People We Like: the great dependables (2)

Last time round, my great dependables were those sterling British actors Jack Hawkins, Trevor Howard, Nigel Patrick and Harry Andrews. Here's another batch of people we like, the distaff side this time...

GLYNIS JOHNS. Born in 1923 Glynis Johns is still with us, in her 80s. What a fascinating career she has had, from those 40s ingénues (AN IDEAL HUSBAND) and that mermaid MIRANDA (reprised in ‘54’s MAD ABOUT MEN). Glynis’s husky voice and comedy sense made her ideal for films (where she began in the 1930s). In a very prolific career highlights include PERFECT STRANGERS, DEAR MR PROHACK in ’49 opposite the young Dirk Bogarde, THE CARD with Alec Guinness, THE COURT JESTER in ‘55, and opposite James Stewart in NO HIGHWAY (1951) as the air hostess, Disney fare like ROB ROY, THE WEAK AND THE WICKED, ANOTHER TIME ANOTHER PLACE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, with Kerr again in THE SUNDOWNERS, the mother in MARY POPPINS, THE CHAPMAN REPORT (where she is great fun gurgling over Ty Hardin in those spray-on shorts, below, as per my review), and a lot of television including her own tv series GLYNIS. Married and divorced 4 times her first husband Anthony Forwood became the lifetime partner of Dirk Bogarde.
I met Glynis in 1966 when she was doing a play THE KING’S MARE in London, I recall a very short lady with enormous eye-lashes! Of course her greatest stage success must be A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC where Stephen Sondheim wrote “Send In The Clowns” to suit her voice. She was Lady Penelope Peasoup in the BATMAN series in ’67 and other work included LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS (Mrs Squeezum), Myfanwy Price in the all-star UNDER MILK WOOD (1972) and an Amicus horror compendium VAULT OF HORROR in ’73 – Glynis was fun in it though and didn’t disgrace herself. What a trouper.



MARGARET LEIGHTON (1922-1976). Margaret was a leading actress in classical theatre who also took successfully to the movies. Her brittle manner and glamour was evident from the 1940s and in films like THE ASTONISHED HEART with Noel Coward and THE HOLLY AND THE IVY (both reviewed below). She also scored in Hitchcock’s 1949 UNDER CAPRICORN as Millie, the devious housekeeper who is secretly tormenting Ingrid Bergman as she is in love with Joseph Cotton. Other cinema roles include CARRINGTON V.C., THE GOOD DIE YOUNG opposite her husband Laurence Harvey, THE CONSTANT HUSBAND, THE BEST MAN, she is brilliant as the Blanche Du Bois type Caddie in the 1959 THE SOUND AND THE FURY (below, also reviewed here) and in the all-star THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT, '69. Among her television roles was AN IDEAL HUSBAND in 1969 and she won two Tony awards for theatre roles in SEPARATE TABLES and as the original Hannah Jelkes in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA in 1962. She had a late career resurgence with her fearsome mothers in Losey’s THE GO-BETWEEN (where she is no longer able to tolerate the deception going on between Bates and Christie) and she gets the last word as Lady Melbourne in Robert Bolt’s LADY CAROLINE LAMB. She was one of those SEVEN WOMEN for John Ford, his last film in 1966, where her missionary head clashes with Anne Bancroft, and she is fun as the aged hippie with Elizabeth Taylor in ZEE & C0, 1972.
She was also married to publisher Max Reinhardt, and after Harvey she had a happy marriage to Michael Wilding (below). She died aged 53 in 1976. Fascinating now catching up with her other roles, Miss Leighton was certainly a class act.



