 1933, Turner/MGM Scripts, f.P-936, Margaret Herrick Library. ‘Jane Austen Leads College List’, New York Times, 28 May 1934.

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intending to cast his wife and top MGM star Norma Shearer as Elizabeth.84 Conversely, Wuthering Heights emerged within Hollywood from a screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who were best known at the time for their stage drama The Front Page. As with Pride and Prejudice, the project was associated with female stars from the outset. Hecht and MacArthur’s screenplay was initially purchased by independent producer Walter Wagner, who planned to develop it as a star vehicle for actor Sylvia Sidney, who was under contract to his company. However, Wagner soon abandoned the project and in 1937 he put the screenplay up for sale. According to William Wyler, who ultimately directed the film, the project had come to the attention of Bette Davis, who asked Warner Bros. to purchase it so she could take the role of Cathy. The involvement of Warner Bros. had in turn drawn the attention of independent producer Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn’s bid was successful, and he proceeded to develop the film with Merle Oberon, who had recently signed a contract with him, as Cathy.85 In this way, the commercial movement of the Wuthering Heights screenplay was determined by contracted female labour and the star-making potential of the Cathy role. The creative decisions made in the adaptation of Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice have been discussed extensively elsewhere.86 It is worth noting, however, that the issue of fidelity was often raised during the production and promotion of both films, particularly Wuthering Heights. Hecht and MacArthur’s screenplay made various departures from Emily Brontë’s novel, and further changes were introduced after their screenplay was obtained by Goldwyn. During pre-production in 1938, William Wyler complained that the adaptation was insufficiently visual and lacking in comedy and proposed that the climactic death of Heathcliff ‘should be shown as a blessing, a happy ending to a tragic story’.87 Wyler later clashed with producer Goldwyn over the film’s ending, which originally featured a shot of Heathcliff and Cathy lying together on the moor, united in death. After this scene tested poorly with audiences, Goldwyn hired a different director and body doubles to replace it with a ghostly long shot of the couple walking over Penistone Crag.88 The film’s marketing nevertheless 84

85 86

87

88

Kenneth Turan, ‘Pride and Prejudice: An Informal History of the Garson–Olivier Motion Picture’, Persuasions 11 (1989): 140. Gabriel Miller (ed.), William Wyler: Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009), 124. Most notably, George Bluestone’s influential book Novels into Film (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968) contains a discussion of both. William Wyler, notes on the script ‘Wuthering Heights’, 17 May 1938, William Wyler papers, f.448, Margaret Herrick Library. Gabriel Miller, William Wyler: The Life and Films of Hollywood’s Most Celebrated Director (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013), 164.

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emphasized the fidelity of the adaptation to its source. One newspaper reported that Goldwyn’s sales organization lobbied to change the film’s title to ‘Gypsy Love’ or ‘Fun on the Farm’, but that the ‘studio was emphatic in stating that no changes would be made in the spirit of the book’.89 The story was almost certainly a studio concoction, functioning to assure viewers of Goldwyn’s respect for the material by playing on notions of Hollywood’s philistinism. The critical reaction to Wuthering Heights was also framed by references to fidelity. According to a New York Times critic, ‘Sam Goldwyn has done right by our Emily. … Their final script … was so faithful and right that Emily Brontë herself might have found it good.’90 A longer report by Frank Nugent in the same newspaper also centred its appraisal on the faithfulness of the adaptation, although he also argued in favour of altering the source material: What they have done, in brief, is trim the unessentials (sic) and bring the essentials into clearer, sharper focus. … We must not say that its spirit has survived Hollywood, for that would be misinterpreted; rather that its spirit is enduring, in one medium and another, which proves that Emily Brontë’s strange and twisted novel is a true classic, ageless and imperishable, endowed with a strength its author dimly understood.91

The contrasting treatment of Brontë and Dickens is notable: whereas the author of David Copperfield was venerated beyond criticism, elements of Wuthering Heights were deemed ‘unessential’ and the agency of its author was downplayed. Perhaps because its source material was less familiar to American audiences at the time, the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was relatively uninhibited by expectations of fidelity. The project was initially due to begin filming in October 1936, with Norma Shearer and Clark Gable in the lead roles, but the sudden death of Irving Thalberg just one month before derailed the project. The draft screenplays prepared during this period of development indicate that Thalberg had planned to emphasize contemporary elements in the material. A draft by John Van Druten from June 1936 introduces the Bennet sisters and others arriving for a ball at Meryton, an event signposted by ‘a poster on a wall’, and in the first scene women are seen ‘fighting for mirrors’ in the restroom.92 A separate draft from the same period, prepared by Tess Slesinger, featured stage directions 89 90 91 92

Douglas W. Churchill, ‘Mr Goldwyn Storms the Heights’, New York Times, 8 January 1939. Alexander Woollcott, ‘A Signed Testimonial’, New York Times, 9 April 1939. Nugent, ‘The Not-So-Prim Victorians’. John Van Druten, Pride and Prejudice screenplay, 20 June 1936, Turner/MGM Scripts, f.P-940, Margaret Herrick Library.

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in which Lydia and Mary were described as ‘flappers’.93 These anachronisms were surely intentional and served to erode the link between the narrative and its English historical setting, transposing its story of female romantic ambition to an idiom which would be less alien to modern American audiences. The project was revived in 1939, with Norma Shearer still attached as the lead, Robert Donat as Darcy, and George Cukor assigned to direct. As with David Copperfield, MGM made plans to produce the film in Britain, this time in their newly opened MGM-British studio, but these plans were stymied by the outbreak of war.94 The film was recast and new drafts of the screenplay were prepared by Jane Murfin and subsequently by Murfin with the English novelist Aldous Huxley. Murfin and Huxley’s initial drafts indicate that they were less eager to invoke the genre conventions of contemporary Hollywood comedies. One version introduced the action the following prologue: This story takes place in the days when pride was a virtue of the rich and fashionable … and prejudice was the only defense of the spirited; when a kiss, however lightly given, meant a proposal of marriage; when young ladies were chaste and had no careers except matrimony and mothers pursued husbands for their daughters like baying hounds on the scent of a fox.95

In this way, the setting of the film was defined in relation to the modern world, its society placed in contrast to coarser mores of contemporary courtship. In the finished film, however, parallels between nineteenth-century England and modern American society are made apparent. The theme of love provoking and overcoming class divisions was common to many Hollywood comedies of the era, and Elizabeth and Darcy’s elegant verbal sparring seems of a piece with many screwball comedies. The Bennet sisters’ gleeful consumerism – a theme introduced in the opening scene when the family is shown on a shopping trip – is also characteristic of Depression-era Hollywood. MGM’s marketing campaign for the film pushed this angle further still, selling it not as a representation of the past (and certainly not as a recreation of a prestigious text) but rather as risqué comedy aimed at women and reflecting modern romantic sensibilities. A series of advertising images stated that the film ‘tells how pretty girls t-e-a-s-e-d men into marriage!’ Another playfully positioned the film as an instructional 93

94 95

Tess Slesinger, Pride and Prejudice screenplay, 22 June 1936, Turner/MGM Scripts, f.P-941, Margaret Herrick Library. ‘A New Role for Miss Shearer’, New York Times, 21 August 1939. Aldous Huxley and Jane Murfin, Pride and Prejudice screenplay, 11 January 1940, Turner/MGM Scripts, f.P-965, Margaret Herrick Library.

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text, advising women, ‘Don’t be a wallflower! Learn how to attract men! See Pride and Prejudice.’ A third featured a mother telling her daughter, ‘It’s time you knew about these things, dear! You must see Pride and Prejudice.’96 In contrast to the critical responses to Wuthering Heights, which made frequent reference to Brontë, reviewers of Pride and Prejudice appeared to be less familiar with the Jane Austen novel. In the Los Angeles Times, for example, a reviewer predicted that the film would have ‘real flavor, real charm for the literary-conscious’, but his reference to the ‘Bennet chicks’ underlines the promotional alignment of the film with gender archetypes of the modern era.97 Much contemporary critical appraisal of Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice has concerned the role they may have played in softening anti-British feeling in America. According to Robert Lawson-Peebles, both films project ‘images of a modernizing England which is learning to reject class and inherited wealth in favour of democracy and love’.98 In their readings of Wuthering Heights, LawsonPeebles and Liana Brosh draw attention to the film’s dramatization of a conflict between the egalitarian attitudes of Earnshaw and Heathcliff and the restrictive class system endorsed by Linton and Hindley. Cathy, driven alternately by romance and materialism, is caught tragically between them. According to Brosh, the film represents England as ‘a country learning to be more democratic’ while for LawsonPeebles it proposes that ‘some central American virtues may be found in England, if only in one protected, utopian space’.99 The theme of class is given greater emphasis in Pride and Prejudice, and it was observed and discussed by reviewers at the time of its release. One critic described Darcy and Elizabeth as a ‘stiff-necked middle class girl and a snobbish young lordling’ while for another they were ‘a lover too proud of his family and a girl prejudiced against class discrimination’.100 The message of the film, according to one reviewer, was that ‘kindness supplants snobbishness’ while another observed that ‘prejudices about caste are tossed aside’ as the narrative ran its course.101 Among modern critics, Ellen Belton has argued that the film depicts the ‘capitulation of the British aristocracy to democratization and social equality’ while Linda Troost has called the film ‘a romance representative of egalitarian 96

Advert in Motion Picture Herald, 27 July 1940. Philip K. Scheuer, ‘Pride and Prejudice Comedy of Character’, Los Angeles Times, 16 August 1940. 98 Robert Lawson-Peebles, ‘European Conflict and Hollywood’s Reconstruction of English Fiction’, The Yearbook of English Studies 26 (1996): 1. 99 Liona Brosh, Screening Novel Women: From British Domestic Fiction to Film (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 36; Lawson-Peebles, ‘European Conflict’, 9. 100 ‘Pride and Prejudice’, Motion Picture Daily, 9 July 1940; ‘Pride and Prejudice’, Variety, 17 July 1940. 101 ‘Pride and Prejudice’, Motion Picture Herald, 13 July 1940; ‘Pride and Prejudice’, Film Daily, 9 July 1940. 97

The Uses of Literature

39

democracy’.102 Pride and Prejudice presents the English class system as both benign and permeable, and marriage for love is endorsed over marriage for money. Significantly, Lady Catherine is initially presented as an exemplar of aristocratic snobbery, only to be revealed in the final act that as an egalitarian matchmaker who sees Elizabeth’s merit and facilitates her match with Darcy. Whereas Wuthering Heights suggests that love between social classes is possible only in childhood or after death, in Pride and Prejudice it is shown to be a pragmatic and laudable choice which causes little disruption to the social order. Despite this evidence, it is hard to prove that the makers of Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice intended to reform American preconceptions about England in order to facilitate a wartime alliance. As I have suggested, the impulse to align the historical world of Pride and Prejudice with modern American social mores can be traced to Thalberg’s initial work on the project in 1936, a time when war in Europe did not seem certain. The adaptation of Wuthering Heights was conceived in the same year, and its dramatic conflict between snobbery and egalitarianism might be attributed to efforts to produce a more conventional ‘lady and the stable boy’ narrative rather than to challenge social hierarchies. It is also hard to determine their impact on public opinion. Films based on classic English literature were surely an impractical means to reach American Anglophobes and persuade them of the benefits of military interventionism. At the same time, the efforts of significant factions within the American film industry to influence public opinion regarding Britain and the war in Europe have been well documented.103 During this period Britain’s Ministry of Information was able to carry out a propaganda campaign in America to make the case against isolationism, and Hollywood films fell within their orbit. In 1940 the British Ambassador to Washington informed British film workers in America that ‘the continuing production of films with a strong British tone is one of the best and subtlest forms of British propaganda’.104 Also in 1940, Warner Bros. informed Britain’s Ministry of Information of their ‘readiness to produce further anti-Nazi and pro-British films’.105 Wuthering Heights and Pride 102

Ellen Belton, ‘Reimagining Jane Austen: The 1940 and 1995 Film Versions of Pride and Prejudice’, in Gina McDonald and Andrew McDonald (eds.), Jane Austen on Screen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 183; Linda V. Troost, ‘The Nineteenth-Century Novel on Film: Jane Austen’, in Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 77. 103 See Nicholas J. Cull, Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign against American ‘Neutrality’ in World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Bennett, One World, Big Screen; Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain. 104 Quoted in Cull, Selling War, 50. 105 Bennett, One World, Big Screen, 71.

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and Prejudice were produced in this climate, and although it is unclear whether they were directly influenced by British propaganda, their images of England did correspond with the Ministry of Information’s notion that Britain was in the process of becoming more democratic and less bound by class hierarchies. Wartime economic changes also made it expedient for Hollywood to embrace Britain: film exports to territories controlled by Germany and Italy were subject to increasing restrictions between 1939 and 1940 before being closed entirely, while Britain remained open to Hollywood imports.106 Whether propaganda or not, Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice met the needs of anti-isolationist campaigners by projecting versions of England which corresponded with contemporary American cultural and social interests. *** As the production histories of David Copperfield, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice indicate, the cultural status evoked by English literature proved a very tool useful for the American film industry as it negotiated a social role during the 1930s. The process of adapting classic literature was related not only to the replication of plot and character but also to the transference of prestige accrued by one text into another medium. Fidelity to the precursor text was often an important part of this process, but in many cases it emerged primarily through promotional discourses built around the film which were intended to signal the filmmakers’ diligent practices and their reverence for the source material. The production of David Copperfield and A Midsummer Night’s Dream was related to struggles over the cultural function of film in America and the need to promote the respectability of cinema as an institution. English literature was thus drawn on as a means to protect and burnish the reputation of the film industry in the face of bourgeois pressure and to promote the notion that films might improve the cultural sensibilities of their audience. The production of Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice indicated that the same industry might also be pressed into patriotic service, shaping perceptions of America’s allies as the nation prepared for war. In each case, adaptation films and the cultural capital they embodied served to highlight the film industry’s potential to positively influence public opinion. This cultural capital, moreover, became associated with a broader sense of Englishness, which carried connotations of respectability and sophistication. 106

M. Todd Bennett, ‘The Celluloid War: State and Studio in Anglo-American Propaganda FilmMaking, 1939–1941’, The International History Review 24, no. 1 (2002): 78.

2

Abstractions of Empire: Filming British Imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s

The prevalence of Hollywood films depicting the British Empire would seem to highlight the peculiar strength of American investments in a certain version of the English past. During the 1930s films such as The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and Gunga Din (1939) set tales of masculine adventure against exotic yet familiar backdrops, their upright heroes evincing a civilized coolness and authority in the face of native unrest. These films also proved to be remarkably good business: the latter two were the highest earning productions for their respective studios in their year of release.1 Reviewing The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1936, the film critic of The New York Times declared, England need have no fear of its empire so long as Hollywood insists on being the Kipling of the Pacific. The film city’s pious regard for the sacrosanct bearers of the white man’s burden continues to be one of the most amusing manifestations of Hollywood’s Anglophilia.2

However, the act of representing the British Empire was more problematic than it appeared, and these films often pricked tensions between Hollywood and Britain. The Empire film cycle of the 1930s can in fact be read as a site of considerable conflict, reflecting not only the struggle for authority and control in Britain’s colonies but also conflicting perceptions regarding the nature and purpose of Britain’s imperial project. Films set in the British Empire emerged as a popular genre in American cinema during the 1910s and 1920s and drew on conventions which had been established in the popular fiction of writers such as G. A. Henty, H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling. In these stories, the British Empire was presented 1 2

Glancy, ‘William Schaefer Ledger’; Jewell, ‘C.J. Telvin Ledger’. Frank S. Nugent, ‘Kiplings of the Pacific’, New York Times, 8 November 1936, X5.

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as a setting where the heroism and superiority of the English national character finds its fullest expression. As Wendy Katz has noted of Haggard’s fiction, the Englishman ‘needs Africa, India or some distant Ruritania to act out the role of his destiny’.3 Stuart Hall has connected the heroic theme of Empire fiction to the ideologies which underpinned imperialism. In such writing, he suggests, ‘The very idea of adventure became synonymous with the demonstration of the moral, social and physical mastery of the colonisers over the colonised.’4 In cinema, moreover, the hero’s ability to master colonial populations and territories is underscored by the visual pleasure offered to the audience through the display of these spaces. In Ella Shoat’s description, The camera relays the hero’s dynamic movement across a passive static space, gradually stripping the land of its ‘enigma’, as the spectator wins visual access to oriental treasures through the eyes of the explorer-protagonist. … The unveiling of the mysteries of an unknown space becomes a rite of passage allegorizing the Westerner’s achievement of virile heroic stature.5

In this way, the experiences of the hero are tied to those of the audience and the visual representation of colonized space is tied to the mastery of it. Silent-era Empire films in America also associated colonized space with a primitive sexuality which was shown to be simultaneously alluring and threatening to imperial sovereignty. In The Victoria Cross (1916), for example, a rebel leader presses an Indian woman into seducing an English major while he leads a revolt against colonial rule. But sexual relations between Englishmen and local women were typically shown to be unrequited, demonstrating the loyalty and submissiveness of colonial subjects while maintaining notions of racial hierarchy. The various adaptations of Under Two Flags (1912, 1916 and 1922) feature a French-Arabic woman who sacrifices her life to save an English legionnaire, for whom she has an unrequited passion, from the firing squad. The Beckoning Flame (1916) follows a similar pattern: at its climax, an Indian woman consents to death by ‘suttee’ in order to protect the reputation of the English deputy commissioner whom she vainly loves. Other films placed the honour of English women in peril. The Ruling Passion (1916) featured an Indian rajah 3

4

5

Wendy R. Katz, Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 83. Stuart Hall, ‘The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media’, in Gail Dines and Jean McMahon Humez (eds.), Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995), 21. Ella Shoat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994), 145–6.

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who uses hypnosis to seduce an Englishwoman and entrap her in his harem. In The Green Goddess (1923) an Englishwoman and her husband are imprisoned by another duplicitous rajah who also wishes to recruit her into his harem. The racial hierarchies which these American-made Empire films sought to protect also reflected attitudes towards miscegenation in the American present, creating a point of identification between the two nations which allowed American audiences to look past their own history within the British Empire by projecting a common white identity. As Prem Chowdhry has suggested, Empire films encouraged white audiences in America to identify not only with European nations ‘but also with the racial solidarity implied by the imperial project as a whole’.6 Whereas the Empire films in the 1910s and 1920s tended to revolve around romance, the Empire films of the 1930s shifted focus towards exterior action and spectacle. In part, this reflected a growing closeness between representations of the British Empire and the American Wild West. As the production of bigbudget Westerns declined following the commercial failure of Cimarron (1931), the themes and narrative conventions associated with the genre migrated to the Empire film. As Richard Slotkin has put it, ‘The “Victorian Empire” film may be thought of as the New Deal successor to the epic Western.’7 Like the Western, the Empire film of the 1930s made drama from the hardships of military life on the frontier, the domestication of alien territories, and the conflict between white settlers and the indigenous people they displaced. Both also focussed on male protagonists who are caught between civilization and savagery and who ultimately assert control over their environment through violent confrontation. The Western and the Empire film are, as Marcia Landy suggests, ‘genres of order’, films which ‘enact the establishment of law, order and the community’.8 The correlation between these genres also made it easier for American audiences to identify with the English colonists depicted on screen, a process compounded by the regular presence of American stars in these roles. Indeed, Shoat and Stam highlight the tendency for Hollywood films to feature American actors (such as Gary Cooper in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer or Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie) as younger colonists with older English actors (such as C. Aubrey Smith 6

7

8

Prem Chowdhry, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image, Ideology and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 40. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992), 265. Marcia Landy, British Genres: Cinema and Society, 1930–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 97.

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in both films) cast as paternal commanding officers. In this way they imply ‘a kind of imperial succession’ in which Americans are initiated into imperialist policy.9 Jeffrey Richards has argued that the Empire films of the 1930s ‘do not reflect contemporary ideas about the Empire’ but rather ‘those of the late nineteenth century’. ‘In films’, he adds, ‘the Empire is unchanged and unchanging’.10 However, the reception of these films indicates that they were often very closely identified with contemporary developments across Britain’s troubled Empire. The cycle of the 1930s coincided with a growth of colonial nationalist movements in British territories, particularly India. British administrators were anxious about overseas influence of Hollywood Empire films, fearing they would undermine colonial sovereignty and incite popular unrest. These films became even more contentious in the run up to the Second World War, as officials in London and Washington began to pressure Hollywood to portray Britain as a politically compatible ally for America and not as an antiquated behemoth fighting to keep large swaths of the globe in bondage. It can also be argued that the idea of Britain’s Empire being ‘unchanged and unchanging’ is itself ideological: in general, Empire films endorsed the notion that British rule was inevitable and absolute, based on the self-evident superiority of the ‘white race’ and the loyalty of the subjects under their command. This chapter examines the representation of the British Empire in Hollywood films in relation to the deterioration of the British imperial system and the rise of American hegemony. I begin with The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, which may be credited with initiating the first sound-era cycle of Empire films. In the process, the film highlighted a series of flashpoints between Hollywood representational practices, British censorship, colonial governmentality in India and Indian nationalism. These tensions flickered again with the release of The Charge of the Light Brigade, this time in relation to a film which drew more directly on colonial history. In Gunga Din, released as Europe stood on the edge of war, the dislocation between Hollywood’s version of the British Empire and the historical circumstances of the film’s production became even more acute. Finally, this chapter considers the decline of the Hollywood Empire film in the face of governmental pressure as America’s involvement in the Second World War intensified.

9 10

Shoat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, 113. Jeffrey Richards, Visions of Yesterday (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 7.

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‘Ruling and protecting these countless millions’: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) Loosely based on a bestselling memoir by Francis Yeats-Brown, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer is set among the 41st Bengal Lancer regiment, stationed on India’s Northwest frontier at the Khyber Pass. A brief summary of the film may be useful. New recruits Lieutenant McGregor (played by Gary Cooper), Lieutenant Forsythe and Lieutenant Stone become friends, although Stone’s position is complicated by the fact that his emotionally distant father, Colonel Stone, is in command of the regiment. Colonel Stone learns that the hostile Afridi tribesmen who are menacing the Lancers have been agitated and united by the local leader Mohammed Khan. A suave and duplicitous Oxford graduate, Khan makes plans to attack the Lancers and steal their ammunition. Aided by a seductive Russian spy, he proceeds to kidnap Lieutenant Stone. McGregor and Forsythe are determined to find him, but Colonel Stone refuses to send his regiment to aid the rescue. Disobeying orders and disguised as Indians, McGregor and Forsythe travel to Khan’s stronghold, but they too are captured. The three soldiers are tortured by Khan, and under interrogation Lieutenant Stone reveals the location of his regiment’s ammunition. In pursuit of the stolen ammunition, the remaining Lancers approach Khan’s stronghold and a climactic battle follows: Forsythe and MacGregor detonate the ammunition and Lieutenant Stone kills Khan, but McGregor is fatally wounded. The three soldiers are honoured in the film’s coda, with MacGregor receiving a posthumous Victoria Cross as ‘God Save the King’ plays on the soundtrack. Paramount obtained the screen rights to the Yeats-Brown memoir before its production in 1930 and work on the adaptation began soon after.11 Prior to writing the first full script, however, the studio sent filmmaker Ernest B. Schoedsack to India for three months, where he cooperated with British colonial authorities to film background material in various locations, including the Northwest frontier later depicted in the film. Much like Selznick’s trip to England during the production of David Copperfield, this expedition provided valuable publicity material, partly due to Schoedsack’s moderate renown as the co-director of the ethnographic non-fiction films Grass (1925), made in Iran, and Chang (1927), filmed in Siam. In 1931 The New York Times published a 11

‘The Lives of a Bengal Lancer’, AFI Catalog of Feature Films, www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailV iew.aspx?s=&Movie=5531, accessed 22 March 2017.

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letter from Schoedsack in which he described building a hidden camera set-up to gather ‘natural street-scenes’ before travelling to the Khyber Pass to film ‘warlike border tribes’ and a regiment of British Lancers.12 Schoedsack planned to integrate his Indian footage with interior scenes filmed using actors on Paramount’s lot. This approach had been partially successful in the 1929 Empire film The Four Feathers, for which Schoedsack and his partner Merian C. Cooper combined location material from Sudan with narrative-based scenes produced in a studio.13 In Lancer, however, Schoedsack’s attempt to marry ethnographic imagery to a fictional narrative set at an earlier date proved to be problematic and he soon departed the project. The first available screenplay, dated November 1932, points to limitations in his Indian material. An opening montage, sourced from the location footage, set out an array of Orientalist imagery: a maharajah riding an elephant in his palace, an ‘attractive beggar girl in rags’, a ‘religious fanatic’ with his chest covered in weighted hooks, a funeral pyre, exotic ‘Nautch’ dancers, a snake charmer and a tiger snarling at the camera.14 With its creative direction unclear despite Paramount’s considerable investment, the film was placed on hiatus. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer was re-announced in October 1933 with a revised script prepared by Waldemar Young and Achmed Abdullah.15 Schoedsack’s location material was still attached to the project, but the producers were wary about how to incorporate it. Instructions in the revised screenplay advised that the material ‘should not be selected at random to give colourful atmospheric impressions of India’. Instead, the screenplay emphasized the benign and rational character of British imperial rule: ‘An attempt should be made to put across the idea of the British Raj, patient, watchful. Ruling and protecting these countless millions.’ In this vein, the revised opening montage included British administrative buildings, which were to represent ‘the most imposing governmental center in the world’.16 The decision to side-line Schoedsack’s material meant that additional location photography was required to take its place. The film’s crew decamped to Lone Pine in California and Paramount’s ranch set, locations which were regularly used to film Westerns. Bringing the

12 13 14

15 16

‘The Lives of a Bengal Lancer’, New York Times, 29 November 1931. ‘Expensive Backgrounds’, New York Times, 17 March 1929. ‘Lives of a Bengal Lancer’ screenplay, no author, 28 November 1932, Paramount Script Files, l.592, Margaret Herrick Library. ‘On the Cinema Horizon’, New York Times, 29 October 1933. ‘The Lives of a Bengal Lancer’ screenplay, no author, 22 September 1934, Paramount Script Files, l.598, Margaret Herrick Library.

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film closer still to the Western genre, Native American performers (plus ‘Hindu fruit pickers’ from the Napa Valley) were cast as Afridi tribesmen, replacing the footage of real Afridis recorded by Schoedsack.17 Some of Schoedsack’s material did make it into the finished film: a brief opening montage features several location shots, and several wide shots showing the Lancer regiment performing drills were inserted later in the film. In general, however, Schoedsack’s interest in spectacle and exoticism was supplanted by production choices which brought the film closer to the conventions of the Hollywood Western. Lancer also emerged as an unambiguous endorsement of Britain’s imperial project. Whereas the location footage might have depicted India as wild and unruly in its alien exoticism, the completed film brought the competence of British colonial governance and the heroism of its armed forces into the foreground. Like many films in the Empire cycle, the plot of Lancer centres on anti-colonial insurgency and the British containment of it. However, this uprising was characterized as indigenous barbarism rather than a reaction to specific political circumstances, and it was not directly associated with colonial nationalist movements in contemporary India. Much of the advertising campaign created for Lancer focussed on the heroism of the Lancers and endorsed the notion of imperial control. Copy from Paramount’s pressbook described the Lancers as ‘a handful of heroic soldiers ordering the lives of 300,000,000 charges in mystic India’ and defined their role as ‘hold[ing] the outpost of the Empire against hordes of sabre-slashing outlaws’. Conjuring the mythical link between imperial rule and the English character, another advert declared, ‘When this breed of man dies out … that’s the end!’ In a further effort to bring the ethos of imperialism home to American audiences, Paramount distributed papier-maché pith helmets and turbans similar to those worn by the Lancers in the film.18 The advertising campaign also highlighted the Orientalist aspects of the story and its setting. India was described as ‘a land of romance, intrigue and mystery … strange Hindu self-torturers, street fakirs, weird music, bronzed nautch dancers, an exotic setting of unparalleled splendor!’19 Although the ultimate direction of the film had veered away from exoticism, the notion that India was ‘a mystic world of exotic rites’, as one advertisement put it, remained a strong attraction. Indeed, one of the major print advertisements for the film indicates that Paramount were able to market 17 18 19

‘Notes from the Cinema Gold Coast’, New York Times, 14 October 1934. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer Pressbook, Paramount Pictures Press Sheets, Margaret Herrick Library. Ibid.

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Figure 2.1 Press advert for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.

it to distinct audience segments: the page is split into sections entitled ‘romance’, ‘spectacle’ and ‘thrills’, positioning the film as love story, exotic spectacle and melodramatic adventure respectively. The romance section featured a picture of Gary Cooper and the glamorous but peripheral Russian spy with the text ‘they took their love where they found it … and dared death with a kiss’.20 Given that the film features no romance whatsoever, heterosexual or otherwise, the advert is distinctly misleading (see Figure 2.1). The script of Lancer was submitted to the Board of British Film Censors (BBFC) while the film was still in production. The decision to consult an external

20

Advert in Film Daily, 2 January 1935, 8. The same advert appeared with slight variations in other publications.

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censor reflected the importance of the British market and the troubles which Hollywood studios had experienced in the past. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the BBFC began taking action against Empire films which they regarded as detrimental to the prestige of Empire or to colonial law and order. Potentially objectionable scenes included those showing ‘white men in state of degradation amidst native surroundings’ and ‘equivocal situations between white girls and men of other races’.21 Such criticism was in fact part of a broader protectionist reaction among the political classes in Britain to the growing economic and cultural power of the American film industry, as well as its potentially harmful effect on audiences in Britain and its Empire.22 Nevertheless, these complaints were typically relayed back to American producers via the MPPDA, and the high value of the British and British Empire markets ensured that they were taken seriously.23 The BBFC complained that the dialogue and behaviour of the officers in Lancer were ‘un-English’, but they deemed the film to be ‘harmless’ with ‘no political significance and no discredit bought on the service’.24 Despite this precaution, the reception of Lancer in Britain and the British Empire was not without incident. In a letter to The Spectator, the Indian writer K. S. Shelvankar critiqued the film’s recreation of the ‘piously, serenely aggressive spirit of the Victorian age’. For the Indian viewer, he proposed, the film ‘presents … more vividly perhaps than he had ever himself been able to conceive the abject posture of his country today, and the perfection of the military machine which maintains his masters in power’.25 Protests occurred when the film was released in India later in 1935. The Statesman of Calcutta ran an article about the film entitled ‘The Vilification of India’ and the matter was discussed in India’s Central Legislative Assembly.26 The MPPDA later reported that Indian ‘nationalists’ had asked the British government to terminate the distribution of the film entirely, but no such action was taken.27 Lancer’s derogatory depiction of India’s Muslim population, a religion ascribed to the Afridi warriors and more loosely to the villain Mohammed 21

22

23 24 25 26

27

Jeffrey Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in 1930s Britain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 137. Lee Grieveson, Cinema and the Wealth of Nations: Media, Capital and the Liberal World System (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), 171–6. Vasey, World According to Hollywood, 149. Richards, Dream Palace, 139. K.S. Shelvankar, Letter to The Spectator, 22 February 1935. Chowdhry, Colonial India, 23; Transcript of article from The Statesman, 19 August 1935. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library. Frederick Herron, Memo to Joseph Breen, 20 July 1936. The Charge of the Light Brigade, PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library.

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Khan, also created tensions. In an early scene, an Afridi character attempts to kill a British officer because he sleeps with his feet pointing towards Mecca. In retaliation, Colonel Stone threatens to sew the Afridi’s body into the skin of a pig. Later, MacGregor makes the same threat to an Afridi captive. Protests against the film were made by Muslims in Britain, and in April 1935 the matter was briefly discussed in the House of Commons.28 The secretary of state for India was asked specifically about the pig skin scene and its potential to ‘do the greatest harm to our Moslem fellow-subjects’, but he relayed that the Government of India had elected not to take action.29 Other colonial governments were less sanguine, however, and the film was rejected by French colonial censors in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, presumably in fear of the effect its anti-Muslim content might have.30 By contrast, Lancer generated great enthusiasm among officials in Nazi Germany, who deemed it ‘artistically valuable’ and ‘useful for national education’, thus exempting it from certain taxes. It was among the first films to be screened at Hitler Youth meetings, where its depiction of young soldiers willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of an unyielding father figure carried obvious propaganda value.31 Overall, the reception of Lancer proved to be far less controversial than later Empire films, but the concerns of the British government, French censors and Indian politicians highlighted the capacity for fictional representations of Empire to incite conflict in the real world. Lancer may have owed a greater debt to pre-existing images of Hollywood’s Wild West than the British-occupied East, but its endorsement of British imperialism and its derogatory representation of Indian characters was problematic at a time of rising colonial nationalism.

‘One of the most distinguished events in history’: The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) Lancer proved to be a major commercial success and Paramount’s rivals sought to emulate it, despite the high costs entailed. In fact, the film arrived in American cinemas in the same month as 20th Century’s Clive of India (1935). As The New 28 29 30 31

Chowdhry, Colonial India, 23. Hansard (Commons), 29 April 1935, Vol. 301, cc3–4. Notes on foreign distribution. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library. Ben Urwand, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 116–20. Urwand’s claim that the film was ‘the most successful Nazi propaganda film of the 1930s’ is surely a gross overstatement, however.

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Figure 2.2 Cenotaph from The Charge of the Light Brigade’s title sequence.

York Times put it, Clive of India was ‘the second of Hollywood’s recent handsome tributes to the glory of British rule in India’.32 But whereas Lancer adopted the form of a melodramatic adventure narrative, Clive of India took its cue from other biopics of the era, portraying a great man struggling against the odds to achieve his destiny (the expansion of British imperial power, in this case). 20th Century Fox later produced a sound version of Under Two Flags (1936), which dramatized the bravery and sacrifice of English soldiers but put them in a French North African setting. The first major reiteration of Lancer was Warner Bros.’ The Charge of the Light Brigade. The film was ostensibly an adaptation of Alfred Tennyson’s popular narrative poem which described the disastrous charge of British cavalry against Russian forces during the Crimean War in 1854. However, Warner Bros.’ production derived from an original story by American journalist Abraham S. Jacoby and it departed significantly from both Tennyson’s poem and the historical record, using the charge as a dramatic climax to a narrative set largely around India’s familiar Northwest frontier.33

32 33

Andre Sennwald, Clive of India review, New York Times, 18 January 1935. Memo from R. J. Obringer to Jack Warner, 19 July 1935. The Charge of the Light Brigade (hereafter Charge) Story Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives.

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In an unusually elaborate preamble, The Charge of the Light Brigade opens with a card resembling an inscription on cenotaph, dedicating the film ‘to the officers and men of the Light Brigade who died victorious in a gallant charge … for Queen and Country’ (see Figure 2.2). This is followed by text praising Tennyson ‘for perpetuating in an epic poem one of the most distinguished events in history conspicuous for sheer valor’. After the opening credits, a card acknowledges the ‘technical advice’ of Captain E. Rochfort-John before a final disclaimer states the film’s ‘historical basis’ has been ‘fictionalized’ and that ‘no identification with actual persons … is intended’. In a series of contradictory rhetorical moves, the film aligns itself with the historical record of the past, asserts its credentials for representing these events, and then disavows the ultimate accuracy of its representation. These credits also indicate that the film will propose a particular reading of history, in which the charge is celebrated as an act of patriotic bravery rather than a senseless military blunder. The subsequent narrative centres on Major Geoffrey Vickers (played by Errol Flynn) of the 27th Bengal Lancers, who is stationed close to the fictional province of Suristan. Vickers visits the Suristani leader Surat Khan and informs him that the British government has decided to cut their financial aid. Surat Khan is angered, but he pledges personal gratitude to Vickers after he saves his life during a leopard hunt. Returning to Calcutta, Vickers discovers that his fiancée has fallen in love with his younger brother. Downcast, he is transferred to a garrison in Chukoti which is subsequently attacked by troops led by Surat Khan. After several days under siege, Khan offers the British inhabitants safe conduct if they surrender, but his soldiers shoot at them as they leave. Vickers escapes, but many British soldiers and civilians are killed. It transpires that Surat Khan has aligned himself with Russia against Britain in the ongoing Crimean War, and Vickers realizes that he has the opportunity to avenge the massacre at Chukoti on the battlefield. Travelling to Crimea, he forges orders from his commanding officer and leads the Lancers in a hazardous charge towards Surat Khan and his troops. Khan is killed, but Vickers and 600 Lancers also die in a horrendous defeat for the British army. Nevertheless, the charge is said to have ‘turned the tide’ in Britain’s favour in the broader conflict and Vickers is posthumously commended for his gallantry. The narrative parallels between Charge and Lancer were more than coincidental. Producer Hal Wallis privately described the former as being ‘along the same lines as The Lives of a Bengal Lancer’.34 Both concerned heroic 34

Hal Wallis, Letter to Morris Ebenstein, 7 July 1936. Charge Story Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives.

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regiments of Lancers waging war against duplicitous, sadistic, English-educated Khans who command warlike tribes in Northern India. Both also associated rebellion against British colonial rule with Russian influence. As one reviewer observed, Charge featured ‘the usual treacherous Amir lurking in one corner, the immaculately heroic Lancers in another and the middle ground a vivid splash of leopard hunts, native uprisings and outpost massacres’.35 But whereas Lancer bore no direct relationship to real events, Charge dramatized one of the most notorious episodes in British military history. For this reason, Warner Bros. was eager to avoid causing offence in the valuable British market. During preproduction the head of Warner Bros.’ distribution arm in London stated that ‘the film can be the greatest picture for England that the company has ever made’, although he warned them against including Florence Nightingale in the story.36 Warner Bros. also received advice from Captain E. Rochfort-John, a former British officer who had served as technical advisor on both Lancer and Clive of India. Rochfort-John pointed out passages which ‘should have a definite OK from London’, adding ‘we must be careful, for this picture is, I take it, primarily intended for the British Empire and European market’.37 The response of British censors confirmed the need for caution. In a letter to Warner Bros.’ British distribution office, the head of the BBFC described the screenplay as ‘a travesty of history’ and warned that the British government was likely to take exception to it. The film must not ‘rehash the sensationalism of former films dealing with India’, they added, nor should it ‘violate … the sacred traditions of the British army’.38 The BBFC therefore took Charge much more seriously than they had Lancer the previous year, partly due to its historical content but perhaps also in apprehension that fanciful adventure films set in India might become commonplace. Warner Bros. anticipated that British objections to the film would centre on its opportunistic attempt to attach a recreation of the charge to an adventure story in a fashionable Indian setting. Screenwriters Abraham Jacoby and Rowland Leigh made the speculative nature of their work quite clear, but they argued that this was done in the name of historical enquiry. In order to create ‘a perfectly logical and possible solution’ to the question of why the charge had occurred, they ‘began with the charge and worked backward’. In this way, so they claimed, the 35 36 37

38

Frank S. Nugent, The Charge of the Light Brigade review, New York Times, 2 November 1936. D.E. Griffith, Letter to S. E. Morris, 3 July 1935. Charge Story Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives. E. Rochfort-John script analysis, 4 December 1935. Charge Analysis Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives. Head of BBFC, Letter to D. E. Griffith, 17 April 1936. Charge Story Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives.

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film would provide an explanation for ‘a major historical mystery’.39 The notion that the film was a work of historical interpretation was extended by publicity materials prepared at the time of its release: according to ‘Jacoby’s hypothesis’, the charge occurred ‘because their leader’s sweetheart loved his brother, for one thing, and because he wanted to avenge an Indian massacre, for another’.40 However, this loose treatment of the historical record was thought liable to cause offence in Britain. Shortly after the film went into production, the head of Warner Bros.’ office in London wrote to Jack Warner directly, warning him that the charge was ‘sacred in Britain’ and that ‘any inaccuracies that appear will be seized upon, and the picture and our Company condemned’.41 Producer Hal Wallis was aware that the film might provoke criticism and he took steps during pre-production to limit the damage of its historical inventions. Contradicting the line taken by Jacoby and Leigh, he acknowledged that ‘we have a very highly fictionalised story and that it bears no relation to the historical facts’. In order to ‘save ourselves from a lot of grief and criticism in England’ he proposed that ‘we surround our Battle of Balaclava and charge of the light brigade with historically correct incidents and detail’ which would deflect attention from the invented episodes.42 The lavish mise en scène which Hollywood studios made a speciality during the 1930s thus became camouflage for the film’s departure from ‘historical facts’. However, the most serious problem created by Charge had nothing to do with its depiction of the charge but rather to do with the scene in which Surat Khan’s troops massacre British soldiers and families at Chukoti. The scenes were clearly based on the 1857 Siege of Cawnpore, a key episode in the Indian Mutiny in which soldiers and civilians attached to the East India Company were massacred by Indian troops, leading to brutal reprisals from Company forces. Contemporary illustrations of the incident showed women and children slaughtered as they attempted to cross a river, a detail which the film recreated (see Figure 2.3). The Indian Mutiny and the British response to it was a highly sensitive topic, particularly for Indian nationalists. According to Chowdhry, it was ‘the most inflammatory memory in the nationalist agenda’.43 Before production began, the BBFC warned against scenes ‘likely to prove objectionable to Indian 39

40 41 42 43

Abraham Jacoby and Rowland Leigh, Memo to Sam Bischoff, 27 August 1935. Charge Story Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives. Publicity file. Charge Publicity and Clippings Files, f.681, USC Warner Bros. Archives. D. E. Griffith, Memo to Jack Warner, 20 April 1936. Charge Story Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives. Wallis, Memo to Bischoff, 13 February 1936. Charge Story Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives. Chowdhry, Colonial India, 29.

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Figure 2.3 Engraving depicting the Cawnpore massacre (left) and corresponding image from The Charge of the Light Brigade (right).

thought’ and stated that films depicting rebellion against British rule should be discouraged ‘at the present juncture’.44 Around the same time, Jack Warner was informed that the British India Office had become aware of the film, possibly as a result of information leaked from the British Consulate Office in Los Angeles, and that they had advised the BBFC to ensure that it was not seen anywhere in the British Empire.45 It seemed certain that Charge would not be released in India. But British administrators went further, lobbying Warner Bros. through various channels, including the State Department and the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, with the rather optimistic aim of preventing the film from being released at all. In communications which were forwarded to the MPPDA, British representatives spoke of ‘irritation in Indian circles’ and the importance of ‘amicable trade relations in the long run’. But Warner Bros. felt no pressure to comply, particularly given as they had invested over a million dollars in the production.46 For all their interest in securing revenues from the British Empire market, Warner Bros. was quite unconcerned by its reception in the specific part of the British Empire which the film represented. Nevertheless, the failed campaign by British administrators to censor the film underlined the extreme sensitivity of its subject and its potential impact in the British Empire, even without an official release in India. Despite these controversies, Charge proved to be a popular success. Foreign earnings of $1.5 million (compared to domestic earnings of $1.1 million) also 44 45 46

Head of BBFC, Letter to D.E. Griffith, 17 April 1936. Charge Story Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives. Letter from D. E. Griffith to Warner, 17 April 1936. Charge Story Files, USC Warner Bros. Archives. J.C. White, Letter to US Secretary of State, 27 May 1936; George C. Howard, Letter to the SpecialtiesMotion Picture Division, 18 June 1936. Charge, PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library.

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indicate that it performed strongly in Britain and the British Empire.47 Criticism in Britain over the fictionalization of the charge was largely avoided, a fact Warner Bros. highlighted in a promotional booklet which reprinted positive reviews from London newspapers: ‘Hollywood glorifies the British army’ (Daily Sketch), an ‘inspiring vision of the dignity and daring and the selfless heroism which made the British Empire’ (The Daily Mail), ‘Hollywood has dramatised British history in a way which makes it imperative to see’ (News of the World).48 In fact, the film’s problematic representation of British and Indian histories was entirely overshadowed by the controversy generated by its treatment of animals. Reports about the death of horses during the filming of the charge sequence due to the use of dangerous tripwires circulated widely in Britain, and the BBFC requested the deletion of multiple shots featuring falling horses.49 Charge was a complex text: it offered naive escapism and flattered the heroism of British colonialists, but in certain contexts it was politically loaded to the point that it was thought to threaten imperial law and order. The reception of the film also pointed to genuine tensions between Hollywood producers, British colonial administrators and Indian nationalists. Shortly after it arrived in cinemas, the colonial government in India prepared criteria for judging whether Empire films were to be considered ‘offensive’ to Indians. These criteria were later sent to producers in America, with the warning that the ‘lowering of Indians in the eyes of the world’ would arouse resentment, whether or not the film in question was actually shown in India.50 As before, Hollywood producers faced no direct pressure to allow objections from a relatively small market to derail such a lucrative film cycle. And as the production of Gunga Din would show, these recommendations had no immediate impact on the dominant representation of the British Empire in Hollywood.

‘Delightfully evil in the Fascist sense’: Gunga Din (1939) The success of The Charge of the Light Brigade led to further depictions of British imperialism in India, although the high cost of films in this vein limited the studios’ output. In 1937, 20th Century Fox released Wee Willie Winkie, directed by John Ford, in which another British garrison in the Northwest frontier were 47 48 49 50

Glancy, ‘William Schaefer Ledger’. Publicity booklet. Charge Publicity and Clippings Files, f.681, USC Warner Bros. Archives. Notes on foreign distribution. Charge, PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library. Chowdhury, Colonial India, 37.

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threatened by another Khan and the fearsome hill tribes under his command. In a novel twist, however, the usual male action hero was replaced by child-star Shirley Temple, and rather than resolving conflict through violence she charms the colonized and their colonizers into a reconciliation. Storm over Bengal (1938), produced by the small Republic Pictures studio, was even more explicit in its replication of the Lancer formula. Originally titled ‘Bengal Lancer Patrol’, the film not only borrowed the central conflict between redoubtable English troops and a mutinous Khan from the earlier film, but also recruited three of its cast. Most prominently, Gunga Din was released in 1939 by the struggling RKO studio. The film was based on a poem by Rudyard Kipling, but this verse description of an Indian water carrier who sacrifices himself to save the life of an English soldier provided only the bare bones of a plot. The film resolved this by incorporating elements from Kipling’s ‘Soldiers Three’ stories, producing a plot based around the friendship between Sergeants Cutter (Cary Grant), MacChesney (Victor McLaglen) and Ballantine (Douglas Fairbanks Jr). At the beginning of the film they are sent from their garrison on the Northwest frontier to investigate the cutting of a telegraph wire at a British outpost. They find that the outpost has been overrun by members of a fanatical religious cult known as the ‘Thugee’ who worship the goddess Kali and have sworn to fight the British. The three sergeants defeat the Thugee, but when they return to their garrison Ballantine announces his intention to marry and retire from the army, much to the dismay of Cutter and MacChesney. The regiment’s water carrier Gunga Din helps Cutter to find a temple which he believes to be made of gold, but the temple is in fact the shrine of the Thugees and Cutter is taken captive. In a departure from convention, the Thugee are led not by a suave Khan but by a religious ascetic referred to as the Guru. Back at the garrison, Din alerts MacChesney and Ballantine to Cutter’s capture and they immediately set out to rescue him, even though this means that Ballantine must re-enlist in the army. The Thugee capture Din, MacChesney and Ballantine, leading their entire regiment to come after them. As the Guru and his Thugee prepare their ambush, Din sounds the bugle to warn them away. Din is killed in the effort but the soldiers defeat the Thugee. In honour of his sacrifice, Din is posthumously made a corporal, fulfilling his life-long ambition. The rights to Kipling’s poem were purchased by an independent producer in 1936 and the project was subsequently developed by RKO.51 William Faulkner

51

Richard B. Jewell, RKO Radio Pictures: A Titan in Born (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 168.

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was among the early writers assigned to produce a screenplay, but none of his work was used.52 Gunga Din took shape when RKO assigned appointed Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and director Howard Hawks to the project. A memo to the studio highlights their struggle to resist the influence of Charge and Lancer: Have finally figured out tale involving two sacrifices, one for love, the other for England, which neither resembles BENGAL LANCERS nor CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE and contains something like two thousand deaths, thirty elephants and a pack of maharajas. We have this now in a cocktail shaker and have poured out some thirty five pages of glittering prose.53

In fact, the resemblance of their screenplay to the earlier films was quite clear. Hecht and MacArthur named their central villain Sufi Khan, giving him a similar pedigree as the treacherous Khans of Lancer, Change, Wee Willie Winkie and Storm Over Bengal. Further echoing Lancer, Sufi Khan is a gun smuggler and he is defeated by an ad hoc team of three daring English soldiers whom he initially tortures for information. The secondary plot in which a soldier is caught between loyalty to his comrades and a woman who tries to domesticate him shares elements of Charge’s love triangle, but it has more in common with Hecht and MacArthur’s play The Front Page, which Hawks later filmed as His Girl Friday (1940). Their work was also marked by racism. In the opening pages Din is referred to as ‘a ratty little chimp’, a ‘black skunk’ and a ‘skinny baboon’ and told to ‘get back in the jungle where you belong’. MacChesney also ties and flays Din with a belt as Cutter and Ballantine wearily look on.54 Insults and beatings were referred to in the Kipling poem (it concludes ‘Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, / By the livin’ Gawd that made you, / You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!) but in an American context the violence and animal imagery evoke more proximate expressions of racism.55 Such a casual depiction of brutality in the British army would also have made the film unacceptable to censors in RKO’s biggest export market. In November 1937 producer Pandro Berman took control of Gunga Din and proceeded to remove Howard Hawks, apparently because his film Bringing Up

52

53 54

55

William Faulkner, Notes for an Original Story, 13 April 1936. Gunga Din research, f.42, Rudy Behlmer papers, Margaret Herrick Library. Quoted in Jewell, RKO Radio Pictures, 169. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Gunga Din revised estimating script, 24 March 1937. George Stevens papers, 222-f.2608, Margaret Herrick Library. Rudyard Kipling, Selected Poems, ed. Peter Keating (London: Penguin, 1993), 25.

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Figure 2.4 The Guru in Gunga Din.

Baby (1938) had gone over budget.56 George Stevens was assigned to direct, and Hecht and MacArthur’s screenplay was rewritten by Joel Sayre and Fred Guiol. The new script significantly toned down the abuse of Din and put greater emphasis on his redeeming loyalty to the British army. It was also at this point that the Thugee were introduced to the film and the Sufi Khan character became the Guru. The Thugee were a real criminal group which had operated in central India until the nineteenth century and their addition added variety to the conventional Empire film formula. In the process, the film moved away from depicting Islam as the religion of the British Empire’s antagonists and substituted it with Hinduism, despite the fact that Islam was far more prevalent in northwestern India. Rudy Behlmer has suggested that the film draws parallels between the megalomaniac Guru and both Hitler and Mussolini.57 The Guru announces his intention to ‘engulf all India’ and his peculiar manner of holding his arms echoes Hitler’s distinctive body language. But as filmed sitting with legs crossed, head shaven and dressed in a white cotton loincloth and head shawl, the Guru’s resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi is much stronger (see Figure 2.4). The image of Gandhi was familiar in the West and at this point in time he was popularly 56

57

Pandro Berman, A Louis B. Mayer Foundation-American Film Institute Oral History. Conducted and edited by Mike Steen (Los Angeles: American Film Institute, 1972), unpaginated. Rudy Behlmer, America’s Favourite Movies: Behind the Scenes (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982), 95.

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regarded less as a hero of non-violent resistance and more as a nuisance to Britain’s colonial authority.58 To this extent, the Guru is associated with colonial nationalist sentiment. Before jumping to his death in a brave sacrifice, he tells the three sergeants, ‘India is my country and my faith, and I can die for my faith and my country as readily as you for yours’. Although Gunga Din sought to depart from certain Empire film conventions, it was filmed at the same California locations as Lancer and Charge. This extensive location work led to the film costing considerably more than planned. Initially budgeted at $1.3 million, which was already more than RKO had spent on a single film since 1931, Gunga Din ultimately cost $1.9 million.59 A significant box-office performance was therefore required if the cash-strapped RKO studio was to see a return on such a heavy investment. Their publicity material played up the novelty of the Thugee subplot with one advert announcing ‘for the first time in film annals, the notorious Thugs who terrorised India for so many years are depicted on the screen’.60 But this historical element was not necessarily grasped by the film’s audience: two separate response cards from a test screening in America referred to the Guru as a ‘Turk’.61 For some reviewers, moreover, Gunga Din seemed harmfully detached from the anxious mood of the era. A critic in Time complained ‘that Hollywood can supply no better salute to 1939 than a $2,000,000 rehash, however expert, of Rudyard Kipling and brown Indians in bed sheets, is a sad reflection on its state of mind’.62 For audiences and the British government in India, however, the cultural context and topicality of Gunga Din was much clearer. Its conflation of Hinduism, colonial nationalism and the Thugee murder cult, as well as its demonization of Ghandi, was clearly provocative. Gunga Din came in for particular attack among India’s nationalist bourgeoisie. The Bombay-based film magazine Filmindia campaigned fiercely against the film after their correspondent read the screenplay on a visit to Hollywood. He called Gunga Din ‘an atrocious libel on my country and my people’ and complained that ‘one more outrageous libel on India will be flashed on the screen in every country of the world’.63 The protest continued in an editorial from the following issue, coinciding with the 58 59

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61 62 63

Chowdhry, Colonial India, 153. Negative cost of Gunga Din, 23 March 1940. George Stevens papers, 222-f.2613, Margaret Herrick Library; Jewell, ‘C.J. Telvin Ledger’. Handbook of Publicity Data for Gunga Din, 11 July 1938. George Stevens papers, 223-f.2617, Margaret Herrick Library. Gunga Din preview comments, n.d., George Stevens papers, 223-f.2615, Margaret Herrick Library. Gunga Din review, Time, 6 February 1939. Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, ‘Gunga Din Another Scandalously Anti-Indian Picture!’, Filmindia, February 1939, 26–31.

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film’s American premiere, in which the editor demanded that RKO withdraw the film worldwide and destroy the negative ‘in the presence of Indian officials’.64 The strident tone of these denouncements was influenced by the success of Indian protests against the British-made Empire film The Drum, which was released in India in September 1938 and rapidly withdrawn after it provoked violent unrest.65 Chastened by this incident and already leery of Hollywood’s depiction of the Empire, the British administration was never likely to allow Gunga Din to be released in India. Aside from the objections of the Indian public, the colonial government considered Gunga Din to be detrimental to the prestige of the British army. Cutter’s determination to loot gold from an Indian temple and the scenes in which uniformed British soldiers are whipped by their Thugee captors were felt to be particularly problematic. In addition, there was also the possibility that Guru’s pledge of faith in his country and his determination to free it from British occupation would appeal to colonial nationalist sentiments, despite the film’s broader execration of this ideology. Nevertheless, RKO submitted Gunga Din to the Board of Censors in Bengal in the belief that they would be more lenient than the censors in Bombay. It was rejected all the same, and the American trade commissioner to India later reported that representatives of RKO in India had been ‘astonished at the insidious propaganda’ against the film.66 Explaining the decision in the same memo, the Commissioner stated that the Board of Censors believed Gunga Din would ‘adversely affect relations between the army and the public’. In particular, the scene in which British soldiers attempted to loot and desecrate a Hindu temple was described as ‘repugnant’.67 In hindsight, it seems remarkable that RKO did not foresee this negative reaction to Gunga Din given the content of the film and the reception of other Empire films in India. Whereas Lancer had offended Indian Muslims and Charge had provoked memories of the Indian Mutiny, Gunga Din depicted the entire population of India in Manichean terms, either as murderous brutes or as childlike subjects ineptly mimicking their masters. At the same time, Gunga Din was arguably much less pro-Empire than its predecessors, omitting the homilies to the white man’s burden which feature in Lancer and Charge. Gunga Din underlined the inattentiveness of Hollywood producers towards 64 65 66

67

Baburao Patel, ‘This Slander Must Stop!’, Filmindia, March 1939, 3–5. Chowdhry, Colonial India, 57. Confidential Footnotes by India Trade Commissioner, 26 May 1939. In Rudy Behlmer (ed.), Gunga Din files, f.42, Margaret Herrick library. Ibid.

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the Indian imperial context which they sought to represent and towards the objectives of the British colonial administration, who were desperate to preserve their sovereignty over an increasingly fractious population. As with Charge and Lancer, the concerns of British administrators towards ‘Indian feelings’ were self-serving, but they illustrated a divide between British and American outlooks. As the editor of Filmindia put it in his attack on the film, ‘It is strange to note that when the ruling race of Britishers have relaxed its imperialist outlook to please the Indians the Americans, who are utter foreigners, should go out their way to scandalise our country.’68 Director George Stevens would later become more reflective about the film’s politics. Looking back at the end of a career which included filming the liberation of Dachau concentration camp as an army cameraman, he noted the chauvinistic context in which Gunga Din’s was produced and described it as ‘delightfully evil in the fascist sense’.69 The outbreak of the Second World War, just months after the release of Gunga Din, would change the fortunes of the Empire film, putting much stronger pressure on Hollywood studios to modify their depiction of British imperialism.

Empire films and the Second World War RKO’s troubles with Gunga Din were echoed by Paramount’s struggles over Beau Geste (1939), a film which may be associated with the Empire cycle even though its English solider protagonist served in the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. The French Consul in Los Angeles viewed the film prior to its release and declared it to be ‘entirely objectionable to the French point of view’, adding that its ‘offensive treatment of the Legion’ had obliged him to walk out of the cinema soon after it began.70 Paramount agreed to make changes to all prints of the film on the understanding that the French government would withdraw their objections, but Beau Geste was rejected in France and its Empire nevertheless. In addition, the film was denied a release by censors in Canada, Portugal, Bulgaria and Paraguay on the request of the French government.71 The 68 69

70 71

Patel, ‘This Slander Must Stop!’. Quoted in George Stevens Jr. (ed.), Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 228. For Stevens’s wartime career, see Mark Harris, Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2015). J.J. Viala to William Le Baron, 20 July 1939. Beau Geste, PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library. George Weltner, Letter to Maurice Garreau-Dombasle, 1 September 1939. Beau Geste, PCA records, Margaret Herrick Library; ‘French Influence Ban on Geste’ in Canada’, Variety, 4 October 1939.

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combined financial damage inflicted by the loss of these territories was much more significant than the blocking of the Indian market for Gunga Din. Once again, the inherent difficulties of distributing Empire films in world markets were apparent, particularly as the looming war raised national sensitivities around the depiction of the military. In general, however, the use of African imperial locations proved to be less contentious than Indian settings. British producers had long favoured African locales (the Indian-set The Drum was a rare exception) and at the end of the decade Hollywood producers began to follow.72 As hostilities escalated in Europe, some studios attempted to address topical issues by setting Empire films in the present. The Sun Never Sets, released by Universal in June 1939, depicted British colonists in West Africa facing off against a Nazi-esque tyrant named Zurof who uses radio propaganda to provoke global conflict. Even more than the Empire films which preceded it, the film went out of its way to honour British imperialism. It opens with ‘Rule Britannia’ on the soundtrack and a card which states, To the countless millions bred in the British Isles who, through the past four centuries, have gone forth to the far corners of the earth to find new countries, to establish laws and the ethics of governments, who have kept high the standard of civilization – this picture is respectfully dedicated.

Stanley and Livingstone, released by 20th Century Fox in August 1939, returned to the past and to biographies of historical figures, but its depiction of AngloAmerican cooperation over colonial administration was prescient. The film offers a rare American perspective on the British Empire by following American reporter Stanley (Spencer Tracy) to Africa in search of the British doctor David Livingstone. Stanley is deeply impressed by Livingstone’s religious and medical endeavours, and after the doctor’s death he agrees to ‘finish the work he’s started’ by returning to Africa. In this way, the film worked to soften American hostility to British imperialism by projecting it as a humanitarian operation in which principled Americans could participate and perhaps even inherit after Britain’s demise. In September 1939, 20th Century Fox released The Rains Came, a drama set in modern India. The film took a different approach in its depiction of British colonial authority, positioning imperialism as a mutually enriching partnership. 72

According to Johnstone, only two British-made Empire films featured Indian settings during the 1930s: Elephant Boy (1937) and The Drum (1938). Sara R. Johnstone, A Special Relationship: The British Empire in British and American Cinema, 1930–1960. PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2013, 59.

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Marketed as ‘the true face of modern India’, the film aligned with British interests to the extent that it was passed for an Indian release.73 Although Stanley and Livingstone used Empire to make the case for an alliance between America and Britain and The Rains Came emphasized modern imperial development, Britain’s Empire was on the whole an impediment to Anglo-American relations. Following the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, depictions of imperialism became much less common. One exception was Sundown, released in 1941 by United Artists. Set in a fictional British colony in East Africa against the backdrop of the Second World War, the film concerns the efforts of the British army and to protect their outpost from falling into the hands of Nazi-aligned arms smugglers. Despite its topical setting, the PCA insisted that the film should avoid mentioning Germany by name, even though the German and Italian governments had already begun to block the import of Hollywood films.74 Like many Hollywood films of the era, Sundown nevertheless made clear the political fidelities of its producers. Its epilogue was staged in a bombed-out London church and featured a funeral elegy in which a vicar urged his congregation to ‘keep bright your faith until our England wins’. MGM’s Mrs. Miniver, released the following year, concluded with a very similar scene in which another vicar in another bomb damaged church declared that the war ‘must be fought not only on the battlefield, but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home, and in the heart of every man, woman, and child who loves freedom!’. The issue of the film industry’s implicit support for American intervention and the extent to which they were influenced by British propaganda was highly contentious, and in September 1941 a Senate Committee was formed by isolationist Republicans to investigate ‘Propaganda in Motion Pictures’.75 Three months after the Committee’s first meeting and just weeks after the premiere of Sundown, however, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor led America to enter the war as an ally to Britain and its Empire. The formation of the Office of War Information (OWI) in June 1942 underlined the role of film in shaping public opinion about the war effort. Based in Washington, the OWI and its Bureau of Motion Pictures were given the task of ‘advising’ studios on the suitability of their films.76 Their ability to directly regulate the content of films was initially limited, but after the film industry 73 74 75 76

Chowdhry, Colonial India, 193. Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain, 60–1; Bennett, ‘The Celluloid War’, 78. Bennett, One World, Big Screen , 83–8. Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain, 182.

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proved reluctant to follow their recommendations the OWI collaborated with the Office of Censorship to deny export licences for films which they regarded as harmful. Their advice was now effectively backed with the threat of financial penalties, giving them powers that were theoretically comparable to those wielded by the PCA.77 The OWI gave particular attention to Hollywood’s representation of America’s allies, including Britain. Their policy towards Britain was outlined in the Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry, which they sent to film studios in 1942: There is a tendency to be critical of the British, their past Imperialistic policies, and the purposes of certain elements in Britain. But the British people are putting up a magnificent battle. Where would we be today if Britain had not continued to resist in the critical year when she stood alone, unprepared, and without allies, against the Axis?78

There was of course no shortage of Hollywood films depicting Britain and British people. The issue was rather that many of these films did not present Britain as an appropriate ally for America. An OWI report concerning the film Forever and a Day (1943) set out their policy for representing Britain in more detail. The statement criticized Hollywood filmmakers for their focus on England’s aristocratic culture instead of ‘the real people of England, the workers and shopkeepers and miners … who were the backbone of England in its darkest days’.79 Following the Ministry of Information’s propaganda principle that Britain was fighting a ‘people’s war’, the OWI endorsed certain depictions of Britain and discouraged others. Empire films were certainly in the latter category. As Koppes and Black put it, ‘For propaganda purposes British society had to be democratized and its empire written out.’80 The impact of OWI policy on the Empire film was made clear very quickly. Although films depicting imperial India declined after the release of The Rains Came in late 1939, MGM decided in 1942 to produce an adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim, the story of an Anglo-Indian orphan boy who helps foil the plans of Russian-backed rebels in India. The project dated back to 1934 when MGM acquired the rights to the novel and assigned Howard Estabrook and 77 78

79 80

Ibid., 184. Office of War Information, Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry (Washington, DC: Office of War Information, 1942), https://libraries.indiana.edu/collection-digi tal-archive-gimmpi, accessed 22 February 2017. Quoted in Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain, 201. Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (London: Collier Macmillan, 1987), 225.

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Hugh Walpole, who had recently collaborated on David Copperfield, to produce a script. Producer Louis Lighton noted, ‘We want to please England with this picture,’ adding that the film ought to depict ‘the very fine relationship that exists between the English officers and almost all of the natives’.81 When Kim reappeared in 1942 the script was rewritten to highlight the idea that its main character was attempting to protect India from German and Japanese aggression. Nevertheless, the OWI informed MGM that such a film was liable to cause offense, not least in India, which played a valuable strategic role in the Pacific theatre. Their decision was backed by the British government, who had long quailed at Hollywood’s representation of imperial India, and MGM postponed Kim until after the war.82 The OWI also interceded when RKO made plans to rerelease Gunga Din in 1942, a necessary measure given that the film recorded a slight loss on its initial release.83 In a review of the film, the OWI stated quite bluntly that ‘the film glorifies British imperialism. … At a time when we are stressing that the current war is a people’s war, this is obviously an inopportune comment.’84 The reviewer also noted the racist treatment of Din and suggested that the Guru’s willingness to fight for his country against British occupation might ‘strike a sympathetic note’ among those opposed to British imperialism. In addition to stoking antiBritish feeling in America, the OWI recalled the uproar generated by the film in India and the suggested that these objections might resurface.85 RKO reluctantly agreed to withdraw the film, although their records suggest that it made money from a short domestic and international rerelease prior to this decision.86 The Empire film cycle had been in decline since 1939, largely for economic reasons: the films were popular, but they tended to be very expensive to produce. Empire films were also orientated towards Hollywood’s export markets, which became less accessible after 1939. But the OWI’s suppression of Kim and Gunga Din was a knock-out blow. America’s entry into the Second World War obliged filmmakers to respond to new prerogatives, and the clear political problems caused by their depictions of the British Empire could no longer be ignored. ***

81

82 83 84 85 86

‘Script Notes by Mr. Lighton’, 21 January 1937, Turner/MGM Script Collection, 1558-f.K-254. Margaret Herrick Library. Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain, 191–2. Jewell, ‘C.J. Telvin Ledger’. Quoted in Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain, 191. Ibid. Jewell, ‘C.J. Telvin Ledger’.

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Hollywood’s Empire film cycle of the 1930s illustrates the rewards as well as the unexpected hazards associated with the representation of England’s past. Films such as Lives of a Bengal Lancer, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Gunga Din depicted India under British rule as a site of adventure and exoticism, affirming the gallantry of the British army and the benign power of the colonial authority which they enforced. The films were made with the lucrative British and British Empire market in mind, but their Western-inspired themes and narrative conventions were sufficiently familiar to make them popular with a large American audience. At the same time, the peak of the Hollywood Empire film coincided with the decomposition of British colonial power in India, the territory which Hollywood represented most frequently. As a result, the popularity of these films among the British public was not shared by Britain’s political classes, who were aggravated by the general indifference of the films towards the prestige of the British army and the maintenance of law and order in India. Empire films also caused outrage in India itself, a factor which intensified British official opposition but which made little impact on filmmakers in Hollywood, at least until the outbreak of the Second World War turned India into an ally. The war also made the positive association between Britain and imperialism a liability, and Hollywood filmmakers were required to adjust accordingly. Lives of a Bengal Lancer, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Gunga Din were products of the Hollywood studio system: produced by American filmmakers on Californian locations with British and American stars. As a result, they were largely isolated from the material circumstances of imperialism. But Hollywood’s global reach meant that these naive representations circulated in political contexts where they took on different meanings. Hollywood Westerns may have troubled few people outside America’s own borders, but this was not the case when the same narrative conventions were transplanted into imperial settings. The representation of British imperialism in the 1930s was thus more fractious than might previously have been imagined. The films were popular, but they also pointed to weaknesses in Britain’s imperial system and sensitivities surrounding the global projection of American popular culture.

3

Ideology and Adventure: The Post-War Swashbuckler Film

The English Middle Ages have featured prominently in Hollywood filmmaking, due largely to the enduring appeal of courtly knights, swashbuckling swordsmen and philanthropic outlaws. In the early 1920s, for example, a popular cycle of medieval romances including Robin Hood (1922), When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922) and Richard, The Lion Hearted (1923) imagined England’s past with an emphasis on opulent pageantry and chivalric heroism. During the 1930s, Warner Bros. had considerable box-office success with a series of medieval and early modern adventure films which Nick Roddick has called the ‘Merrie England’ cycle.1 Most prominently, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) departed from earlier screen adaptations of the legend by characterizing Robin as a man of the people rather than an aristocrat. Scholars of medieval culture have often noted that the Middle Ages is commonly represented as somehow outside the dominant narrative of history. According to Bettina Bildhauer and Anke Bernau, the ‘medievalist discourse’ posits the Middle Ages as ‘a time before history’; to use Nickolas Haydock’s term, it has been a ‘temporal Other’.2 Similarly, Sarah Salih argues that while Arthurian narratives ‘regularly gesture towards history’, the era ‘is not located in history: it is – and always has been – a multi-temporal, or extra temporal, zone of fantasy’.3 This ahistorical quality helps to explain why filmmakers have so frequently used the Middle Ages as a means to comment obliquely on their present. Umberto Eco has argued that in contemporary contexts the Middle Ages may function as ‘a pretext … a sort of

1 2

3

Nick Roddick, A New Deal in Entertainment: Warner Brothers in the 1930s (London: BFI, 1983), 236. Bettina Bildhauer and Anke Bernau, ‘Introduction: The A-Chronology of Medieval Film’, in Bildhauer and Bernau (eds.), Medieval Film (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 3; Nickolas Haydock, Movie Medievalism: The Imaginary Middle Ages (Jefferson: McFarland, 2008), 5. Sarah Salih, ‘Cinematic Authenticity-Effects and Medieval Art: A Paradox’, in Bildhauer and Bernau (eds.), Medieval Film (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 31.

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mythological stage on which to place contemporary characters’.4 In a discussion of Disney films set in the Middle Ages, Pugh describes the medieval period as ‘endlessly protean and malleable’ and suggests that it has become ‘the preeminent chronological period for creating cultural fantasies of yesterday for consumer consumption today’.5 More specifically, Susan Aronstein has suggested that Hollywood films have created images of Camelot in times of ‘cultural crisis’ in order to ‘provide a vision of national identity and a handbook for American subjectivity’.6 Of course, all historical films carry traces of the era in which they were made, but it can be argued that films depicting the Middle Ages reflect a heightened relationship between past and present. Medieval films are also strongly connected to the broader tradition of the adventure story and the ‘swashbuckler’ genre, a term which derives from the sound of noisy swordplay.7 As Steve Neale has argued, the ‘ideology of adventure in the modern sense’ can be traced to narrative forms which developed around the medieval cult of the courtly knight, the merchant adventurer or pirate in the early modern period, and the spread of imperialism in the nineteenth century.8 The influence of medieval discourse may therefore be discerned in films which do not directly depict the Middle Ages. But among films which are set in the Middle Ages, the tendency to follow the adventure mode is strongly pronounced. Thomas Sobchack has noted that it is necessary for adventure narratives to locate characters and conflict ‘in the romantic past or an inhospitable place in the present’ in order to ‘maximise the dangers and thus to increase the magnitude of the efforts’ of their heroes.9 To borrow Eco’s phrase, the medieval era can in this way provide a ‘mythological stage’ in which heroes are able to achieve their destiny. The political themes of the medieval adventure also tend to follow a predictable pattern. As Ina Rae Hark puts it in her summary of The Adventures of Robin Hood, the action in medieval adventure films derives from ‘the efforts of a charismatic individual to restore responsible government and economic stability 4

5

6

7

8 9

Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality: Essays, trans. William Weaver (London: Secker & Walberg, 1987), 68. Tison Pugh, ‘Disney’s Retroprogressive Medievalisms: Where Yesterday Is Tomorrow Today’, in Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein (eds.), The Disney Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 16. Susan Aronstein, Hollywood Knights: Arthurian Cinema and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1–2. James Chapman, Swashbucklers: The Costume Adventure Series (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 4. Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000), 58. Thomas Sobchack, ‘The Adventure Film’, in Wes D. Gehring (ed.), The Handbook of American Genres (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988), 10.

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to his country’.10 This (implicitly male) hero is typically high-born, as with Robin Hood, but he must become part of the masses in his effort to return order to society.11 The social system in need of restoration is often located in England, but the swashbuckler film is a pan-European genre in which a variety of Old World settings (Scotland, France, Italy or Spain) are also represented. The universality of these political themes, as well as their emphasis on heroic individualism, has made the medieval adventure film suitable for addressing political themes in an American context. Indeed, Brian Taves argues that historical adventure films may be read as allegories of the American Revolution, ‘imputing American ideals to past foreign struggles for freedom’.12 The politics of swashbuckler films thus stand apart from those of the imperial adventure films discussed in the previous chapter. In Gunga Din and Lives of a Bengal Lancer, among others, uprising and social unrest are associated not with heroism but with savagery and are overpowered by the forces upholding imperial order. By contrast, the swashbuckler film ‘acclaims a pattern of social unrest and revolution’, to use Jean-Loup Bourget’s phrase.13 At the same time, and as Sobchack argues, the swashbuckler theme of overthrowing tyranny in order to restore legitimate government is not entirely revolutionary and does not necessarily channel prevailing social structures.14 The Middle Ages have thus provided a malleable, atemporal space suited to the representation of social themes which relate to the present rather than the historical past. In particular, the conventions of the medieval adventure or swashbuckler film have allowed filmmakers to fashion narratives of individual heroism centred on the vanquishing of tyranny. This chapter will examine the cycle of English medieval swashbucklers which emerged during the early 1950s by focussing on its two most commercially prominent examples: Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953). Both films were put into development at MGM in 1935, only to be postponed, for different reasons, and then shelved as war broke out in Europe. Following the war, both films were revived and redeveloped by different studios before eventually returning to MGM in the early 1950s. In the intervening period, America joined the Second World War, 10

11 12

13

14

Ina Rae Hark, ‘The Visual Politics of The Adventures of Robin Hood’, Journal of Popular Film 5, no. 1 (1976): 3. Sobchack, ‘Adventure Film’, 12. Brian Taves, The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), 14. Jean-Loup Bourget, ‘Social Implications in the Hollywood Genres’, in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader III (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 57. Sobchack, ‘Adventure Film’, 12.

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fascism gave way to communism as the nation’s foremost ideological adversary and internationalism replaced isolationism as the guiding principle behind its foreign policy. As Ivanhoe and Knights passed between individual writers, producers and studios prior to their execution, the screenplays became tradable commodities and the only continuous marker of creative intent during their long gestation. In each case, the narrative continuity and much of the dialogue was established early on, but was subjected to repeated revision by writers working at different points in time who seemed to be responding to contrasting ideas about the film’s final shape. The excavation of this layered creative process invites a rereading of both Ivanhoe and Knights, revealing both as fascinating documents of political change and conflict in American culture between the dominantly isolationist politics prior to the Second World War and the internationalism and paranoia of the Cold War. Knights and Ivanhoe were remarkably congruent with their shifting political circumstances and as such they point to a complex relationship between modern America and images of medieval England.

‘A nation divided’: Ivanhoe (1952) Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, published in 1819, was first adapted for the cinema by the Independent Moving Pictures Company in 1913. Quite unusually for an American production of the period, the film was produced on location in England.15 The first sound adaptation began in 1935 at MGM. A series of outlines produced for the studio by R. N. Lee between May and October that year proposed the casting of Frederic March as Ivanhoe, Loretta Young as Rowena and Gary Cooper as King Richard.16 Scott’s novel was firmly installed in the English literary canon and was frequently studied in American classrooms. According to MGM’s promotional materials from 1952, over seven million copies had been printed for use in schools and only Shakespeare and the Bible had been translated into more languages.17 Ivanhoe would thus have slotted neatly into the cycle of lavish, prestigious literary adaptations discussed in Chapter 1. However, serious work on the film did not begin until 1938, this time 15

16

17

‘Ivanhoe on the Bioscope’, The Times, 19 July 1913, 6. See also Jon Burrows, ‘“England Invaded”!: The Contested Authenticity of IMP’s Ivanhoe (1913)’, in Alan Burton and Laraine Porter (eds.), Crossing the Pond: Anglo American Film Relations before 1930 (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 2002), 34–44. R. N. Lee. ‘Long Outline of Ivanhoe’, 18 May 1935, MGM Screenplay Collection, University of Southern California Cinema–Television Library, Los Angeles. ‘Ivanhoe Teacher’s Guide’, Pressbook Collection, BFI National Library, London.

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with Robert Taylor, Myrna Loy and Clark Gable announced in the leading roles. Shooting was scheduled to take place at the MGM-British Studios at Denham, but the outbreak of hostilities in Europe put an end to MGM’s British operations and in 1939 the project was put on hold.18 As plans for Ivanhoe languished, the novel drew interest from producers at Paramount. Between April 1946 and June 1947 a series of screenplay drafts were prepared by screenwriter Aeneas MacKenzie, whose previous credits included the Warner Bros. historical films Juarez (1939) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). None of MacKenzie’s drafts bear the title ‘Ivanhoe’; the majority were called ‘The Black Knight’ and one was entitled ‘Richard the Lionheart’. Given that the name ‘Ivanhoe’ possessed significant marketing value, this indicates that another studio had the title under registration at the time. As with many of the Hollywood English films discussed earlier, MacKenzie’s screenplay made an explicit appeal to the patriotism of British audiences. His adaptation centres on the Saxon knight Ivanhoe and his role in an ethnic and political struggle to control the destiny of the emerging English nation. Ivanhoe returns from the Crusades to raise a ransom for the kidnapped King Richard, only to discover that Prince John, aided by Norman lords, has taken the English throne in his absence. MacKenzie’s instructions for the film’s credit sequence highlight his interest in English nationalism: the film was to open with the Royal Arms of Great Britain which dissolve to the Arms of England with ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ (a composition written in 1902) as a musical accompaniment. According to MacKenzie, this music would indicate ‘the nature of the story to be told’.19 He did not elaborate further, but we may assume MacKenzie’s intention was to connect the medieval England of the narrative to the modern British nation. MacKenzie also planned to close the film with an image focussing on the restored King Richard and a reprise of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, this time with the lyrics printed on the screen: ‘Wider still and wider, shall thy bounds be set / God that made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.’20 His final draft omitted this quotation, but MacKenzie’s effort to identify the Crusading monarch with the imperial project of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is nevertheless striking, particularly at a point in the twentieth century when Britain’s status as an imperial power was drawing to a close. 18

19 20

Ivanhoe, AFI Film Catalog, www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=50525, accessed 7 June 2017. Aeneas MacKenzie, ‘The Black Knight’ script, 1 March 1947, MGM Screenplay Collection. Ibid.

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MacKenzie’s adaptation also stressed the importance of reconciliation and concord to the reconstruction of the English nation. In a commentary accompanying the screenplay he described his theme as ‘a house divided cannot stand’, proposing that King Richard will ‘make England a nation’ by uniting Saxon and Norman interests.21 In a subsequent draft, MacKenzie’s Ivanhoe declares, If there be a spell cast on me, father, [King] Richard hath not cast it … but this green Isle of England. (wistfully) I have travelled far … seen many nations, many states … and there are none like her. She cannot stand divided … for she is more than Saxon, more than Norman … and there are wolves across the seas to tear her down. Richard must rule! There is no other in whom Saxon and Norman can put their trust.22

MacKenzie’s adaptation was most inventive in its attention to the Jewish elements in Scott’s narrative. He proposed that Norman and Saxon elements in the English nation would be ‘fused’ by ‘the touch of a Jew’s finger’.23 The character of Isaac thus assumes a greater stature than in Scott’s novel, and it is he who provides Ivanhoe with the ransom for King Richard. In return, Ivanhoe offers to make all Jews in England free to ‘worship unmolested in their own faith’. In counterpoint, Isaac demands that Richard ‘deny full, fair and free justice to no man – be it Saxon, Norman … Baron, burgess or serf – in all this realm of England’.24 Medieval England is thus imagined as the source of democratic, proto-American values, this time at the moral initiative of a Jewish character. According to a 1946 newspaper report, MacKenzie intended his screenplay to ‘point out the value of tolerance which the fusion of Saxon and Norman elements in the English population … illustrated’.25 MacKenzie’s screenplays also revised the romance between Ivanhoe and Rebecca, Isaac’s daughter. In Scott’s novel, Rebecca loves Ivanhoe but Ivanhoe’s feelings for her are ambiguous and he ultimately marries the Saxon noblewoman Rowena. MacKenzie, however, eliminated Ivanhoe’s romantic relationship with Rowena by making them halfbrother and sister, allowing a relationship with Rebecca to develop in its place. An early treatment concludes with a Jewish marriage ceremony for the couple.26 MacKenzie backtracked in a later version, replacing the Jewish wedding with a 21 22

23 24 25 26

MacKenzie, ‘The Black Knight’ treatment, 24 April 1946, MGM Screenplay Collection. MacKenzie, ‘The Black Knight’ script, 17 June 1947, MGM Screenplay Collection. Ellipses are MacKenzie’s own. MacKenzie, ‘The Black Knight’ treatment, 24 April 1946, MGM Screenplay Collection. MacKenzie, ‘The Black Knight’ script, 17 June 1947, MGM Screenplay Collection. ‘Paramount to Do Film on Ivanhoe’, New York Times, 19 July 1946. MacKenzie, ‘The Black Knight’ treatment, 24 April 1946, MGM Screenplay Collection.

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Christian one presided over by an Abbot, but the marriage still takes place under a ‘Jewish canopy’ and in the presence of a Rabbi.27 As the film ends, Rowena also marries outside her ethnic group, this time to a Norman nobleman. Following traditional dramatic (and medieval political) convention, these weddings symbolize the union of Norman, Saxon and Jewish populations in a cohesive and inclusive English nation. It seems very likely that MacKenzie’s particular interest in Jewish characters was motivated in part by the aftermath of the Holocaust and the campaign for the creation of the Jewish state. Although the UN Partition Plan for Palestine was not announced until November 1947, five months after MacKenzie finished the project, his long writing period overlapped with the attempted repopulation of Palestine by survivors of the Holocaust and their conflict with the British colonial administration. His work also coincided with the trial of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.28 In this political context, the novel’s avoidance of a relationship between Jew and Gentile and its depiction of Isaac as an avaricious money-lender may have seemed hard to countenance. MacKenzie’s depiction of utopian racial harmony in a newly formed English nation, as experienced by a character returning from war, may also have been intended to resonate in American society of the late 1940s. However, this veiled political content was considered to be a liability. According to The New York Times, executives at Paramount were concerned about Ivanhoe’s impact in Britain due to sensitivities arising from their faltering mandate in Palestine.29 Paramount’s apprehension was also connected the political climate in America itself. In September 1947 the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) began its interrogation of members of the American film industry. The committee informally associated attacks on anti-Semitism, such as those proposed in the Ivanhoe screenplay, with communist subversion and regarded communism and Judaism as intricately bound.30 According to Jon Lewis, the HUAC’s initial decision to investigate Hollywood can be attributed to a ‘residual, post-war anti-Semitism’.31 Indeed, six of the ‘Hollywood Ten’, the original ‘unfriendly witnesses’ indicted in the first hearings, were Jewish. One of the films which most concerned the HUAC 27 28

29 30

31

MacKenzie, ‘The Black Knight’ script, 1 March 1947, MGM Screenplay Collection. See Jeffrey Shandler, While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 5–22. J. D. Spiro, ‘Hollywood Notes’, New York Times, 13 November 1949. Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story behind America’s Favourite Movies (New York: The New Press, 2002), 369–70. Jon Lewis, Hollywood v. Hardcore: How the Struggle over Censorship Saved the Film Industry (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 12.

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in 1947 was the RKO release Crossfire (1947). A powerful critique of post-war race relations, the film blended social problem and crime film conventions in its depiction of an anti-Semitic GI whose bigotry leads him to murder an American Jew. The film’s director and producer, Edward Dmytryk and Adrian Scott, were among the first witnesses called to testify before the HUAC on October 1947. Both were identified as former Communist party members and were subsequently fired by RKO.32 MacKenzie’s Ivanhoe offered a much milder repudiation of anti-Semitism than Crossfire, but Paramount nevertheless determined that the project was undesirable and in June 1947 they sold it to RKO for $110,000.33 RKO proceeded to assign Waldo Salt to revise MacKenzie’s screenplay. Salt eliminated Ivanhoe’s relationship with Rebecca and reinstated his romance with Rowena. Dore Schary, RKO’s head of production at the time, later claimed that he had requested this change because it was ‘sacrilege to rewrite a classic’, but it seems likely that his decision was influenced by other factors.34 A New York Times report from 1947 implied that RKO had been unsettled by the political fall-out from Crossfire, stating, ‘Before [Ivanhoe] was shelved, Paramount had planned to use it to illustrate the advantages of racial and religious tolerance. RKO, however, has recently completed Crossfire, a modern exposition of the same theme, and will not attempt the experiment in altering the Scott classic.’35 Of course, MacKenzie’s adaptation of Ivanhoe could hardly be regarded as a re-tread of Crossfire. It seems rather that executives at RKO were anxious to stay on the right side of the controversy which Crossfire had generated. In fact, RKO’s plans to film Ivanhoe quickly vanished in the wake of Howard Hughes’s ill-fated purchase of the studio in May 1948. Hughes cancelled Ivanhoe and Schary left soon after, heading to MGM to become vice-president in charge of production. Hughes agreed to sell the Ivanhoe rights and screenplay to Schary, allowing him to take them to his new employer.36 In this way, Ivanhoe returned to the studio where it had originated thirteen years before. Despite being impeded by the HUAC investigation, Ivanhoe nevertheless maintained an association with blacklist politics. As John H. Lenihan has

32

33 34 35 36

Jennifer Langdon-Teclaw, ‘The Progressive Producer in the Studio System: Adrian Scott at RKO, 1943–1947’, in Frank Krutnik et.al (eds.), ‘Un-American’ Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2007), 152–68. Spiro, ‘Hollywood Notes’. Dore Schary, Heyday (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979), 246. ‘Rank-RKO to Film Scott’s Ivanhoe’, New York Times, 17 June 1947. Schary, Heyday, 246.