ANN TODD (1909-1993). A fairly new discovery for me, I now find Ann Todd fascinating. She had a fairly remote Garbo quality which with her patrician manner made her ideal for those upper class roles she portrayed for her third husband David Lean in the 40s and early 50s. In movies since the 1930s, I first noticed her in the 1945 PERFECT STRANGERS (or VACATION FROM MARRIAGE) for Korda, as the nice woman Robert Donat could have had a romance with, before he re-unites with wife Deborah Kerr. Hitchcock then took her to Hollywood (along with Alida Valli) for his rare misfire THE PARADINE CASE in 1947 as Gregory Peck’s wife. This is a fascinating oddity to see now. She is perfect in THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS for Lean in 1948, as per my review (Ann Todd label), as the wife of Claude Rains who meets her old lover Trevor Howard again at an Alpine holiday, so the stage is set for dramatics when her jealous husband turns up. MADELEINE was another created for her by Lean and she is also ideal in THE SOUND BARRIER (again, reviewed here) in ’52 as Ralph Richardson’s daughter who marries test pilot Nigel Patrick, as they try to break the sound barrier. Other roles include Losey’s TIME WITHOUT PITY in ’57 and a Hammer thriller A TASTE OF FEAR in 1961 – she even played in THE SON OF CAPTAIN BLOOD with Erroll Flynn’s son, Sean (which would be interesting to see now). She later took to directing and made some successful documentaries about travels in then exotic locations like Nepal.





PAMELA BROWN (1917-1975). One of the most fascinating British actresses, Pamela had memorable looks and that distinctive voice which made her ideal for some eccentric roles. She began in theatre and then in films with Michael Powell and Emeric Pessburger. She and Powell lived together until her death aged 58 in 1975. I have already written about her Catriona in I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING in 1945, one of my absolute favourite women in cinema. Other roles include RICHARD III, LUST FOR LIFE, BECKET, the seer in CLEOPATRA (above), in Losey’s SECRET CEREMONY and FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE, a silent cameo as Mrs Fitzherbert in the Brighton flashbacks in ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, LADY CAROLINE LAMB, THE NIGHT DIGGER with Patricia Neal, and another Rumer Godden drama about nuns IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE. It is a very prolific career with lots of television also. Never a conventional beauty, Pamela added a dramatic presence to whatever she appeared in, and is always a pleasure to see.



Soon: British actresses of the 40s and 50s: Muriel Pavlow, Dinah Sheridan, Shirley Eaton, Yvonne Mitchell, Diana Dors, Sylvia Syms, Virginia McKenna, Rosamund John, Wendy Hiller, Celia Johnson, Margaret Lockwood, and Dame Flora Robson. I have already written extensively here on Kay Kendall, Joan Greenwood, Claire Bloom, Belinda Lee …

3 very British treats

THE ASTONISHED HEART, 1950, written by Noel Coward who also scored the music and he stars too as the psychiatrist contentedly married to Barbara (Celia Johnson). Barbara meets her old school friend Leonora (Margaret Leighton) by chance and they become friends again. There is an initial coolness between the husband and Leonora but soon passions are raging beneath those stiff upper lip exteriors as they embark on an affair. The wife though does not seem to mind too much and even encourages the lovers to go away together. Is she waiting for it to run out of steam and he will return to her? I knew nothing about this 1950 rarity so the ending is a surprise. It is all redolent of that older age of film-making, easy to spoof now, with the upper-class accents, the high life in Mayfair (complete with butler and cook) as Coward and Leighton do the rounds of nightclubs and restaurants, ordering their stingers and trying the samba. The two ladies are of course splendid as ever (with Leighton, as gowned by Molyneux, the height of late 40s chic), but it is odd seeing Coward with his clipped vocal delivery and mandarin appearance as the clever man torn between two women [he was perfect though with Johnson in IN WHICH WE SERVE] … it seems Michael Redgrave was set to star initially. Coward’s pals Graham Payn and Joyce Carey are in support, and co-director is Terence Fisher who helmed those Hammer classics. A very intriguing oddity then - essential though not to know how it is going to end....