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noted, the two principle screenwriters to work on Ivanhoe after MacKenzie – Waldo Salt at RKO and Marguerite Roberts at MGM – were later blacklisted by the HUAC.37 Indeed, Roberts was actually working on the script when she was subpoenaed to the HUAC’s second round of Hollywood hearings in 1951. Refusing to cooperate, she was fired by the studio and replaced by British writer Noel Langley, who produced the final version of the screenplay and shared credit for it with MacKenzie.38 Lenihan argues that changes devised by Salt and reinforced by both Roberts and Langley made Ivanhoe into a reflection of the anger and anxieties felt by many Hollywood personnel, not least writers, during this period. In particular, he notes that Salt and Roberts transformed the trial of Rebecca for witchcraft from a case of religious prejudice into ‘a political redherring orchestrated by the wicked Prince John to cast suspicions on and thereby smear his Saxon enemies’.39 In the completed film, the political motives of the Norman court are made clear and the trial is presented as transparently cynical and unjust. Presiding over the court, Prince John has no case against Rebecca: in order to prosecute her he coerces witnesses and invokes anti-Semitic prejudice, referring to her as an ‘infidel’ and suggesting that her ‘tribe’ be driven into the sea. Just as the HUAC conflated Judaism with communism, Prince John conflates it with witchcraft. As he passes sentence, he declares, ‘Like a plague passing from hand to hand, the scourge of witchcraft spreads across this land, even to other lands.’ This imagery of contagion evokes similarly hysterical accounts of communist infiltration in America at the time. Furthermore, the court’s spurious and politically motivated identification of Rebecca as a witch neatly echoes the popular vilification of the HUAC’s activities as a ‘witch hunt’, a term which had been widely applied since the committee’s inception in 1938.40 Indeed, Ivanhoe’s dramatization of this witch hunt as a historical allegory predates The Crucible (1953), Arthur Miller’s more celebrated attack on McCarthyism. The involvement of Dore Schary in overseeing revisions to the Ivanhoe script, firstly at RKO and then at MGM, corroborates Lenihan’s claims. Schary had been a prominent figure in the 1947 HUAC hearings, where he gave early evidence on his involvement with Crossfire. Bolstering his defence with references to the

37

38

39 40

John H. Lenihan, ‘English Classics for Cold War America’, The Journal of Popular Film and Television 20, no. 3 (1992): 47. Marguerite Roberts’s credit was in fact restored by the Writer’s Guild of America in 1997 as part of a program to correct writing credits which were denied during the HUAC era. See www.wga.org/the -guild/about-us/history/corrected-blacklist-credits, accessed 21 May 2017. Lenihan, ‘English Classics’, 47. See, for example, ‘Dies Group to Sift Ohio Communism’, New York Times, 2 November 1938.

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First Amendment, Schary declared that he would not withhold work from a Communist until it was proven that communism was ‘dedicated to the overthrow of the government’.41 Schary quickly fell into line: less than a month after his testimony he put his name to the ‘Waldorf Statement’, a studio-wide agreement of the industry’s intention to cooperate with the HUAC and refuse employment to suspected Communists. Nevertheless, his initial stand was radical for a man in his position and he later described the HUAC as ‘malicious’ and fellow producers who followed their whims as ‘cowardly and cruel’.42 It seems likely that Schary would have fostered or at least tolerated a veiled attack on this political situation in the period that followed. It is less clear, however, how widely these ideas were shared or understood among other MGM personnel involved in the production. Producer Pandro Berman later denied that the HUAC had been an issue for him during his work on the film, although he stated that he had been interested in the ‘Jewish angle’ of the screenplay. Berman also claimed that he assigned Richard Thorpe to direct the film due to his affinity for action filmmaking, but also for his willingness to cede creative oversight to the producer.43 In a final irony, Robert Taylor was cast in the title role. Playing Ivanhoe, Taylor railed against Prince John’s corrupt and politically motivated trial of Rebecca. In real life, however, the actor had appeared before the HUAC as a ‘friendly witness’ in 1947, fingering former colleagues as communist sympathizers. MGM produced Ivanhoe in studios and locations in Britain under the auspices of the revived their MGM-British company, now based at Borehamwood. According to Berman, shooting in Britain entailed a saving of ‘three or four hundred thousand dollars’.44 The finished film largely jettisoned MacKenzie’s emphasis on ethnic reconciliation and tolerance. The Norman characters are shown to be largely unredeemable and the narrative is resolved through the violent overthrow of their tyrannical and illegitimate government in favour of Saxon rule. MacKenzie’s historical perspective on anti-Semitism was also diminished. Romantic feelings between Ivanhoe and Rebecca are intimated, and the casting of pre-established screen-couple Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor in these roles would have intensified them for contemporary audiences, but Ivanhoe remains committed to Rowena throughout the film. At the same 41

42 43

44

Quoted in Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), 443. Schary, Heyday, 163. Transcript of American Film Institute Seminar with Pandro S. Berman, 26 January 1972, Margaret Herrick Library. Berman, A Louis B. Mayer Foundation-American Film Institute Oral History.

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time, Isaac is shown to be a noble and solemn figure and is performed without caricature. As in MacKenzie’s draft, the price he names in return for the ransom money is an inclusive ‘justice to each man, whether he be Saxon, Norman or Jew, for justice belongs to all men, or it belongs to none’. These egalitarian sentiments, as well as sympathetic references to Jews being ‘allowed no country’, may explain why state censors in Lebanon reportedly detected ‘pro-Zionist leanings’ in the film.45 MacKenzie’s symbolic weddings between Norman, Saxon and Jewish characters were written out, but the film’s final line, spoken by the reinstated King Richard, hints at MacKenzie’s optimistic nation building: ‘Before me kneels a nation divided! Rise as one man – and that one, England!’ In the process of overthrowing tyranny and restoring legitimate government, the English nation is healed. Despite the lawfulness of his claim to the throne, however, there is little indication of how Richard might establish this national unity.

‘Under banners unknown’: Knights of the Round Table (1953) Surprisingly few films based on the Arthurian legends were produced in America prior to Knights of the Round Table in 1953. Vitagraph’s ‘quality film’ cycle included Launcelot and Elaine (1909), based on Albert Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’, and Mark Twain’s time-travel burlesque A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was adapted in 1921, 1931 and 1949, but little else was committed to celluloid. As a result, Knights of the Round Table had few cinematic precedents to build on. As with Ivanhoe, its long journey to the screen began at MGM in 1935. Producer Albert Lewin proposed the project to Irving Thalberg and the title Knights of the Round Table was registered with the MPPDA in April the same year. Of course, the legends themselves, as well as their most popular expression in the work of Thomas Malory, were in the public domain, but the rights to the marketable phrase ‘Knights of the Round Table’ could be restricted. A treatment was written and Charles Laughton was provisionally selected to star as King Arthur. However, Thalberg’s death in September 1936 prevented the project from developing any further, and when Lewin left MGM to join Paramount shortly afterwards he took the project with him. Paramount made a secondary registration on the title, but MGM remained first in line and it was only after their option lapsed in April 1938 that Paramount began to develop the 45

Hollywood Citizen News, 21 April 1953.

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film.46 Despite MGM’s hesitance, King Arthur had become a viable subject and by August 1938 both United Artists and the newly formed Selznick International were in line behind Paramount for the ‘Knights of the Round Table’ title.47 In a January 1938 letter to Adolph Zukor, the president at Paramount, Albert Lewin outlined the attractions of Knights. The legends were ‘one of the few remaining great subjects’, possessing a strong appeal to young people and ‘many of the elements of a super western’. Despite this, Lewin insisted the film would not be dependent on spectacle: ‘The personal story is so good that we intend to keep expensive production elements down to a minimum, avoiding such things as tournaments, castles, etc.’48 The film would therefore be relatively inexpensive, with a budget in the region of $1 million. This was certainly an A-picture sum, but it was half the amount it cost to produce The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) the same year.49 Lewin also compared the project to depictions of the English past from the same era, stating that Knights ‘had a good chance of recovering its negative cost in England alone’ because ‘the picture is even more patriotically British than [Mutiny on the] Bounty or [Lives of a Bengal] Lancer, both of which grossed over $1m in England’. Lewin also spelled out the project’s ideological connotations. The theme was one ‘with implications in present day Europe’, namely the struggle ‘to keep together a noble Kingdom’ that had been ‘designed to dispense justice, keep peace and protect the weak’.50 Here, then, are two of the recurring factors that would dominate the film’s early development: firstly, the economic imperative to attract and flatter British audiences, and secondly, the impulse to make topical connections between Arthurian mythology and contemporary political turbulence in Europe. The idea that the film’s depiction of a English king fighting to keep his ‘noble kingdom together’ should have contemporary significance is particularly striking as it seems to endorse the maintenance of the British Empire, a sentiment rather at odds with the foreign policy of the Roosevelt government at the time. A second document by screenwriter W. C. Roberts, who provided an early treatment, suggested further nuances for the project. Entitled ‘King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table: A Statement of Entertainment Values’ and also dating

46

47 48 49 50

Letter from Albert Lewin to Adolph Zuckor and M. LeBaron, 27 January 1938, Albert Lewin collection, University of Southern California Cinema–Television Library, Los Angeles. I am grateful to Ned Comstock for directing me towards Lewin’s correspondence. Letter from A. M. Botsford to Albert Lewin, 24 July 1938, Albert Lewin collection. Letter from Lewin to Adolph Zuckor and M. LeBaron, 27 January 1938, Albert Lewin collection. Glancy, ‘William Schaefer Ledger’. Letter from Lewin to Adolph Zuckor and M. LeBaron, 27 January 1938, Albert Lewin collection.

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from January 1938, it appears to have been prepared for the benefit of executives at Paramount. Echoing Lewin’s interest in the British market, Roberts states, The immensely successful Cavalcade fired English hearts to a white-heat, and its key note of selfless patriotism rings out even more stirringly in the narrated efforts of The Knights of the Round Table to bring about a safer, better and more peaceful England.51

The marketing potential of this appeal to Britain was evidently central to his conception of the film, as his continued emphasis suggests: Inherent in all the stories is a healthy patriotic fervour, a flag-waving patriotism that is subtler and stronger since the flags are early English pennants whipping from the long lances of hard-riding, hard-fighting knights in shining armour. … Idealism is here, and the strong foundations upon which England has erected her twin edifices of Morals and Ethics.52

According to Roberts, moreover, the legends had become ‘a basic and integral part of the Anglo-American credo’. The continuity between English and American traditions thus constituted a further marketing element: this would not simply be a film about England, but one about the values common to both cultures. Hammering home this historical analogy, Roberts claimed that the Round Table was ‘not an ancient League of Nations’, an organization that America did not join and which had by 1938 proven to be ineffective, ‘but rather an oldtime Congress of United States’.53 As hostilities escalated in Europe, Knights was put into development under the aegis of producer Albert Lewin. Henry Hathaway was assigned to direct and in preliminary casting Frederic March was given the role Lancelot with John Barrymore as Arthur and Myrna Loy as Guinevere.54 A preliminary budget was set at $1,160,000 with the largest single element being March’s salary.55 The first full screenplay was written by Talbot Jennings, whose credits included Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Romeo and Juliet (1936), both for MGM. Assigned to the film in March 1938, Jennings’s final draft of Knights was dated 24 October

51 52 53 54

55

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Letter from Albert Lewin to Adolph Zuckor and Me. LeBaron, 27 January 1938, Albert Lewin collection. Fred Lehry, ‘Preliminary Estimate on Knights of the Round Table’, 5 March 1938, Albert Lewin collection; Susan Felleman, Botticelli in Hollywood: The Films of Albert Lewin (New York: Twayne, 1997), 155.

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1938.56 The script, which was loosely adapted from Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, establishes a love-triangle between King Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, and a father-son bond between the aging Arthur and Lancelot. Additional narrative momentum is provided by the struggle for power between Arthur and Modred, both of whom claim to be the legitimate heirs to the kingdom.57 The screenplay opens with a battle for the throne between Arthur and Modred. Arthur wins with the help of Lancelot, establishing a fair and peaceful kingdom ruled through his Round Table. But against Lancelot’s objections, Arthur fails to banish Modred, instead installing him as a member of the Round Table. Modred uses his position within Arthur’s court to monitor the burgeoning relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere, eventually exposing their illicit love to Arthur. Modred calls on Arthur to execute Lancelot but he refuses, and their war for the throne begins again. Finally, Arthur is killed in battle, leaving Lancelot to take revenge on Modred. In keeping with Lewin’s desire for a strong showing in England, Talbot Jennings’s script transparently appealed to English national pride. A speech written for Lancelot states, I have loved England – a land beautiful and debonair, blessed beyond all other lands. To live in England has filled me with joy. It made these very trees glitter, and men and women shine like moving jewels. To me, paradise could not be more beautiful. Whatever I have loved most, England has given me.58

This patriotic element tied in with an additional discourse about monarchy and English law, which Jennings worked into his narrative. Shortly before Arthur is crowned, his mentor Merlin declares that ‘the true ruler of England is the law of England’.59 Arthur endorses this position, and at the formation of the Round Table he announces to the gathered Knights, My Lords, a true King of England must serve all – be they nobles or commons, knights or ploughmen. He must give good law and justice to every man, woman and child from Tyne to Wight, from Humber to Wales – every Christian soul in this land!60

56

57 58 59 60

‘Changes to Scenarios’, 18 March 1938, Albert Lewin collection; Talbot Jennings, ‘Knights of the Round Table’ draft screenplay, 24 October 1938, MGM Screenplay collection, University of Southern California Cinema–Television Library, Los Angeles. ‘Modred’ was spelt as such throughout the development of the project. Jennings, ‘Knights of the Round Table’, 165. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 35.

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These sentiments ultimately become Arthur’s undoing. When he overrules the Round Table to save Lancelot from execution, precipitating a rebellion within his kingdom, Modred states, ‘Sir, you have done a thing against our law and custom. You have set yourself up above the law. No King of England is above the law. It is you who said that.’61 The political idea invoked in these passages – that the power of the monarchy should be limited, accountable to the same laws as other citizens – derives from Magna Carta. Of course, the Arthurian legends date from a period well before the signing of Magna Carta in 1215. In the context of American representations of the history of British sovereignty, however, this reference is more fitting. Magna Carta has occupied a pivotal position in American political culture and it was consistently cited by the eighteenth-century colonists as they negotiated their relationship with the British government. After the revolution, its promotion of a government based on a law common to all citizens was understood to be enshrined in the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights.62 Jennings’s screenplay invokes the document most plainly in its final pages. As Arthur dies in Lancelot’s arms, he restates the political values for which he has fought: Live, and begin the way again, the way of freedom, liberty under a common law. The way of England. Freedom lost. Again and again. But it will not die. It is stronger than those who betray it. It will not die. It will live in the hearts of men, knights of a fellowship of freedom, not alone in England, but under banners unknown.63

These ‘banners unknown’ seem to refer to America, the heir to these political ideas and (for some) the ultimate expression of ‘liberty under a common law’. As W. C. Roberts had suggested in 1935, Knights was to have depicted the continuity between English and American culture. For good measure, Jennings’s script even has Arthur endorse the American right to free speech: ‘In England’, he declares, ‘Every man may speak his mind.’64 Camelot, in this version at least, is the seedbed of the American Republic. Jennings’s engagement with Magna Carta at a time when Europe stood on the verge of war can hardly have been accidental. As Nicholas Cull has shown, the document played a significant part in the extensive British propaganda 61 62

63 64

Ibid., 161. A. E. Dick Howard, The Road from Runnymede: Magna Carta and Constitutionalism in America (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968), 368–82. Jennings, ‘Knights of the Round Table’, 170. Ibid., 80.

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campaign designed to break American neutrality in the build-up to the Second World War.65 Although Knights was developed with the British audience in mind, it seems that the film was also intended to combat the domestic anglophobia which contributed to America’s neutral stance. Jennings’s screenplay thus sought to position England not as the historical enemy of America but as its natural ally, a nation sharing a common culture and common values. A document written 700 years in the past may not seem the most obvious means to express these sentiments, but Magna Carta’s symbolic capital in American political culture made it a valuable tool in debates regarding America’s isolationist status. In April 1939, seven months after Jennings’s final draft, a thirteenth-century copy of Magna Carta was displayed at the ‘British Pavilion’ of the World’s Fair in New York. A genealogical table of George Washington was placed next to it, charting the descent of America’s first president from both King John and twenty-five of the barons who presented Magna Carta to him. The mode of government wrought by Magna Carta was evidently part of America’s political pedigree. Commenting on the exhibition, The New York Times called Magna Carta one of the three ‘outstanding documents of American history’, adding, ‘It is as much our heritage as Britain’s.’66 Exploiting the exhibit further, the British Foreign Office made facsimile copies of Magna Carta available to every school in America. When the British Pavilion closed in October 1939, its copy of Magna Carta was formally presented to Library of Congress for safekeeping.67 A year and a half later, Roosevelt invoked this document again in his third inaugural address, declaring democracy to be ‘no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. It permeated the ancient life of early peoples. It blazed anew in the middle ages. It was written in Magna Carta.’68 In this way Magna Carta was used to project a sense of continuity between American and English cultures, binding the values for which America was imagined to stand to those which Britain was imagined to be fighting to protect. By invoking this discourse, Jennings’s Knights screenplay proved to be remarkably in tune with the strategies of the Anglo-American interventionist lobby.

65 66 67

68

Cull, Selling War, 216–17. ‘The Great Charter’, The New York Times, 24 April 1939. Cull, Selling War, 26–7; Fred M. Leventhal, ‘Public Face and Public Space: The Projection of Britain in America before the Second World War’, in Leventhal and Ronald Quinault (eds.), Anglo-American Attitudes: From Revolution to Partnership (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 216–17. ‘Third Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt’, 20 January 1941. The American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16022, accessed 11 May 2016. Emphasis in original.

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Jennings’s broadly Anglophilic script was also critical of contemporary British foreign policy. Arthur’s peace-making granted Modred political leverage and resonated with Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in the Munich Agreement. Jennings’s timing was significant: the Munich Agreement was signed on 29 September 1938; his final draft was submitted just four weeks later. Lancelot alone protests Arthur’s pardoning of Modred, turning ‘white with anger’ and declaring, ‘Modred, you’ve won the victory!’69 Lancelot’s fears are vindicated when Modred determines to overthrow Arthur’s kingdom. As he dies, Arthur tells Lancelot, ‘You were right concerning Modred, I should have destroyed him. Therefore do it, before he grows again in evil.’70 The significance was clear to a script editor working after the war when the Jennings script was revised: the passage was flagged with the words, ‘The arguments were written for the Munich crisis and are no longer relevant.’71 In this way, the Jennings screenplay argued in favour of intervention and against appeasement in Europe. Such political engagement was out of step with America’s powerful isolationist lobby and also much of the American public at the time, but it reflected the antifascist politics of many Hollywood personnel, including Albert Lewin. When a Senate Committee investigating ‘Propaganda in Motion Pictures’ was formed by isolationist Republicans in 1941, producer Lewin was among those called for questioning.72 Jennings seems to have shared Lewin’s political views. According to a California State Senate report on ‘Communist front organizations’ in 1948, he had affiliations with the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the pro-Roosevelt Hollywood Democratic Committee.73 It was not political content that halted the project’s production, however, but more mundane commercial interests. In April 1939, five months before Britain declared war on Germany, Lewin wrote that Paramount ‘abandoned’ the production because it was designed largely for the British market and ‘the panicky potentates who control the destinies of this company are terrified by the political situation’.74 With commercial access to Britain jeopardized by the war, the film had become too financially risky. Lewin, who had coordinated the project from the beginning, seems to have been distraught over this development,

69 70 71 72 73

74

Jennings, ‘The Knights of Round Table’, 54 Ibid., 170. ‘Notes to Albert Lewin’, circa August 1951, Albert Lewin collection. Felleman, Botticelli in Hollywood, 5. California State Senate, Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, 1948: Communist Front Organizations (Sacramento: Senate, 1948), 251. Letter from Albert Lewin to T. H. White, 20 April 1939, Albert Lewin collection.

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and settled his contract with Paramount in June 1939. After attempting to get the film made at Universal and RKO, presumably on a much lower budget, he formed the independent production company Loew-Lewin.75 In an indication of the political beliefs that shaped the development of Knights, Loew-Lewin’s first release was So Ends Our Night (1941), also written by Talbot Jennings, an anti-Nazi drama depicting the flight of dissenting Germans from the Gestapo. Knights spent the following decade in limbo. Paramount still owned the Jennings screenplay, but executives were uninterested in producing it and Lewin had moved on to new projects, first with his own company and then back at MGM. In 1949, however, two popular projects loosely based on Arthurian mythology were released: a new adaptation of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, retooled by Paramount as a Bing Crosby musical, and Columbia’s fifteen-part serial The Adventures of Sir Galahad. In 1950 the title ‘Knights of the Round Table’ was once again registered with the MPPDA, this time by David O. Selznick. Indicating the competitive mentality of the Hollywood studios, Paramount, RKO, MGM, Disney and 20th Century Fox quickly followed with secondary registrations, along with Douglas Fairbanks Jr’s production company and two other independents – Small and Alperson. By June 1951, no fewer than eight companies – the bulk of the American film industry, no less – were queuing behind Selznick for the same title. The same companies also scrambled for every possible variation: ‘King Arthur’ was registered by Fairbanks and Disney; ‘King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table’ was claimed by Selznick, Fairbanks and Disney; ‘The Court of King Arthur’ belonged to Alperson and Fairbanks had registered both ‘King Arthur and Sir Lancelot’ and the commendably concise ‘The Round Table’.76 Arthuriana had become commercially viable once again, and this gave Albert Lewin the impetus to form a group of private investors among his colleagues at MGM in order to buy the Talbot Jennings script back from Paramount.77 Lewin’s co-investors were producer Wayne Griffin, executive Henry Henigson and Clark Gable. The four planned to produce the film independently, with Gable starring as Lancelot and Lewin directing, and then to release it through their employers at MGM. An outline prepared in August 1951 proposed that production take place at MGM-British Studios and on location in Cornwall, 75

76

77

Douglas W. Churchill, ‘News of the Screen’, New York Times, 21 June 1939, 31; Churchill, ‘News of the Screen’, New York Times, 4 July 1939, 16. ‘List of Registrations on the Title Knights of the Round Table’, unsigned document, 2 March 1951, Albert Lewin collection. Letter from Lewin to Eddie Mannix, 31 May 1951, Albert Lewin collection.

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and that Ivanhoe might be ‘salvaged’ for props and costumes. In addition to Gable, Laurence Olivier was suggested for the Arthur role and Vivien Leigh for Guinevere.78 Lewin’s plans seem to have caused consternation among the other studios competing to produce versions of the Arthur legends, not least Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who offered to buy out Lewin and his partners in August 1951. In response, Lewin claimed, ‘None of us is interested in merely recovering our investment or making a profit on the disposition of the script. We want to make the picture because we believe it will be outstanding in every way.’79 Economic sensibilities prevailed, however, and in September 1952 Lewin was persuaded to sell the Talbot Jennings script to MGM. Wayne Griffin admitted to having doubts over the project ‘for some time’ and suggested that since the success of Ivanhoe had raised the commercial stakes for a King Arthur project, it ‘seems expedient to consider selling’.80 As an independent outfit, they did not have the means to get their script into production before one of the major studios produced a different King Arthur film, and so they decided to cut their losses while the screenplay they owned had some resale value. Indeed, the most favourable moment to sell might already have passed: Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and Columbia all turned the script down, and MGM’s offer of $75,000 was half what the investors had asked for. RKO offered a slightly higher sum, but the producers felt it was best to remain loyal to MGM.81 Like Ivanhoe, Knights thus performed a complete rotation on the Hollywood carousel and finished at the studio where it began. For Lewin, who lost control of his pet project after seventeen years, Knights was ‘the big one that got away’.82 MGM’s acquisition of Knights came just three months after their hugely successful release of Ivanhoe. The studio also moved into priority position on its original title following the expiration of Selznick’s registration and the withdrawal of both Paramount and the financially troubled RKO. MGM thus wasted little time in getting their second English-themed medieval adventure into production. They assigned the same director-producer team, Richard Thorpe and Pandro Berman, and the same star, Robert Taylor, and based production at the same MGM-British facilities in Borehamwood. The film could hardly be regarded as a sequel to Ivanhoe, but there were clear continuities between the two projects. Clark Gable, previously attached as Lancelot, was reportedly approached for 78 79 80 81 82

‘Production Outline’, unsigned but probably by Lewin, 7 August 1951, Albert Lewin collection. Letter from Lewin to Fairbanks, 15 August 1951, Albert Lewin collection. Letter from Griffin to Henry Henigson, 13 August 1952, Albert Lewin collection. Letter from Griffin to Lewin, 23 September 1952, Albert Lewin collection. Letter from Lewin to Henry Henigson, 4 September 1952, Albert Lewin collection.

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the lesser role of Arthur, but declined.83 MGM also made changes to Jennings’s fourteen-year-old script, which had now lost its topicality. The first revision, by Jan Lustig, did away with much of Jennings’s Magna Carta discourse, but his wartime references remained, albeit in modulated form. As Modred prepares to go to war, Arthur pleads, Modred beware! – none will emerge the victor from this holocaust! Friend slaying friend in this mist, not knowing whom he slays! Like confusion itself! The realm in ruins, chivalry destroyed, evil spreading like a stain, darkness, utter destruction, the end of the world! In the name of our Lord, I beg you to reconsider!84

A similar passage appears in the 1938 script, but the later version is more intense, reflecting a more apocalyptic vision of war and marked by the word ‘holocaust’. In fact, this term was not recorded in association with Nazi concentration camps until 1961, but it was used to refer to events such as the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and a parallel with the Second World War was surely intended.85 Lustig also revised Arthur’s anti-appeasement speech to Lancelot to read: ‘Modred! The great Beast of Evil abroad is in this land! You were right. I should have destroyed him. Therefore do it, before he grows again in strength.’86 The dramatic purpose of the dialogue is unchanged, but the new terminology is revealing. In 1952, at the height of Senator McCarthy’s influence in American political life, the idea of a ‘Beast of Evil abroad … in this land’ – a foreign infiltrator, in other words – suggests a malign force threatening to destroy America from within. The final version of Knights was written in January 1953 by Noel Langley, who had also produced the final draft of Ivanhoe. Langley retained Lustig’s reference to a holocaust, but removed the ‘Beast of Evil’ dialogue. Nevertheless, modern critics have tended to interpret Knights as an artefact of Cold War culture. According to Susan Aronstein, it offers a ‘pro-American, anti-communist Camelot as a bulwark against cold war anxieties’.87 For Kathleen Coyne Kelly, Arthur’s renegotiation of the relationship between monarchy and government

83 84

85 86 87

Letter from Wayne Griffin to Albert Lewin, 23 September 1952, Albert Lewin collection. Jan Lustig, ‘Knights of the Round Table’ draft screenplay, 3 October 1952, MGM Screenplay collection, 124. Robert K. Banhart (ed.), Chambers Dictionary of Etymology (Edinburgh: Chambers, 2001), 487. Lustig, ‘Knights of the Round Table’, 128. Aronstein, Hollywood Knights, 5.

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parallels ‘the U.S.’s redefinition of itself as a global power during the cold war’.88 These readings are not as well supported by archival evidence as the pre-war agenda previously worked in by Jennings and Lewin, but they are borne out to some extent in the film. The depiction of Modred as a lurking, malign presence, an enemy within, seeking to corrupt the God-willed utopia of Camelot, resonates with popular conceptions of both America and the communist subversives who apparently stood against it. The nature of the threat Modred poses to Camelot is made clear in the film’s opening shot: a slow pan across charred, post-apocalyptic landscape destroyed by Modred’s army. But although he is twice depicted in battle, Modred inflicts the greatest harm to Arthur’s kingdom as a spy operating under his nose. Arthur, meanwhile, is characterized as a good leader but one too naive to expel the threat to his kingdom when he had the chance. A parallel to contemporary communist conspirators seems apparent. The finished film also makes it plain that England and by association America have God on their side. Langley’s major addition to the script was a final scene where Lancelot’s son, Percival, is shown a vision of the Holy Grail and a celestial voice offers redemption to Lancelot. In Jennings’s script Percival’s vision occurs much earlier in the narrative; relocated as a conclusion it suggests that the entire film might be assessed from a religious perspective. During the Cold War, Christianity was a key element in the ideological effort to establish an ideological opposition between America and the atheistic Soviet Union. As David Eldridge has put it, ‘Communism was demonised as a conspiracy against God as well as democracy.’89 It seems remarkable that such little revision was required to update the political orientation of Knights. Evidently, Hollywood’s ideological antagonists, first Hitler and then Stalin, were easily interchanged. Indeed, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, described communism as ‘Red Fascism’.90 According to Cyndy Hendershot, ‘The forging of a close association between the Communists and the Nazis made for an easy transition in public perceptions between the enemy forces of World War II and the ideologies perceived as menaces during the post-war period.’91 Official attitudes regarding the appeasement of these 88

89 90

91

Kathleen Coyne Kelly, ‘Hollywood Simulacrum: Knights of the Round Table (1953)’, Exemplaria 18, no. 2 (2006): 15. Eldridge, Hollywood’s History Films, 90. See Les K. Adler and Thomas G. Paterson, ‘Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930s–1950s’, The American Historical Review 75, no. 4 (1970): 1046–64. Cyndy Hendershot, Anti-Communism and Popular Culture in Mid-Century America (Jefferson: McFarland, 2003), 59. See also Eldridge, Hollywood’s History Films, 89–90.

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figures in America were quite different, however. In 1938 the cautionary tale told in the Knights screenplay about the lenient treatment of an antagonistic leader was out of step with America’s official policy in Europe, but by 1953 such appeasement policies were thoroughly discredited. Instead, the interventionist position endorsed by Lancelot mirrored Truman and Eisenhower’s strategy for Soviet containment, and the importance of avoiding ‘another Munich’ became ingrained in foreign policy negotiations. In the new era that followed the Second World War, a relatively subversive element in the Knights screenplay was thus recast as a reflection of political orthodoxy. The post-war reinflection of Knights places it in almost diametric opposition to the ideological shape taken by Ivanhoe in the same period. This perhaps seems surprising given the closeness of the two productions: they shared a director, producer and a final screenwriter and were overseen by the same production chief, Dore Schary. However, while Schary took a personal interest in Ivanhoe, rescuing the project from turnaround at both Paramount and RKO, he was less closely involved in the production of Knights and acquired the property principally to exploit Ivanhoe’s commercial success. Perusal of the draft screenplays also reveals that the credit given to screenwriter Noel Langley on both films overstates his actual input. Although they did not receive full credit at the time, Jan Lustig on Knights and Waldo Salt and Marguerite Roberts on Ivanhoe had a stronger bearing on the final ideological shape of the two films. The fact that that two such similar films with such closely entwined production histories should have finally come to reflect such different political agendas highlights the complex and contingent manner in which Hollywood cinema reflects ideology. Power in the Hollywood studio system was diffuse, and meaning in these films was determined by a variety of often conflicting forces. *** Both Ivanhoe and Knights of the Round Table proved to be highly successful for MGM. Ivanhoe recorded earnings of $10.8 million, including a strong international showing, against a budget of $3.8 million.92 Knights was produced for the slightly more modest cost of $2.6 million and earned $8 million for MGM.93 Knights also broke ground as the first MGM film to use the widescreen CinemaScope format and the first to use the studio’s new optical track 92 93

Eddie Mannix Ledger, Margaret Herrick Library. Ibid.

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stereophonic system. More significantly, the smooth production and financial success of both films demonstrated the viability of outsourcing the production of British-themed films to Britain itself, a topic covered in more detail in the following two chapters. Although Ivanhoe and Knights were not the first depictions of the English Middle Ages from their era, their commercial success inspired a series of similar medieval adventure films. Among them were Warner Bros.’ King Richard and the Crusaders (1954), another Walter Scott adaptation, the Arthurian adventure The Black Knight (1954), produced for Columbia by the independent Warwick Films, 20th Century Fox’s Prince Valiant (1954) and Universal’s The Black Shield of Falworth (1954). In 1955 MGM released The Adventures of Quentin Durward, a follow-up to Ivanhoe and Knights featuring the same star, producer and director. The film announced its fifteenth-century setting as a time ‘when knighthood was drooping in blossom’. Sure enough, the English medieval cycle was losing momentum and Quentin Durward recorded losses of over $1.2 million.94 Fittingly perhaps, the end was marked by Paramount’s The Court Jester (1956), a musical comedy lampooning the cycle’s now overly familiar conventions. The production histories of Ivanhoe and Knights provide valuable examples of the nexus of politics and culture in Hollywood cinema. These projects were taken in and out of production in response to external political events, but as the scripts were revised they came to absorb these political elements into their narratives. The 1947 version of Ivanhoe foregrounded Jewish identity in the context of the Nuremberg trials and the creation of Israel. These themes were removed as the HUAC grew in power, but ironically they were replaced in the early 1950s by covert criticism of the HUAC, whose activities had affected several individuals involved in the film’s creation. Knights initially invoked the political philosophy of Magna Carta to argue in favour of American interventionism and against appeasement prior to the Second World War, but it was subsequently revised to tap into the Red Scare anxieties of the Cold War era and America’s new approach to foreign intervention. As the screenplays used in the two films passed between different writers, layers of often contradictory meanings were added. Despite their differences, Ivanhoe and Knights share an interest in the unifying image of the English nation, an institution that is depicted as democratic and egalitarian. In this, they draw on a well-established vein in American culture that imagines the medieval world to be proto-American. The creation of Camelot 94

Ibid.

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in Knights or the unification of England in Ivanhoe can be seen to dramatize the birth of America and the battle to implement and sustain its self-evident truths. Ivanhoe and Knights thus exemplify the significance and durability of narratives and iconographies drawn from English history in American culture. In these and many other Hollywood movies, medieval England is made to serve as both a metaphor and a reference point for political change in America. For many critics, the medieval period is particularly suited to this kind of cultural work. Aronstein has suggested that ‘popular medievalism … presents its ideal middle ages as the ideal, as the site of our original cultural unity, lost in the fragmentation of modern society’.95 This return to America’s imagined cultural and political childhood, it seems, appealed most forcefully at times when America’s national identity and relationship to its past was under negotiation. In periods of uncertainty and transition, England’s Middle Ages provide a familiar, flattering and above all malleable cultural space for the articulation of more contemporary concerns.

95

Aronstein, Hollywood Knights, 12. Emphasis in original.

4

Cosmopolitanism and the Cold War: Historical Epics in the 1950s and 1960s

Films depicting English history remained at the centre of Hollywood activities during the 1950s and 1960s; but this engagement with the English past came in the context of a broader cycle of films depicting historical cultures, both ancient and modern, from Europe and the Middle East. The biggest hits of the era included Ben-Hur (1959), Cleopatra (1963), The Sound of Music (1965) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). Hollywood’s depiction of England during this period can therefore be seen as an element in a wider post-war turn towards international subject matter, reflecting the preferences of audiences both domestically and in Hollywood’s growing export markets. Films about English history also contributed to a more general trend for epic movies. The term ‘epic’ has been used to describe large-scale historical films since at least the 1910s, but it obtained greater prominence in the promotion and marketing of Hollywood films during the 1950s. As Steve Neale has shown, the label has typically been applied either to films with ancient world or other historical settings or to largescale films in general.1 As such, epic films tend to be distinguished primarily by their formal properties, as a genre of high spectacle and lavish production values. This sense of spectacle is not necessarily tied to the representation of the past, but historical settings have frequently provided filmmakers with a pretext for excessive display. As Vivian Sobchack has argued, the formal excess associated with epic filmmaking has often been a strategy for giving ‘objective and visible form’ to our sense of historical eventfulness.2 The emergence of epic filmmaking and the internationalization of Hollywood subject matter during the 1950s and 1960s – as well as the place of English historical films in these trends – can be attributed to four major factors. Firstly, 1 2

Neale, Genre and Hollywood, 78. Vivian Sobchack, ‘Surge and Splendor: A Phenomenology of the Hollywood Historical Epic’, in Film Genre Reader III, 310.

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Hollywood filmmaking was influenced by a broader cultural internationalism in post-war American society. In terms of government policy, the expansion of America’s geographical imagination had roots in its growing ideological conflict with the Soviet Union and the thawing of its isolationist foreign policy. In his 1953 inaugural speech, President Eisenhower was eager to associate America’s plight with that of its friends around the world: The faith we hold belongs not to us alone but to the free of all the world. This common bond binds the grower of rice in Burma and the planter of wheat in Iowa, the shepherd in southern Italy and the mountaineer in the Andes. It confers a common dignity upon the French soldier who dies in Indo-China, the British soldier killed in Malaya, the American life given in Korea.3

Eisenhower’s desire to find common cause with Asian farmers also reflected the Cold War scramble for influence in the emerging Third World. To this end, the American government sent military reinforcements to South Korea in 1950, sponsored a military coup in Guatemala in 1954 and supported the Cuban Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. From 1950, American presidents also provided military assistance and built up armies in former French Indochina, seeking to challenge the rise of Soviet influence in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. As Odd Arne Westad has argued, this new interventionist mode of foreign policy did much to ‘create the Third World as a conceptual entity’.4 There is evidence that domestic culture in America also became more cosmopolitan in this era. In 1950 a reported 670,000 American citizens travelled overseas and spent $1 billion. By 1960 the figures almost tripled to 1.6 million American tourists spending $2.7 billion.5 The sharp rise in international tourism during the 1950s had much to do with the birth of the jet age, heralded by the arrival of jet passenger services across the Atlantic in 1958. Jet travel and its associated lifestyle was inaccessible to most Americans, but it further raised the aspirational cachet of international tourism. Popular films of the early 1950s such as An American in Paris (1951), Roman Holiday (1953) and To Catch a Thief (1955) reflected this status, depicting idealized tourist experiences and often associating them with romantic conquests and journeys of self-discovery.

3

4

5

‘Second Inaugural Address of Dwight D. Eisenhower’, 20 January 1953, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/w s/index.php?pid=9600, accessed 9 July 2017. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 130–1. Ronald J. Oakley, God’s Country: America in the Fifties (New York: Dembner Books, 1986), 260.

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Table 4.1 American co-productions filmed overseas by country, 1949–57a

UK 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 Total a

6 4 9 17 9 9 17 17 21 109

West Italy Mexico France Germany Japan Spain 5 2 3 2 3 4 1 1 9 30

1 3 0 1 2 7 13 2 0 29

1 2 2 1 0 3 6 3 6 24

1 2 0 2 2 5 0 1 4 17

0 2 1 1 0 0 2 3 3 12

0 0 0 0 2 1 3 3 3 12

Adapted from data in Irving Bernstein, Hollywood at the Crossroads: An Economic Study of the Motion Picture Industry (Los Angeles: Hollywood Association of Film Labor, 1957), 54–5.

In addition to this cultural internationalism, Hollywood production in this era was shaped by economic internationalism. As the American film industry’s domestic market began to contract in the late 1940s and early 1950s, export markets in Europe became ever more essential to their financial survival. Weekly attendance figures in America declined from a peak of 84 million during the war to just 49 million in 1951.6 Conversely, many European markets were expanding at a rate which helped Hollywood producers to offset this decline. Financial difficulties in the early 1950s also led American studios to move production overseas, abandoning their traditional production base in California for foreign climes. Hollywood producers set up shop all over the world, but as Table 4.1 indicates, Britain was by far the most popular foreign location during this period. The studios producing these ‘runaway productions’, as they became known, often justified their decision to move jobs overseas by citing the need for geographic realism. The vogue for international subject matter and the outsourcing of production were in this way mutually reinforcing. However, runaway production was also motivated by a range of financial incentives. Depending on the dollar exchange rate, foreign labour and studio space could be hired much more cheaply than in California. Even the cautious estimates 6

Peter Krämer, ‘“Faith in Relations between People”: Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday and European Integration’, in Diana Holmes and Alison Smith (eds.), 100 Years of European Cinema: Entertainment or Ideology? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 197.

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of the Hollywood unions, whose members were badly hit by the runaway production trend, put European wages 50 per cent below those of American workers.7 American film studios also came to Europe in order to access revenues which had been ‘blocked’ by cash-strapped European governments in the years following the Second World War.8 Rather than leaving the money until the embargoes were lifted, American producers were permitted to invest it in the nations where it was blocked. The money could not be returned to America directly, but it could be spent on film production, and these films could then be exported and made to earn back their investment at the box office. Finally, Hollywood films produced in Europe were able to benefit from various state incentive schemes. The most prominent of these was the British Film Production Fund or Eady levy, which taxed cinema tickets in order to pay a dividend to British film producers.9 The levy paid producers in proportion to the box-office gross of their films, meaning that the most popular films received the highest payments. The money available was potentially vast: an average payment of 44.3 per cent of each film’s box-office gross was made to all British registered films in the Eady levy’s first nine years of operation.10 In order to qualify for these payments Hollywood producers set up subsidiary companies in Britain which were notionally registered as the producers of their films. For example, MGM was able to receive Eady levy payments for Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1954) by producing them under the banner of their MGMBritish subsidiary. Economic conditions thus made it expedient for Hollywood companies to outsource a large proportion of their production to Britain. In the process, the line separating the British and the American film industries began to lose definition. The third major influence on the American film industry related to innovations in film distribution. During the 1950s the rise of suburbanization and new leisure habits, particularly television, cut Hollywood off from the strong domestic market on which its empire had been built. One strategy for enticing audiences back to cinemas was known as ‘roadshowing’. This effectively entailed marketing and exhibiting a film as though it was a stage production with live 7

8

9

10

Aida Hozic, Hollyworld: Space, Power and Fantasy in the American Economy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 94. Jonathan Stubbs, ‘“Blocked” Currency, Runaway Production in Britain and Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 28, no. 3 (2008): 337–41. Jonathan Stubbs, ‘The Runaway Bribe? American Film Production in Britain and the Eady Levy’, Journal of British Cinema and Television 6, no. 1 (2009): 1–7. Thomas Guback, The International Film Industry: Western Europe and America since 1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), 156.