Much more conventional is THE HOLLY AND THE IVY from 1952. Adapted from a play and directed by George More O’Ferrell it is a “heartwarming tale of an English minister and his family reunited at Christmas time” so why isn’t it a Christmas perennial? Ralph Richardson is the rather bumbling minister but he hardly seems old enough to be the father of daughters Celia Johnson and Margaret Leighton (again) or son Denholm Elliott. Celia is the dutiful daughter who stays at home to look after him but she longs to leave and marry reliable John Gregson who has an offer of work abroad. Also returning home is Leighton as the wayward daughter in London whose life has gone wrong – she has taken to drink after the loss of her wartime lover and the death of her child. As son Denholm rails to the minister, he cannot be told the truth about them, but he turns out to be very human and understands perfectly as solutions are found to suit everyone. Add in two maiden aunts (one very bitter about losing her own chances of marriage by having to look after aged parents) and suave Hugh Williams and the stage is set for a nice drama played out with the snow falling on that perfectly quaint English village. I loved it.



Back to 1945 (the year I was born!) for THE SEVENTH VEIL, an enormous hit at the time and one can see why. It's a delirious melodrama, classily done, which pushes all the right buttons: lots of music, heightened emotions and great roles for James Mason and Ann Todd. Todd starts as a convincing 14 year old in pigtails, in thrall to her ward Nicholas (Mason with that cane…). She becomes a famous pianist but is always under the Svengali-like spell of her lame cousin/guardian and mentor until she attempts suicide by jumping off a bridge. Enter the doctor (Herbert Lom) who tries to unlock her secrets and her phobia about playing again. Lom discovers the severely shy young woman's repressed need for love, and her guardian's overbearing need to live his life's dream through her and her talent as a pianist. By the end her three suitors (the band-leader she wanted to elope with, before Nicholas whisked her off to Paris, and the painter who fell for her as he painted her, as well as the brooding Nicholas) are all waiting to see which she will choose – but it is not really a surprise. Lom, in a long and varied career, went on to play the psychiatrist in a successful tv series THE HUMAN JUNGLE.



Todd, with her odd Garbo quality, is fascinating as ever here, and no wonder Mason was soon on his way to Hollywood. Todd though remains virtually unknown of all the major British actresses of the ‘40s – was she too patrician or aloof for the moviegoers to take to their collective bosoms? Directed by Compton Bennett, with an Oscar-winning script by Muriel and Sydney Box.

A '50s Losey double bill

A pair of ‘50s Joseph Losey films: I remember seeing TIME WITHOUT PITY as a kid in 1957 and that it was a gripping drama, so was looking forward to seeing it again, but really it is just a potboiler, albeit a very well acted one with Michael Redgrave as the former alcoholic released from a clinic in Canada who flies to England just as his son (Alec McCowen) is due to be hanged in 24 hours for the murder of his girlfriend. Can the father find enough evidence in that time to prove his son’s innocence? What is the link beween the girlfriend and that wealthy Stanford family, presided over by Leo McKern as the domineering father, with Ann Todd as his wife, and son Paul Daneman, the friend of the condemned man. Redgrave and Todd are of course excellent as is Peter Cushing as the lawyer, but McKern is so over the top that he becomes totally annoying and exasperating. One hardly recognised the young Joan Plowright as a high-kicking chorus girl!



Much more in the Losey style is the 1959 thriller BLIND DATE which nicely captures that end of the 50s/early 60s era. I did not see this at the time but knew it would be a stylish movie, and so it proves. Hardy Kruger is the Dutch painter turning up for a liaison with the attractive, elegant French woman he knows as Jacqueline, only to find that she has been murdered and he is the prime suspect as the police start to investigate. Stanley Baker is the man in charge and we see in flashblacks how Kruger and his Jacqueline (the very elegant Micheline Presle) meet. It turns out of course that there are shady secrets among the upper classes and police chief Robert Flemyng wants the case quickly closed with the painter charged. As usual with Losey there are some great mirror shots, Kruger and Presle are an attractive pair and the resolution is quite neat. Losey was hitting his prime here, he went on to do 2 more with Baker (THE CRIMINAL and EVA with Moreau) and then began that run with Bogarde starting with THE SERVANT in ’63. BLIND DATE and THE SERVANT would be a terrific double bill....