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actors. Tickets were sold at increased prices on a reserved-seat basis, films were restricted to one venue per city and screenings or ‘performances’ occurred only once or twice per day, each with an intermission. Roadshow exhibition had been employed intermittently in Hollywood for decades and had wrought huge dividends for high-budget releases such as The Birth of a Nation (1915), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) and Gone with the Wind (1939).11 During the 1950s, however, the practice became much more dominant and was associated particularly with historical epics such as Quo Vadis (1951) and The Robe (1953), or with films centred around new widescreen processes, such as This Is Cinerama (1952). Later in the decade, the roadshowing of Broadway adaptations such as Oklahoma! (1955) and South Pacific (1959) aimed to elevate cinema-going by bringing it closer to the legitimate theatre. By making tickets for certain films scarcer and more expensive, roadshowing aimed to put the sedentary pleasures of television in the shade and to confer prestige on big films. The strategy could also deliver huge profits: of the ten most successful films in America during the 1950s, at least seven were initially released on a roadshow basis.12 Finally, American filmmaking in the 1950s was shaped by new exhibition technologies and an increased emphasis on spectacle. As with roadshowing, the creation of spectacular viewing experiences was part of the film industry’s response to shifting leisure habits in America – in order to compete with television, filmmakers endeavoured to provide an alternative to the flat, small, monochrome image offered by their rival. Colour films thus became more common, experiments were made in stereoscopic ‘3D’ filmmaking and various widescreen formats proliferated. The Cinerama process, which generated a widescreen image using three synchronized projectors, was launched by an independent production company in 1952. 20th Century Fox responded to Cinerama’s popularity the following year by unveiling CinemaScope, which used anamorphic lenses to compress a widescreen image on to a single strip of film. CinemaScope proved to be much more practical than Cinerama and its success made widescreen formats the standard for Hollywood’s largest productions in the years which followed. CinemaScope was strongly associated with the historical epic from the outset: three of the first five films made in the format were historical productions, including the English historical films Knights of the Round Table 11

12

Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale, Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 2–5. ‘Domestic Grosses Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation’, Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/all time/adjusted.htm, accessed 22 July 2017.

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and King of the Khyber Rifles (1954). Later innovations in widescreen technology maintained this link with the historical epic: The Ten Commandments (1956) was filmed in Paramount’s VistaVision, the Todd-AO process was used in Around the World in 80 Days, MGM used their Camera 65 format in Ben-Hur and the Super Panavision 70 process was employed in Lawrence of Arabia. Spectacle, technology and historical representation were thus entwined as the film industry sought to differentiate its product from rival leisure activities. The convergence and the impact of these four factors – cultural internationalism, economic internationalism, innovations in distribution and new exhibition technologies – can be observed in two of the most prominent films of the era: Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Both films can be considered epics and both use this form to represent English history. Both reflect a cosmopolitan cultural internationalism, depicting the experiences of adventurous Englishmen in multiple exotic locations. In different ways, both films show the British Empire at its late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century zenith, suggesting parallels between British imperialism in the past and contemporary American policy in the emerging Third World. Both were runaway productions, filmed partly or wholly outside America with some location work in Britain, although only Lawrence of Arabia was registered as a British co-production. Both were exhibited on a roadshow basis in cinemas around the world. And both are visually spectacular, employing new technologies to put international locales on display. This chapter examines 80 Days and Lawrence of Arabia as historical epics of the Cold War, focussing particularly on their transnational production histories, their ideological use of spectacle, and the ways in which their representation of the British Empire resonated with American experiences in the present.

‘A show on film’: Around the World in 80 Days (1956) Adapted from the 1873 Jules Verne novel, Around the World in 80 Days attached an extravagant travelogue to a simple adventure story. The film was very much the work of its producer, Mike Todd, a theatre impresario once described as ‘a combination of Quasimodo and P.T. Barnum’.13 Todd’s prior experience in cinema

13

S. J. Perelman, apparently in a letter to T. S. Eliot, quoted in Dorothy Herrmann, S.J. Perelman: A Life (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1986), 210.

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had involved the development of new exhibition technologies. He was an early backer of the Cinerama process and an executive producer of This Is Cinerama in 1952. Ousted from the Cinerama company, Todd funded and put his name on the new widescreen process Todd-AO, which was first used in Oklahoma! (1955).14 Todd-AO – which created a huge, high-resolution, wraparound image using a large 65-millimetre negative – proved successful, and Todd sought to use it again in a film over which he had full control. The 80 Days project originated from a 1946 stage adaptation written and directed by Orson Welles with music by Cole Porter.15 Todd purchased the script from British producer Alexander Korda and enlisted screenwriter James Poe and director John Farrow to revise it for production. Their new screenplay established a structure which was used to schedule production, but Todd found it ‘flat’ and sought another writer to enliven the dialogue.16 Apparently declaring ‘I need a big name for where it says the writer is’, Todd first approached Noël Coward and Peter Ustinov, reflecting the anglocentric cachet he sought for the film.17 Both demurred, however, and Todd hired S. J. Perelman, a writer best known for his work with the Marx Brothers. To star in the principal roles, Todd secured the services of two experienced British actors, David Niven as Phileas Fogg and Robert Newton as Inspector Fix, and cast an unknown American, Shirley MacLaine, as Princess Aouda. For Passepartout, Fogg’s French manservant, Todd approached the Mexican comic star Cantinflas.18 Todd claimed that Cantinflas was ‘the highest paid entertainer in the world’, and although this was probably an exaggeration he nevertheless earned the highest salary of anyone on the film and negotiated an additional percentage of its gross in Spanish-speaking territories.19 Principal photography began in August 1955 near Madrid.20 The first scene to be filmed was a bullfight, which had been incorporated specifically to showcase Cantinflas’s trademark comic matador routine. It was also in Spain that Todd initiated his policy of casting international stars in minor roles. Facing the bulls 14

15

16 17

18

19

20

For an extensive, personal account of Todd’s career, see Michael Todd Jr and Susan McCarthy Todd, A Valuable Property: The Life Story of Michael Todd (New York: Arbor House, 1983). ‘Todd Acquires Jules Verne’s 80 Days from Korda’, Variety, 22 September 1954. See also Schwartz, It’s So French, 165–6. Todd Jr., Valuable Property, 274. Letter from James Poe to Ed North, 1 October 1956; letter from James Poe to Bernard Reis, 11 July 1955, James Poe papers, Box 22–4, Department of Special Collections UCLA, Los Angeles. See Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity (Wilmington: SR Books, 2001). Art Cohn (ed.), Michael Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days Almanac (New York: Random House, 1956), 48; Todd Jr., Valuable Property, 276. ‘Production Schedule’, 12 July 1955, James Poe papers, Box 22–4.

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alongside Cantinflas was Luis Miguel Dominguín, the partner of Ava Gardner and arguably the most famous bullfighter of the era. The other major Spanish scene in the film featured a performance from the celebrated flamenco dancer José Greco and appearances from Hollywood actors Gilbert Roland and Cesar Romero. Popularizing the term, Todd declared these roles to be ‘cameos’: ‘a gem carved in celluloid by a star’.21 He also dispensed with director John Farrow while in Spain, finding him to be too slow.22 As the production decamped to London, the young British director Michael Anderson, fresh from his huge British success The Dam Busters (1954), was hired in his place. Todd initially intended to retain Anderson for the English scenes only and then to hire a succession of international directors to correspond with the film’s fictional locations, but Anderson remained in place for the remainder of the shoot.23 Todd’s extemporaneous cameo casting continued apace in London. Noël Coward and John Gielgud were added for a scene at an employment agency, the latter reportedly baited by the former.24 The members of Fogg’s Reform Club were fleshed out by Trevor Howard, Finlay Currie and Robert Morley, while John Mills, Hermione Gingold and Glynis Johns were rapidly incorporated into vignettes written ad hoc by Perelman. A quick trip across the channel to shoot exteriors in France yielded cameos from Martine Carol and later from Charles Boyer. To entice French star Fernandel into making an appearance, Todd reportedly told him, ‘We have Nöel Coward, John Gielgud … and David Niven representing England. Who better to represent France … than the great Fernandel?’25 His cameo strategy was clear: by casting stars from Latin America, Britain, Spain and France, Todd ensured that major international markets were catered to from the outset. With European material complete, the production returned to Hollywood where the interiors for the majority of the film were shot along with locations for the American-set scenes. Nineteenth-century America was also populated by prominent local stars, including Frank Sinatra, Buster Keaton and Marlene Dietrich. To complete the global shoot, a second unit was dispatched to record footage in India, Pakistan, Japan and Thailand.26 Todd funded the film not by approaching a studio for backing, as most independent producers would have done, but by borrowing $2 million from a 21 22 23 24 25 26

Cohn, Almanac, 14. Todd Jr, Valuable Property, 282. Frederick C. Szebin, ‘The World on a Shoestring’, American Cinematographer 78, no. 2 (1997): 110. Todd Jr., Valuable Property, 283. Ibid., 289. Ibid., 301; Cohn, Almanac, 17.

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private investor.27 To generate additional finance, he sold his stock in the Todd-AO Company for a further $2 million.28 These deals enabled Todd to bring the film close to completion before meeting with studios in Hollywood, granting him considerable leverage in subsequent negotiations. The film was initially previewed to Columbia, from whom Todd requested a $4 million loan in return for a low distribution fee and 10 per cent of the profits. In a bold move, only the rights to the print-down version of the film for general release were put on the table; Todd elected to handle the international roadshow release in the Todd-AO format by himself, entirely independent of the Hollywood studio infrastructure.29 Columbia balked at Todd’s terms, but they were accepted by United Artists, who had much more experience working with independent producers. The company agreed to put the film into general distribution once it had played in 125 theatres on a roadshow basis.30 In order to cover his costs, Todd also sold 10 per cent of the film to the TV company CBS and a further 1.8 per cent to a private investor. By the time 80 Days was ready to premiere, the film had cost a relatively lean $6.3 million and Todd had retained a 78.2 per cent stake, leaving him with a huge potential profit.31 80 Days premiered at the Rivoli Theatre on Broadway on 17 October 1956. It began rolling out in the rest of America in December the same year and in May 1957 it opened internationally, first in Paris and subsequently in Caracas, London and Tokyo.32 Todd increased demand for the film by deliberately restricting access to it, requiring audiences to go out of their way to obtain a ticket, much as they would strive to see a hot show on Broadway. In San Francisco, for example, around 900,000 admissions were recorded during the first eighteen months in a city with just 750,000 inhabitants.33 Indeed, Todd contrived to promote 80 Days as though it was a theatrical production wherever possible, regularly describing it as ‘a show on film’.34 As he explained (using Canadian prices), A movie … is something you go to see casually when you’ve got nothing better to do and you pay 99 cents for. A show is something you doll up for and make an occasion of and you’re happy to pay $3.80 for.35

27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35

Todd Jr., Valuable Property, 273. Ibid., 295. ‘Todd’s $5,000,000 Bet Finishes’, Hollywood Reporter, 15 December 1955, 1. Todd Jr., Valuable Property, 307. Ibid., 319. ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ Advertising Supplement, circa July 1957. 80 Days clippings file, Margaret Herrick Library. New York World Telegram and Sun, 5 June 1958. ‘Legit-Type Sell for 80 Days’, Variety, 10 October 1956. Quoted in The Globe and Mail, 16 October 1956, 12.

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Whereas previous roadshows had been based around two showings a day, Todd concentrated demand by limiting matinee screenings, much like a theatrical production.36 Tickets were sold in advance at inflated prices up to $3.50, a staggering rise on the 1956 average price of 50 cents.37 In New York they were made available through Broadway ticket brokers and to holders of the fledging Diners Club credit card. To further differentiate the production from standard Hollywood fare, paid advertising was also restricted: prior to the premiere, only billboards outside theatres were used.38 Todd also banned the sale of popcorn in theatres, a move which irked some theatre owners. In its place, he promoted lobby sales of ‘Michael Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days Almanac’, an elaborate, seventy-two page, hardback programme featuring production information, colour photos and cast biographies. They sold for a dollar each and one million were thought to have been bought in the film’s first eighteen months of release.39 The film’s box-office earnings vindicated Todd’s approach. After two years, the film earned $17.7 million from bookings in 1,569 domestic cinemas.40 The unorthodox techniques used to promote 80 Days were mirrored by its content. The film begins in the American present with a spoken prologue by the well-known broadcaster Ed Murrow. Seated behind a desk in a booklined office, Murrow acclaims the imagination of Jules Verne and introduces an abridged version of an earlier Verne adaptation, Georges Méliès’s Le voyage dans la lune (1902). The stark contrast between this early vision of space travel and the technology available in the present prompt Murrow not only to extol the ‘stretching fingers’ of scientific progress, but also to sound a note of nuclearage caution. The Méliès footage segues into film of an actual rocket launch, in fact a guided missile released in New Mexico, followed by images of the earth’s receding surface taken from the rocket as it moved into orbit (see Figure 4.1). As these images appear, the frame expands from the standard academy ratio to reveal the vast proportions of the Todd-AO screen, thus linking the technology of the contemporary American space adventure to the technology used to create the film. Indeed, the awesome, expanding space of the movie screen seems an apt metaphor for the even greater expanses of space itself. The prologue concludes with Murrow introducing the main body of the film in London, 1872. 36

37

38 39 40

Sheldon T. Hall, Hard Ticket Giants: Hollywood Blockbusters in the Widescreen Era. PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, 1999, 133. ‘Adjusting for Ticket Price Inflation’, Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm , accessed 18 July 2017. ‘Legit-Type Sell for ‘80 Days’. New York World Telegram and Sun. Hall and Neale, Epics, Spectacles, 152.

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Figure 4.1 Missile launch in Around the World in 80 Days.

This location is established with images of Buckingham Palace, marking a direct transition from contemporary America to historical England. Over a game of cards at the Reform Club, Phileas Fogg wagers that he can circumnavigate the globe in just eighty days using available means of transport. Accompanied by his manservant Passepartout, a carpet bag of banknotes and pursued by Inspector Fix of Scotland Yard, Fogg begins his journey. The three travellers proceed through series of exotic and spectacularly rendered locations – France, Spain, Egypt, India, Hong Kong, Japan and America – and are joined by Princess Aouda, whom they rescue from a funeral pyre in India. Their means of transport are equally varied, including hot-air balloon, elephant, ostrich and ‘sailmobile’ in addition to schooner and steam train. Fogg becomes engaged to Aouda and arrives back in London to narrowly win his bet. Finally, the key locations and cameo stars reappear in a six-minute encore-cum-credits sequence animated by Saul Bass. The adventure story narrated in 80 Days is relatively traditional – a hero and his sidekick set out on a high-stakes mission, overcoming obstacles and finding romance in the process. In formal terms, however, the film departed from Hollywood norms in its hybrid construction of drama, comedy, travelogue and animation. Much of the promotional discourse around the film emphasized this formal hybridity. According to Todd, the film was a combination of a three-ring circus, a vaudeville show with all-headline acts and a trip on a magic carpet to the most exotic and novel places all over the world in the company of several brilliant performers.41 41

Quoted in Hollywood Reporter, 18 October 1956.

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On another occasion he described it as ‘a wonderful adventure story which is also a great documentary, a romantic legend which is a breathtaking travel picture with a worldwide expanse of beautiful scenery’.42 For contemporary observers, the elements most easily identified in the hybrid production were cinema and theatre. According to Art Cohn, the editor of the promotional Almanac, ‘Todd widened the screen physically, now he intends to widen the vistas of expression upon it. To this end, he has, in the production, begun to bridge the motion picture medium and the theater.’43 Similarly, The New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther observed, ‘Todd, who has already shaken the foundations of the legitimate theatre with an onslaught of highly heterogeneous and untraditional musical shows, is apparently out to shatter the fundamental formation of the screen.’44 In keeping with its Victorian setting, 80 Days asserts a vision of the world strongly rooted in imperial ideology. Not only does it depict the triumph of an English colonial adventurer, it also reflects his conception of the world he has mastered. Phileas Fogg is very much the cool, phlegmatic, authoritarian archetype of upper-class English masculinity. His expedition takes him through several British colonies and although he is never shown to be directly involved in colonizing or maintaining order in these spaces, his attempt to circumnavigate the world within eighty days is essentially a quest to assert his mastery over time and space. In a sense, Fogg conquers the entire globe, establishing the superiority of his race and class over those he passes along the way. The fact that his mission was undertaken so casually, as a sporting wager between members of an elite English gentlemen’s club, only serves to underline the naturalness and ease of this apparent superiority. Imperialist ideology is also reflected in 80 Days’s use of spectacle and in particular its construction of the spectator as a tourist. The visual motif the film uses most often to represent foreign cultures is the procession. In the streets of Bombay, the travellers witness a parade celebrating a Hindu festival, while in Hong Kong they see a performance of Chinese dancing dragons. They pass the procession of the Thai Royal barge in Bangkok and in America they observe a native pow-wow. In each case, the forward momentum of the narrative pauses while camera lingers, its oblong format suited to the procession’s lateral

42 43 44

Quoted in Eldridge, Hollywood’s History Films, 75. Cohn, Almanac, 10. Bosley Crowther, ‘Screen: Mammoth Show’, The New York Times, 18 October 1956, 37.

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movement, as the native culture is performed for the tourist-spectators. Mary Louise Pratt identifies a tendency in Western travel writing which she describes as the ‘monarch-of-all-I-survey’: the sweeping, panoramic description of an exotic and alien landscape narrated from a fixed vantage point, typically a promontory of some kind. This kind of narrated gaze attempts to both aestheticize and find meaning in the landscapes it surveys, announcing their discovery and in the process creating a ‘relation of mastery predicated between the seer and the seen’.45 In its ostentatious representation of foreign landscapes and cultures, 80 Days does something similar. The lateral movement of the human gaze across a landscape closely resembles the axial panning of a movie camera seen throughout the film, and the huge, high-resolution image of the Todd-AO format might be considered to provide a ‘promontory’ of a kind. It is also worth noting that the widescreen spectacles of the 1950s had their roots in various pre-cinematic Diorama and Panorama technologies of the nineteenth century which were used, among other things, to familiarize European audiences with newly colonized spaces.46 These sequences are ordered in a way that flatters a tourist’s sense of exploration, reinforcing imperial power-relations. As John Urry has suggested, the gaze of the tourist is ‘constructed through difference … in relation to its opposite, to non-tourist forms of social experience and consciousness’.47 In this way, 80 Days caters to the tourist-audience by presenting foreign cultures in terms of their otherness, and in doing so it emphasizes their opposition to Western traditions. The premising of tourism on spectatorship also serves to maintain a rigid partition between the seer and the seen. At no point is the audience invited to participate in the exotic landscapes laid out in front of them. As Edward Said has suggested, ‘The European, whose sensibility tours the Orient, is a watcher, never involved, always detached, always ready for new examples of … “bizarre jouissance”.’48 As though to underline the point, the non-European Passepartout, whom Fogg describes as a ‘dark little man’, takes a far more active interest in these foreign cultures than his English master. The dichotomy between spectator and subject is complicated to some extent

45

46 47 48

Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 201–5. See also David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 17–18. John Belton, Widescreen Cinema (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 93–4. John Urry, The Tourist Gaze, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2002), 1. Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003), 103.

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Figure 4.2 The Queen’s Guard in Around the World in 80 Days.

by the film’s representation of England. The London scenes are introduced by a fully uniformed regiment of the Queen’s Guard marching in formation (see Figure 4.2). Their procession is as spectacular as any other in the film, and in this sense the film renders England in similar terms to India or Hong Kong. But although the Queen’s Guard are presented in exotic terms, it seems significant that their procession is more methodical than any other in the film. Whereas colonized territories are characterized by chaos and savagery, England exists in contrast as a land of order and civilization. With his obsessive punctuality and sense of fair play, Fogg stands as the embodiment of these values. England is thus the centre of the film’s world, the starting point and the finishing line for its journey and the norm from which its representation of other cultures departs. The centrality of England is further emphasized by the film’s depiction of historical America. Introduced at San Francisco amid a chaotic political rally – the centrepiece of which is a procession, of course – this America is portrayed as bawdy, violent, ill-mannered and corrupt. Matters become even more dangerous as the party cross the interior to reach New York and Passepartout is kidnapped by ‘Indians’. According to Fogg, it is ‘a very primitive country’ populated by ‘natives’ who are scarcely more civilized then those in colonized territories. At the same time, the depiction of British imperialism in 80 Days also reflects the historical era in which the film was made. By 1956, many of the imperial territories that Fogg passes through had become independent, not least India. The scenes set in Suez, meanwhile, took on an entirely unintended significance: just twelve days after the New York premiere, Britain, France and Israel began their doomed campaign to invade Egypt and reoccupy the Canal Zone. In his

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draft screenplay, James Poe introduced the imperial-era English setting with the following passage: It is London, the London of Queen Victoria. … It is London at its best, the serene glory of an English spring. … London, the capital of an Empire that will never change. … London of the fixed and invulnerable sterling.49

These words are not heard in the film, but they were printed in the synopsis from the souvenir almanac.50 They may be an apt description of the world in which Verne had set his novel, but an audience in the mid-1950s would presumably have appreciated Poe’s irony. Although the Suez Crisis had yet to occur, English imperial rule had already proven to be far from permanent and a series of currency crises since the Great War had destabilized the pound. The film’s final scene also makes a critique of Britain’s imperial decline. As Fogg arrives at the Reform Club to claim his bet, the gathered members recoil at the sudden appearance of Princess Aouda. Fogg asks her to leave, explaining that ‘no woman has ever set foot in the club’. Asked why, he replies, ‘Because that could spell the end of the British Empire.’ At that moment, Passepartout appears at the window, and another member, aghast, declares, ‘This is the end.’ With that, the credits roll. The humour is absurd rather than satirical, but the implication that Britain’s imperial supremacy could so easily be challenged is clear nonetheless. Despite these post-imperial ironies, the film is largely celebratory in tone and offers nothing in the way of direct criticism for British imperial policy. Indeed, its representation of colonized people and landscapes replicate imperial power relations. I would argue that 80 Days constructs a flattering profile of Victorian England and the British Empire in order to draw a parallel between the grandeur of the English past and that of the American present. As embodied by Ed Murrow and his polished narration in the film’s prologue, modern America is characterized by rationalism, scientific progress and cultural refinement: the same qualities that the film proceeds to associate with historical England. The film’s images of historical America serve to underline this association: the sophistication of the American present is enhanced by the recreation of its apparently unsophisticated past. Crucially, the 1870s and 1950s are shown to be periods in which technology was making international travel and communication faster and more accessible. As Murrow explains, modern technology (implicitly American) had since made Fogg’s journey possible in 49 50

Undated screenplay draft, ‘JP Work Papers’, James Poe papers, Box 22–4. Cohn, Almanac, 18.

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just four hours. Accordingly, the film depicts two historical periods in which scientific progress gave one national culture the edge over its neighbours. Just as English imperialists and quasi-imperialists such as Fogg had once led the way, Americans were now in a position to do the same. In Around the World in 80 Days, America is thus established as the successor nation to England, the culture best equipped to preside over the world around it. Of course, American imperialism is not directly represented in the film. Instead, America’s investment in the rest of the world is flagged up through tourism, a cultured fascination with the exotic surfaces in far flung corners of the world. The construction of spectator and spectacle common to English imperialism and American tourism suggests that the two discourses were not wildly different. In this way, tourism and imperialism are laid over each to mark a new era of American internationalism. The English past, with its connections to Empire, thus enabled Hollywood to register an increased interest in the world beyond America’s borders. In a broader sense, the film’s representation of English history and projection of an anglocentric prestige acted as an element in its highly specialized methods of distribution and exhibition. As America’s geographical imagination expanded, it seems Victorian England and the British Empire became an ever more valuable and relevant point of reference. In this way, flattering, benign images of British imperialism enabled America’s contemporary imperial reach to be seen in a positive light.

‘The magic of distant places’: Lawrence of Arabia (1962) T. E. Lawrence was a British officer who attained the status of imperial hero following his involvement in the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman army during the Great War. He was introduced to the British public by American journalist Lowell Thomas, who had been granted access to military operations in the Middle East and subsequently turned his reports into a public lecture. This lecture initially foregrounded General Allenby, who was already somewhat well known, but later versions shifted focus to the previously unheralded Lawrence. Thomas anointed Lawrence as ‘a man who will be blazoned on the romantic pages of history with Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Lord Clive, Chinese Gordon and Kitchener of Khartoum’.51 Such earnest myth-making captured the public imagination, and 51

Joel Hodson, Lawrence of Arabia and American Culture: The Making of a Transatlantic Legend (Westport: Greenwood, 1995), 35.

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the title ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ began to circulate, an appellation that echoed Clive of India, Rhodes of Africa and Scott of the Antarctic among others, implying a possessive affinity between the man and the scene of his heroism. Lowell Thomas’s version of Lawrence slotted in to what John Mackenzie has called the ‘apostolic succession’ of British imperial heroes: legendary soldiers and explorers such as Kitchener, Rhodes and Livingstone who could explain and justify the rise of empire and offer examples of service to subsequent generations.52 A film adaptation of this biography was always a strong prospect, and numerous attempts were made to bring Lawrence to the screen in the years which followed. Although Lawrence was said to favour a Disney animation depicting his life, plans for the first biographical film were made in Britain.53 Alexander Korda prepared a film based on Lowell Thomas’s material in 1935, but it was abandoned because the British governor of Palestine refused to permit large assemblies of Arabs on location in Jerusalem. A second attempt in 1937 was halted after objections from Turkey, with whom Britain hoped to form an alliance in the looming war, and in 1955 a Rank project was abandoned due to unrest in Iraq.54 In an ironic reflection of the Arab Revolt’s legacy, the Middle East remained as politically volatile as ever. Plans for a Lawrence film were revived again by the itinerant American producer Sam Spiegel and British director David Lean. The scale and complexity of the project was acknowledged when Spiegel purchased the film rights to no fewer than seven different biographies of Lawrence, including Lowell Thomas’s With Lawrence in Arabia. By effectively taking possession of Lawrence’s story, Spiegel also closed down any possible rival productions. In particular, he scared financiers away from Herbert Wilcox’s projected biopic Ross, based on a play by Terence Rattigan.55 The final piece was added when Lawrence’s brother agreed to sell the film rights to Lawrence’s autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom after approving a draft screenplay by the American screenwriter Michael Wilson.56 Whereas 80 Days was funded outside the Hollywood studio system, Lawrence of Arabia was financed by Columbia Pictures. However, Spiegel was able to operate with considerable freedom under the aegis of his Horizon Pictures production company. Significantly, Horizon Pictures was incorporated in Britain, which

52

53 54

55 56

John M. MacKenzie, ‘T.E. Lawrence: The Myth and the Message’, in Robert Giddings (ed.), Literature and Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1991), 156. ‘Brother Rejects Lawrence Film’, The New York Times, 5 January 1963, 7. Kevin Brownlow, David Lean (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 406. See also Andrew Kelly, Jeffrey Richards and James Pepper, Filming T. E. Lawrence: Korda’s Lost Epic (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997). Brownlow, David Lean, 411. Ibid., 409.

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allowed Lawrence of Arabia to be registered as a British production and thus to receive generous payments from Britain’s Eady levy. Spiegel went to considerable effort to ensure that the film met the official criteria to qualify as a British production. Firstly, Horizon Pictures had to be listed as the film’s British ‘maker’, despite being owned by an ex-pat American citizen. Secondly, the film had to be produced using studios in Britain, Ireland or the British Commonwealth. However, information supplied to the Board of Trade broke down the filming locations as follows: Studios:

Shepperton – 39secs Goldhawk, Shepherds Bush – 1sec

Locations:

UK – 3mins 2secs Jordan – 64mins 51secs Spain – 115mins 55secs Morocco – 14mins 27secs Egypt – 35secs57

British studios were indeed used, but only to create 4 minutes of footage in a 203-minute production. Thirdly, 75 per cent of the labour costs had to be paid to British, Irish or Commonwealth workers. Spiegel ensured that the payroll was balanced to meet this target, but there is evidence among the figures presented to the Board of Trade that British workers were systematically overpaid and foreign workers underpaid in order to make the figures add up.58 Lawrence of Arabia was thus successfully registered as a British film, despite being funded by American production capital and filmed almost entirely in Jordan and Spain. Michael Wilson left the project after completing his third draft of the screenplay in December 1960, and due to his inclusion on the Hollywood ‘blacklist’ he was denied credit for his work until 1995.59 According to Lean, the problems arose from Wilson’s characterization of Lawrence: The basic flaw is that in the present conception there is no margin for kickback off the main character. He just keeps on doing things and the audience watches and draws their own conclusions.60

57 58 59

60

‘Evidence of British Nature of a Film’, 27 March 1963. BT 64/5208, National Archives, Kew. See Stubbs, ‘Runaway Bribe?’, 8–13. ‘Action Memorandum: Lawrence of Arabia’, Writers Guild of America Board of Directors Meeting, 7 August 1995. Lawrence of Arabia clippings file, Margaret Herrick Library. Letter from David Lean to Sam Spiegel, 5 January 1961, David Lean Collection, Box 3, British Film Institute National Library and Special Collections, London.

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In his place, Spiegel hired the British dramatist Robert Bolt, who had recently received acclaim for his play A Man for All Seasons (1960). The principal creative personnel working on Lawrence of Arabia appear to have occupied differing positions on the subject of their film. Robert Bolt asserted anti-imperialist views, insisting that he had been ‘bought up to disapprove of figures like T.E. Lawrence as being the colourful ornaments and stalking horses of imperialism’.61 Like Wilson before him, he was also associated with left-wing politics and was briefly imprisoned for attending a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally while still working on the film.62 David Lean, on the other hand, professed a rather more old-fashioned attitude towards the British Empire. In a letter written to Wilson while scouting locations in Jordan, he stated, The truth is that I think I still carry the ‘Boy’s Own Paper’ with me. It’s a monthly magazine, long dead, which I used to devour in my youth, full of stories of Africa, India, China. No doubt a cliché-ridden lot of nonsense, but it had magic and the magic of distant places has clung on to me.63

The film’s political position was further complicated by the involvement of Sam Spiegel, who had worked in a Jewish kibbutz in Palestine in his youth and who maintained close relations with Israel throughout his life. While shooting in Jordan, a nation technically at war with Israel, he resided on his yacht in order to avoid sleeping on Arabian soil.64 Although his precise political attitudes are hard to determine, it seems unlikely that Spiegel would have wished to produce a film which endorsed Arab nationalism at a time when so many Arab states maintained hostile relations with Israel. The conflicting perspectives of Lawrence of Arabia’s creative personnel, combined with its timely subject matter, imbued the film with a distinct although often ambiguous political content. Anti-colonial and anti-war sentiments are certainly in evidence. One of the key motifs in the film is the circulation of Lawrence’s pistol. It first appears when Lawrence makes a present of it to his Bedouin guide as he is led into the desert. When Ali approaches them in the iconic scene at the well, however, the guide draws the gun and Ali shoots him. Ali then takes it from the dead guide, but returns it to Lawrence before the raid 61

62 63 64

Robert Bolt, ‘Clues to the Legend of Lawrence’, The New York Times Saturday Magazine, 25 February 1962, 15. Adrian Turner, Robert Bolt: Scenes from Two Lives (London: Hutchinson, 1998), 191–8. Letter from David Lean to Michael Wilson, 24 April 1960, Michael Wilson papers, Box 18. Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, Sam Spiegel: The Biography of a Hollywood Legend (London: Little, Brown & Co., 2003), 250.

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on Aqaba so that he can execute the murderer Gasim and settle the blood feud. Shaken by the action as the sound of the gunshot reverberates expressionistically, Lawrence throws his weapon into the sand, only to see dozens of Arabs scramble to pick it up. He is unable to stop the chain of events he has inadvertently set in motion. As Steven C. Caton observes, violence is thus shown to circulate ‘from the hand of the colonizer’.65 The passage of Lawrence’s pistol feeds into a larger discussion of the political uses of artillery throughout the film. At a meeting in Prince Feisal’s tent, Colonel Brighton proposes that if the Bedouin make a tactical retreat the British will provide them with ‘arms, advice, training, everything’. Recognizing that British ‘training’ would compromise their independence, Ali interjects, ‘Give us guns and keep the training.’ Frustrated, Brighton argues that Britain is great ‘because it has discipline’. ‘Because it has guns,’ Ali interjects. The theme continues when Lawrence returns to British headquarters after the raid on Aqaba. Lawrence requests military equipment including field artillery for the Arabs in order to sustain their revolt. After he leaves, Dryden asks, ‘Are you really going to give them artillery, sir? … Give them artillery and you’ve made them independent.’ General Allenby replies, ‘Then I can’t give them artillery, can I?’ Guns, the film suggests, are what separate colonizer from the colonized. As an imperial power, Britain is loath to make them available unless they are accompanied by British political influence. Lawrence of Arabia also makes anti-imperialist capital out of Lawrence’s hypocritical attitude towards his Arab associates. In his first meeting with Ali, Lawrence describes Arabs ‘a little people, a silly people; greedy, barbarous, and cruel’. Much later, Ali throws these words back at him after Lawrence orders a brutal attack on retreating Turkish soldiers at Tafas. As Lawrence sits dazed and bloodied, Ali asks the American journalist Bentley, ‘Does it surprise you …? Surely you know the Arabs are a barbarous people. Barbarous and cruel. Who but they?’ It is also at Tafas that the cynicism and dishonesty of the Western media is most fully exposed. Appalled by the violence he has witnessed, Bentley takes a ‘rotten, bloody picture’ of Lawrence. Later on, however, this very image is printed on the front page of an American newspaper (see Figure 4.3). Taken entirely out of context, Lawrence’s glazed expression operates not as evidence for his horror at the massacre he ordered but for his supposedly triumphant entry into Damascus. The film also makes ironic reference to contemporary colonial

65

Steven C. Caton, Lawrence of Arabia: A Film’s Anthropology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 189.

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Figure 4.3 Lawrence’s image is out of context in Lawrence of Arabia.

politics. Colonel Brighton’s insistence that the Suez Canal must be protected over all other areas in the region usefully historicizes Britain’s more recent adventures in Arabia. Perhaps more fittingly, the presence of Bentley as a witness to Lawrence’s actions in the second half of the film allows the film to allude to America’s post-war international ambitions. Bentley grandly tells Feisal, ‘We Americans were once a colonial people. We naturally feel sympathetic to any people who struggle for their freedom.’ With a withering look, Feisal replies, ‘Very gratifying.’ Although America had no direct involvement in the Middle East at the time of the Arab Revolt, it seems clear to Feisal that their strategic interests were closer to those of Britain than to his own. These critical sentiments exist, however, alongside a disdain for the Arab people and colonial nationalism in general. The scenes towards the end of the film when Lawrence and the Arab army attempt to establish an Arabian government in Damascus are particularly revealing. Beating Allenby into the city, they take control of its infrastructure and form an Arab National Council in the town hall. Their meeting is chaotic; members walk across the tables to insult each other and petty tribal disputes forestall debate. Lawrence calls order by banging his pistol on the table, but on this occasion it is beyond him to organize and lead the Arabs. Meanwhile, Allenby orders British troops, including medical staff, to remain in quarters, ignoring the growing humanitarian disaster at the hospitals. As the power generators burn and Turkish soldiers perish in the unstaffed military hospital, the Arabs begin to leave Damascus. Lawrence remains in the emptying town hall, abandoned by the Arabs but apparently still hoping to maintain control over the city on their behalf. In these scenes, the

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Arabs are depicted as childish, backward and inherently divided.66 Manifestly unable to govern themselves, they drift back into the desert from whence they came. In order to assume command, the British military simply wait for them to lose interest and abandon the mess they have made. This depiction of the Arab National Council suggests that, despite Lawrence’s heroic efforts in their name, the Arabs were incapable and undeserving of selfgovernment. The implications of these scenes in 1962, as former colonial states all over the world became independent and formed sovereign governments, are striking and resonate with patrician anxieties about how well former colonial nations would take to independence. In a later scene the film’s repudiation of colonial nationalism goes even further. Ali, who according to screenwriter Robert Bolt ‘has to represent emergent Arab nationalism’, pulls a knife on Auda, with whom he has argued through the film.67 He quickly thinks better of it, but as he leaves Auda exclaims, ‘Being an Arab will be thornier than you think, Harith!’ With this, Ali disappears into darkness and is never seen again. As Caton puts it, ‘Factionalism is the last word.’68 At a time when pan-Arab nationalism exerted a strong political influence in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt, this denigration of Arab unity carried overt political connotations. Indeed, Lawrence of Arabia was subsequently banned in Jordan – ironically the nation where a large proportion of the film was photographed – on the grounds that it was ‘anti-Arab’.69 Strong criticisms were also made in Egypt, where it was noted that the film had been made under ‘Zionist’ influence.70 In fact, Lawrence of Arabia makes no direct reference to Judaism or Zionism. Nevertheless, the broader historical implications of the film’s subject matter were apparent to some Americans. The reviewer of the New York magazine Cue noted that the Arab Revolt ‘led … indirectly, to the establishment of the State of Israel’.71 When the film went into general release in America, Columbia offered to send exhibitors ‘reprints from various Jewish publications on Lawrence of Arabia and his role “in furthering the cause of Jewish people”’.72

66 67 68 69 70

71 72

See also Melanie Williams, David Lean (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 160. Robert Bolt, ‘Apologia’, Cineaste 21, no. 4 (1995): 35. Caton, Lawrence of Arabia, 193. ‘Jordan Bans Lawrence’, The Washington Post, 15 January 1964, 6. ‘Egyptian Critics See Zionist Hand, Distortions in “Lawrence of Arabia”’, The Washington Post, 28 April 1963, 16. The film was also banned in Turkey. See Lawrence Raw, ‘T.E. Lawrence, the Turks and the Arab Revolt in the Cinema: Anglo-American and Turkish Representations’, Literature/Film Quarterly 33, no. 4 (2005): 252–61. ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, Cue, 29 December 1962. Lawrence of Arabia Pressbook, Margaret Herrick Library.

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In place of the collapsed Arab government, Feisal negotiates with Allenby to administer the city with British technical assistance, a relationship encapsulated by Dryden’s submission to ‘a British waterworks with an Arab flag on it’. Allenby describes Arab power under such an arrangement as ‘illusory’, but Feisal gnomically adds that ‘illusions can be powerful’. It is a compromise for the British, but they nevertheless impose a form of control over the new government. Again, the Cold War context seems crucial: this mode of informal influence is very close to the type desired by America and the USSR in emerging Third World nations. Like other depictions of the British Empire from the 1960s, most notably Khartoum (1966), Lawrence of Arabia is critical of the mendacity of the British politicians and officers involved in the maintenance of Empire, but it pointedly fails to endorse local government as an alternative. Imperialism is recognized as corrupt and unstable, but nationalist self-government is shown to be no better. Some contemporary reviews reflected this reading. John Coleman of Britain’s New Statesman, for example, described the depiction of the Arab National Council as ‘slanted’.73 Conversely, Nate Wheeler of Scene, another British publication, regarded Lawrence of Arabia’s depiction of Arabs as inappropriately positive, declaring, ‘The situation in the Middle East has changed a great deal since then and today, whether by accident or design, this film must certainly be received with raptures in Radio Cairo circles.’74 The film’s ambivalence towards imperialism and colonial nationalism is no better embodied than by Lawrence himself. Neither European imperialist in the conventional sense nor colonial nationalist, Lawrence mediates between these positions, initially with great success. In a sense, he embodies the sort of ‘third force’ role which American military advisors sought in Third World nations during the Cold War. Lawrence’s political ambitions are perhaps best illustrated by his attempt to turn the British push on Damascus into a coup for Arab nationalism. In an exchange with Allenby, he announces, ‘I’m going to give them Damascus. We’ll get there before you do. And when we’ve got it, we’ll keep it.’ Lawrence’s identification with the Arabs through his use of ‘we’ is revealing, but by implication he sees himself as their benefactor rather than their ally. However, Lawrence’s involvement with the British military ultimately compromises his operations for the Arabs. Learning of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which arranged for Ottoman possessions in Arabia to be divided 73 74

John Coleman, ‘El Aurens’, New Statesman, 14 December 1962. Nate Wheeler, ‘A Freudian Oasis’, Scene, 27 December 1962, 32. Radio Cairo was the broadcasting service operated by the United Arab Republic.

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between Britain and France, Allenby admonishes Lawrence for his surprise: ‘You may not have known, but you certainly had suspicions. If we’ve told lies, you’ve told half-lies.’ Lawrence proceeds in his mission to capture Damascus for the Arabs, but his failure plays into the hands of the British forces. Outflanked by the back-room deal-making of British politicians, and possibly by Prince Feisal too, Lawrence’s ‘third force’ is ultimately defeated. In a British context, it is tempting to understand Lawrence of Arabia as an elegy for a passing age. Indeed, Graham Dawson has described the film as ‘a lament for the lost romance of empire’, while for Wendy Webster it is ‘imbued with a sadness for a lost world’.75 In an American context, however, the film has been read differently. The majority of the reviews focussed primarily on the film’s vast spectacle, but some also proposed that the Lawrence myth might have a wider political significance. The continuity between the Middle East of 1910s and the 1960s was widely alluded to. According to the Newsweek critic, Lawrence was ‘a bridge between the truly medieval society of the Arab sheikdoms and contemporary civilisation’, while James Powers of the Hollywood Reporter noted that Lawrence’s influence was ‘still apparent in the emergence of Arab nationalism’.76 In The Washington Post, Richard L. Coe assessed the parallel in more partisan terms, claiming that ‘the United Arab Republic and Saudi Arabia represent … tribes still struggling, 45 years after Lawrence’s adventure with futility’.77 For Coe and Powers, the film also reflected the awkward effects of Third World nationalism closer to home. According to Coe, the nationalist ideology which Lawrence attempted to bring to the Arabs was ‘the same enigma … which carries forth the dream of [Simon] Bolivar into today’s Latin American nightmares’.78 In this analysis, then, Lawrence is equated with anti-American ideology and activism. Intriguingly, and as though to underline the fundamental ambiguity of the film, Powers was keen to identify him with America: What Lawrence did is roughly comparable to a situation that might arise if the U.S. State Department were to send an obscure second lieutenant into Castro’s Cuba to come back in a few weeks with an intelligence report on anti-Castro

75

76

77 78

Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1994), 227; Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire 1939–1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 210. ‘All Star, All-Good’, Newsweek, 24 December 1962; James Powers, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, Hollywood Reporter, 21 December 1962. Richard L. Coe, ‘Perspective Given Enigma’, The Washington Post, 26 February 1963, Box 18. Ibid.

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elements, only to have the second lieutenant raise a revolt, appoint himself Field Marshal [and] capture Havana.79

As America tangled with both Arab and Latin American nationalism, Lawrence of Arabia’s depiction of Britain’s response to Third World self-determination evidently struck a chord. Unsurprisingly, political readings such as these were also apparent when Lawrence of Arabia was re-released in America in 1989. Describing the film as a ‘post-colonial spectacle’, J. Hoberman of the Village Voice detected ‘more than a hint of delirious New Frontiermanship in its representation of a handsome, quixotic moulder of Third World aspiration’.80 Identifying the film as a portent of American foreign policy to come, Richard Corliss of Time noted that ‘in the picture’s political wrangling and massacre scenes, we see hints of American history in the late ‘60s and American movies today: a preview of Viet Nam and a prequel to Platoon’.81 In contrast to so many earlier Hollywood imperial films, the world put on display is not an exotic playground where a Westerner needed only his sense of adventure to come out on top. In Lawrence of Arabia, the business of imposing influence over other nations shown to be much more complicated. The Lawrence of Arabia myth was initially developed as a means to invigorate public interest for the Great War, but as time passed and Western interests in the Middle East expanded it came to be associated much more closely with Western imperialism. The passage of time also served to complicate the public image of T. E. Lawrence himself: initially cast as a youthful and dashing, if eccentric, hero, subsequent revisions and reinterpretations of the myth highlighted the ambivalence of his motives. As a result, the film Lawrence of Arabia contended with a historical figure whose personality and motives were enshrouded by politically loaded myth, and a contemporary backdrop where the meaning of imperialism in Britain and America was rapidly shifting. Responding to these complexities, the filmmakers chose to emphasize Lawrence’s ambiguity. He was shown to be both a hero and a failure, an agent of the British Empire but an advocate of Arab nationalism. The film thus criticized British imperial activities while also depicting colonial nationalism as an inept, doomed enterprise. As a result of these complexities, Lawrence of Arabia seems to have been interpreted quite differently in Britain and America. In the former, it appeared to be a nostalgic lament for a passing age of well-intentioned imperialism, while in the 79 80 81

James Powers, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, Hollywood Reporter, 21 December 1962. J. Hoberman, ‘Radical Sheik’, Village Voice, 14 February 1989, 59. Richard Corliss, ‘A Masterpiece Restored to the Screen’, Time, 6 February 1989.