Soon, a raft of other Loseys to see, re-see and review: FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE, A DOLL'S HOUSE, STEAMING, DON GIOVANNI, ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY, EVA and that Burton/Taylor double BOOM and SECRET CEREMONY! Several of these were failures then but are cult movies now! Other Losey posts at label, including seeing him and Burton & Taylor in 1970.

A Rattigan double bill

A terrific early '50s double bill of Terence Rattigan adaptations - I thought I would steal a march on the London NFT (National Film Theatre) with their mini-Rattigan season in April, it being Rattigan's centenary year (as it is also Tennessee Williams]. Several Rattigan productions are already on their way to being staged here - a new version of FLARE PATH opens shortly by Trevor Nunn (this was the basis for the great 1945 THE WAY TO THE STARS) [my review of this favourite is at War label], and there is also a new production of CAUSE CELEBRE and Terence Davies has made a new version of THE DEEP BLUE SEA (the 1955 Vivien Leigh film being curiously unavailable for years [though I did source a copy last year]. So it seems Rattigan is back being in favour again. I saw him give a lecture back at the NFT in the early '70s when he was as spry and dapper as ever. His great successes of the '50s and those scripts he turned out in the '60s for films like THE VIPS, THE YELLOW ROLLS ROYCE and that remake of GOODBYE MR CHIPS had all been quite successful, though his type of well made plays had temporarily gone out of fashion with the arrival of the 'kitchen sink' dramatists.

I had not seen THE SOUND BARRIER before and it is a revelation. Totally engrossing and marvellously filmed by David Lean, as meticulous as ever, with great depths of controlled feeling and emotion, depicting the breaking of the sound barrier. This may have been done by pilot Chuck Yeager back in 1947 (as shown in THE RIGHT STUFF), but this drama excels as driven industrialist Ralph Richardson and his equally driven test pilots Nigel Patrick and then John Justin take the controls of those aircraft. We get great aerial photography, no obvious process shots, and those aircraft like the Comet are lovingly filmed. Ann Todd (Mrs Lean at the time) excels here, as she does in Lean's 1948 THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (another great discovery recently) as Richardson's daughter who has already seen her brother (Denholm Elliot) die in a plane crash trying to please his father, and now her husband is also going to try to smash the sound barrier. That excellent actor John Justin is the other pilot - with that ideal home life with Dinah Sheridan to whom Todd flees when she can no longer stay with her tyrant (or is he?) father. The drama is nicely resolved and there is a nice detour with a trip to Egypt - quite a novelty then I imagine. It is just a perfect early 50s British film, with those actors like Richardson, Patrick and Todd at the top of their game, as of course was Lean and Rattigan.

THE BROWNING VERSION is Anthony Asquith's sterling 1951 film of Rattigan's play, again superbly cast with Michael Redgrave in perhaps his best film role (along with Losey's TIME WITHOUT PITY in 1957) as the schoolmaster Crocker-Brown, with Jean Kent as his unfaithful wife and Nigel Patrick again (as insouciant as ever) as her lover.
Once a brilliant teacher, Redgrave has turned into a desiccated, unfeeling pedant, despised by his colleagues and feared by his pupils, apart from young Taplow. Ill-health has prompted his early retirement, but it is apparent that his departure will go unmourned, in contrast to that of his attractive wife (Jean Kent). Dismissed as outdated and irrelevant after the Angry Young Men of the mid '50s rendered his middle-class scenarios unfashionable, Rattigan was a master technician of drama, and his dialogue and pacing are faultless. I like that long terrific scene with Redgrave and Patrick where the latter regrets his affair with the spiteful wife and tries to make amends, but Redgrave knows well how unsatisfied his wife is and how it is his fault. There is so much restraint and control here it is quite affecting. There was a 1994 remake but like those lightweight recent remakes of Wilde's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST and AN IDEAL HUSBAND they are just not in the same league as the 1952 and 1947 originals.