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latter it resonated with anxieties about the nation’s rising involvement in the post-colonial Third World. *** In different ways, Around the World in 80 Days and Lawrence of Arabia reflected the growing cosmopolitanism of Hollywood cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, in terms of their dominant subject matter as well as the shifting circumstances in which they were made. Both films were produced on the periphery of the traditional American film industry, and yet as hugely profitable, award-winning productions, both were part of Hollywood’s commercial mainstream during this period. Hollywood’s international turn was motivated by economic factors, including the financial savings which overseas production offered and the greater ease with which film capital and labour moved across national borders. More importantly, perhaps, this internationalism was part of the American film industry’s attempt to build a more global market for its product. As Vanessa R. Schwartz suggests, films like 80 Days and Lawrence of Arabia were part an economic expansion which aimed to ‘create the globe as a whole in order to establish it as a marketplace’.82 However, this attempt to move into global markets also had political dimensions. Receiving an Oscar for The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1958, Sam Spiegel declared that ‘no land is inviolate to the gaze of our camera’.83 Similarly, in 1960 the veteran studio executive Darryl F. Zanuck declared his mission ‘to put the whole world on the screen’.84 The rewards of Hollywood’s geographic expansion may have been economic, but the films of this era also reflected the global growth of America’s cultural and political power, particularly as its conflict with the Soviet Union and its engagement with the Third World became stronger. It is fitting, therefore, that both 80 Days and Lawrence of Arabia combined cosmopolitan spectacle with depictions of British imperialism. In the former, the British Empire was used to evoke a positive image of American internationalism, as it had been in the case in the Empire cycle of the 1930s. But in Lawrence of Arabia the parallel between British and American foreign policy is much more ambiguous. As the consequences of America’s imperial reach grew more complicated in the early 1960s, its relationship to British imperial narratives developed less flattering associations. 82 83 84

Schwartz, It’s So French!, 196. Quoted in Ibid., 186. Darryl F. Zanuck, ‘Shoot It Where You Find It!’, Journal of the Screen Producers Guild 6, no. 7 (1960): 31.

5

Boom and Bust: The English Past in the Swinging Sixties

As suggested earlier, the representation of English history on screen reached a peak of sorts in the early to mid-1960s with a series of hugely successful, award-winning films, including Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Tom Jones (1963), My Fair Lady (1964), Mary Poppins (1964) and A Man for All Seasons (1966). Hollywood’s representation of the English past during this decade was shaped by two overriding factors. The first was the rapid injection of American production capital into the British film industry. With several profile exceptions, notably Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady, the most prominent representations of English history produced during the 1960s were filmed in Britain itself with funding from Hollywood studios. There is of course a longer history of American film production in Britain, and this history has frequently intersected with the production of English historical films. Taking examples from preceding chapters, MGM found it expedient to maintain a studio in London during much of the 1930s and they initially planned to film both David Copperfield (1935) and Pride and Prejudice (1940) in these facilities. After the war, the studio proceeded to outsource the production of Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953) to their new Borehamwood facility, enabling them to reduce costs and to take advantage of financial incentives made available by the British government. However, Hollywood production in Britain during the mid- to late 1960s stands apart due to the unprecedented scale of investment from American sources and the heightened involvement of British creative personnel in the production process. American film companies were initially drawn to Britain by the sensational success of three relatively low-budget films released in successive years: Dr No (1962), Tom Jones and A Hard Day’s Night (1964). All were produced in Britain by mainly British personnel with funding from United Artists. As the dividends of United Artists’s investment mounted, other Hollywood studios moved to establish or expand production subsidiaries

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in Britain. Investment flowed across the Atlantic, and in 1967 the National Film Finance Corporation reported that 90 per cent of all production finance in Britain came from American sources.1 This financial surge transformed British filmmaking, raising both the costs and the commercial expectations of films made in Britain. In the process, the line which separated ‘British’ and ‘Hollywood’ filmmaking was muddied to the extent that few high-profile films made in Britain could be unambiguously identified as ‘British’. The second factor shaping the representation of England’s past during this period was a shift in dominant American perceptions of Englishness. As discussed previously, England had long been represented in American popular culture as an essentially old country. In the 1960s, however, a range of British cultural imports – particularly in film, theatre, fashion and pop music – began to challenge conventional images of England, projecting in their place a metropolitan culture marked by youth, modernity and social change. The most celebrated statement regarding this transformation was made in a 1966 Time cover story which dubbed London ‘the Swinging City’. Highlighting a shift in the balance of political power, writer Piri Halasz asserted that ‘Britain has lost an empire and lightened a pound. In the process, it has also recovered a lightness of heart lost during the weighty centuries of world leadership.’ Significantly, Halasz attributed this cultural regeneration not so much to the rejection of the past but to a creative tension between tradition and modernity: London, a city steeped in tradition, seized by change. … It swings; it is the scene. Ancient elegance and new opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop. … In a once sedate world of faded splendor, everything new, uninhibited and kinky is blooming at the top of London life.2

London’s ‘swinging’ qualities were thus presented as a broader national passage between historical eras, a moment of transition which yielded a dynamic and creatively stimulating coexistence of old and new. The shifting perception of England can also be attributed to the emergence of a new generation of British film actors. Female stars such as Julie Christie and Vanessa Redgrave were quickly recruited by the American film industry, but a greater impact was made by a cohort of male actors who collectively departed from received notions of English and British masculinity. In 1965, a writer for The Washington Post claimed that ‘James Bond, Richard Burton and the Beatles’ had ‘confounded the 1 2

Robert Murphy, Sixties British Cinema (London: BFI Publishing, 1992), 258. Piri Halasz, ‘You Can Walk across It on the Grass’, Time, 15 April 1966.

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hoary myth that British menfolk are effete, mannered and milk-blooded’ and ‘made the British male synonymous with virility’.3 Similarly, the Chicago Tribune proclaimed, When a producer wants masculinity with a capital V (as in virility), where does he go? Why across the sea of course. Except for Omar Sharif, an Egyptian, all of today’s most believable leading men are from in and around England.4

The masculine actors cited were Sean Connery, Albert Finney, Michael Caine, Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris, Terence Stamp and Tom Courtenay. (Harris and O’Toole were Irish and Connery was Scottish, but they were accustomed to performing English roles.) Representations in popular culture – particularly film – modified the image which had prevailed in previous decades. England was no longer tied so firmly to the past, and younger English and British performers were suddenly in high demand. During the 1960s, then, American representations of English history were increasingly created in England itself in a cultural context where England was associated with its ‘swinging’ present as well as its stately past. This chapter examines six English historical films from this era: three from the beginning of the decade when Hollywood investment in British production was growing, and three from the end of the decade when the popularity of British-made films had peaked. In this way I will address the creative and economic conditions which made British-based production attractive to American companies in this period and the impact which these conditions had on the representation of English history. The first pair of films is Tom Jones and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). Both were directed by Tony Richardson and financed by United Artists through the British company Woodfall Films. The huge success of Tom Jones illustrated that strategic investment in innovative British filmmakers could be hugely beneficial to Hollywood studios, although the subsequent failure of Charge indicated that success was by no means guaranteed. The second pair is Becket (1964) and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), monarchic dramas made in Britain by veteran Hollywood producer Hal Wallis. These films illustrate the growth of the decentralized, package-based mode of production in Hollywood and the advantages of outsourcing this type of production to Britain. The final pair is My Fair Lady and Camelot (1967), hugely expensive Broadway musical adaptations designed for roadshow exhibition. Unlike the other films addressed 3 4

Karl E. Meyer, ‘B Is for Virility, Vigor and Violence’, The Washington Post, 28 November 1965. Bob Ellison, ‘Sean Connery and the Importance of Manhood’, Chicago Tribune, 5 August 1968, 58.

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in this chapter, Warner Bros. decided against outsourcing their production to Britain. Rather, their production histories illustrate the efforts of Hollywood studios to maintain traditional, centralized modes of production at a time when audience preferences were changing and the American film industry was undergoing a period of corporate upheaval.

‘A living past’: Tom Jones (1963) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) Tom Jones emerged from the partnership between director Tony Richardson and screenwriter John Osborne. Their professional collaboration began with the stage production Look Back in Anger in 1956 and continued with the creation of Woodfall Films. Their first production was a screen adaptation of Look Back in Anger (1959) with Richard Burton, who divided his time between prestigious stage work and Hollywood blockbusters throughout the 1950s, in the lead role. Burton’s casting led to a co-financing arrangement with Warner Bros. and the film proved to be a minor success at American box-office.5 Woodfall proceeded to produce a number of films associated with the British ‘new wave’ while Richardson cultivated an international profile as an emerging auteur. Their output included Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), directed by Karel Reisz and produced by Richardson, and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), which Richardson directed himself. Unlike Look Back in Anger, these later films were funded not with American money but through an ongoing relationship between Woodfall and the British consortium Bryanston. Richardson and Osborne began developing Tom Jones in 1962. An adaptation of Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel, it marked a clear departure from the contemporary industrial landscape inhabited by the major British new wave films. In terms of its key creative personnel, however, the film can be seen as a direct continuation of the cycle. In order to make Tom Jones in colour, Woodfall funded the film not with Bryanston, who balked at the proposed £300,000 cost, but with investment from United Artists.6 For United Artists, the presence of talent developed in ‘new wave’ cinema made Tom Jones commercially viable. In an internal memo, their head of European productions declared, ‘This is Albert Finney starring, Tony Richardson directing 5 6

Street, Transatlantic Crossings, 172. Alexander Walker, Hollywood England: The British Film Industry in the Sixties (London: Michael Joseph, 1974), 133.

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the John Osborne screenplay. … Made by these picturemakers, I see this as a potentially important worldwide grosser.’7 Of these ‘new wave’ figures, Finney appeared to be the most important to United Artists. Although he had starred in just one film prior to Tom Jones (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, as well as a smaller role in The Entertainer) and did not appear on Broadway until 1963, Finney’s growing stature was regarded as sufficient to offset the risk of the 100 per cent cash financing which United Artists put on the table.8 The deal between United Artists and Woodfall was very much in keeping with the overall direction of the American film industry at the time. In contrast to the Fordist production methods and vertically integrated industrial structure the studios had pioneered in the 1920s and 1930s, the retrenchments of the 1950s led the major Hollywood companies (and the banks which traditionally lent them capital) to approach films on an individual basis and to prioritize distribution over production and exhibition.9 Producers thus would assemble a ‘package’ consisting of a script, a director and stars, and companies like United Artists would provide financing and distribute the completed film. In return, they charged the producers a distribution fee and claimed an agreed percentage of the profits.10 By Distancing themselves from film production, United Artists were nevertheless able to maintain a steady supply of releases while reducing their payroll, thereby increasing profit margins. Filmmakers such as Richardson, meanwhile, were afforded greater independence and were able to benefit directly if their films were profitable. Tom Jones opened in New York in October 1963, three months after its premiere in London. As had been the case in Britain, the film’s sexual content ran afoul of the censors. According to PCA director Geoffrey Shurlock, who read an early version of the screenplay, Granted that this is a classic of English literature, nevertheless, the present script seems to us to utilise an unacceptable amount of very coarse language and to be told with too much emphasis on scenes of a physical sexual promiscuity. … The suggestion that for part of the story Tom has been fornicating with his mother seems to us to be so shocking as to be unapprovable.11

7

8 9 10 11

Quoted in Tino Balio, United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 239. Ibid., 239–40. Schatz, Genius of the System, 470. Balio, United Artists, 91. Geoffrey Shurlock, Memo to Edward Schellhorn, 16 May 1962. Tom Jones PCA file, Margaret Herrick Library.

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Instead, United Artists elected to release the film without a Production Code seal under the banner of their ‘art film’ subsidiary Lopert Pictures.12 Uncertain of the film’s marketability, United Artists opted to build demand through word of mouth and rolled Tom Jones out to cinemas very carefully.13 The film was initially booked into just one art-house cinema in Manhattan and another in Los Angeles, and it remained exclusively at these two locations until the end of the year when it was expanded to a further sixteen cinemas. By this stage, Tom Jones had won Best Film, Best Actor (Finney) and Best Director awards from the New York Film Critics Circle. However, it was only once the film had won four Oscars in April 1964, including Best Picture and Best Director, that it was given a full national release. By making the film an exclusive event on almost on a par with a roadshow release, United Artists were able to exploit positive critical and popular reaction and concentrated demand to a fantastic extent. Tom Jones recorded domestic rentals of $8 million just one month into its full national release and earned the same amount again in the months that followed, making it the eleventh highest grossing film of all time.14 Its international performance was also strong: the film grossed over $2 million in Britain alone, generating an Eady levy payment of $1 million.15 The box-office success of Tom Jones was assisted by its rapturous reception in the American press. In Variety, the film’s saleable features were listed as ‘sex, Eastmancolor, some prime performers and plenty of action’.16 Many critics saw beyond the film’s period setting and linked it to the wider perception that contemporary England had begun to ‘swing’. Tom’s hedonistic personality, lustily embodied by Finney, drew frequent comment: for the Los Angeles Times he evinced an ‘irresistible joy of living’; according to the Saturday Review he was ‘roisterous, ribald, romantic, human’ and for The Washington Post he was ‘full of vitality’.17 Tom’s attractive virility was also foregrounded by the film’s advertising, which showed Finney surrounded by five prostrate women with the tagline, ‘The whole world loves Tom Jones!’ Surprisingly perhaps, this focus on sexuality caused little offense in America. According to the Catholic newspaper 12

13 14 15 16 17

Tino Balio, The Foreign Film Renaissance on American Screens, 1946–1973 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 237. Balio, United Artists, 242. Ibid.; ‘All-Time Top Grossers’, Variety, 6 January 1965. ‘James Bond and Tom Jones Send Film Levy to America’, The Times, 3 February 1966, 16. ‘Tom Jones’, Variety, 31 July 1963. Philip K. Scheuer, ‘A Merrie Romp with One of the Jones Boys’, Los Angeles Times, 20 October 1963, Box 1; Arthur Knight, ‘Richardson’s England’, Saturday Review, 5 October 1963, 52; Richard L. Coe, ‘Tom Full of Vitality’, The Washington Post, 19 January 1964.

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Our Sunday Visitor, ‘Its healthy, hearty and humorous vulgarity is far cleaner than the teasing titillation we find in so many of our American films.’18 Even the National Legion of Decency took a benevolent line, reporting that the film was ‘saved from being offensive by reason of its fast paced comic treatment’.19 In its optimistic celebration of sexual promiscuity and its repositioning of English masculinity, Tom Jones was very much in keeping with the supposed culture of ‘Swinging London’. Such attitude would have been unthinkable in the earlier ‘new wave’ films, where narrative closure tended to punish or shut down male sexuality. As Justine Ashby has suggested, It is possible to see Tom Jones as providing an opportunity to relive and celebrate the spectacle of Finney’s roguish charisma in a diegetic space less fettered by the imperative to deliver a topical, socially responsible punitive closure.20

By adopting period garb, then, Tom Jones was able to reflect the perceived sexual mores of contemporary England all the better. Several American critics also noted Tom Jones’s modern approach to the historical film, in which techniques associated with the French new wave were used to evoke what Arthur Knight called a ‘sense of a living past’.21 Bosley Crowther praised its ‘20th-century means of characterizing 18th-century manners and morals’, while Richard L. Coe noted that the film created the ‘feeling that it is happening for the first time before our eyes’ and that in this way ‘the 18th century becomes to a unique degree of vividity alive to the 20th’.22 In keeping with the ‘swinging London’ discourse, Tom Jones offered an image of England’s past which had been made in the mould of contemporary London, thus embodying a vibrant coexistence of past and present. As Jeffrey Miller later observed, ‘What seemed on the surface to be an impenetrable eighteenthcentury costume drama became accessible through utterances of class mobility, youth and sexuality.’23 Looking back on his film’s sudden breakthrough into mainstream culture, Richardson attributed its transatlantic appeal to its apparent

18 19 20

21 22

23

John E. Fitzgerald, ‘Manners and Morals’, Our Sunday Visitor, 17 November 1963. National Legion of Decency Report, 24 October 1963. Tom Jones PCA file, Margaret Herrick Library. Justine Ashby, ‘The Angry Young Man Is Tired: Albert Finney and 1960s British Cinema’, in Bruce Babington (ed.), British Stars and Stardom: From Alma Taylor to Sean Connery (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 186. Knight, ‘Richardson’s England’. Bosley Crowther, ‘Screen: ‘Tom Jones’, A Lusty Comedy’, The New York Times, 6 October 1963; Coe, ‘Tom Full of Vitality’. Miller, Something Completely Different, 16.

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embodiment of this cultural moment, stating that ‘the sixties were starting to swing, and Tom Jones became part of the “revolution”’.24 The success of Tom Jones contributed to a low-key resurgence of classic literary adaptations in the years which followed. The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) was the most obvious attempt to replicate the Tom Jones formula; other films included Lord Jim (1965), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Women in Love (1969) and the musical Oliver! (1968), all of which were made in Britain with American finance. More importantly, the critical and financial success of Tom Jones demonstrated the financial value of investing in British production and prepared the ground for British imports later in the decade. Richardson’s relationship with United Artists allowed him to pursue a range of commercially unpromising projects, including two films based on the writing of Marguerite Duras.25 In the view of one contemporary commentator, the director conducted his post-Tom Jones career like ‘a sudden millionaire who, upon inheriting a fortune, goes out and squanders it’.26 With The Charge of the Light Brigade, however, Richardson endeavoured to reconnect with a larger audience. The appeal of its subject matter had been demonstrated by the success of the 1936 film of the same name, discussed in Chapter 2. Its cast included David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, who had recently starred together in Blow-Up (1966), as well as a roster of distinguished British actors from earlier generations, notably Trevor Howard and John Gielgud. The film also reunited Richardson with John Osborne, working together as screenwriter and director for the first time since Tom Jones. Given these impressive credentials, United Artists approved Woodfall’s $6.5 million budget, making Charge among the most expensive British-made films to date.27 Work on the film, which Richardson described as ‘a new a truthful version of the charge of the Light Brigade’, began in 1965.28 Osborne’s screenplay was based partly on The Reason Why (1953) by Cecil Woodham-Smith, a historical account of the charge which laid blame for the military blunder at the feet of the Lord Cardigan and Lord Lucan. However, the rights to Woodham-Smith’s book were not available and the ensuing legal conflict precipitated Osborne’s 24

25 26

27

28

Tony Richardson, The Long Distance Runner: An Autobiography (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1993), 135. Balio, Foreign Film, 238. George Lellis, ‘Recent Richardson – Cashing the Blank Cheque’, Monthly Film Bulletin 38, no. 3 (1969): 133. James Chapman, Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 232. Richardson, Long Distance Runner, 165–6.

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Figure 5.1 Child labour in The Charge of the Light Brigade’s animated title sequence.

withdrawal from the film. The final script was credited to Charles Wood but it was submitted just weeks before production began, leaving much of Osborne’s structure in place.29 As with Tom Jones, Charge took an irreverent, iconoclastic approach to the representation of the English past which allowed Richardson to foreground the contemporary resonances of the story. The strongest echoes of Tom Jones can be seen in the comic sex scene featuring Lord Cardigan and Fanny Duberly, while the film’s satirical use of anachronism is clearest when Cardigan’s Hussars are shown violently breaking up a peaceful anti-war demonstration. But whereas Tom Jones’s critique of the English class system was couched in bawdy comedy, the more serious subject matter of Charge opened the door to a grimmer form of political commentary. As James Chapman suggests, the film is ‘a lampoon of the values and attitudes of the military caste’ and it establishes connections between the class structures dividing the army and their calamitous actions on the battlefield.30 Its satirical project is announced by animated sequences which appear initially in the film’s opening titles. Adopting the style of Victorian newspaper illustrations, the sequence gleefully punctures the militaristic chauvinism and hypocrisy of British imperial culture, suggesting that the industrial strength facilitating Britain’s role as global policeman was based on child labour and the exploitation of colonized populations (see Figure 5.1). In less obvious ways, Charge also engaged with the radically different politics evinced by the 1936 Warner Bros. film of the same name. Both films attempt to ‘explain’ the tragic loss of life caused by the charge, but whereas the 1936 29 30

Chapman, Past and Present, 235–7. Ibid., 242.

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film depicts a heroic sacrifice made in revenge against a tyrant, the 1968 film shows a blunder resulting from a distinctly unheroic error in communication. The films also differ in their representation of the climactic charge itself. In the older film it is shown in a rhythmically edited action sequence with a clear sense of forward momentum and a propulsive musical score, punctuated by text from the Tennyson poem. In the later film, conversely, any such spectacle is withheld: lacking music and spatial coherence, the action is chaotic and entirely futile. As with Lawrence of Arabia, then, Richardson’s Charge drew on English history not to imply flattering parallels with the American present but rather to offer a critique by means of analogy. Released during the escalation of America’s war in Vietnam, the targets of its anti-war and anti-militarism satire were clear. The public were unmoved, however, and Charge’s North American gross of $3.2 million made it an outright commercial failure.31 Richardson and Woodfall’s subsequent films for United Artists were similarly unprofitable, leaving the phenomenal success of Tom Jones an unlikely one-off. Do Tom Jones and Charge have a place in a history of Hollywood film? Unlike Lawrence of Arabia, which has been claimed for both British and American cinema, neither film has to my knowledge been described as a Hollywood movie.32 Nevertheless, it is clear that both films were products of an American film industry which was seeking to invest production capital on a global scale, and a British film industry whose most ambitious projects had become almost entirely dependent on American finance. Hollywood and British filmmaking had become unmoored from their traditional geographic centres, and the representation of English history followed suit.

‘Intimate spectacle’: Becket (1964) and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) Becket and Anne of the Thousand Days were key entries in a cycle of prestigious films depicting English royalty which Hall and Neale describe as ‘intimate spectacle’.33 Other films of this type include A Man for All Seasons (1966), The

31 32

33

Balio, United Artists, 247. For example, when the American Film Institute produced a centenary list of the ‘greatest’ American films in 1997 and the British Film Institute followed in 1999 with a hundred British films, Lawrence of Arabia was named in the top five of both. Hall and Neale, Epics, Spectacles, 181.

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Lion in Winter (1968), Alfred the Great (1969), Cromwell (1970) and Mary, Queen of Scots (1971).34 All are characterized by lavish production design, an emphasis on erudite dialogue over action, and the charismatic presence of stagetrained actors such as Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole and Paul Scofield. Not incidentally, all of these films were made in Britain with American financing and distribution, and combined British and American above-the-line talent. The use of actors such as Burton and O’Toole also connected ‘intimate spectacle’ films to the more conventionally spectacular historical epic, a cycle whose appeal among Hollywood executives had begun to falter in the wake of Cleopatra’s (1963) enormous budget overruns. Becket and Anne were brought to the screen by American producer Hal Wallis. Wallis had operated as an independent producer since 1944, establishing a productive working relationship with Paramount in which he assembled the creative elements for a film and the studio provided financing and distribution. Janet Staiger refers to this arrangement as the ‘package-unit’ production system and initially it was quite unusual: in 1950 Paramount had ties with only one other independent producer.35 But by the end of the decade, as film production was decentralized and employment became more transitory, independent production companies had become the norm in the American film industry. Two-thirds of all American feature film production in 1960 was undertaken by 165 separate companies, with the majority being funded by the major studios.36 As Tino Balio put it, Hollywood companies came to function essentially as ‘bankers supplying financing and landlords renting studio space. Distribution had become the name of the game.’37 In many ways, Wallis’s relationship with Paramount was similar to the financing arrangement which United Artists made with Woodfall. But whereas Richardson took American financing for film projects which originated in Britain, Wallis planned his films in Hollywood and strategically outsourced their production to British facilities. As a result, Anne and Becket were relatively conventional productions which posed few risks for the studios backing them. 34

35

36

37

The titular protagonists of Cromwell and Mary, Queen of Scots were not of course English royalty. However, both films concern the relationships between these characters and English monarchs. Janet Staiger, ‘The Package-Unit System: After 1955’, in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (eds.), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985), 330; Bernard F. Dick, Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood (Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 243. Paul Monaco, History of American Cinema. Vol. 8: The Sixties (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001), 24. Balio, United Artists, 87.

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Wallis’s initial output as an independent producer had centred mainly on commercial projects, including several Elvis Presley musicals and comedies starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. However, as traditional studios such as Paramount showed greater willingness to support ambitious projects from independent producers, Wallis took the opportunity to reinvigorate his career with a more prestigious film.38 Becket clearly fitted the bill. Adapted from a 1959 play by the French dramatist Jean Anouilh, it centred on the gradual souring of close relationship between King Henry II and his archbishop, Thomas Becket, leading to Becket’s assassination in 1170. In order to make the material palatable to a large audience, the film was anchored by the star power of Richard Burton as Becket and Peter O’Toole as the king. The casting of O’Toole, in his first role since Lawrence of Arabia, was a particular coup, while Burton was perhaps at the peak of his fame following his role in Cleopatra. In addition to their celebrity, both actors also bought significant stage experience and gravitas to the film, an association which Wallis enhanced by hiring Peter Glenville, who had directed Becket on Broadway in 1960, to direct the adaptation. Initial development of Becket was dominated by the question of where it ought to be filmed. It was envisaged as at least a partially European production from the outset. According to Wallis in 1962, Because of the types of exteriors, exteriors at least would have to be produced abroad, and we are thinking England or possibly Spain. Also I assume it would be a lot cheaper to do the interiors over there, particularly if we can photograph the interiors of existing castles and cathedrals. I doubt it would be possible to make a budget on doing this in the studio, as it would probably be too costly.39

The possibility of British location work put British registration and payments from the Eady levy into the frame. As the head of Paramount’s British subsidiary warned, however, ‘It is very necessary for the British company to be able to prove that the production plans originated in this country,’ that is, Britain, as ‘the Board of Trade are looking closely at the production of British films for U.S. companies’.40 Wallis also investigated the possibility of shooting part of the film outside Britain while still claiming British classification. He noted that Eady levy money could ‘still be had’ if the film was shot in Spain, provided a certain percentage of costs were ‘devoted to England’.41 Indeed, Spain’s low labour and 38 39 40 41

Bernard F. Dick, Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004). Memo from Hal Wallis to Mickey Moore, 25 May 1962, Hal Wallis papers, Margaret Herrick Library. Memo from David J. Grimes to Bernard Donnerfield, 8 May 1962, Hal Wallis papers. Memo from Wallis to Russell Holman, 22 May 1962, Hal Wallis papers.

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studio costs made it an increasingly popular location for American runaway productions, particularly spectacular historical epics such as Lawrence of Arabia. To this end, Wallis ordered photographs of castles and cathedrals near to Madrid and comparative budget projections were drawn up for production in Britain and Spain.42 Surprisingly perhaps, London emerged as the cheaper option, with a projected expenditure of $1.2 million against Madrid’s $1.6 million. The wider availability of production facilities, the absence of a language barrier and better housing facilities were also mentioned in Britain’s favour, and it was pointed out that in order to shoot on Spanish soil and still meet the Eady levy labour percentage, some twenty to thirty-five ‘English technicians’ would need to be hired and transported to Spain.43 For reasons of finance, convenience and authenticity, then, Becket was registered as a British film and made using British locations and studios. The film’s final cost was $3.7 million.44 This was a substantial figure and a million dollars more than had been estimated during production, but Wallis nevertheless proposed publicizing the cost as $10 million ‘to create a sense of importance and justify roadshow prices’.45 The majority of this money was spent in Britain through Hal Wallis Pictures, which was incorporated in Britain, but the salaries of several cast members, the story rights, the insurance and various other items were paid directly by Paramount in America. The presence of American finance was clear, but the film was nevertheless registered by Board of Trade as a British production and thus became eligible for Eady levy payments.46 Reflecting its prestige and the status of its stars, Paramount gave Becket a roadshow release and it became a moderate success, with rental earnings of around $5 million.47 The film was also nominated for twelve Academy Awards, giving Wallis the prestigious career boost which he desired. The critical and commercial profile generated by Becket also provided a template of sorts for A Man for All Seasons in 1966, another dialogue-heavy theatre adaptation (from a play by Robert Bolt) depicting a conflict between a different English king and his counsellor. A Man for All Seasons lacked Becket’s star cast but it nevertheless proved to be a much bigger hit. North American earnings of $28.3 million were reported, delivering

42 43

44 45 46 47

Wallis, ‘Proposed Photographing of Motion Picture Becket in Spain’, 25 May 1962, Hal Wallis papers. Memo from William W. Gray to Wallis, 27 June 1962, Hal Wallis collection; Memo from John Pellatt to Howard Harrison, 7 June 1962, Hal Wallis papers. Statement of Production Cost, 2 January 1965, Hal Wallis papers, f.206. Memo from Wallis to Martin Davis, 10 December 1963, Hal Wallis papers. Letter from D.E.F. Carter to D. Peverett, 4 February 1964, Hal Wallis papers. ‘Big Rental Pictures of 1964’, Variety, 6 January 1965.

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a considerable return on the investment of veteran producer-director Fred Zinnemann and Columbia Pictures, who provided financing.48 Wallis produced several films after Becket, but Anne of the Thousand Days is best regarded as its follow-up. As before, it was a British-made, monarchic drama, albeit set in a later period than Becket, adapted from a stage production with Richard Burton in the lead role. The source material was a 1948 play of the same name by American dramatist Maxwell Anderson depicting the relationship between King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and culminating in her execution. Paramount had been interested in the play even before it opened on Broadway and had submitted the script ‘off the record’ to the PCA. But Joseph Breen immediately ruled out the adaptation, declaring that Anderson’s depiction of Cardinal Wolsey as ‘a pimp and a hypocrite’ was ‘offensive to Catholics and non-Catholics’.49 These obstructions faded with the declining influence of the Production Code and Wallis turned his attention to Anne in 1964, shortly after the premiere of Becket. British registration and the use of locations and studios around London was a given from the outset; instead, much of the preproduction planning focussed on finding the most appropriate cast. Wallis toyed with the possibility of casting Burton as Henry VIII and Elizabeth Taylor as Anne. Both were interested, and their considerable offscreen profile as a couple would have made the film highly marketable.50 However, Taylor was initially hesitant to work in Britain during the 1964/65 tax year as it would have exposed her to retroactive taxation. A later arrangement proposed a salary of $1 million against 10 per cent of the films gross revenue for Burton, and half a million dollars against 7.5 per cent gross for Taylor.51 This was of course a fantastically expensive prospect for Paramount, particularly given that Burton had been paid the considerably lower salary of $350,000 for Becket.52 The project idled and Wallis considered other actors, including Rex Harrison, Albert Finney, Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway. During this hiatus, Paramount Pictures voted to merge with the industrial conglomerate Gulf and Western. The move came shortly after the merger of United Artists with the Transamerica Corporation and initiated a series of corporate takeovers within the American film industry, the biggest upheaval in its ownership for decades.53 48

49

50 51 52 53

Alex Ben Block (ed.), Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 483. Memo by Joseph Breen, 16 July 1948. Anne of the Thousand Days, PCA file, Margaret Herrick Library. Joseph H. Hazen, Letter to Wallis, 19 May 1964, Hal Wallis papers, f.86. Paul Nathan, Letter to Hazen, 5 June 1964, Hal Wallis papers, f.86. Nathan to Wallis, 24 April 1962, Hal Wallis papers, f.207. Maltby, ‘Nobody Knows Everything’, 31.

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The growing demand for television programming and the opportunity to licence film inventories to meet this demand led to the perception that the assets of Hollywood companies were undervalued, making them ripe for acquisition by larger corporations.54 For Wallis, however, this change in ownership marked the end of his relationship with Paramount, and in 1967 he announced that Anne would be his first film in a new production deal with Universal Pictures. As development on Anne resumed, it became clear that the film would have to contend with the influence of A Man for All Seasons. The historical subject matter shared by the two films made comparisons unavoidable: both revolved around the same relationship between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and featured many of the same characters, although whereas Anne focussed specifically on the royal couple, the earlier film put Sir Thomas More at its centre. According to his biographer, Wallis might have developed A Man for All Seasons himself but he passed on the opportunity to option its rights.55 One means of differentiating the two films, suggested by Wallis’s partner Joseph Hazen, was to add material concerning Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and thus to expand the film into a ‘3 to 3½ hour roadshow epic’.56 Wallis elected not to do this, but he did approve the decision to omit the death of Cardinal Wolsey on the basis that ‘we have seen it in A Man for All Seasons’.57 Wallis was also impressed by A Man for All Seasons’s visual approach to historical drama. In a letter to Charles Jarrott, who was hired to direct Anne, he commended the simplicity of its production design and declared the use of ‘overpoweringly large costumey sets’ to be ‘old fashioned’.58 In the end, the passing of time did most to allow Anne to escape A Man for All Seasons’s shadow: it premiered in December 1969 and was not widely released until the following year. Richard Burton was retained as Henry VIII and the role of Anne was played by Quebecois actor Geneviève Bujold, making her Hollywood debut. With a final cost of $4.46 million, however, the film had become rather expensive.59 Despite North American rentals of $9.1 million and ten Academy Award nominations it may have fallen somewhat below the expectations of Wallis and Universal.60

54

55 56 57 58 59 60

Leonard Sloane, ‘Wall St. Is Eying Mergers and Hidden Asset Values’, The New York Times, 23 October 1966. Dick, Producer to the Stars, 183. Hazen, Letter to Wallis, 27 November 1967. Hal Wallis papers, f.56. Charles Jarrott, Letter to Wallis, 20 January 1969. Hal Wallis papers, f.101. Wallis, Letter to Jarrott, 13 January. Hal Wallis papers, f.101. Statement of Production Cost, 24 August 1969. Hal Wallis papers, f.82. ‘Big Rental Films of 1970’, Variety, 6 January 1971.

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‘Intimate spectacle’ films such as Becket and Anne were medium-budget productions aimed at middle-class adult audiences who presumably responded to their aura of prestige. In their narratives, historical figures who might otherwise have seemed remote were made accessible by presenting their conflict with royal authority in personal terms, emphasizing loyalty, duty and faith. In some cases, these films also proved to be more popular (and certainly more profitable) than conventional historical epics of the same era, such as The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). For studios struggling to meet the demands of the public, then, they were sound investments at an uncertain time. Becket and Anne also highlight the rise of flexible, decentralized modes of filmmaking in which traditional studios such as Paramount and Universal funded and distributed films on an individual basis though producers such as Wallis. The outsourcing of production to Britain was part of this decentralization, allowing filmmakers to take advantage of lower labour and studio costs and to receive payments from the Eady levy. Under these conditions, a new form of Anglo-American historical drama emerged, based on narratives of pre-modern English monarchy and drawing on the traditions of British theatre (most notably in casting and performance) with production values and a narrative pacing which derived from Hollywood filmmaking.

Manhattan transfer: My Fair Lady (1964) and Camelot (1967) My Fair Lady and Camelot were high-budget roadshow musicals adapted by Warner Bros. from the work of Broadway composers Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. The two films could hardly be more different in their English historical subject matter, but their production histories were deeply entwined. Whereas the other films discussed in this chapter were made in Britain by producers who were to varying degrees independent of the Hollywood studio system, these films came from the heart of the traditional American film industry. As though to underline the point, the producer credit on both was taken by Warner Bros.’s co-founder and President Jack L. Warner, exactly the opposite of an independent producer. My Fair Lady and Camelot can be seen as high-risk attempts to maintain studio-centred modes of film production in a shifting economic and cultural climate. Warner Bros. invested heavily to purchase the rights to make them, mobilized huge amounts of studio resources

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in their production, and controlled their exhibition through heavily marketed roadshow releases. In the case of My Fair Lady, this strategy paid off, bringing in revenues which exceeded the high cost of production. But in the case of Camelot, which was released after overproduction and changing audience preferences put an end to the roadshow musical’s box-office dominance, it proved much less successful. Work on adapting My Fair Lady for the screen began in early 1962. An adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1914 play, the show opened in New York in 1956 and became the longest running musical in Broadway history. Accordingly, Warner Bros. agreed to pay the enormous sum of $5.5 million for the rights to make it into a film.61 This was by far the highest cash figure ever paid for screen rights at the time, easily beating the $2.27 million that 20th Century Fox had paid for South Pacific (filmed in 1958) and matching the total production cost of Mary Poppins, released in the same year.62 The main beneficiary was the television company CBS, who had financed the original Broadway production for $400,000.63 CBS also retained the rights to the film’s very lucrative cast recording LP, approval of the director and the principle cast, and were to receive an extraordinary 48 per cent of the film’s gross once it passed $20 million.64 With the deal so heavily weighted against them, Warner Bros. needed the film to perform spectacularly at the box office if they were to make any meaningful return on their investment. For obvious reasons, this consideration had a significant bearing on the subsequent direction of the film and the locations chosen for production. Initial development was led by director George Cukor and British production designer Cecil Beaton, who had also created the Broadway sets and costumes. Their correspondence indicates that early plans were made to base production in Britain. Beaton initially favoured working in London and sought ‘atmospheric touches’ that would ‘bring real authenticity to the film’. To this end, he provided Cukor with a list of working-class behaviour for possible inclusion in the film, including ‘being offered a cigarette, accepting it, and placing behind ear’, and a ‘close up of a fried-egg or sausage for six o’clock breakfast’.65 Cukor was less

61 62 63

64

65

‘Warner Makes Record Offer for “Fair Lady”’, Los Angeles Times, 27 September 1961, 5. A. D. Murphy, ‘Poppins an Industry on Own’, Variety, 28 April 1965. Alan Jay Lerner, The Street Where I Live: The Story of My Fair Lady, Gigi and Camelot (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978), 68. My Fair Lady Story Purchase Digest, 2 November 1962. My Fair Lady music files, USC Warner Bros. Archives; Lerner, Street Where I Live, 60. Letter from Cecil Beaton to George Cukor, 14 September 1962, George Cukor papers.

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keen on working outside California, however, denouncing London studios as ‘disorganised and badly run’.66 The use of British locations remained on the table, however, and in October 1962 Cukor and Beaton met in London to scout for suitable venues. Cukor reported that several locations could ‘pass for 1910’ in long shot, but was frustrated to discover that ‘the dismal, sordid parts of the East End have disappeared’.67 Shortly after this expedition, Warner decided to produce the entire film at in the Warner Bros. studio facilities at Burbank, Los Angeles. After production began in 1963, Warner fielded questions about his decision to shoot My Fair Lady in Hollywood rather than in London. He replied, Probably we could have made it for less money by doing it over there, but we would not have had the quality. … But this does not mean – I want to get this over explicitly without fear of contradiction – that we could not make the film in England. We’ve made some fine pictures there, and therefore, it isn’t anything against working in Great Britain or any other foreign country – the idea is that we have the wherewithal, the ‘tools’ – for want of an easier word – to make the picture here.68

Given the nature of their rights deal with CBS, cost-cutting at the level of production was not really a priority for Warner Bros. In order to turn a profit, they needed My Fair Lady to make as much money as possible at the box office. If a California-based shoot afforded access to superior personnel and technical facilities and allowed the production to be managed more carefully, it was worth the higher cost. Access to payments from the Eady levy was lost in the process, but a strong international box office would more than make up for this. My Fair Lady was filmed on sets built simultaneously on seven sound stages, including an elaborate mock-up of Covent Garden, and a further three stages were used to store and fit costumes, wigs and make-up.69 The studios of California were accustomed to such extravagance; in a British studio, resources would have been stretched. A further factor in the decision to shoot entirely in studios was Cukor’s stylistic departure from the realism and period authenticity originally envisaged by Beaton. The use of large studios gave My Fair Lady a hermetic, stage-bound feel that barely strayed from the design of the original Broadway production. 66 67 68

69

Letter from Cukor to Beaton, 6 August 1962, George Cukor papers. Letter from Cukor to Rex Harrison, 26 October 1962, George Cukor papers. Martin Quigley and Raymond Levy, ‘The Story of the Production of My Fair Lady by Jack Warner’, Motion Picture Herald, 27 November 1963, 26. Ibid., 26–7.

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This too was motivated by the need to maximize profits: why deviate from the formula established by one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history? As a Warner Bros. publicist put it to Warner, My Fair Lady was ‘the best pre-sold property the world has known’.70 Warner Bros. therefore committed to make a film which reproduced the experience of attending a popular Broadway show for a global cinema audience. The casting of Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins, retaining the role which had been written for him, emphasized this continuity, although the decision to cast Audrey Hepburn rather than Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle reflected other considerations. The final production cost was announced as $17 million, a massive sum and a record for Warner Bros. at the time.71 Fortunately for the overleveraged studio, My Fair Lady’s box-office performance matched expectations and after three years it had grossed $55 million in worldwide roadshow exhibition.72 However, this figure was immediately put in the shade by another Broadway adaptation, 20th Century Fox’s The Sound of Music (1965). Rewriting commercial expectations for roadshow musicals and for cinema in general, estimates of the film’s gross ranged between $115 million and $125 million, finally eclipsing Gone with the Wind (1939) as the most successful release of all time.73 At a time of uncertainty and retrenchment, The Sound of Music’s extraordinary success motivated other studios to invest heavily in similar musical films. It was reported that at least sixteen were in preparation at the beginning of 1967.74 Although The Sound of Music was set in 1930s Austria, a conspicuously large proportion of the films released in its wake drew on images and narratives from English history, among them Warner Bros.’s Camelot, 20th Century Fox’s Doctor Doolittle (1967) and MGM’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), as well as Oliver! and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), which were made in Britain and distributed by United Artists. Warner Bros. had in fact purchased the rights to Camelot before they made the deal to adapt My Fair Lady.75 At $2 million, Camelot’s rights came at a significantly lower price than the earlier film and this time the studio was not required to share its gross with a third party. However, Camelot fell some way 70

71 72 73 74 75

Memo from Max Bercutt to Warner, 29 November 1963. Marty Weiser papers, f.343, Margaret Herrick Library. Quigley and Levy, ‘Story of the Production’, 25. Hall and Neale, Epics, Spectacles, 184. Ibid. Ibid., 185. Matthew Kennedy, Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 26.

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short of matching the Broadway success of My Fair Lady, and work to bring it to the screen did not begin until early 1966, after The Sound of Music had demonstrated the commercial potential of big-budget musicals. As with Anne, much of the preproduction discussion centred on the casting. The Broadway cast had featured Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as Guinevere. Both were considered to reprise their roles, along with familiar names such as Audrey Hepburn, Doris Day, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston.76 The following month, however, an alternate list of actors circulated in the studio, proposing Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Sean Connery and Michael Caine as Arthur, and Julie Christie, Diana Rigg and Susannah York as Guenevere.77 The contrast between the older, more American cast and the younger, more British cast is clear, and it marked a shift in thinking which moved away from conventional mores of Broadway adaption and aligned Camelot with fashionable British cinema. Richard Harris eventually won the part of Arthur, even though his highest-profile screen credit prior to this was the British film This Sporting Life (1963). For the role of Guenevere, Warner Bros. turned to Vanessa Redgrave, who had risen to prominence very recently in another British film, Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966). The studio were so keen to have Redgrave in the film that they scheduled production around her West End stage commitments, excusing her from the location work in Spain and delaying American studio work until she was available.78 The casting of relatively unknown actors with backgrounds in British cinema and little musical experience might have allowed Warner Bros. to save money, although the $300,000 and $250,000 paid to Harris and Redgrave respectively were not insignificant.79 More importantly, their casting ensured that Camelot would be quite different from the big Broadway adaptations which preceded it. The visual style employed by Camelot can also be regarded as a departure. Director Joshua Logan, who had previously directed South Pacific for both stage and screen, informed Jack Warner that the musical form gives ‘much licence to experiment’ and that the film should ‘make use of the modern techniques of cutting, sound recording and laboratory that some Italian, English and French directors have made giant strides with’. In this way, Camelot might ‘show the world that Hollywood is still capable of being the style setter of the motion 76

77 78 79

List of Actors, 23 February 1966. Camelot correspondence files, f. 1835A, USC Warner Bros. Archives. List of actors, 15 March 1966. Camelot correspondence files, f. 1835A. Walter MacEwen to Sonny Burke 14 May 1966. Camelot correspondence files, f. 1835A. Joel Freeman to Warner, 29 December 1966. Camelot correspondence files, f. 1835.

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picture industry’. In the same memo Logan also discussed plans to depart from ‘typical realistic Middle ages spectacle’ in favour of an ‘imaginary past created out of earlier and later periods in England’.80 To generate this look, Australian designer John Truscott, who had designed sets and costumes for Camelot’s Melbourne and London transfers, was hired as production designer. Logan later claimed that Truscott’s designs for the Australian Camelot had been responsible for reviving Warner’s interest in the project.81 According to Logan, Truscott created an aesthetic that was ‘neither Gothic nor Romanesque but an in between period, suggesting a legendary time’.82 Whether or not this description is accurate, Camelot’s visual design stands apart from other screen adaptations of Arthurian myth, creating a look which Sarah Salih compares to the ‘gilded fantasy of aristocratic life which was illuminated in luxury manuscripts’.83 Production on Camelot did not proceed smoothly. The screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner clocked in at three hours, and Logan dissuaded Warner from cutting it to a more manageable length.84 The Spanish location work was beset by rain and yielded very little usable footage, and the film ran over budget by $1.2 million.85 Its final cost was $13 million, slightly higher than My Fair Lady’s if the cost of the screen rights is excluded. Production was also disrupted by the news that that Jack Warner had agreed to sell his Warner Bros. stock to the Canadian film and distribution company Seven Arts.86 Remarkably, this development was announced when Camelot, which Warner was nominally producing, was on hiatus awaiting Redgrave’s arrival. Seven Arts proceeded to purchase the remaining two thirds of Warner Bros.’s stock and in July 1967 the studio was formally dissolved and merged into a new corporation.87 As the wave of corporate takeovers engulfed more and more of the American film industry, Camelot became the first film released under the Warner Bros.-Seven Arts banner. Despite these difficulties, optimism around the film remained high. As production chief Walter MacEwen told Warner, Camelot ‘could be our Sound of Music and then some’.88 However, Camelot’s marketing moved away from the 80 81 82 83 84

85 86

87 88

Joshua Logan to Warner, 16 May 1966. Camelot correspondence files, f. 1835A. Logan to Richard Mahn, 1 November 1966. Camelot correspondence files, f. 1835. Ibid. Salih, 30. Mark Harris, Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood (London: Canongate, 2008), 192. Kennedy, Roadshow!, 35; Picture cost report, 22 April 1967. Camelot correspondence files, f. 1835. ‘Holder Sues to Bar Warner Stock Sale’ The New York Times, 23 November 1966; ‘7 Arts Weighing Offer to Warner’, The New York Times, 6 December 1966. Kennedy, Roadshow!, 87. McEwan to Warner, 19 October 1966. Camelot correspondence files, f. 1835.

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family audience which had flocked to The Sound of Music in an attempt to appeal to the growing youth market. Taking advantage of the popular association between Britain and youth culture, publicity materials referred to the film as a ‘mod-medieval romance-adventure musical’, adding, ‘It’s mod … because it’s “now”.’ The publicity also highlighted Camelot’s innovative design, pointing out that costumes and furniture ‘subtly suggest the Mod clothing of today’.89 This facet of the film comes across most strongly in the summer-of-love overtones of the ‘Lusty Month of May’ sequence. The marketing approach also drew attention to the film’s casting, particularly the serendipitous appearance of two of its stars, Redgrave and David Hemmings in what they called ‘the most Mod film of all, Blow-Up!’90 Casting and production design aside, however, Camelot held limited appeal for the youth audiences and this marketing direction may have deterred family audiences from seeing the film. A rental income of less than $7 million after its first run fell disastrously below expectations.91 Camelot was followed a month later by Doctor Doolittle, 20th Century Fox’s attempt to sustain the money-making cycle of roadshow musicals. Adapted from a children’s story with original songs and Rex Harrison in the lead, the film had been though an even rockier and more expensive production than Camelot and its boxoffice performance was similarly dismal. The subsequent commercial failure of Star! (1968), which reunited the star and the director of The Sound of Music, confirmed the failure of the major studios’ roadshow musical strategy. *** The overproduction of expensive musicals such as Camelot was a major factor in the American film industry’s financial crisis at the end of the 1960s. The wave of takeovers earlier in the decade did little to protect Hollywood companies from the effects of this recession: despite merging with larger corporations, United Artists, Warner Bros. and Paramount all reported multi-million dollar losses between 1969 and 1971.92 Facing pressure from the bankers who supplied their credit, the studios scaled back production budgets and reduced overseas spending.93 The British film industry suffered disproportionately as a consequence, with American investment falling from a peak of £31.3 million 89 90 91 92 93

Pressbook. Camelot publicity files, f. 643A. Camelot Souvenir Program. Pressbook Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles. Kennedy, Roadshow!, 89. Walker, Hollywood England, 442. Maltby, ‘Nobody Knows Everything’, 33.

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in 1968 to just £2.9 million in 1974.94 Little commercial or state support was available to ease the fall for British producers. As might have been anticipated, then, the injection of production finance into Britain ended even more rapidly than it began, leaving a dilapidated film sector in its wake. The box-office failure of specific films was partly to blame. In addition to the commercial washout of American-made representations of English history, notably Camelot and Doctor Doolittle, several British-made representations of English history also proved to be expensive failures. In addition to The Charge of the Light Brigade, MGM’s Goodbye, Mr Chips, Paramount’s Half a Sixpence (1967) and United Artists’s The Battle of Britain (1969) all fell short of expectations. Attendance at British cinemas also fell sharply throughout the 1960s. Not only did this reduce the value of films aimed at British audiences, it also lowered payments from the Eady Levy for British registered films. More generally, American production in Britain was affected by broader generational changes in audience preferences and by the retrenchment and restructuring of the American film industry. In the decade which followed, the cosmopolitanism which had characterized much Hollywood cinema during the 1950s and 1960s was replaced by a renewed focus on American subject matter. The 1960s might be seen as the best of times and the worst of times for the Hollywood depiction of English history. The runaway success of Tom Jones and My Fair Lady at the beginning of the decade helped to institute specific industrywide trends which favoured the representation of English past. The former encouraged American film companies to decentralize production by increasing their investments in British-made films, taking advantage of cheaper production facilities and the broader vogue for ‘swinging London’ popular culture. The latter encouraged the major studios to ramp-up the production of expensive roadshow musicals in order to maintain Hollywood-centred modes of production in the face of broader industrial restructuring. The ultimate failure of these strategies at the end of the decade, as embodied by Charge and Camelot, can also be seen as a commercial rejection of the Hollywood English historical film. At the same time, Becket and Anne occupied a middle ground during the decade, reaching neither the highs of Tom Jones and My Fair Lady nor the lows of Camelot and Charge. Instead, they demonstrated the ongoing value of outsourcing the production of certain projects to Britain under American management, as well

94

Margaret Dickinson and Sarah Street, Cinema and State: The Film Industry and the British Government 1927–84 (London: BFI Publishing, 1985), 240.

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as the prestige value of English historical material. Nevertheless, the 1970s saw a relative hiatus in the American production of films set in the English past. Several exceptions can be cited, notably literary adaptations and films aimed at children. Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) attempted to emulate Mary Poppins with some success, but their fully animated Robin Hood (1973) proved much more popular. At the other end of the market, John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (1975) revisited the Empire film by adapting a Rudyard Kipling story, Stanley Kubrick mounted a lavish adaptation of the Thackeray novel in Barry Lyndon (1975) and Tony Richardson returned to Henry Fielding with Joseph Andrews (1977). To some extent, the English past became more visible on television during this era in the form of British-made mini-series. Occupying similar ground as Becket and Anne, lavishly made serials such as The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), Elizabeth R (1971) and the transatlantic-themed Edward and Mrs Simpson (1978) brought British royalty to the small screen. But although these shows were widely seen in America, they stand apart from my main interests in this book. To see how the representation of English history returned to American film, the following chapter therefore skips forward to examine the 1980s.

6

Intimations of Quality: English Heritage and the ‘Specialty’ Film in the 1980s and 1990s

As discussed in the previous chapter, the production of English historical films in Hollywood declined steeply after 1970. Films of this type were also relatively uncommon for much of the 1980s. A mode of filmmaking which had consistently provided the American film industry with some of its biggest hits between the 1930s and the 1960s was thus consigned to the periphery. But even as science fiction fantasies such as E.T. (1982) occupied the mainstream, a small number of British films made with financial assistance from American companies also rose to prominence, notably Chariots of Fire (1981) and A Room with a View (1985). Both won awards and critical attention while also exceeding expectations at the box office. But in contrast to the British films which American studios had financed during the 1960s, this new English historical cycle consisted of relatively low-budget productions aimed at niche audiences. Moreover, the American companies which invested in them were often small operations which worked independently of the major Hollywood studios. The unlikely success of these imported films contributed to the renewal of American interest in the English past. In the years that followed, Hollywood studios incorporated some of the marketable elements of these films into a cycle of more mainstream English historical productions. English historical representation thus returned to American cinema, albeit as a relatively minor component in an increasingly fragmented marketplace. The re-emergence of the English historical film in America during the 1980s and 1990s can be traced to the confluence of so-called ‘heritage’ filmmaking in Britain and to broader reorganization within the American film industry. The concept of ‘heritage cinema’ has been expounded most influentially in the work of Andrew Higson, who has linked British costume films such as A Room with a View with a conservative cultural movement in Britain which sought to preserve and memorialize an elite, homogenized version of the past

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at the expense of more dynamic, diverse modes of public remembering.1 The term ‘heritage film’ has gained some traction outside academia, but it remains rooted in critical discourse rather than industrial practice. I would nevertheless argue that it has considerable descriptive value. On a textual level, heritage films may be identified by their narrative focus on upper-middle-class, southern English social milieux, most commonly set in the early twentieth century; by their sumptuous, pictorial mise en scène based around the display of houses, landscapes, interior décor and costume; by modes of performance associated with British theatre; by a relatively slow narrative pace and an emphasis on dialogue over action and by their references to elite culture (music, painting, philosophy, literature).2 The heritage film’s textual association with high culture is reinforced by its frequent and prominent use of literary source material. E. M. Forster was strongly associated with the cycle during the 1980s, but the cycle has also included adaptations of novels by Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen and Henry James. The relationship between heritage and Englishness has also been a pronounced element in these debates, whether the films are interpreted as a celebration of indigenous culture and a form of resistance against the mass production of globalized Hollywood movies, or as a symptom of England’s postcolonial vanity and decline. Nevertheless, the Englishness or even Britishness of many heritage films is by no means straightforward. Merchant Ivory Productions, the company responsible for many of the quintessential heritage films, was founded by an Indian producer and an American director and regularly collaborated with German-born screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Originally based in India, a majority of their films between 1963 and 2005 had American settings. Many heritage films also received production finance from diverse sources, not only Britain and America but also Japan. Indeed, a key quality of the heritage film is perhaps its exportability and its ability to transcend national borders. According to Belén Vidal, heritage film ‘has become a supple term to refer to the ways in which national cinemas turn to the past at different moments in their histories in search of their own foundational myths’. 1

2

Andrew Higson, ‘Re-Presenting the Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’, in Lester Friedman (ed.), Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 109–29. For an overview of the debates surrounding heritage film, see Andrew Higson, English Heritage, English Cinema: Costume Drama since 1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 9–85; Claire Monk, Heritage Film Audiences Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 10–27, Belén Vidal, Heritage Film: Nation, Genre and Representation (London: Wallflower Press, 2012), 7–51.

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But she adds that the term also ‘highlights the strategic positioning of national film industries in the global markets and their need for expansion through transnational alliances’.3 These films represent a distinctly English past, but their markers of Englishness are sufficiently broad to give them international appeal and to allow them to stand out in a globalized market. The tendency for heritage films to draw on literature recalls the uses of literary adaption in Hollywood during the 1930s, as discussed in the first chapter. In this earlier period, however, literature was used to create a prestige product which would add legitimacy to the American film industry and dispel its taint of moral dissipation. By the 1980s, however, the American film industry was less troubled by such issues. Why then did the literary adaptation return to prominence? As Dudley Andrew has suggested, literary adaptation has been an almost constant feature in the history of cinema, but its ‘particular function in any given moment is far from constant’. The dominant modes of adaptation, he adds, are indicative of the shifting cultural role which films have played over time.4 I would suggest that whereas literary adaptation was once used in service of public relations for the film industry, its primary role in the 1980s and 1990s was related to product differentiation. Jim Collins has argued that the popularity of British-made literary adaptations in the 1980s ‘signalled the emergence of a growing audience for quality alternatives to mainstream mass entertainment and a commercial infrastructure to serve that audience’.5 Whereas Hollywood had originally endeavoured to deliver films to an undifferentiated public, this approach became less tenable after their audience began to fragment.6 The dominance of the film industry’s core product during the 1980s and 1990s – the action or science fiction blockbuster – created a market for a ‘quality’ alternative, particularly for older cinema goers. Demand for variety in the same period was fuelled by the growth of multi-screen cinemas, cable television and VHS. According to Collins, literary adaptations in the 1990s effectively displaced the art film as the main alternative to the Hollywood blockbuster.7 Similarly, Higson has noted that ‘heritage films operate as a middle-brow version of quality, pitched somewhere between modernism and more high-brow elements of art cinema on the one hand, and low-brow popular culture on the other’.8 As the 3 4 5 6 7 8

Vidal, Heritage Film, 3. Dudley Andrew, Concepts in Film Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 104. Collins, Bring on the Books, 139. Maltby, ‘Nobody Knows Everything’, 33. Collins, Bring on the Books, 145. Higson, English Heritage, 8.

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American film industry sought to cater to multiple audiences, the associations between ‘quality’ filmmaking and literary adaptation allowed them to diversify their output accordingly. In this way, the same corporations were able to supply both mass-market content and niche alternatives to it. The diversification of the cinema audience and the popular appeal of ‘quality’ films relates to other changes in American film industry. In particular, heritage films played an important role in the growth of independent distributors within the American film industry. As Alisa Perren has suggested, the term ‘independent’ in the context of cinema has functioned largely as a ‘discursive tool employed by the industry and the press’.9 Nevertheless, several companies who were not formally tied to the traditional major American studio (among them Orion, Miramax, New Line and Cinecom) came to prominence during the 1980s and played increasingly significant roles in American film culture thereafter. Independent companies were typically involved in ‘negative pickup’ deals to distribute completed films, often European imports, but some companies later expanded by financing films directly. Concurrently, major studios such as United Artists, Universal and Columbia began to establish ‘classics’ or ‘specialty’ divisions in order to handle the distribution of smaller, less marketable films. As Yannis Tzioumakis suggests, the studios’ ‘increased emphasis on ultraexpensive event films’ left space in the market for a different type of product, and these specialty divisions began to compete with independent companies to fill it.10 The American film industry thus reorganized in order to better cater to a changing market. As Perren observes, a ‘three-tier industry structure’ emerged, consisting of the major studios, independent companies and specialty divisions which belonged to the major studios.11 Of course, the distinctions between these tiers were far from stable: larger independent companies like Orion and New Line were briefly able to make films on a scale comparable to the major studios and even operated specialty divisions of their own. Nevertheless, this new industrial structure expanded the range of films available to audiences, allowing traditional studios to develop new talent and take greater creative risks while catering to a valuable segment of the cinema-going public.12

9

10

11

12

Alisa Perren, ‘Sex, Lies and Marketing: Miramax and the Development of the “Quality Indie” Blockbuster’, Film Quarterly 55, no. 2 (2001): 37. Yannis Tzioumakis, Hollywood’s Indies: Classics Divisions, Specialty Labels and the American Film Market (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 13. Alisa Perren, Indie, Inc.: Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 145. Ibid., 4.

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Heritage films have often been excluded from discussions of independent and ‘indie’ cinema. It is perhaps not difficult to see why: they are not hip, they cater primarily to mature rather than young audiences, they eschew representations of sex and violence and, in the case of literary adaptations, they exhibit the ‘wrong’ kind of authorship. But much like the ‘indie’ films of Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino, heritage cinema typically involved low-budget, critically acclaimed productions which were initially aimed at niche audiences and which stood apart from mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. As I will discuss in this chapter, heritage films were integral to the growth of independent and specialty film distribution in America, and heritage film aesthetics were subsequently appropriated by specialty production companies in America as they endeavoured to enter the mid-range film market. The first section of this chapter examines the role of American independent companies and specialty divisions in the emergence of the heritage film cycle, focussing on the rise of Merchant Ivory Productions and American involvement in A Room with a View and Howards End (1992). The second section examines the relationship between heritage cinema and the traditional American studios, particularly in relation to The Remains of the Day (1993) and Sense and Sensibility (1995). The final section examines the rapid expansion of the independent company Miramax following their acquisition by Disney, and their adoption of heritage tropes, notably in The English Patient (1996) and Shakespeare in Love (1998), in films designed to cross over from the specialty sector into mainstream film culture.

‘A holiday out of time’: Heritage film and American indies From the outset, heritage films were supported by American production finance and patronized by American cinema goers. Chariots of Fire (1981), which told the inspirational story of amateur British athletes competing in the 1924 Olympic Games, was developed by producer David Putnam at a time when British film financing was at a particularly low ebb. A small initial investment came from the independent UK production company Goldcrest Films, but other British film and television companies balked at the project’s relatively high cost. The $5.9 million budget was eventually supplied by Allied Stars, owned by the Egyptian millionaire Mohammed Al Fayed, and 20th Century Fox, who bought distribution rights outside North America. The film acquired an American distributor only after its completion in the form of the Ladd Company, an independent organization

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which released films through Warner Bros.13 Chariots of Fire thus arrived on screen through a patchwork of mostly non-British sources, including major and independent American film companies. It proved to be a runaway success and earned around $80 million at the North American box-office, a record for an imported film.14 As with 1960s English historical films such as Tom Jones and A Man for All Seasons, the box-office performance of Chariots of Fire accelerated following a strong performance at the Academy Awards, where it won in four categories including Best Picture. As Paul McDonald notes, ‘Awards became a kind of currency in the specialty market,’ functioning as an ‘institutionalized form of cultural capital’.15 But as the improved post-Oscars performance of Chariots of Fire indicates, they had economic value too, particularly for smaller films. British imports with historical settings continued to perform strongly at the Academy Awards in the years which followed. The biopic Gandhi (1982), not normally associated with heritage cinema, won nine Oscars including Best Picture. The E. M Forster adaptation A Passage to India (1984), also set in India but often regarded as a heritage film, won two of its eleven nominations. English historical material also found favour with American audiences in the form of Brideshead Revisited (1981), an imported Evelyn Waugh adaptation which was broadcast in America in 1982. Many of its personnel would later work in heritage cinema, demonstrating a greater continuity between TV and film than in previous eras. The British companies responsible for Chariots of Fire, Gandhi and A Passage to India had difficulty repeating their American box-office success. By contrast, Merchant Ivory showed that the production of heritage films could be financially sustainable. Producer Ismail Merchant claimed to be incapable of working ‘in a corporate structure’, but his organization nevertheless had a long history of cooperating with Hollywood companies.16 Their debut feature The Householder (1963) was distributed in America by Columbia and the bulk of the funding for The Guru (1969) came from 20th Century Fox, using the studio’s blocked Indian revenues.17 In the 1980s, Heat and Dust (1983) was distributed by Universal, although its success was limited. On many other projects, however, the company 13 14 15

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Chapman, Past and Present, 272–4. Ibid., 284. Paul McDonald, ‘Miramax, Life Is Beautiful, and the Indiewoodization of the Foreign-Language Film Market in the USA’, New Review of Film and Television Studies 7, no. 4 (2009): 360. Quoted in Lawrence Raw (ed.), Merchant-Ivory Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 144. Christopher Mier, ‘Ismail Merchant, Harry Alan Towers and Post-Imperial “British” Cinema’, Journal of British Cinema and Television 9, no. 1 (2012): 63.

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worked with small independent American distributors. Their Henry James adaptation The Europeans (1979), for example, was distributed by a company whose other releases included Blaxploitation and soft-core pornography films.18 Merchant Ivory’s commercial breakthrough was A Room with a View (1985). The film emerged from a meeting in the early 1980s between Merchant, director James Ivory and E. M Forster’s literary executors, seemingly arranged to persuade the company to adapt A Passage to India.19 They chose the lesser-known novel instead, commissioning a script from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala which Ivory later revised.20 Merchant initially offered the film to the independent Samuel Goldwyn Company, but after they requested changes to the script he sold the American rights to Cinecom, a small distributor which specialized in American independent film.21 Additional finance to make up the $3 million budget came from British sources: the cinema chain Curzon, who handled British distribution, the National Film Finance Corporation and Goldcrest Films.22 A Room with a View received positive reviews in the American press, many of which emphasized its escapist qualities. The New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby described it as ‘like a holiday out of time’ while in Time Richard Schickel praised it for ‘permitting the past to appear not as a stern lesson but as a delicious irrelevance’.23 Cinecom’s marketing budget was limited, but the company benefitted from a tie-in edition of the novel published by Random House and a study guide designed for high schools and colleges, a move which recalled the promotion of films such as David Copperfield in the 1930s.24 Cinecom released the film very slowly, initially at a single venue, but they expanded it in response to demand and after four months it was playing on over a 100 screens in America. A Room with a View experienced a second life at the box office during the 1987 awards season after it was nominated in eight Academy Awards categories and won three. Between the announcement of the nominees in early February and the ceremony itself in late March, the film expanded again from

18 19

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21 22

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Tzioumakis, Hollywood’s Indies, 6. Robert Emmet Long, James Ivory in Conversation: How Merchant Ivory Makes Its Movies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 211. Earl G. Ingersoll, Filming Forster: The Challenges of Adapting E.M. Forster’s Novels for the Screen (Lanham: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012), 79–80. Long, James Ivory in Conversation, 199. Jake Eberts and Terry Ilott, My Indecision Is Final: The Rise and Fall of Goldcrest Films (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), 571. Vincent Canby, ‘A Room with a View’, The New York Times, 7 March 1986; Richard Schickel, ‘A Stroll on the Wilde Side’, Time, 10 March 1986. Street, Transatlantic Crossings, 198.

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35 to 150 screens.25 The latter figure represented the film’s peak during its American release; in the same year, by comparison, Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) opened on more than 2,000 screens.26 In total, A Room with a View played continuously for sixteen months – an unusually long period which attests not only to its popularity but also to the limited budget available to Cinecom to produce prints and buy advertising. The film was a significant success: its North American gross of over $16 million was by far the biggest in Cinecom’s history.27 Merchant later speculated that although a bigger distributor might have enabled the film to earn twice this figure at the box office, they would have spent an additional $20 million on marketing and distribution in the process.28 Merchant Ivory’s success with A Room with a View led to interest from the Hollywood majors, who recognized their ability to produce marketable, prestigious films on low budgets. The company began developing films for MGM and United Artists, the latter starring Tom Cruise at the peak of his early fame.29 But neither project materialized and the company returned to the novels of E. M. Forster to make Maurice (1987) instead. Partly due to its subject matter, which concerned gay romance, the film was distributed in America by Cinecom rather than a major studio and it fared less well at the box office than its predecessor. In the years that followed, however, various other heritage films were imported from Britain and distributed by independent American companies. The overriding influence of A Room with a View is illustrated by the remarkable popularity of Tuscan locations, which appear in Where Angels Fear to Tread (Fine Line, 1991), Enchanted April (Miramax, 1992), Much Ado about Nothing (Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1993) and The English Patient (Miramax). Early twentieth-century novelists also proved durable, with an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust released by New Line in 1988 and Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread following in 1991. Both were directed by Charles Sturridge, the director of Brideshead Revisited, and both also featured actors from previous Merchant Ivory productions: Judi Dench and Rupert Graves from A Room with a View appeared in A Handful of Dust alongside with James Wilby from Maurice, while Helena Bonham Carter and Graves played the leads in Where Angels

25 26

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28 29

Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com/title/tt0091867/business, accessed 5 October 2017. Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=beverlyhillscop2.htm, accessed 10 October 2017. Tzioumakis, Hollywood’s Indies 73; Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/studio/chart/?stud io=cinecom.htm, accessed 10 October 2017. Aljean Harmetz, ‘Independent Films Making It Big’, The New York Times, 6 April 1987. Robert Emmet Long, The Films of Merchant Ivory (New York: Abrams Books, 1997), 147.

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Fear to Tread. The recurrence of these actors recalls Diane Negra’s description of independent film performers who ‘while not fully meeting the criteria for stardom in the conventional sense, nevertheless generate personae that operate as legible, functional trademarks’. Their presence, moreover, provides a guarantee ‘that the films in which they appear will support a certain aesthetic and status economy with which independent film-goers are likely to affiliate’.30 In this way, a cadre of British performers came to serve as marketable textual markers for a filmmaking niche which aimed to stand apart from Hollywood norms. Merchant Ivory followed Maurice with one film set in India and two in America, but in 1992 they returned to Forster and Edwardian England to make Howards End. Some cast members, including Bonham Carter and Vanessa Redgrave, had appeared in previous Merchant Ivory films, but lead actors Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins were not yet established as ‘functional trademarks’ of heritage cinema. Despite Merchant Ivory’s prior success, their $7.5 million budget for the film was modest.31 Production finance was assembled from a global patchwork of sources, including British broadcaster Channel 4, a London merchant bank, and two Japanese media companies. Further investment was raised by pre-selling the distribution rights to Palace Pictures in Britain and (following the demise of Cinecom) Orion Classics in America.32 Orion Classics were the specialty division of the ‘mini-major’ studio Orion Pictures, and they had successfully distributed the French heritage films Jean de Florette (1987), Manon des sources (1987) and Cyrano de Bergerac (1990).33 However, Orion was facing serious financial problems and in late 1991 it refused to release the $1 million which Orion Classics had agreed to pay for Howards End.34 The American rights thus reverted to Merchant Ivory, allowing them to seek another American distributor.35 In the meantime, news of Orion Classics travails over the film led to the company’s top executives being recruited by Columbia to form a new specialty division, Sony Picture Classics (SPC). After repurchasing the rights from Merchant Ivory, the first SPC release was Howards End.

30

31 32 33

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Diana Negra, ‘“Queen of the Indies”: Parker Posey’s Niche Stardom and the Taste Cultures of Independent Film’, in Chris Holmlund and Justin Wyatt (eds.), Contemporary American Independent Film: From the Margins to the Mainstream (London: Routledge, 2005), 61. Higson, English Heritage, 156. Ibid., 155–6. For more on heritage cinema in a French context, see Dayna Oscherwitz, Past Forward: French Cinema and the Post-Colonial Heritage (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010). Mike Medavoy, You’re Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 284. Tzioumakis, Hollywood’s Indies, 77.

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Despite their parent corporation’s financial muscle, SPC rolled Howards End out to cinemas at an even slower rate than A Room with a View. The film played on a single screen in Manhattan for five busy weeks before expanding to eleven additional venues.36 As demand built through word-of-mouth and critical praise, both SPC and Merchant Ivory took pride in the exclusivity which they had generated around the film. An SPC executive claimed, ‘We want the audience to say, “It’s finally here,” rather than: “Where did it go?”’37 As Merchant put it, ‘If you make it a little difficult [to see], like a beautiful woman, it is more attractive.’38 The film was promoted with study guides and tie-in editions of the novel, but its most marketable element proved to be its cast of British stars. According to one article, Bonham Carter, Thompson, Hopkins and others were deployed ‘like warheads’ and gave media appearances ‘at strategic intervals as the film made its way across the country’.39 As with A Room with a View, attendance peaked during awards season, a full year after the film’s premiere. In the week that Jhabvala, Thompson, and art directors Luciana Arrighi and Ian Whittaker won Academy Awards, the film appeared on 547 screens.40 SPC’s distribution strategy was thus similar to the ‘platform’ release given to Tom Jones thirty years before: both opened on very few screens and expanded on a town-by-town basis, both had limited advertising, and both were dependent on reviews and awards to reach an audience beyond the cultural elite. By the early 1990s, however, this type of distribution had become less common. As the specialty film sector expanded and greater volumes of heritage films were released, individual films required more extensive promotion in order to stand out against the welter of similar titles.41 More generally, the bankruptcy of Cinecom and Orion in the early 1990s, as well as reported financial troubles at Miramax, highlighted considerable stresses within the American independent film sector. The growth of studio-backed speciality divisions raised the competition to acquire marketable independent films, driving up prices and forcing companies to make riskier investments in films at earlier stages in their production. Nevertheless, SPC’s calculatedly restrained handling of Howards End paid off, vindicating their methods even as the independent film market shifted around them. The film grossed over $26

36 37 38 39 40 41

Higson, English Heritage, 159. Quoted in ‘A Tale of Howards End: Shuttling the Stars Around’, The New York Times, 30 July 1992. Quoted in Jane Galbraith, ‘Let’s Get Small’, Los Angeles Times, 14 June 1992. ‘A Tale of Howards End’. Higson, English Heritage, 160. James Schamus, ‘To the Rear of the Back End: The Economics of Independent Cinema’, in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, 104.

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million in North America and it remained the company’s biggest release until Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000.42

‘Films of consequence’: Heritage goes to Hollywood As before, the success of Howards End piqued the interest of the major studios. Merchant Ivory was contacted by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, who praised their ability to work with low budgets and offered to finance their long-gestating Jefferson in Paris project.43 This one-off deal led to a longer term arrangement in which the studio pledged to contribute half the costs of their films, with Merchant Ivory retaining creative control on films whose budgets did not exceed $12 million.44 For Merchant Ivory, who had not previously maintained a working relationship with a well-capitalized distributor, the deal offered security without threatening their independence. For Disney, the deal added diversity to their slate of releases and allowed them to compete in the growing specialty market. As Merchant put it, ‘Disney wants to make films of consequence and within a certain budget. They are part of the mainstream, and so are we.’45 The following year, Katzenberg announced that Disney would purchase Miramax for a figure reported between $60 million and $80 million, effectively transforming them into Disney’s specialty division. According to Perren, the purchase ‘served as a quick fix for Disney, providing the conglomerate with heightened prestige and adult-oriented material at a relatively low cost’.46 The terms of Miramax’s deal were remarkably similar to that of Merchant Ivory’s: operating largely from New York, the company retained a certain degree of autonomy and required clearance from Disney executives only on productions and acquisitions costing more than $12.5 million.47 With Merchant Ivory and Miramax under contract to Disney, heritage cinema and specialty film in general took another step closer to mainstream American filmmaking. In addition to Disney, Columbia also sought to strengthen its offering of adultorientated films during the 1990s. The studio began developing an adaptation of the critically revered Kazuo Ishiguro novel The Remains of the Day, which 42 43 44 45 46 47

Tzioumakis, Hollywood’s Indies, 112. Raw, Merchant-Ivory Interviews, 122. Bernard Weinraub, ‘Disney Signs Up Merchant and Ivory’, The New York Times, 27 July 1992. Quoted in Ibid. Perren, Indie, Inc., 71. Ibid., 72.

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told the story of an emotionally repressed English butler before and after the Second World War. The film rights were optioned by Harold Pinter prior to the book’s publication in 1989, and he and veteran director Mike Nichols made a development deal with Columbia.48 Pinter duly produced a script for Nichols to direct, and Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons were tentatively attached in the leading roles. However, Columbia was in the midst of a series of expensive flops and studio executives were facing pressure to rein in spending.49 The studio thus sought to reduce their investment in The Remains of the Day, which was due to cost more than $25 million despite its ostensibly niche appeal.50 With a view to contracting out production, Columbia called Merchant Ivory, who had honed the production of lavish period films within small budgets over decades of penny pinching in the independent sector. According to Merchant, Columbia made their offer in May 1992 (shortly before their deal with Disney) and the film began went into production in autumn the same year – a remarkably quick turnaround which confirmed the company’s sought after efficiency.51 The Remains of the Day’s budget has been reported between $9 million and $11.5 million: much lower than Columbia’s original projection, but much more than Merchant Ivory had worked with before.52 Although Nichols and his collaborator John Calley remained on board as producers, Merchant Ivory proceeded to thoroughly refashion the project. Jhabvala was invited to rewrite the script, leading Pinter to withdraw his credit.53 Various other Merchant Ivory collaborators also joined, giving the film the same cinematographer, production designer, costume designers, editor and composer as Howards End. Most significantly, the film reunited Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, the central couple from Howards End, in the lead roles, providing the film with a highly marketable cast. Despite being funded entirely by a Hollywood studio, then, the continuity between The Remains of the Day and earlier heritage films was significant. The American star Christopher Reeve did appear in a supporting role, but he had in fact worked with Merchant Ivory previously in The Bostonians (1984). In fact, the film’s clearest departure from heritage norms was its subjective, non-linear narrative structure, a feature which brought 48 49 50

51 52

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Long, James Ivory in Conversation, 226–7. Tzioumakis, Hollywood’s Indies, 116. Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters, Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 341. Anna Kythreotis, ‘At Long Last, Hollywood’, The Times, 29 October 1992, 33. Terry Ilot, Budgets and Markets: A Study of the Budgeting of European Films (London: Routledge, 1996), 38; Kythreotis, ‘At Long Last’, 33. Long, James Ivory in Conversation, 227.

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the film closer to the traditions of European art cinema. The studio gave The Remains of the Day a relatively wide release; by its third week it played on 517 screens in America, leading to a more condensed commercial lifespan than previous Merchant Ivory releases. The total North American gross was around $23 million, a slightly lower figure than Howards End but proof that the film had been relatively successful in crossing out of the specialty market to a broader segment of cinemagoers.54 Columbia might have struggled to find a sufficiently large audience for The Remains of the Day had they followed their original plan to produce it as a medium-budget film. As a smaller production orientated towards a mature audience, however, it proved highly competitive and vindicated their decision to work with Merchant Ivory. Columbia was also responsible for the Jane Austen adaptation Sense and Sensibility (1995). The film was developed by American producer Lindsay Doran in collaboration with Emma Thompson, who provided the screenplay.55 In an unexpected move, Doran hired Taiwanese director Ang Lee for his first English-language project. Lee’s previous films The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) were distributed in America by the Samuel Goldwyn Company and both rank among the top ten foreign-language imports of the decade, giving him a certain amount of name-recognition among arthouse audiences.56 As screenwriter and headlining star, Thompson’s specialty film cachet was even greater. As the Los Angeles Times put it, she was ‘the Oscarwinning empress of high-tea cinema’.57 Underlining Sense and Sensibility’s continuity with the heritage cycle, production designer Luciana Arrighi and costume designer and Jenny Beavan, who had worked on both Howards End and The Remains of the Day, were hired to oversee the film’s visual design. For all its prestige value, however, this package of largely untested English literary material, English heritage performers and a Taiwanese auteur did not provide Columbia with an obvious marketing hook. Matters were helped somewhat when Hugh Grant, cast in a supporting role, rose unexpectedly to stardom with Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), although his image was not in fact used in the film’s main promotional poster. The studio may also have taken comfort from their recent success with Little Women (1994), another period literary 54

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Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekly&id=remainsoftheday.htm, accessed 14 October 2017. Nancy Mills, ‘Lindsay Doran Kept Her Sites on Bringing Sense and Sensibility to the Screen’, Chicago Tribune, 17 March 1996. Perren, Indie Inc., 189. Jan Stuart, ‘Emma Thompson, Sensibly’, Los Angeles Times, 10 December 1995.

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adaptation centred on female characters. All the same, the $18.5 million budget58 was something of a gamble and it meant that the film needed to outperform every Merchant Ivory film at the box office in order to return a profit. In keeping with these ambitions, Columbia gave Sense and Sensibility a much wider release and a more extensive marketing campaign than they had for The Remains of the Day. At its peak, in the run-up to the 1996 Academy Awards, the film played on over 1,000 screens, almost certainly a record for a heritage film at the time. Sense and Sensibility was ultimately a success. Its final North American gross of $43 million was slightly lower than that of Little Women, but Sense and Sensibility proved to be the stronger performer overseas.59 The profile of Sense and Sensibility in America was given an unanticipated boost by an unprecedented spate of Austen adaptations released in the same period. In some ways, the ground for Sense and Sensibility was prepared by Clueless, released in summer 1995, which took the narrative of Emma into a contemporary American high school setting. In January 1996, as Sense and Sensibility expanded into cinemas around the country, the BBC television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was broadcast to critical acclaim on the American A&E Network. Preceding them both was Persuasion (1995), originally shown on television in Britain but given a cinema release in American by SPC in the autumn of 1995. In keeping with the release strategy SPC had employed for Howards End, the film rolled out around the country at a deliberate pace. In the early months of 1996, then, American audiences were able to view two Austen adaptations at the cinema and one on television all at once, creating a sense of critical mass around the author’s work. A fourth adaptation, Emma, was already in production at Miramax and was released in summer the same year. Writing in January 1996, Vanity Fair declared ‘the hottest writer in show business is not John Grisham or Michael Crichton, but Jane Austen’.60 As Higson has suggested, however, adaptation and literary culture provide just two of the ‘intertextual frames’ through which these productions can be viewed, and they are best seen as elements in a broader, longer-term trend for marketable English historical material.61

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Andrew Higson, Film England: Culturally English Filmmaking since the 1990s (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 157. Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekly&id=senseandsensibility.htm, accessed 14 October 2017. Laura Jacobs, ‘Playing Jane’, Vanity Fair, January 1996, 74. Higson, Film England, 160.

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The studio-led expansion of heritage cinema tropes also extended to several American-set literary adaptations which represented the American past in terms similar to those used for the English past. The Age of Innocence (1993), directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted from the Edith Wharton novel, approached its aristocratic milieu with a familiar sense of visual splendour and heightened detail. Similarities may also be observed in the film’s casting and performance style, its references to high culture, its emphasis on dialogue over external action, and its themes of emotional containment and social exclusion. Once again, the project was financed by Columbia, who took it on after 20th Century Fox retreated from the $40 million proposed budget.62 The rise of American heritage can also be seen in a late-1990s cycle of transatlantic Henry James narratives. Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady (1996), featuring American characters in mainly European settings, was followed by The Wings of the Dove and Washington Square (both 1997). Merchant Ivory, who had already adapted The Europeans and The Bostonians and had vied with Campion to produce The Portrait of a Lady, released The Golden Bowl in 2000. The outsize influence of Howards End and other heritage films can also be observed in Titanic (1997), a quintessentially transatlantic period narrative. As Julian Stringer has suggested, Titanic ‘combines technological spectacle with pristine heritage visuals’.63 However, this was no longer low-budget filmmaking for niche audiences. Whereas heritage films had once provided an alternative to the blockbuster, Hollywood studio involvement led to its most marketable elements being incorporated into mainstream filmmaking.

‘An emotional event’: The rise of Miramax This mainstreaming of heritage cinema tropes, and the representations of England associated with them, was undertaken most forcefully by Miramax under the leadership of Bob and Harvey Weinstein. The majority of their early successes – notably Cinema Paradiso (1988), Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) and the British import The Crying Game (1992) – were ‘negative pickups’ which they had licenced (and in some cases re-edited) after their completion. But 62 63

Griffin and Masters, Hit & Run, 340. Julian Stringer, ‘“The China Had Never Been Used!”: On the Patina of Perfect Images in Titanic’, in Kevin S. Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (eds.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 206.

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Miramax’s 1993 acquisition by Disney provided a line of credit which enabled them to invest in projects at earlier stages and even to package and produce films on their own. Miramax’s reputation during the immediate post-Disney period derives largely from their handling of controversial ‘indie’ films such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Clerks (1994) and Kids (1995), which were associated with emerging American auteurs and marketed to young audiences. But the company was responsible for a much broader range of films and many of their most successful films – critically and commercially – were cut from quite different cloth. Marquee releases such as The Piano (1993), Good Will Hunting (1997), Life Is Beautiful (1998) and Chocolat (2000) were orientated towards adult audiences and carried an air of prestige and sophistication. The latter two also underline Miramax’s consistent engagement with European period material, an interest that also extended to the English past. The company bought the American rights to heritage films such as Enchanted April, The Wings of a Dove and Mrs Brown (1996) and were responsible for producing Emma and the royal drama Restoration (1995). They also distributed Stiff Upper Lips (1998), an Airplane-style parody of English heritage conventions. If Miramax’s Americanset films were sometimes controversial, their international films tended to be more conventional, with an audience appeal based on their cultural value.64 As A. O. Scott put it, ‘What Bob and Harvey Weinstein did was not primarily to cultivate the public’s taste for exotic or adventurous films, but rather to revive the tradition of prestige filmmaking that the studios had allowed to languish in their pursuit of franchisable blockbusters, overseas receipts and cross-media synergy.’65 As with the heritage films discussed earlier, the impression of quality which Miramax cultivated around their films functioned as a form of product differentiation in an increasingly crowded market. Miramax’s extensive marketing and their strategic exploitation of film awards proved to be a key element in this process. As we have seen, the American boxoffice performance of heritage films such as Chariots of Fire, A Room with a View and Howards End was significantly enhanced by strong showings at the Academy Awards. For films which did not possess conventional marketing hooks (such as star-casts or pre-sold source material) and for distributors which worked with small advertising budgets, the financial repercussions of awards success were often substantial. Columbia organized the release of Sense and 64

65

Miramax did handle controversial British films as well, including The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1990) and Priest (1995). A. O. Scott, ‘Life without Miramax?’, The New York Times, 3 October 2004.

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Sensibility along similar lines but on a larger scale. Miramax took this strategy further still, marketing their films explicitly to Academy voters and using awards success to market them in turn to a global audience. The effectiveness of this practice was demonstrated by The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love, midbudget English historical films which crossed over from the specialty market to a mass audience and won Miramax their first and second Best Picture Academy Awards. In the process, the company transformed the commercial expectations associated with prestigious, literary, hitherto niche modes of filmmaking. As Collins has suggested, Miramax’s ‘prestige formula’ rested on their ability to package films which ‘radiate a quality cultural experience while being so intensively marketed’, thus maintaining a delicate equilibrium between art and commerce.66 The early development of The English Patient had nothing to do with Miramax. The film, an adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, was developed by American producer Saul Zaentz. Working with the British screenwriter-director Anthony Minghella, Zaentz invested $5 million of his own money in the film and raised a further $20 million from 20th Century Fox, who planned to distribute it through their Fox Searchlight and Fox 2000 divisions.67 Amid rising costs, however, the studio became sceptical about the film’s commercial viability and just three weeks before production was due to begin they withdrew their funding.68 With the cast and crew in limbo and no interest from other studios, Miramax offered $28 million to distribute the film worldwide.69 This was a high fee for a company which had previously dealt with much smaller budgets, and Disney gave their approval on the condition that the overseas rights were re-sold to external distributors.70 The last-minute timing of Miramax’s intervention allowed them to drive a hard bargain and gave them leverage in the production of the film. It also allowed the company to fashion a promotional narrative in which, as Peter Biskind summarizes, the ‘courageous indie rode in on a white horse to save the fair maiden from the clutches of the foxy old studio king’.71 In the process, Miramax refined their corporate image as a principled purveyor of quality fare and an antidote to major studio philistinism. 66 67

68 69 70

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Collins, Bring on the Books, 149. Author’s emphasis. Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 244; Perren, Indie Inc., 167. John Blades, ‘Minghella’s Film Fitting Treatment of Ondaatje Novel’, 24 November 1996. Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures, 244. Ken Auletta, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, The New Yorker, 16 December 2002. Other sources suggest that the decision to sell the foreign rights was made by Harvey Weinstein. Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures, 246.

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At the same time, 20th Century Fox’s doubts about The English Patient’s financial prospects were not unreasonable. Although Zaentz had a strong record as a producer, Minghella was untested in films on this scale and the cast, led by British actors Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas, were not widely known. Its source material, a novel by Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje, was critically garlanded but lacking in mass appeal. And the film combined a subjective, associative narrative structure (not unlike The Remains of the Day) with an extended running time. But rather than selling The English Patient as a heritage film or a literary adaptation, Miramax’s marketing campaign attempted to link it to older epic films such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), another wartime desert adventure, and Doctor Zhivago (1965), which shared its literary pedigree and its doomed, nostalgic love story. These classical-era Hollywood associations flattered the cultural aspirations of the filmmakers and may have helped sell the film to older audiences. Marcy Granata, Miramax’s executive vice-president of marketing and publicity, explained that their strategy was to sell it not as ‘a small, precious film’ but rather as an epic movie ‘with big emotions, sweeping environments and a story of intrigue, romance and betrayal’. Extending the contrast between Miramax and mainstream Hollywood output, The English Patient was to be positioned as ‘an event film – not like Independence Day or Twister, but an emotional event’.72 This ambitious strategy was backed up by serious investment: Harvey Weinstein later claimed that the company had spent $42 million on prints and advertising, considerably more than they had invested in the film’s production.73 Critical and public reaction to The English Patient upon its release in December 1996 was positive, ensuring that it would be Miramax’s principal challenger in the awards season and the focus of its marketing efforts. The film duly won nine Academy Awards – a figure exceeded only by Ben-Hur (1959) and West Side Story (1961) at the time. As expected, awards exposure stimulated demand for the film, and spikes in its weekly gross can be seen in the week following the Academy Awards and the week after the announcement of the nominations.74 The English Patient ultimately grossed over $78 million in the North America box office with an additional $150 million overseas, a sore point for Miramax as they had already sold the foreign distribution rights.75 72 73 74

75

Quoted in Claudia Eller, ‘Miramax’s Patient Approach’, Los Angeles Times, 21 March 1997. Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures, 275. Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekly&id=englishpatient.htm, accessed 24 October 2017. Eriq Gardner, ‘Miramax Can’t Trim Saul Zaentz’s $20 Million English Patient Lawsuit’, Hollywood Reporter, 5 February 2014.

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Somewhat improbably, Harvey Weinstein maintained that the film was not profitable, leading to protracted legal conflict with Zaentz over unpaid monies.76 It is certainly possible that Miramax were creative in their accounting, but it is also true that they spent heavily in order to position a relatively obscure film for Oscar glory, and these costs had a serious impact on their bottom line. Crooked Hollywood accounting practices were brazenly satirized in Miramax’s next headline release, Shakespeare in Love. Making plans for a new production, the financier Fennyman suggests paying the actors and the author a share of the profits. When theatre owner Henslowe remarks that there are never any profits, Fennyman declares ‘of course not!’. ‘I think you may have hit on something,’ Henslowe replies. Like The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love was developed outside Miramax, but under rather different circumstances. The original concept for the film – that Shakespeare’s Elizabethan London has parallels with the Hollywood of modern screenwriters – was devised by Marc Norman and developed by director Edward Zwick. Zwick made a deal with Universal and hired British playwright Tom Stoppard to revise Norman’s script.77 Much like David Copperfield, in which the involvement of British novelist Hugh Walpole eclipsed the work of the original American screenwriter, Stoppard was given precedence over Norman in the film’s marketing and reception. Preproduction work on the film began in late 1991 with an in-demand Julia Roberts cast as the female lead. The role of Shakespeare proved harder to fill, however, and after Daniel Day-Lewis declined the part Roberts decided to drop out of the project entirely. With sets under construction in London but no stars in the cast, Universal also withdrew.78 The film thus entered a process known as ‘turnaround’, in which a studio attaches costs to abandoned projects in the hope of recovering its investment. If any new studio wished to revive Shakespeare in Love, they would have to pay Universal $4.5 million on top of any new budget for the film.79 This high cost served as a deterrent, and Miramax took several years to reach a deal with Universal to take control of the project. Like The English Patient, then, Shakespeare in Love came to Miramax after being abandoned by a major studio. The company’s other major successes during the 1990s, Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting, were acquired in the same way from Columbia TriStar and Warner Bros. subsidiary Castle Rock respectively. Projects that the 76

77 78 79

Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=englishpatient.htm, October 2017. Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures, 327. Ibid. Ibid., 328.

accessed

24

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major studios regarded as unviable or difficult to market thus became profitable for Miramax. But if this suggests that the company’s values differed from those of the major studios at the time, it also reveals how much they remained dependent on the wider Hollywood ecosystem. Shakespeare in Love went into production in 1997, some six years after its original start, with John Madden directing. American actor Gwyneth Paltrow, who was under contract to Miramax, was given first billing among a mainly British cast, and the Shakespeare role was played by relatively unknown actor Joseph Fiennes. Underlining his influence over the project, Harvey Weinstein took a producer credit on the film, an unusual step for an executive. As Collins suggests, the themes expressed in Shakespeare in Love were very much in tune with Miramax’s corporate image. In depicting the behind-the-scenes romance and creativity that bought Romeo and Juliet to the stage, ‘The film offers its own proof that literary passion can collapse the bar between commerce and art’ by creating a transcendent experience for its audience.80 In doing so, the film also worked to reconcile the literary with the cinematic, deferential high culture with irreverent low culture, romantic fulfilment with artistic inspiration, and comedy with tragedy. Shakespeare in Love’s marketing campaign initially highlighted its balance of literary and romantic aspects, featuring the principle tagline ‘love is the only inspiration’, although subsequent posters foregrounded its Academy Awards recognition instead.81 Weinstein claimed that around $30 million was spent on advertising on top of a $34 million budget and a $4.5 turnaround payment to Universal.82 He also recounted a now-familiar release strategy to the press: We began the movie with a small release. Went wide. Got to the academy. And the [advertising] blitzkrieg was really in support of the commercial release of the film. Shakespeare in Love was $38 million at the box office before the nomination. It’s $66 million now. And it’ll be $75 million by the time of the awards.83

The film proceeded to win seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it subsequently joined Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting in passing $100 million at the North American box-office. It performed even more strongly overseas, 80 81

82

83

Collins, Bring on the Books, 156. Emma French, Selling Shakespeare to Hollywood: The Marketing of Filmed Shakespeare Adaptations from 1989 into the New Millennium (Hatfield: University of Herfordshire Press, 2006), 141. Bernard Weinraub, ‘Just a Couple of Old Pals Wrestling for an Oscar’, The New York Times, 15 March 1999. Quoted in Ibid.

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recording a gross of $189 million. In combined worldwide earnings, the film stands as Miramax’s most successful release after Chicago (2002).84 Miramax is widely credited with redefining the relationship between niche filmmaking and the mainstream. According to Variety, their ballooning budgets ‘forever blurred the line of what constitutes a specialty division’.85 But even as the company grew, their flagship films continued to offer something which the major studios tended not to prioritize – old-fashioned prestige, the perception of quality and flattering associations with high culture, particularly literature. As the successes of The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love demonstrated, the representation of an English past provided the means to glue these qualities together. Neither could be called heritage films as such, but their crossover route to mass audiences – via careful marketing and awards success – was prepared by earlier films such as Howards End and Sense and Sensibility. As time passed, however, the flaws in Miramax’s strategy became clear. As Perren notes, the company had moved towards mid-range productions at a time when the rest of the industry was moving away from them, largely because films in this bracket were expensive to market and difficult to profit from.86 English Patient and Shakespeare in Love were hits, but their high marketing costs cut into Miramax’s profits, which may explain why Universal and 20th Century Fox had backed away from them to begin with. Comparable projects like Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001) and Cold Mountain (2003), directed by Madden and Minghella respectively, failed entirely. Producing a ‘quality’ alternative to mainstream Hollywood releases was viable if budgets (both for production and marketing) remained modest. But as Miramax’s spending began to reach the same levels as the major studios, this process became more perilous. With profits in decline, Disney elected not to renew Bob and Harvey Weinstein’s contracts in 2005, forcing them to leave the company they founded in 1979. Recent reporting has uncovered an appalling history of sexual predation at the company, but it is currently unclear whether this influenced Disney’s decision. *** The Merchant Ivory films A Room with a View, Howards End and The Remains of the Day – distributed and funded (in whole or in part) by an independent 84

85 86

Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=shakespeareinlove.htm, accessed 20 October 2017. Ian Mohr, ‘Too Big for Their Niches’, Variety, 21 March 2005. Perren, Indie Inc., 146.

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company, a specialty division and a major studio respectively – mark distinct stages in the growth and institutionalization of heritage film in America. Sense and Sensibility and Miramax’s late-1990s releases films took this process further, expanding the commercial horizons of ‘quality’ representations of the English past through intensive marketing to the point where they competed for the same mass audience as mainstream Hollywood output. Tropes initially associated with low-budget, imported, heritage films were thus gradually transposed into mainstream American filmmaking. In the process, a style that had enabled smaller films to reach niche audiences away from the commercially dominant blockbuster lost its ability to function as a marker of cultural distinction. The association between heritage-type films and literary adaptation, as well as the frequent references to novels and poetry in the films themselves, underlines the long-standing link between literature and ‘quality’ filmmaking in Hollywood. As in the 1930s, adaptation provided the means to harness the cultural capital attached to classic English literature for the greater benefit of the American film industry. Cultural capital cannot always be converted into economic capital, but the intensive marketing campaigns targeting Academy Awards success discussed in this chapter provided one method for expediting this transaction. English historical films thus remained prominent among Hollywood’s prestige products in the 1980s and 1990s, retaining their elevated position in what Collins calls the ‘hierarchies of American popular taste’.87 At the same time, the location of this product within the American film industry became more economically marginal. Despite Miramax’s best efforts, ‘quality’ was less commercially remunerative than it had been in the past. It might be tempting to associate the declining market for English historical material in America with Britain’s declining status as a world power. But as the following chapter demonstrates, demand for English historical material was far from exhausted.

87

Collins, Bring on the Books, 145.

7

Pirates, Wizards and Wardrobes: The English Past in the Contemporary Family Film

English historical subject matter returned to the centre of the American film industry at the beginning of the twenty-first century through a cycle of lavish and highly successful fantasy films aimed at family audiences. This chapter addresses the three most prominent examples: the Harry Potter franchise (2001–11), set in a magical version of contemporary Britain but heavily marked by English historical iconography, the Narnia franchise (2005–10), which segues between wartime England and a fantasy Anglo-medieval setting, and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (2003–17), set loosely around British colonial territories in the mid-eighteenth century. These fantasy franchises are, to a greater or lesser degree, quite unorthodox in their representation of England. In many respects they are not historical films at all. But I would argue that they demonstrate the durability, malleability and marketability of the English past in ways which connects them to the more orthodox representations discussed in the preceding chapters. It is worth emphasizing that the cycle addressed in this chapter has been far more lucrative than any previous cycle of English historical films. Their cumulative box-office grosses are remarkably high, as Tables 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 show. As a result, these franchises became increasingly central to the business operations of the studios which released them. Between the release of the first Harry Potter film in 2001 and the penultimate instalment in 2010, for example, Warner Bros.’s operating income increased from $450 million to $1.1 billion. This upturn cannot be attributed solely to the success of a single franchise, but Harry Potter-related business was nevertheless estimated to have accounted for around 15 per cent of the studio’s total income during this period.1 1

Ethan Smith, ‘Potter Studio Tries to Stretch Brand Forward’, Wall Street Journal, 18 July 2011.

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Table 7.1 The Harry Potter franchise, 2001–11a

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 a

Month of release

Worldwide gross ($)

Percentage Percentage domestic foreign

November 2001 November 2002 June 2004

974,755,371

32.6

67.4

878,979,634

29.8

70.2

796,688,549

31.3

68.7

November 2005 July 2007

896,911,078

32.3

67.7

939,885,929

31.1

68.9

July 2009

934,416,487

32.3

67.7

November 2010 July 2011

960,283,305

30.8

69.2

1,341,511,219

28.4

71.6

Data from Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=harrypotter.htm, accessed 19 November 2017.

Table 7.2 The Chronicles of Narnia franchise, 2005–10a Month of release The Chronicles of Narnia: December The Lion, the Witch 2005 and the Wardrobe The Chronicles of Narnia: May 2008 Prince Caspian The Chronicles of Narnia: December The Voyage of the 2010 Dawn Treader a

Worldwide gross ($)

Percentage Percentage domestic foreign

745,013,115

39.2

60.8

419,665,568

33.7

66.3

415,686,217

25.1

74.9

Data from Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=chroniclesofnarnia.htm, accessed 19 November 2017.

The films discussed in this chapter also stand apart from earlier English historical cycles due to their sequelization and their targeting of family audiences, practices that became increasingly important to Hollywood during this era. The rise of the franchise system has been a major element in the transition to what Thomas Schatz calls ‘Conglomerate Hollywood’, in which ownership of the American film industry was deregulated and consolidated

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Table 7.3 The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, 2003–17a

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales a

Month of release

Worldwide gross ($)

Percentage Percentage domestic foreign

July 2003

654,264,015

46.7

53.3

July 2006

1,066,179,725

39.7

60.3

May 2007

963,420,425

32.1

67.9

May 2011

1,045,713,802

23.1

76.9

May 2017

794,674,274

21.7

78.3

Data from Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=piratesofthecaribbean.htm, accessed 19 November 2017.

by a group of six ‘tightly diversified’ media corporations.2 As Schatz has put it, these six conglomerates came to control ‘all of the major film studios and broadcast networks, along with over 60 cable networks, and had attained a level of synergy across their movie, television and home entertainment sectors that resulted in unprecedented revenues and profits’.3 In this media economy, the ability to create film properties with the potential to be propagated beyond their original iteration became a key industrial strategy. As Schatz observes, and as the proliferation of sequels in Tables 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 attests, ‘a blockbuster series is the consummate renewable resource – a product line that can be strategically regenerated to sustain and actually increase its yield’.4 Crucially, this product line is not extended simply through the production of additional films: modern franchises are designed to be integrated and promoted across a range of media platforms, which in many cases are controlled by the same conglomerate. As Paul Grainge puts it, they are engineered to ‘travel through an integrated corporate structure’.5 Similarly, Simone Murray suggests that ‘the potential for any particular content package to be leveraged across multiple

2

3 4

5

Thomas Schatz, ‘The Studio System and Conglomerate Hollywood’, in Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (eds.), The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 25–6; Maltby, ‘Nobody Knows Everything’, 24. Schatz, ‘The Studio System’, 36. Thomas Schatz, ‘New Hollywood, New Millennium’, in Warren Buckland (ed.), Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2009), 31. Paul Grainge, Brand Hollywood: Selling Entertainment in a Global Media Age (London: Routledge, 2008), 10.

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media platforms has ceased to be merely a desirable asset. Rather, it has emerged as the indispensable characteristic of blockbuster media content.’6 In the era of Conglomerate Hollywood, therefore, the most economically significant film production is dedicated not to the creation of self-contained texts but to the conversion of pre-existing material into brands which can be cross-promoted and licenced over a range of interconnected media formats and delivery systems. The franchises favoured in the Conglomerate Hollywood era have increasingly targeted family audiences, featuring subject matter which aims to be suitable for young audiences without alienating older viewers. As Schatz proposes, the typical hero in the modern franchise is either adolescent or an ‘utterly naï ve man-child’ who inhabits a simplistic ‘Manichean universe of light and dark’ in which sexual situations and realistic violence are avoided.7 Peter Krä mer has highlighted the influence of the Walt Disney Company in this industry-wide turn towards inclusive family entertainment. Hollywood studios increasingly turned away from films aimed at younger audiences during the 1960s and 1970s in pursuit of adult-orientated material. However, Disney maintained its focus during this period on family entertainment films which it synergized through other parts of its business, particularly its theme parks. Then, at the end of the 1970s, the huge success of family adventure films such as notably Star Wars (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and E.T. (1982) re-established the value of the international family audience and media properties which could generate additional revenue through merchandising. In this way, Krä mer argues, the dominant business model favoured in modern Hollywood was pioneered by Disney.8 Disney also has a long history of combining family entertainment with English historical settings, and many of their biggest films have been adapted from classic English literature written for children. The huge success Mary Poppins (1964), based on the stories of P. L. Travers, was in fact the culmination in a sequence of animated films adapted from similar material, including Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), 101 Dalmatians (1961) and The Sword in the Stone (1963). Disney followed Mary Poppins with Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), also based on English children’s books. The studio treated English myth in Robin 6

7 8

Simone Murray, ‘Brand Loyalties: Rethinking Content within Global Corporate Media’, Media, Culture and Society 27, no. 3 (2005): 416. Schatz, ‘New Hollywood’, 32–3. Peter Krä mer, ‘Disney and Family Entertainment’, in Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond (eds.), Contemporary American Cinema (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006), 264–71.

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Hood (1973) and co-opted colonized spaces as settings for family entertainment in The Jungle Book (1967), Pocahontas (1995) and Tarzan (1999). Due primarily to the dominant influence of Disney, then, the Hollywood family film has deep connections to English historical settings. The huge success of the Harry Potter, Narnia and Pirates of the Caribbean films has accelerated this trend. Of course, the tendency towards fantasy in these films sets them apart from more conventional historical representations. But as Maria Sachiko Cecire has noted, narratives of this type nevertheless draw from an imagined, Anglicized version of history in order to ‘depict the past’s participation in contemporary ideas of the nation’.9 This chapter is structured slightly differently to the preceding studies of cycles. Rather than considering films individually, I will examine the Harry Potter, Narnia and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises on a broader, thematic basis. This is because there are a total of sixteen films in the three franchises, with more likely to follow, and this approach makes it easier to draw connections across large bodies of work. The first section considers the initial development of each franchise, focussing on their basis in licensable intellectual property depicting the English past. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which these properties were acquired, managed and cross-promoted by the production companies which made them and the media conglomerates responsible for their distribution. The second section examines the production of films in these franchises, focussing on their increasing reliance on international production centres and global divisions of labour, and their exploitation of subsidies and tax breaks from local governments. Whereas runaway productions depicting the English past had previously used British studios and locations by default, the contemporary representation of the English past is no longer tied to production facilities in Britain itself.

Licensing the past: Intellectual property, conglomeration and the franchise boom Steve Ross, the influential CEO of Time Warner, went some way towards dispelling the glamour which still surrounds Hollywood when he declared, ‘We 9

Maria Sachiko Cecire, ‘English Exploration and Textual Travel in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’, in Cecire, Hannah Field, Kavita Mudan Finn and Malini Roy (eds.), Space and Place in Children’s Literature, 1789 to the Present (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2015), 114.

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are not just in the movie business, we are in the intellectual property business.’10 Continuing the process described in Chapter 5, modern studios have come to function primarily as the financiers, distributors and marketers of films, with the production process typically contracted to smaller organizations which fall within their orbit. The studios’ most valuable asset, therefore, is the intellectual property under their control: distinct stories, characters or ‘universes’ to which they possess exclusive adaptation rights. As Edward Jay Epstein has suggested, Hollywood studios function largely as ‘service organizations’ which collect and allocate fees for the intellectual properties under their management.11 Access to intellectual property which is suited to the creation of multi-film franchises is thus crucial to profitability: as marketing and production costs rise, films based on material which is already familiar to audiences offer the safest investments. As Epstein puts it, ‘The studios’ business nowadays is entirely driven by huge franchises that serve as worldwide licensing platforms.’12 Tim Wu has explained how this model operates, Every film is anchored to an underlying intellectual property. … The film is thus simultaneously a product in its own right as well as, in effect, an advert for the underlying property. The returns on the film are thereby understood to include not simply the box office receipts, but also the appreciation in the property value and its associated licencing revenue.13

The need to produce films which have the potential to expand beyond their running time to form the basis of additional films, as well as products in different media platforms, has also affected Hollywood storytelling. As Schatz observes, many films aim to delineate ‘a world that is internally coherent but highly complex, and that is by design too expansive to be contained within a single film’.14 Modern franchises thus break away from the norms of ‘classical’ storytelling, assuming a narrative model which Henry Jenkins terms ‘worldcentred’ rather than ‘character-centred’.15 The most prominent example of 10

11 12

13

14 15

Quoted in Edward Jay Epstein, The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood (New York: Random House, 2006), 219. Epstein, Big Picture, 107. Edward Jay Epstein, The Hollywood Economist 2.0: The Hidden Financial Reality behind the Movies (New York: Melville House, 2010), 76. Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (London: Atlantic Books, 2010), 228. Schatz, ‘New Hollywood’, 33. Henry Jenkins, ‘The Pleasure of Pirates and What It Tells Us about World Building in Branded Entertainment’, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 13 June 2007, http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/06/for ced_simplicity_and_the_crit.html, accessed 24 November 2017.

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this may be Marvel’s sprawling ‘Cinematic Universe’, which spans multiple interlinked films and television serials. However, similar features can also be observed in the franchises under discussion in this chapter. The underlying intellectual property in the Harry Potter franchise was of course the bestselling book series (1997–2007) by J. K. Rowling. The first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, came to the attention of Londonbased production company Heyday Films. Under the leadership of producer David Heyman, the company had a ‘first look’ deal with Warner Bros. in which they were charged with developing British material.16 In 1998, shortly before the book was published in America under the amended title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights for an initial fee of $500,000. Crucially, the deal also gave them worldwide merchandising rights to the Harry Potter brand, allowing them to sell licences for other companies to produce Potter-branded products.17 The film was put into development at Heyday with Heyman as producer and Warner Bros. providing finance. In the meantime, Harry Potter became a global publishing sensation and acquired a dedicated fan following, raising the commercial stakes for the adaptation and compelling the filmmakers to hew closely to Rowling’s original vision. In the numerous column inches dedicated to the film’s development, anxiety regarding its fidelity was most often projected via Rowling’s apparent efforts to protect the film from American influence and to instil it with the Britishness which was perceived to be central to the novel. It was widely reported, for example, that Steven Spielberg left the film over his desire to cast American child-star Haley Joel Osment in the title role. According to one source, Spielberg ‘bailed over creative differences with Rowling and Warner Bros.’ because ‘the studio and author want to find an unknown British schoolboy’.18 Several months later, a Warner Bros. spokesman was quoted as saying ‘this will be a British Harry. Not a single person in this film will be anything other than British. Chris [Columbus, assigned as director] is very protective of the integrity of the book.’19 Non-British actors were indeed almost entirely absent from the production, although Richard Harris (playing Dumbledore) was Irish by birth. These extra-textual discourses served to position Rowling and Warner Bros. as like-minded allies in the film’s 16

17 18

19

Geoff Boucher and Claudia Eller, ‘The End Nears for Harry Potter on Film’, Los Angeles Times, 7 November 2010. ‘Harry Potter and the Merchandising Gold’, The Economist, 19 June 2003. Joshua Grossberg, ‘From Home Alone to Harry Potter’, Eonline, 29 March 2000, www.eonline.com/ news/39633/from-home-alone-to-harry-potter, accessed 15 November 2017. ‘Warners Pledge British Harry Potter’, Guardian, 13 July 2000.

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realization. A New York Times article put it rather less delicately, stating that Warner Bros. used Rowling ‘as a resource to satisfy those who view her works as a sacred text’.20 The fact that day-to-day production was carried out by a British production was largely elided, and details of Rowling’s specific role in the film were left largely to the imaginations of her fans. Press coverage of the film also highlights the extent to which a patina of Britishness was deployed as a kind production value, averting criticism from Harry Potter’s considerable fan-base and authorizing Warner Bros. to extract maximum returns from the intellectual property under their control. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (or Philosopher’s Stone, as it was named outside America) was a crucial release for Warner Bros. The film opened in cinemas in the same year that Time Warner, Warner Bros.’s parent company, finalized its merger with internet service provider America Online (AOL) in a deal worth $183 billion. Despite being formed in 1991, AOL was the ascendant partner at the time of the deal and the merger gave their shareholders 55 per cent ownership of the new conglomerate. Much of the discussion surrounding the creation of AOL Time Warner (as it became known) centred on its potential to generate innovative synergies between the online and traditional media platforms it controlled. The Harry Potter franchise was a much-needed opportunity to prove the effectiveness of this model. According to the new company’s co-chief operating officer, Harry Potter provided the means for ‘driving synergy’ within the conglomerate: ‘We use the different platforms to drive the movie, and the movie to drive business across the platforms.’21 As Grainge put it, Harry Potter ‘embodied [their] most fervent ambitions for synergy’.22 In a New Yorker profile, Ken Auletta outlined AOL Time Warner’s vision of holistic corporate selfpropagation: America Online connects half of all American Internet users from their homes, and its subscribers – they number thirty-one million – will be led to various links, including those to Harry Potter merchandise that the company licenses and sells. Moviefone, which AOL Time Warner owns, will promote and sell tickets. The magazine division, with more than a hundred and sixty titles, among them Time, People, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, will feature ads and contests and innumerable cover stories. Warner Bros. studio, 20

21

22

Rick Lyman, ‘Coming Soon: Harry Potter and Hollywood’s Cash Cow’, New York Times, 4 November 2001. Quoted in ‘Does the Hype about Harry Potter Vindicate the AOL/Time Warner Merger?’, The Economist, 8 November 2001. Grainge, Brand Hollywood, 142.

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which made the movie, will advertise on Time Warner cable systems, which reach about twenty per cent of American homes wired with cable television, and on Turner Broadcasting, which owns four of the top ten cable networks, and will air promotions for the movie. Warner Music Group will produce the soundtrack and sell the CDs and tapes.23

Beyond the AOL Time Warner conglomerate, Warner Bros. signed licensing deals for Harry Potter tie-ins with eighty-five brands, including Coca-Cola.24 They might have sold more – Warner Bros. had licenced Batman (1989) to some 150 companies – but the studio elected to avoid alienating fans by overexposing the Harry Potter brand.25 Nevertheless, fees from these merchandising arrangements were sufficient to cover much of film’s production costs before tickets went on sale, with the Coca-Cola licensing alone (covering the film and its first sequel) raising $150 million.26 The Sorcerer’s Stone was a huge success, but the AOL Time Warner conglomerate proved less buoyant. Mounting debt, accounting scandals and a record-breaking annual loss of $99 billion in 2002 hit the value of the company’s stock. AOL chairman Steve Case resigned in 2003 and the company proceeded to reinstate its pre-merger name, consigning the ‘AOL’ prefix to history.27 Many of the synergies which had been envisaged around the Harry Potter franchise failed to materialize, but Warner Bros. was nevertheless highly successful in managing the remaining films in the series. In the opinion of Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Harry Potter ‘has unequivocally been the best-managed franchise that we’ve ever seen, top to bottom’.28 They were aided by regular publication of Rowling’s Harry Potter books, which remained a phenomenon in their own right: by June 2011 an estimated 450 million copies had been sold in 67 languages.29 David Heyman and Heyday Films continued to produce the film and they were granted greater autonomy from Warner Bros. as the franchise continued, a move signalled by their more adventurous recruitment of directors (notably Alfonso Cuaró n, who led the third instalment) and the progressively darker, more mature tone of the films. Partly as a result, there is evidence to suggest that the Harry Potter franchise aged with its audience: around 25 per 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Ken Auletta, ‘Leviathan’, New Yorker, 29 October 2001. Lyman, ‘Coming Soon’. Ibid. Auletta, ‘Leviathan’. Grainge, Brand Hollywood, 131. Quoted in Boucher and Eller, ‘The End Nears for Harry Potter on Film’. ‘Harry’s Magic Numbers’, Variety, 18 July 2011.

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cent of the audience for Deathly Hallows Part 1 in 2011 were aged between eighteen and thirty-four, whereas only 10 per cent of the audience for the more child-friendly first film came from this age bracket.30 Harry Potter’s importance to Warner Bros. was made clear when The Deathly Hallows was split into two films, prolonging the franchise by a year and effectively doubling the revenue from the final book in the series. The studio continued to exploit its merchandising rights in the years that followed, most notably in a licencing arrangement with Universal theme parks. The first Harry Potter attraction, branded ‘The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’, opened at the Universal Orlando Resort in 2010 and expanded to the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park in 2016. Outside America, a ‘Wizarding World’ attraction features at Universal Studios Japan and another is under construction at Universal’s theme park in Beijing.31 Harry Potter also transferred successfully to video games: more than eighty different games had been licenced by 2016, selling forty-four million units in total.32 Nevertheless, the Harry Potter brand was driven by its films. As such, Warner Bros. announced an expanded partnership with Rowling in 2013. According to chief executive Kevin Tsujihara, who negotiated the deal shortly after assuming his position, ‘Re-establishing the franchise was incredibly important to our studio. It is a foundation piece of what our slate is going to look like going forward.’ Emphasizing the value of renewable, long-term franchises based on intellectual property licencing, Tsujihara described the ‘Harry Potter universe’ as ‘one of the three pillars’ in his company’s film strategy, the other two being Lego and the DC Comics ‘extended universe’.33 Accordingly, the studio announced the formation of the remarkably named ‘Harry Potter Global Franchise Development’ team in 2014. Their task, according to a press release reported in Variety, was the ‘optimization of the Harry Potter franchise globally through a cross-divisional marketing lens’ and the execution of ‘a high-level strategic vision for the Harry Potter brand and its ancillary businesses’.34 The first fruit of this new phase came with the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), which expanded the franchise 30 31

32

33

34

Brooks Barnes, ‘Warner’s Edgy Harry Potter Campaign Pays Off ’, New York Times, 22 November 2010. Brady MacDonald, ‘Theme Parks Develop “Blockbuster Worlds” Based on Movie Franchises’, Los Angeles Times, 17 August 2016. Andrew Pulver, ‘Fantastic Riches and Where to Find Them: How to Grow a $22bn Franchise’, Guardian, 21 November 2016. Ryan Faughnder, ‘Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara’s Big Bet on J.K. Rowling Could Pay Off with Fantastic Beasts’, Los Angeles Times, 18 November 2016. Leo Barraclough, ‘Warner Bros. Conjures Up Harry Potter Global Franchise Development Team’, Variety, 30 June 2014.

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beyond the Harry Potter character by travelling seventy years into the past. Establishing continuity with the main series, Fantastic Beasts was produced by Heyman and directed by David Yates, who had directed the final four Harry Potter films. It was also filmed in England, despite its American setting. In the most visible attempt to integrate the new series into the existing franchise, the script was written by Rowling. In this way, Rowling remained at the franchise’s centre, authorizing as well as authoring its extension and sustaining relations to the core Harry Potter fan community through her social media activity. The high profile maintained by Rowling may also be understood as a means to strategically obscure true control over the franchise’s underlying intellectual property. In Conglomerate Hollywood, ownership trumps authorship. The concurrent success of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–3), distributed by Time Warner subsidiary New Line, encouraged producers to search for similar English fantasy books. C. S. Lewis’s Christianthemed series The Chronicles of Narnia, which had sold over eighty-five million copies since the publication of the first instalment in 1950, was among the more obvious targets.35 Amid interest from more established companies, the rights to all seven books were licenced to newly formed production company Walden Media in December 2011 for an undisclosed sum.36 The timing was auspicious, coming just weeks after the first Harry Potter film opened in cinemas. Walden Media were founded in 2001 with a self-declared focus on ‘the marriage of entertainment and education’.37 Co-founder Michael Flaherty later claimed, ‘We think that great stories have a power and ability not just to entertain, but also to educate, uplift, inspire – even transform.’38 Cary Granat, Walden’s other co-founder, was even more explicit about their aims, stating, ‘If a studio could be born that marries the best of family entertainment and a new approach to education, we could show kids an alternative to what they learn at school.’39 This missionary posture attracted the interest of billionaire investor Philip Anschutz, who had a record of supporting conservative Christian causes. Walden was subsequently incorporated into the Anschutz Entertainment Group, making it part of a conglomerate which also operated the largest chain of cinemas in

35 36 37 38

39

Paul Martin, ‘Narnia: The Book, the Film … and the Teachers’, Financial Times, 1 April 2004. Cathy Dunkley, ‘Mouse Making Narnia Myths’, Variety, 1 March 2004. Charles Lyon, ‘Walden Media Merges Entertainment, Education’, Variety, 13 May 2002. Quoted in Nathalie Dupont, Between Hollywood and Godlywood: The Case of Walden Media (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015), 71. Quoted in Martin, ‘Narnia: The Book, the Film … and the Teachers’.

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America.40 This financial security allowed Walden to begin adapting The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first book in the Narnia series, without involving a major studio. The company might even have handled the film’s distribution themselves, given Anschutz’s cinema holdings, but arranging distribution overseas would have posed greater challenges. In March 2004, therefore, Walden announced a co-financing and distribution deal with Disney for the first Narnia film, with the two companies splitting production costs on a fifty-fifty basis.41 Filming began less than four months later. The Lion was released under Disney’s family-friendly banner, but as their relatively late involvement suggests, Walden exerted much greater influence during its development. The influence of Walden was also clear in The Lion’s marketing strategy. In keeping with their educational precepts, 300,000 study guides were sent to American schoolteachers, a strategy often used to promote literary adaptations but less commonly seen in family films.42 The film was also heavily marketed towards Christian audiences, an approach which had been instrumental in the unexpected success of The Passion of the Christ (2004) the previous year. A specialist evangelical marketing agency was contracted to design and distribute promotional material to church congregations, and, as James Russell has argued, efforts were made to ‘position the film as an explicitly evangelical experience’.43 Walden even sought advertising space in the pulpit: American pastors were offered a chance to win $1,000 and trip to London for the best sermon which mentioned Narnia.44 In all, some $5 million out of an $80 million print and advertising budget was spent niche marketing the film to Christian audiences.45 The Lion was a huge success, but the relationship between Walden and Disney was unstable. Later reports based on sources close to Disney suggested that Anschutz had attempted to renegotiate his contract after the film became a hit, insisting that Disney return part of the distribution fee which they had charged to Walden.46 Further conflict followed over the production and release of the second Narnia film, Prince Caspian. The tone of the sequel was quite different to The Lion. Its Christian allegory was less pronounced and greater emphasis 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

James Russell, ‘Narnia as a Site of National Struggle: Marketing, Christianity, and National Purpose in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, Cinema Journal 48, no. 4 (2009): 67. Dunkley, ‘Mouse Making Narnia Myths’. Dupont, Between Hollywood and Godlywood, 163. Russell, ‘Narnia as a Site of National Struggle’, 71. ‘Write a Sermon, Win a Prize?’, Honolulu Advertiser, 10 December 2005. Russell, ‘Narnia as a Site of National Struggle’, 69. Patrick Goldstein and James Rainey, ‘The Secret History of Why Disney Dumped Narnia’, Los Angeles Times, 19 January 2009.

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was placed on action and Lord of the Rings-influenced battle sequences. The marketing campaign highlighted this new inflection, targeting a male teenage audience and making little attempt to reach church audiences.47 As Table 7.2 indicates, Prince Caspian proved to be significantly less popular at the box office than its predecessor. According to producer Mark Johnson, the effort to attract teenagers to the series led them to ‘stray from our core audience’ and may have alienated families.48 It was also considerably more expensive, with production costs of $225 million, including almost $100 million for visual effects, and a further $175 million for worldwide marketing.49 The release date selected for the film might also have caused problems. Whereas The Lion rolled out to cinemas in the Christmas season, Walden insisted (over Disney’s objections) on a summer release for Prince Caspian, and faced tougher competition as a result.50 Disney proceeded to cancel its contract with Walden in December 2008, before production on the third Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, had begun. Disney had lost money, and it was not able to control the franchise as it wished because the Narnia rights were held by Walden. The Narnia franchise nevertheless remained attractive to film producers and within a month Walden announced a new partnership with 20th Century Fox.51 As a result, The Dawn Treader arrived in cinemas only slightly later than planned, taking a Christmas rather than a summer release date in 2010. Walden also sought to reconnect with the family and Christian audiences targeted by the first film. According to an executive in the Anschutz conglomerate, ‘We’re reaching out to faith contingencies around the world where C.S. Lewis’ works are well known and resonate strongly.’52 The Dawn Treader nonetheless failed to repeat the success of The Lion and its worldwide gross was slightly lower than Prince Caspian. Walden did not produce a fourth Narnia film and in 2011 their rights to the series expired.53 The Narnia films were popular, but their performance paled beside the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises which preceded them. Neither Walden, Disney nor 20th Century Fox was able to integrate the franchise into their conglomerate structures in the way that Warner Bros. had with Harry Potter, and the content of the films was less suited to ancillary merchandising. 47 48

49 50 51 52 53

Dupont, Between Hollywood and Godlywood, 175. Claudia Eller and John Horn, ‘Producers Hope Dawn Treader Has Magic of First Narnia Film’, Los Angeles Times, 3 December 2010. Goldsmith and Rainey, ‘Secret History of Why Disney Dumped Narnia’. Tatiana Siegel, ‘Walden Wallflowers’, Variety, 12 January 2009. Tatiana Siegel and Michael Fleming, ‘Fox to Develop Narnia 3’, Variety, 28 January 2008. Eller and Horn, ‘Producers Hope Dawn Treader’. Dupont, Between Hollywood and Godlywood, 140.

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As written by C. S. Lewis, moreover, continuity between each instalment diminished as the series progressed: the same four children appeared in the first two books, but only two returned in the third and all were absent in the fourth. Nevertheless, the intellectual property value of the Narnia series was not entirely diminished. In 2016 the C. S. Lewis Company licenced the fourth book in the series to a different American production company.54 The uneven progress of the franchise may yet continue, albeit under entirely new management. The intellectual property basis for the Pirates of the Caribbean was a waterbased ride at Disneyland which opened in 1967.55 Unlike Narnia, therefore, the source material was directly owned and managed by the Disney Company. In fact, the film emerged from an effort by Disney’s film division to mine intellectual property from the conglomerate’s wildly popular theme parks.56 The two other films which were developed in this process had limited success, and Pirates was initially conceived as a direct-to-video production.57 Whereas the intellectual property behind the Harry Potter and Narnia franchises offered considerable direction for filmmakers, the Disneyland ride had almost nothing in the way of usable narrative or character. Moreover, the small number of pirate movies in recent memory, notably Pirates (1986) and Cutthroat Island (1995), had been expensive and unpopular. However, the project grew after it came to the attention of Jerry Bruckheimer, the leading independent producer under contract to Disney at the time. Bruckheimer had been with Disney since 1991 and he developed some of their most successful live-action films. As producer, he oversaw the two main innovations which distinguished the Pirates franchise from previous attempts to revive the pirate genre. Firstly, he hired writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who rewrote the film around the concept that the pirate antagonists were cursed, adding a supernatural element which refreshed the conventions of the genre and motivated the use of spectacular visual effects.58 Secondly, Bruckheimer cast Johnny Depp as the lead pirate, giving rise to an unconventional performance which became a key marketing element for the franchise. Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner was highly reluctant to approve Bruckheimer’s budget, which was initially $120 million but rose to around $150

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Justin Kroll, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia Revival in the Works from TriStar, Mark Gordon’, Variety, 9 August 2016. Emily Mae Czachor, ‘Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean: 50 Years of Change’, Los Angeles Times, 7 July 2017. James B. Stewart, DisneyWar (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 398. Ibid. Ibid., 399.

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million. According to James B. Stewart, Bruckheimer eventually won approval by arguing that other studios (notably Warner Bros.) were spending similar sums to develop franchise properties of their own, and that Disney should do the same in order to remain competitive.59 The first Pirates film was hugely successful and Bruckheimer quickly began work on two sequels. In order to secure the availability of key cast and crew and to manage costs through economies of scale, the second and third instalments were filmed back to back, a mammoth undertaking which emulated Warner Bros.’s expansion of the Matrix franchise in 2003. Whereas the second and third instalments of the Harry Potter and Narnia franchises grossed less at the box office than their predecessors, both Pirates sequels surpassed the initial instalment. Disney also accelerated Pirates merchandising as the franchise matured. The company’s consumer products division had passed on producing a range of branded toys in 2003, but by 2011 it was estimated that sales of merchandise products emanating from the films were worth $1.6 billion.60 However, this franchise expansion came at a cost. Disney did not publicize their budget, but it was widely reported that the combined cost of the second and third films exceeded $500 million, not including marketing.61 The 2008 financial crisis and the decline of the DVD market made spending on this scale increasingly unsustainable, and the Los Angeles Times reported that the franchise’s fourth instalment would reflect the ‘fiscal restraint’ of new studio chairman Rich Ross.62 Despite its strong box-office performances, then, the costs of sustaining the Pirates franchise were immense. In the hiatus between the fourth and fifth instalments, Disney announced that it would not renew its ‘first look’ deal with Bruckheimer. Their acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in 2009 and Lucasfilm in 2012 provided Disney with highly marketable franchise properties and the opportunity to manage costs more carefully, reducing their need to work with free-spending independent producers like Bruckheimer.63 Nevertheless, the erratic progress of the Pirates franchise continued. As Table 7.3 indicates, the percentage of box-office revenues taken by the franchise outside North America expanded dramatically as the franchise continued. The Chinese 59 60

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Ibid., 400–1. Ibid., 437; Georg Szalai, ‘Disney: Pirates of the Caribbean Merchandise Has Made $1.6B in Sales’, Hollywood Reporter, 1 February 2011. Diane Garrett, ‘Big-Budget Bang-Ups’, Variety, 20 April 2007. Claudia Eller and Dawn C. Chmielewski, ‘Not Even Bruckheimer Movies Can Escape Budget Cuts’, Los Angeles Times, 3 May 2010. Danny Miller, ‘Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer to End Longtime Partnership’, Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2013.

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market proved particularly receptive, and in 2016 Disney opened a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean Treasure Cove’ attraction at their theme park in Shanghai. In 2017 the park hosted the opening of the fifth Pirates film, making it the first Hollywood film to premiere in the People’s Republic of China.64 As with Harry Potter and Warner Bros., global recognition of the Pirates franchise thus aided the strategic expansion of the Disney Company, helping them to open new markets and new platforms for the distribution of intellectual property under their management.

Fantastic rebates and where to find them: Global production and incentive schemes The global expansion of conglomerate Hollywood’s key franchises is also reflected by the conditions of their physical production. Each of the franchises discussed in this chapter involved extensive production outside America. As discussed in previous chapters, Hollywood production has long been conducted on a global basis. But when English historical films left America, their runaway location was almost always England itself, either for geographic authenticity or due to the availability of specific economic incentives. Some exceptions may be noted: The Black Knight (1954) and Camelot (1967) used some Spanish locations to evoke Arthurian England, and The Knights of the Round Table (1953) was filmed partially in Ireland. Tess (1979) was filmed entirely on location in France. But in the twenty-first century it became common for American films to recreate the English past using studios and locations all over the globe. In From Hell (2001), A Knight’s Tale (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (2003), for example, the Czech Republic was made to stand in for various periods in England’s history. This geographic shift reflects the mobility of the dominant ‘package-unit’ production system and the increasingly flexible delivery of film-making services, including post-production work. In addition, a growing array of subsidies and tax breaks from national governments vying to attract Hollywood investment has incentivized runaway production as never before. As the costs entailed by blockbuster production spiral upwards and producers seek to offset their spending through subsidies, franchise productions have become remarkably adept at moving from location to location. As Tino Balio has put it,

64

Dave McNary, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales to Hold World Premiere in Shanghai’, Variety, 25 April 2017.

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modern Hollywood studios are engaged in a particular form of globalization in which they expand horizontally into emerging worldwide markets, expand vertically by forming alliances with independent producers, many of whom are based outside America, and spread risks by partnering with foreign investors.65 But amid this global dispersion of film production and global expansion of film audiences, Hollywood studios (and the multimedia conglomerates which have absorbed them) remain firmly in control of film distribution. As Miller et al. suggest, power thus ‘remains vested in a small number of companies’ which have ‘successfully controlled the gateways to film and television that make real money for minimal outlay’.66 In keeping with their avowed fidelity to the Britishness of the book series, all eight Harry Potter films were made in British studios and locations. In 2001 Heyday Films set up shop at the Leavesden studio in Hertfordshire, a former aircraft factory which had been retrofitted as a studio in the 1990s.67 The company was able to occupy the facilities for the duration of the franchise, enabling their large standing sets to remain in situ even while stages were used for other films. The franchise also relied on substantial visual effects design in post-production. This was undertaken in Los Angeles for the first film, but subsequent work was carried out in Britain as local effects vendors expanded to meet the needs of large-scale American production.68 Of course, the decision to work in Britain offered considerable economic advantages. In particular, the initial instalments in the Harry Potter series benefitted from the British government’s Section 42 tax relief program, which was designed to stimulate investment in higherbudget films by allowing investors to limit their exposure to British taxes.69 The scheme offered complex but lucrative incentives to investors in ‘British qualified’ films (typically those which spent more than 70 per cent of their budget in the UK) by allowing production spending to be deferred against tax over time.70 In 2016 it was reported that investments in a range of films, including several Harry Potter instalments, enabled the Royal Bank of Scotland to defer an estimated 65

66 67

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Tino Balio, ‘“A Major Presence in All of the World’s Important Markets”: The Globalization of Hollywood in the 1990s’, in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, 58; Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria and Richard Maxwell, Global Hollywood (London: BFI Publishing, 2001), 42. Ibid., 55. James Russell, ‘Hollywood Blockbusters and UK Production Today’, in Justin Smith, Laraine Porter and Ian Hunter (eds.), The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History (London: Routledge, 2017), 178. Ryan Gilbey, ‘Ten Years of Making Harry Potter Films, by Cast and Crew’, Guardian, 7 July 2011. Maggie Magor and Philip Schlesinger, ‘“For This Relief, Much Thanks”: Taxation, Film Policy and the UK Government’, Screen 50, no. 3 (2009): 304. ‘Torn Curtain’, Sight and Sound 14, no. 3 (2004): 3.

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$1 billion in taxes between 1998 and 2007.71 State-sanctioned tax relief thus made investment in British film production attractive to parties outside the film industry, which in turn made it easier for Hollywood studios to raise finance for British runaway production. However, in 2004 the British government announced plans to abolish the Section 42 provision, along with other more aggressive tax avoidance schemes related to film production. In their place, a new system of rebates and tax credits was proposed to ensure that the British film industry remained competitive.72 In this way, the benefits of government support passed from external investors to British-based production companies, who were offered greater value for money spent in Britain. This transition to a new inventive system initially created uncertainty among American studios. The outsourcing of film production to Britain became less appealing, particularly as the dollar began to weaken against the pound, and Warner Bros. indicated that they might move the fifth Harry Potter film overseas.73 However, the new tax credit system soon proved to be well suited to Hollywood studios and to the production of large-scale films in particular. Producers of British qualifying films were able to claim a cash rebate worth up to 20 per cent (later increased to 25 per cent) of UK expenditure, and were entitled to additional tax relief on 80 per cent of their British costs.74 The new measures were particularly attractive to American producers because production expenditure was uncapped, and because the rebate could be applied to all UK spending, including the salaries of American stars and crew.75 In addition, films were able to qualify for the rebate by spending as little as 25 per cent of their budget in Britain, allowing producers to combine work in Britain with production elsewhere. At the insistence of the European Commission, the system for determining whether a film qualified as British included a ‘cultural test’: to receive the tax credits, films were scored on their ‘cultural content’ and their ‘contribution’ to British culture.76 Films which were set in Britain or based on British material thus had a distinct advantage; crucially for Harry Potter, this included those which depicted a ‘fictionalised version’ of the nation. The 71

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Emma Dunkley, ‘RBS Enjoyed £ 1bn Tax Break from Cinema Blockbusters’, Financial Times, 16 February 2016. Adam Dawtrey, ‘U.K. Tax Proposals Baffle Filmmakers’, Variety, 8 August 2005. Adam Dawtrey, ‘Blighty Tax Break Tiny for H’wood’, Variety, 10 August 2005. ‘UK Tax Relief ’, British Film Commission, www.britishfilmcommission.org.uk/film-production/u k-film-tax-relief, accessed 10 December 2017. Adam Dawtrey, ‘Snaring the Big H’wood Pictures’, Variety, 29 November 2010. John Hill, ‘Living with Hollywood: British Film Policy and the Definition of “Nationality”’, International Journal of Cultural Policy 22, no. 5 (2016): 712.

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franchise thus qualified as British quite easily, but the looseness of the cultural test was demonstrated when numerous other Hollywood films, including The Dark Knight (2008), Thor: The Dark World (2013) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), qualified for the British rebate in the same way.77 The revised system of incentives succeeded in sustaining the investment of American film companies in the British film industry. Indeed, Warner Bros. spent an estimated $4 billion on British production between 2001 and 2011, much of this on the Harry Potter films, a figure which accounted for more than a quarter of all investment in the British film industry.78 In the process, the Harry Potter franchise played a leading role in the institution of a substantial filmmaking infrastructure concentrated around London. Following the completion of final Harry Potter film in 2011, Warner Bros. spent $200 million to purchase the Leavesden facility outright and convert it into a permanent studio geared towards Hollywood film production.79 A ‘Making of Harry Potter’ visitor attraction also opened on the same site. In addition, the franchise had an impact on the British visual effects sector, which began to produce work which had formerly been undertaken only by specialized companies in California. According to Harry Potter producer David Barron, the franchise ‘created the UK effects industry as we know it’.80 As a result, the British film industry has grown into a state-sponsored ancillary to the American film industry, anchored around the production of large-scale runaway films and the strategic exploitation of tax incentives. Walden Media initially planned to produce the first Narnia film in Britain, but after judging the financial incentives to be insufficient they moved production to Auckland, New Zealand.81 In New Zealand the film benefitted from the new Large Budget Screen Production Grant, in which the government repaid filmmakers 12.5 per cent of their spending in the country.82 Styled as a ‘grant’ rather than a rebate, the system did not apply to low-budget films, making clear its orientation towards American rather than local filmmakers. Public records indicate that the government paid $10.9 million to a New Zealand shell company created for the purposes of production.83 In addition to its spectacular topography and

77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Ibid., 717. Adam Dawtrey, ‘House That Harry Built’, Variety, 2 April 2012. Adam Dawtrey, ‘United Kingdom’, Variety, 21 May 2012. Quoted in Gilbey, ‘Ten Years of Making Harry Potter Films’. Martin, ‘Narnia: The Book the Film … and the Teachers’. Peter Calder, ‘Riding a “Whale” Wave’, Variety, 8 November 2004. John Drinnan, ‘Big Budget Relief ’, Variety, 14 November 2005.

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infrastructure left in place by the production of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Walden benefitted from New Zealand’s cheaper crew rates and lack of unions. At the same time, facilities in New Zealand were limited, and director Andrew Adamson later complained that the lack of large sound stages forced them to work in makeshift facilities which led to sound recording problems.84 Partly as a result of these constraints, the bulk of Prince Caspian was produced elsewhere. Production began in New Zealand locations, providing visual continuity with the first film, but the cast and crew subsequently decamped to the large Barrandov Studios in Prague. Additional location work was filmed in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia. Eastern European locations and studios had in fact featured in the first Narnia film, but their role became much more extensive in the sequel. Whereas the visual effects on The Lion had been undertaken in Los Angeles and New Zealand, the bulk of the work for Prince Caspian was assigned to vendors in Britain. The decision to outsource this work was motivated by the new British tax incentives, which allowed films to claim rebates and tax credits even if the majority of their budget was spent elsewhere. Prince Caspian qualified as a British film due to its British content and mainly British cast, and so Walden were able to claim significant rebates on its expensive visual effects.85 The relative failure of Prince Caspian and the departure of Disney led to the Dawn Treader being produced on a significantly reduced budget. Walden had considered basing production of the largely sea-bound film on the Mexican coast, but favourable tax incentives ultimately led them to Queensland, Australia. Occupying the Village Roadshow Studios in Queensland and locations on the Gold Coast, the production qualified for a 15 per cent rebate on their spending.86 As with Prince Caspian, visual effects work was outsourced to Britain, where expenditure could be rebated. In just three films, then, the Narnia franchise ranged between New Zealand, Eastern Europe and Australia, with visual effects work spilt between Britain, New Zealand and America. Quite evidently, Walden’s choice of locations was motivated less by authenticity or continuity than by the value of the various global incentive schemes on offer. It is also worth emphasizing that much of what appeared on screen was created in a virtual environment rather than in physical spaces, making the specific location of production even less tangible. Reflecting both technological and financial 84

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Joanna Hunkin, ‘Adamson Back in NZ to Shoot Next Narnia Film’, New Zealand Herald, 5 February 2007. Adam Dawtry, ‘Caspian to Qualify as U.K. Movie’, Variety, 13 December 2006. Michaela Boland, ‘Oz Rebound Seen as Long Overdue’, Variety, 11 May 2009.

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developments, then, production of the Narnia franchise was expedited by the mobility and global dispersion of modern film labour. This global dispersion is also evident in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The first Pirates film was produced in a somewhat traditional manner, using the Walt Disney Studio and other backlots in Los Angeles as well as locations in the Caribbean. For the second and third instalments, an ambitious 200-day combined schedule entailed a greater proportion of location work. In addition to Los Angeles studios, cast and crew filmed in Hawaii, St Vincent and the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica. Seafaring scenes for both films were filmed in the Bahamas using a large outdoor water tank built at a decommissioned US Air Force missile base. Constructed to the specifications of the Pirates producers, the tank was part of an ambitious studio complex on the Grand Bahama island.87 In the absence of an indigenous film industry, this complex was designed with Hollywood in mind, and the government of the Bahamas incentivized foreign investment by introducing a 17 per cent rebate for money spent on the islands.88 Disney attempted to reduce costs for the fourth Pirates film, and as such they sought further rebates for production expenses. They benefitted from a 20 per cent refundable tax credit for location work on the Hawaiian island Oahu, and production in Puerto Rico received a staggering 40 per cent rebate on local spending.89 But the bulk of the photography on the fourth film occurred in Britain at the Pinewood studios and on locations around London. Producers chose Britain partly because the opening section of the film was set in England, but they were also motivated by the ability to access the new rebates from the British government. Indeed, it is possible that England was written into the plot after it was decided to base production there. The growth of the British visual effects companies also made it possible to undertake the majority of the postproduction work in Britain as well, further increasing the proportion of spending against which a rebate could be claimed. According to public records obtained by a reporter, a total of $32.1 million was rebated to Disney from the British exchequer.90 The new incentive scheme had clearly made Britain attractive to producers of high-budget Hollywood films. Public records also indicate that the 87 88

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Gordon Lomer, ‘Grand Bahama Lures Disney’s Pirates’, Bahamas Investor Magazine, 1 January 2006. Irene Lacher, ‘Bahamas Aims for Smooth Sailing with Film Biz’, Reuters, 28 May 2007, www.reuter s.com/article/film-bahamas-dc/bahamas-aims-for-smooth-sailing-with-film-biz-idUSN272618632 0070528, accessed 12 December 2017. ‘Hawaiian Punch’ Variety, 30 July 2012; ‘Ocean Gems Beckon Filmmakers’, Variety, 3 November 2015. Christian Sylt, ‘Fourth Pirates of the Caribbean Is Most Expensive Movie Ever with Costs of $410 Million’, Forbes.com, 22 July 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2014/07/22/fourth-pirates-of-thecaribbean-is-most-expensive-movie-ever-with-costs-of-410-million, accessed 19 December 2017.

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Disney Company spent a total of £ 1.4 billion (around $2.38 billion) on British film production between 2007 and 2014 – mainly on the Pirates, Avengers and Star Wars franchises – and received rebates of £ 167.6 million (around $285 million) as a result.91 The fifth Pirates film was initially due to be based in Puerto Rico, where it would have benefitted from the archipelago’s generous rebate system. But Disney later announced that production would move further afield to Australia. This relocation followed the cancellation of Disney’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea remake in Australia. The company had negotiated a one-off grant of $20 million from the Australian federal government in return for bringing production to the country. Following its abandonment, Disney requested that these funds be transferred to support the fifth Pirates film instead. The government grant came on top of the standard rebate (worth 16.5 per cent of Australian spending at the time) and an additional grant from the state government of Queensland, the value of which was not made public.92 Visual effects were delivered mainly by the Moving Picture Company in Britain, providing further access to British rebates.93 The Queensland government had in fact lobbied the Disney Company to bring the fifth Pirates film to their state, using public funds for what Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate called ‘an all-hands-on-deck approach to making a good impression’.94 According to government predictions, the film would bring in investment worth around $100 million and create thousands of jobs, maintaining employment at the large Village Roadshow Studios.95 However, it is impossible to determine whether these targets were reached, leading some to question the wisdom of the state’s lavish and obliging hospitality. According to a subsequent report by the Queensland Competition Authority, the benefits of incentive schemes such as these were ‘largely appropriated by international production companies’ and not by the state itself.96

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Christian Sylt, ‘Rags to Riches: Disney Earns £ 170m in Tax Breaks as UK Film Industry Grows’, Guardian, 1 October 2014. Karl Quinn, ‘Disney Hopes to Switch $21.6m Federal Cash from 20,000 Leagues to Pirates of the Caribbean 5’, The Age, 18 August 2014. Vincent Frei, ‘Interview with VFX Supervisor Gary Brozenich’, The Art of VFX, 13 July 2017, www. artofvfx.com/pirates-of-the-car ibbean-dead-men-tell-no-t ales-gary-brozenich-production-vfxsupervisor-mpc, accessed 12 December 2017. Suzanne Simonot and Andrew Potts, ‘How the Gold Coast Won the Race to Film Pirates of the Caribbean’, Gold Coast Bulletin, 2 October 2014. Danny Miller, ‘Disney Got a Big Government Grant to Make a Pirates of the Caribbean Film in Queensland, Australia, but Nobody Will Say How Much’, Los Angeles Times, 17 November 2016. Quoted in Ibid.

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The Harry Potter, Narnia and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises would have been made quite differently – if they were made at all – were it not for financial incentives offered by national governments. As the case studies above indicate, millions of dollars of public money was paid to support the Hollywood studios which financed them – companies which hardly seem deserving of public subsidies, least of all from foreign governments. Nevertheless, as the cost of blockbuster film production escalates, the ability to access valuable subsidies has become a major consideration in production planning. For the nations competing to play host, however, the benefits of their tax-funded largesse is less clear. The main justification has been that Hollywood production stimulates local employment. American production companies are certainly willing to move jobs overseas in exchange for public money, although as in 1950s and 1960s this has caused problems for film workers in California. A study funded by American film unions estimated that 47,000 jobs were lost to runaway production between 2000 and 2006.97 Moreover, in an analysis of American state-level programs (which have similarities with international schemes) Michael Thom has argued that incentives targeting film production have had ‘little to no sustained impact on employment or wage growth’.98 Incentive schemes have also been defended on the basis that they can institutionalize the facilities and workforce necessary for a sustainable film production sector. But this has tended to create infrastructures based around the needs of large-scale Hollywood production rather than those of smaller-scale local filmmaking. In addition, the commitments of American production companies are often shortterm and changing circumstances can lead to their rapid departure, as was the case in Britain at the end of the 1960s. From a broader perspective, Thomas Piketty has argued that inter-territorial competition over tax and subsidies in a variety of industries has been a driving factor in the polarization of wealth and income.99 The globalization of film production has, in this sense, been part of a wider ongoing transfer of public funds from around the world into the hands of a small number of private companies based mainly in America. ***

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Dave McNary, ‘Runaway Drain?’, Variety, 31 July 2006. Michael Thom, ‘Lights, Camera, but No Action? Tax and Economic Development Lessons from State Motion Picture Incentive Programs’, American Review of Public Administration 48, no. 1 (2018): 46. In David Steele, ‘Rethinking the Focus of UK Film Support’, Cultural Trends 24, no. 1 (2015): 75.

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The management of intellectual property and the globalization of film production have been key elements in maintaining the structural dominance of the Hollywood studios amid ongoing changes in audience consumption patterns. These strategies were developed in various film franchises during the twenty-first century, but it is nevertheless significant that English historical material was at the centre of these trends. Harry Potter has been a huge revenue generator for Warner Bros., Pirate of the Caribbean remains an expensive but still profitable global franchise for Disney, and although the Narnia franchise did not proceed as planned, it nevertheless bought significant income for Walden, Disney and 20th Century Fox. Numerous additional franchises set in the English past were developed during this period, mainly aimed at family audiences and adapted from books written for children. Most notably, New Line attempted to maintain the momentum of their Lord of the Rings franchise by licencing His Dark Materials, a fantasy book trilogy set in a fantasy version of England’s past. However, The Golden Compass (2007), the first film in the projected franchise, failed at the box office, leading parent company Time Warner to fold New Line into their larger Warner Bros. subsidiary. Several films based on more familiar English literary sources were also unsuccessful, including The Legend of Tarzan (2016) and two versions of Peter Pan (2003 and 2015). Potential franchises based on tried-and-tested English mythology proved similarly uninviting, notably Robin Hood (2010) and two King Arthur films (2004 and 2017). However, other attempts to revive pre-sold English properties met with greater success, including Sherlock Holmes (2009) and its sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011). Most conspicuously, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) remake grossed over a billion dollars worldwide. Its sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) was much less profitable, but Disney were nevertheless emboldened to excavate further intellectual property from their back catalogue of family films. Christopher Robin (2018) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018) will thus be followed by live-action ‘re-imaginings’ of numerous animated films, including 101 Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, and yet another attempt to resuscitate Peter Pan.100 Nostalgia for an idealized English past is thus wrapped up in the nostalgic return to family entertainment from earlier eras. In the risk-averse climate of conglomerate Hollywood production, English historical

100

Angie Han, ‘What’s Left for Disney to Remake?’, Mashable, 20 March 2017, www.mashable.com/201 7/03/20/disney-remake-movies-live-action-reboot, accessed 14 December 2017.

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material remains attractive to filmmakers because they are able to draw on such a rich archive of previously tested, licensable images and characters. In part, the English past is popular today because it has been popular for much of the preceding century. Through countless films, it has been institutionalized in American entertainment as a diverse but familiar assemblage of references and conventions, ready to be reworked and marketed to a global mass audience.

Conclusion: An Available Past As the preceding chapters have shown, Hollywood’s steady engagement with English history has informed a prolific, prominent and profitable mode of production. At various points in time, English historical films have been both economically and culturally central to the operations of the American film industry. Although the selection of films and film cycles I have addressed is diverse, certain consistencies emerge. The British Empire features regularly, both directly and indirectly, extending the representation of English history to India, the Middle East and the Caribbean. The English past has also been represented in ways which allow it to expand into fantasy spaces, notably Camelot and Narnia. English royalty emerges as a theme: monarchs feature as protagonists in films including Knights of the Round Table and Anne of the Thousand Days, and play decisive minor roles in others, such as Around the World in 80 Days and Shakespeare in Love. A majority of the films addressed in this book have been based on novels and plays and, in the case of Gunga Din, poetry. From David Copperfield to Howards End, literary adaptation has acted as an expedient gateway into the English past. Representations of English history have also been shaped by economic decisions to outsource film production to Britain: more than half of the films discussed here were made wholly or partially in British studios and locations. Partly as a result of this, many of the key creative roles in the films under discussion have been filled by British personnel, particularly actors. Indeed, the centrality of British performers may be the single most consistent feature of the English historical films in this book. From Freddie Bartholomew to Daniel Radcliffe, Hollywood’s representation of England has relied upon, and granted stardom to, several generations of British acting talent. Connections between the films and film cycles examined in this book can be further addressed by returning to the four interconnected perspectives outlined in my introduction. The first perspective relates to the practices through which the English past has been represented on screen. Representations of the Victorian Empire in the 1930s intersected with the conventions of the Hollywood Western, allowing colonial occupation to be depicted as a valiant struggle to uphold the values of civilization in the face of native unrest. The past was also used as a

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backdrop for heroic adventure and masculine chivalry in this cycle of Empire films, a practice which became more pronounced in the cycle of medieval swashbucklers from the 1950s. Representations of colonized spaces in the 1950s and 1960s also depicted the past as a site for adventure, but these epic films placed greater emphasis on English history as cosmopolitan spectacle, taking advantage of location shooting and new image technologies to showcase the spectacular properties of the medium. A different kind of spectacle, organized around the display of properties and landscapes, characterizes the heritage films of the 1980s and 1990s. In the twenty-first century the representation of English history became dominated by fantasy spaces which in turn operated as the backdrop for chivalric and spectacular adventure, although the heroes tended to be children. The representation of the English past has thus very often been a pretext for something else: spectacle, display, action, fantasy, heroic adventure. It is also worth considering the aspects of the English past which these practices of representation have excluded. It is certainly the case that some historical periods (medieval, Tudor, Victorian) occur more frequently than others (Stuart, Georgian). More pertinent, I would suggest, is the extent to which Hollywood films have represented English history as principally white, or at least presented it from a white perspective. According to Douglas M. Haynes, cultural representations of English and British history have allowed this past to be ‘fetishized as a form of commodified whiteness’ for the consumption of middleclass Americans.1 Similarly, Antoinette Burton has described the American conception of Britain as ‘an essentially white island of history’. Furthermore, she adds, Nostalgia for Britain (Britain primarily as ‘England’, it should be said) represents one expression of the contemporary desire for what America has not been in the twentieth century: that is, ordered, white, untouched by social upheaval, homogenous, and polite.2

The Hollywood version of English history can thus be seen to instrumentalize a certain kind of nostalgia for the benefit of a white, middle-class American audience, offering a fictional but familiar escape into the whitewashed history of a culturally adjacent nation.

1

2

Douglas M. Haynes, ‘White Lies: The British Past in Post-War America’, The History Teacher 31, no. 1 (1997): 98. Burton, ‘When Was Britain?’, 364–5.

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My second perspective concerns the projection of continuities and affinities between English and American culture and the ways in which Hollywood films have made the English past function as a reference point in the American present. The clearest example of this process can be seen in the production histories of Ivanhoe and Knights of the Round Table, in which an imagined English past provided a flexible storytelling toolkit for allegorizing a range of contemporary American political problems. The representation of the British Empire has also provided the means to address changes in American foreign policy and the expansion of its overseas military and political presence during the Cold War. The Empire cycle of the 1930s did little to criticize the abuses of colonial rule and in some cases intimated that America might inherit Britain’s imperial mantle. In the 1950s, as American policy took on a more explicitly internationalist tone, films such as Around the World in 80 Days became more explicit in associating the spirit of British imperial supremacy with America’s emerging role in a new global balance of power. By the following decade, as the complications of an interventionist foreign policy became clearer, Lawrence of Arabia and The Charge of the Light Brigade proposed less flattering parallels between British imperial folly in the past and American foreign policy overreach in the present. In this way, representations of English history have provided filmmakers with the means to historicize America’s changing role during the twentieth century. A similar process of historicization can be observed in the relationship between political and cultural powers of the past. In his work on ‘poetics of ruins’ the historian Roland Mortier observes that the Romans viewed the ruins of ancient Greek civilization ‘as the material image of Destiny’. They were ‘not a presence but an absence, a void, the sign of vanished greatness, the negative mark of greatness which has been destroyed’.3 In more figurative way, the ruins of the grand English past, revived and mediated for modern audiences, have provided context and precedent for the ascendant American present. Just as the Romans saw their destiny in the relics of the defeated power which they succeeded, the history of England serves to aggrandize the American present and perhaps to presage its own eventual decline. Similarly, in his study of history and the representation of time, François Hartog suggests that the Classical past came to function an ‘available’ or ‘accessible’ past for artists during the Renaissance,

3

Quoted in François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time, trans. Saskia Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 156. Emphasis in original.

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projecting what he calls ‘a kind of eternal within easy reach’.4 In much the same way, I would suggest that English history has offered modern America with the most available and accessible of all possible pasts, providing a range of narratives and images which can be deployed for a range of purposes. The third perspective follows closely from this and addresses the impact of English historical films on their political context. The most direct example of this influence followed the outbreak of the Second World War when Hollywood filmmakers modified their representation of England and the British Empire in order to promote Britain as a suitable wartime ally whose interests aligned with those of America. These changes came in response to external pressure, firstly from an informal propaganda campaign led by British and American figures and secondly by the formal influence of the OWI. However, such direct and coordinated campaigns to influence public opinion were unusual, certainly in peacetime. During the 1960s films such as Tom Jones marked another shift in the dominant representation of England, presenting the English past in a manner which reflected social changes ongoing in the present. But whereas representations of Britain in the 1940s were tailored towards specific ideological ends and enforced by government policy, its representation in the 1960s was a more spontaneous reflection of trends in other media. Causal links between popular culture and political context are similarly unclear elsewhere. For example, although several Empire films of the 1930s provoked a hostile response among the Indian public, the cause was most likely the ignorance of American filmmakers rather than their malice. And although the development of the medieval swashbuckler was shaped by the Second World War and Cold War contexts, it is not at all clear whether the ideological layers they accrued were apparent to contemporary audiences. Overall, the evidence that English historical films had a significant and direct influence over broader political events is weak. The films under discussion may reflect their political context, as discussed above, but their ability to consistently shape public opinion is less certain. Finally, the fourth perspective relates to power. Who has gained from Hollywood’s projection of England’s eternal oldness? In economic terms, the clear beneficiary has been the American film industry itself: English historical films have consistently made money. It became clear in the 1930s that English historical films performed well in Hollywood’s lucrative British and British 4

Ibid., 168.

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Empire export markets. Revenues from these markets remained critical to the American film industry for decades after, making such films a sound investment. The fact that English historical films also tended to perform well in America increased their value. The production of English historical films has also been tied to the broader, long-term economic strategy of outsourcing film production to Britain. In the 1950s and 1960s British runaway production allowed filmmakers to access blocked revenues and the Eady levy production subsidy; in the twenty-first century it enabled studios to qualify for a range of financial incentives. The English past is also suited to the production of modern blockbuster franchises, yielding intellectual property in other media which Hollywood studios can licence and propagate over a range of platforms. The benefits to the American film industry have also been political. In the 1930s, for example, prestigious adaptations of classic English literature constituted a major element in a public relations campaign to demonstrate the moral respectability of American film and the efficiency of self-regulation. English historical films also played a role in the American film industry’s wartime propaganda, allowing Hollywood studios to further emphasize their positive contribution to American society. During the 1990s the production of prestigious literary adaptations served a different function, allowing studios to differentiate their products and cater to a fragmenting cinema-going public. For audiences, the consumption of English historical films has also been associated with social benefits. As Martin A. Hipsky has suggested, the heritage films of the 1980s and 1990s ‘function as cultural markers in a specifically American middle class habitus’.5 It is harder to say what England itself has gained from its representation in American cinema. The use of Britain as a production base for Hollywood production has provided some economic benefits, although producing films in Britain does not necessarily entail the representation of English history. In a much broader sense, the American film industry has increased the visibility of England and English history in way which projects national continuity amid significant political change. These films may thus be regarded as an aspect of England or Britain’s ‘soft power’, although the actual utility of this power is hard to assess. Representations of English history may also be regarded as a facet of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with America. Evocations of England’s historical connection to America have long played a role in Anglo-American diplomacy;

5

Martin A. Hipsky, ‘Anglophil(m)ia: Why Does America Watch Merchant-Ivory Movies?’, Journal of Popular Film and Television 22, no. 3 (1994): 102–3.

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as Alex Danchev has put it, the special relationship relies on the ‘exploitation of history for the present purposes, practiced religiously … by the weaker partner’.6 The strategic evocation of English history, and America’s place in it, thus provides the means to foster a sense of cultural affinity between the two nations. However, Anglo-American relations have become more and more asymmetrical over time, and the ability of the British government to influence American foreign policy has diminished significantly since the end of the Cold War. As Danchev has put it, history is a ‘wasting asset’, a property bound to lose value as time passes.7 The value of America’s traditional diplomatic alliances certainly seems to be in rapid, unprecedented decline at the time of writing. The production of English historical films in Hollywood is therefore best understood as a calculated response to specific economic and, to a lesser extent, political incentives. They reflect the political contexts in which they were produced, but it is harder to make the case that they are evidence of a purely sentimental attachment to English culture. At the same time, I would suggest that the practice of representing English history has also become a kind of habit for Hollywood filmmakers: a mode of filmmaking that is motivated not simply by box-office success but by the compulsion to participate in a Hollywood tradition. Just as English culture typically looks backwards to times of more auspicious grandeur, so too does the American film industry. In the process, its notions of quality and achievement have become increasing retrospective and nostalgic. As a consequence, English historical films do not simply engage with the history of England, they also look inward to the history of Hollywood filmmaking.

6

7

Alex Danchev, ‘The Cold War “Special Relationship” Revisited’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 17 (2006): 582. Ibid., 584.

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Index Academy Awards 1–3, 19, 131, 133, 148, 149, 152, 156, 158–9, 160, 162 adaptation 15–40, 72, 109, 122, 126, 144–6, 156, 164, 191. See also Jane Austen; Emily Brontë; Charles Dickens; E.M. Forster; Henry James; J.K. Rowling; William Shakespeare The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955) 91 The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) 69, 70, 80 Andrews, Julie 1, 137, 138 Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) 121, 128–9, 132–4, 141, 142, 191 Arab Revolt 108–9, 113–14 Around the World in 80 Days (1956) 98–108, 118, 191, 193 Austen, Jane 38, 144, 155–6 Beau Geste (1939) 62–3 Becket (1964) 121, 128–32, 134, 141, 142 Berman, Pandro 78 blocked currency 96, 148, 195 Bolt, Robert 111, 114, 131 Bonham Carter, Helena 150–2 Breen, Joseph 23, 132 British Board of Film Censorship (BBFC) 48–9, 53, 54–5, 56 British Empire 5–7, 41–67, 73, 80, 104–8, 111–18, 120, 127, 192 African territories 63–4 Arab colonial nationalism 111, 113–17 British Empire market 19, 24, 29, 49, 55, 67 and ideology 42, 71, 104, 111 relationship to American power 63, 107–8, 116–18, 128, 193 and Second World War 62–7 and spectacle 43, 47, 104–6, 116, 118. See also India

British film industry 119–20, 128, 140–1, 147–8, 182–4 British new wave 122–3, 125 British royalty 73–4, 78–80, 82–3, 128–32, 138, 142, 188, 191 Brontë, Emily 17, 35–6, 38 Bruckheimer, Jerry 178–9 Burton, Richard 120, 122, 129–30, 132, 133, 138 Camelot (1967) 121, 134–5, 137–41, 180 Cantinflas 99–100 Cavalcade (1933) 19, 81 CBS 101, 135–6 censorship 18–22, 33, 48–9, 50, 53, 55, 58, 61–3, 65, 123. See also British Board of Film Censorship; Production Code Administration The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) 41, 50–6, 58, 60, 61–2, 67, 126–8 The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) 126, 127–8, 141, 193 Chariots of Fire (1981) 143, 147–8, 158 Chronicles of Narnia book series 175, 178 Chronicles of Narnia film franchise 165–6, 169, 175–8, 183–5, 187–8 Cinecom 146, 149–50, 151, 152 Clive of India (1935) 50–1, 53 Cold War 88–91, 94, 115–17, 193 and Third World 94, 98, 115, 116–18 Columbia Pictures 87, 91, 101, 109, 114, 132, 146, 148, 151, 153–7, 158 communism 72, 75–8, 85, 88–9. See also House Un-American Activities Committee Conglomerate Hollywood 166–8, 180–1 Coward, Noël 19, 24, 99, 100 Crossfire (1947) 76–7 Cukor, George 24, 25, 37, 135–6 ‘cultural test’ 182–3

Index David Copperfield (1935) 22–33, 36, 37, 40, 45, 66, 119, 149, 161, 191 Dickens, Charles 17, 18, 22–3, 25–8, 32, 36 Disney Company 70, 86, 142, 168–9, 173, 176–80, 184–6, 188 and Merchant Ivory 153 and Miramax 153, 158, 159, 163 and T.E. Lawrence 109 Doctor Doolittle (1967) 137, 140, 141 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) 20–1 Eady Levy 96, 110, 124, 130–1, 134, 136, 141, 195 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 90, 94 Eisner, Michael 178 The English Patient (1996) 150, 159–61, 163 epics 93, 97–8, 129, 134, 160, 192 Estabrook, Howard 23, 25, 26, 65 family film 140, 165, 168–9, 176, 188 film distribution practices 96–7, 101, 123, 129, 146, 149, 150, 151–2, 159, 176. See also roadshowing Finney, Albert 121, 122–3, 124–5, 132, 138 Forster, E.M. 144, 148–9, 150, 151 France 62, 100, 116 French Empire 50, 51, 62 French heritage films 151 franchise films 165–71, 173–4, 179–80 Goldwyn, Sam 35–6 Gunga Din (1939) 41, 44, 56–63, 66, 67, 71, 191 Harris, Richard 121, 138, 171 Harrison, Rex 1, 132, 137, 140 Harry Potter book series 171, 173 Harry Potter film franchise 165–6, 169, 171–5, 177, 180–3, 187–8 Hays, Will 20–2, 23, 29–31 Hecht, Ben 35, 58–9 heritage film 143–64 Heyman, David 171, 173, 175 Hope, Bob 1–2 Hopkins, Anthony 151, 152, 154

211

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) 12, 75–8, 91 ‘blacklisted’ screenwriters 77, 110 and Joseph McCarthy 77, 88 and ‘witch hunt’ analogy 77 Howards End (1992) 147, 151–3, 154, 156, 157, 158, 163, 191 independent production companies 86–7, 143, 146–7, 149, 151, 152 India 42–67, 103, 106, 144, 148, 194 colonial nationalism 44, 47, 49–50, 54, 56, 60–1 Indian Mutiny 54–5 and Russia 45, 48, 51, 52–3, 65 intellectual property 169–71, 178, 188, 195 Israel 91, 106, 111, 114 Ivanhoe (1952) 71–9, 87, 88, 90–2, 96, 119, 193 James, Henry 144, 149, 157 Jennings, Talbot 81–9 Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer 144, 149, 152, 154 Kim (1950) 65–6 Kipling, Rudyard 41, 57–8, 60, 65 Knights of the Round Table (1953) 71–2, 79–92, 96, 97, 119, 180, 191, 193 Korda, Alexander 99, 109 Langley, Noel 77, 88, 89, 90 Lawrence, T.E. 108–9, 111, 116–17 Seven Pillars of Wisdom 109 Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 98, 108–18, 119, 128, 130, 131, 160, 193 Lean, David 109, 110–11 Lee, Ang 155 Legion of Decency 21, 31, 125 Lewin, Albert 79–87, 89 Little Women (1934) 21–2, 24–31 The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) 41, 43, 45–53, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 67, 71, 80 Logan, Joshua 138–9 Lord of the Rings franchise 175, 177, 184, 188 MacArthur, Charles 35, 58–9 MacKenzie, Aeneas 73–9

212

Index

Madden, John 162, 163 Magna Carta 83–4, 88, 91 A Man for All Seasons (1966) 119, 128, 131, 133 Mary Poppins (1964) 1–2, 119, 135, 142, 168 Maurice (1987) 150, 151 Merchant Ivory Productions 144, 148–57, 163 MGM 19, 21, 22–8, 29, 32, 34–5, 37, 64, 65–6, 71–3, 76–82, 86–8, 90–1, 96, 98, 137, 150 MGM–British studio 37, 73, 78, 86, 87, 96, 119 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) 28–33, 40, 97 Minghella, Anthony 159–60, 163 Miramax 146, 147, 150, 152, 153, 156, 157–64 Monogram 21 Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) 20–3, 29–31, 49, 55, 79, 86 ‘better pictures’ campaign 22, 27–8, 29, 30–1 Studio Relations Committee 21 Murrow, Ed 102, 107 Musical films 134–41 Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) 2 n.4, 80, 81 My Fair Lady (1964) 1–2, 119, 134–8, 139, 141 ‘negative pickup’ deals 146, 157 Niven, David 99, 100 Oberon, Merle 35 Office of War Information 64–6, 194 Olivier, Laurence 24, 87 Orion Classics 151, 152 Osborne, John 122–3, 126–7 O’Toole, Peter 121, 130 Paltrow, Gwyneth 162 Paramount Pictures 20–1, 45–7, 73, 75–6, 79–81, 85–7, 129–33, 140 merger with Gulf and Western 132–3

Pirates of the Caribbean franchise 165, 167, 178–80, 185–8 prestige 2, 5, 22–3, 28, 40, 97, 108, 131, 134, 142, 145, 153, 158–9, 163–4, 195 Pride and Prejudice (1940) 33–40, 119 Production Code Administration (PCA) 21, 23, 31, 64, 65, 123, 132 production subsidies 95–6, 180–5, 187, 195 tax credits 182–4 See also Eady Levy The Rains Came (1939) 63–4 Redgrave, Vanessa 120, 126, 138–40, 151 Reinhardt, Max 29 Religion, Catholicism 21, 28, 124, 132 Christianity 75, 89, 175–6, 177 Hinduism 59, 60, 104 Islam 49–50, 59 Judaism 74–9, 111, 114 Remains of the Day (1993) 153–6, 160, 163 Richardson, Tony 122–8, 129, 142 RKO 21, 31, 57–8, 60–1, 66, 76–7, 86–7 roadshowing 96–7, 101–2, 121, 131, 135, 137, 140 A Room With a View (1985) 143, 149–51, 152, 158 Rowling, J.K. 171–2, 174, 175 runaway production 95–6, 169, 180, 183 Australian facilities 184, 186 British facilities 78, 86–7, 110, 119, 130–1, 136, 169, 181, 185 New Zealand facilities 183–5 Spanish facilities 99–100, 110, 130–1, 138 Schary, Dore 76–8, 90 Schoedsack, Ernest B. 45–7 Second World War 33–40, 44, 62–7, 84–5, 88–90, 194 appeasement 85, 88, 90 British propaganda 34, 39–40, 64–5, 83, 85, 194 Holocaust 75, 88 US neutrality 34, 39–40, 64, 72, 84–5 Selznick, David O. 21–6, 28, 32, 45, 86, 87 Sense and Sensibility (1995) 147, 155–6, 158, 163, 164

Index Shakespeare, William 17, 18, 22, 29–30, 32, 161–3 Shakespeare in Love (1999) 147, 159, 161–4 Sony Pictures Classics 151–2, 156 The Sound of Music (1965) 93, 137, 138, 140 ‘specialty’ divisions 146–7, 151–3, 155, 163–4 Spiegel, Sam 109–11, 118 Stanley and Livingstone (1939) 63–4 Stevens, George 59, 62 Stoppard, Tom 161 Storm over Bengal (1938) 57, 58 Study guides 31–2, 149, 152, 176 Suez crisis 106–7, 113 Sundown (1941) 64 The Sun Never Sets (1939) 63 ‘Swinging’ London 120–1, 124–6, 141 A Tale of Two Cities (1935) 32 Taylor, Elizabeth 78, 132, 138 Taylor, Robert 73, 78, 87 television 10, 96–7, 133, 142, 148, 156 Thalberg, Irving 32, 34–6, 79 theme parks 168, 174, 178, 180 Thomas, Lowell 108–9 Thompson, Emma 151, 152, 154, 155 Todd, Mike 98–105 Tom Jones (1963) 119, 122–8, 141, 148, 152, 194

213

Treasure Island (1934) 16, 21 Twentieth Century Fox 51, 56, 63, 86–7, 91, 135, 159–60, 177 United Artists 101, 119, 121–4, 126, 129, 132, 140, 146, 150 Universal Pictures 146, 148, 161–2, 174 Vietnam War 117, 128 visual effects 181, 183, 184, 185, 186 Walden Media 175–7, 183–4 Wallis, Hal 52, 54, 129–34 Walpole, Hugh 25–8, 66, 161 Warner, Jack 54, 55, 134, 136, 138–9 Warner Bros. 29, 31, 35, 39, 51–6, 69, 122, 134–40, 165, 169–75, 179, 182–3 merger with AOL 172–2 merger with Seven Arts 139 Wee Willie Winkie (1937) 43, 56–7, 58 Weinstein, Harvey 157–8, 160–3 Western (film genre) 43, 46–7, 67, 80, 191 widescreen processes 90, 97–8, 99, 105 Wilson, Michael 109–11 Woodfall 122–3, 126, 128, 129 Wuthering Heights (1939) 33–40 Wyler, William 35 Zaentz, Saul 159–61 Zanuck, Darryl F. 118