Carte-de-visite of the week #12

 

It seems like an eon since I last posted in this series, and so – to make up for lost time – this week I’m looking at four cdvs, including delightful portraits of three young sisters.

Bishop Wood (1839-) of Lower Leigh.

What makes me want to acquire cdvs such as these?  The attraction could stem from any number of things. There might be some unusual aspect to the image itself, or some intriguing detail in the artwork or lettering on the back of the card. It might be the photographer’s name that attracts, possibly because I am familiar with their work already, or because he or she has a local connection. Sometimes the place or person depicted is of interest. Handwritten annotations always catch my eye, for even a few cryptic details might provide enough clues to build up a little bit of background.

Such was the case with this group of four cards. Although they were produced by two photographers, one in Bristol the other in Tiverton, the similarity of surnames, placenames and handwriting indicated a close family connection. Piecing the jigsaw together involved a fair amount of work, but enough details came together to share here.

 According to the printed advert on the reverse of the card, the portrait above was taken by R Houlson, of 5 Griffin Hill, Bristol. Robert Houlson was born in Bristol but had Devon connections, as he first appears as a commercial photographer in the 1871 census when he was living in Honiton.

Bishop Wood appears in the 1861 census as the 22 year old son of William Ayshford Wood (1810-84), a ealthy gentleman who lived at Leigh House in Uffculme and was one of the main freeholders in the parish. William’s other children included William (aged 19 in 1861), Penelope (aged 16), Florence (aged 9) and Arthur Ayshford. It seems almost certain that this Arthur Ayshford Wood (1849-) – Bishop Wood’s brother –  is ‘A.A.W’, father of the three girls below. He married Julianna Palmer (1845-1921) at Tiverton in 1869, and their first child – a son named Arthur – was born in 1870.

The girls’ portraits were taken by Walter Mudford, about whom I have written in a previous post. His photography business was first recorded in 1878 and these were probably taken within five years of that date. Note the bearskin rug!

The caption to each portrait reproduces the pencil note on the back.

 

 

‘M. Wood, daughter of AAW, Leigh Court, now Mrs Worth of Tiverton.’
Julia Mabel Wood was born in 1872. She married Charles Lloyd Henry Worth at Tiverton in April 1894.
‘F. Wood, daughter of AAW, Leigh Court.’
Gertrude Florence Wood was born in 1875.

‘A. Wood, daughter of AAW, Leigh Court’

Alice Wood, born in 1876.

The 1881 census records Arthur Wood along with three daughters: Gertrude (aged 6), Alice (aged 4) and Ethel (aged 1) as well as a three-year old son named Ashford. The absence of any names beginning with either M or F was puzzling at first, but the 1891 census reveals that the eldest daughter (Julia) Mabel (now aged eighteen and therefore born in 1872) was away from home on the night of the census ten years earlier, presumably with her mother Mrs Julianna Wood (now 44.) A son Ernest had also appeared, born around 1883.

It is therefore possible to identify the three sitters as Mabel, Gertrude and Alice. Going by the ages and their dates of birth, Walter Mudford probably took the portraits in the mid-1880s. Dating their uncle’s portrait is a little harder, but if he was in his mid-40s when the photograph was taken then it was probably about the same time. He was then living in Dulverton, Somerset – not far from Tiverton and Uffculme – with his wife Elizabeth and describing himself as a retired farmer.

Sadly, his brother’s marriage broke up in the late 1890s – Julianna divorced Arthur Wood following his infidelity with a woman named Sarah Broad, and went to live in Heavitree, Exeter. I haven’t followed up how life turned out for her daughters – a project for another day, perhaps.

Shakespeare 400

AW as Edmund in Shakespeare’s ‘König Lear’ (1926.) Photographed by Ursula Richter.
As today is the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, it seemed appropriate to mark it with a photograph of AW in the role of Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear. This play was staged at the Schauspielhaus in Dresden in November 1926, coinciding with the actor’s thirtieth birthday.  Edmund – the dark and brooding bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, who conspires to betray his father and anyone else who stands in his way – is one of the Bard’s most despised villains.

AW as Andrew Aguecheek in ‘Twelfth Night’ (1930). Photograph by Genja Jonas.
Dresden was the location for a great many of AW’s Shakespearean performances, especially in the early summer of 1930 when his roles included Octavius Caesar in Julius Caesar, Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, or What You Will [photo above] and Gratiano in A Merchant of Venice. He had a deep admiration for Shakespeare and it is a matter of some irony (and no little sadness for the actor) that his emigration to the playwright’s native country meant renouncing such roles: there was little likelihood of a German actor who spoke limited and heavily-accented English being offered Shakespearean roles on the stage in wartime Britain. He would have to wait until he returned to German soil in the 1950s before he could once again speak the bard’s immortal words on stage.

Bette Davis: ‘The Virgin Queen’ (Koster, 1955)

With her imperious personality and feisty nature, one might argue that no actress was more suited to playing a monarch than Bette Davis. It’s therefore unsurprising that she played Queen Elizabeth (the First) not once but twice – a distinction shared only with Glenda Jackson, who reprised the role twice in 1971.  Sixteen years, however, had passed between The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Michael Curtiz, 1939) and The Virgin Queen (Henry Koster, 1955), and the superiority of her performance in the latter film surely owe more than a little to the difficulties endured by Bette during this period.
The two films were very different anyway. The 1939 movie was based on the play by Maxwell Anderson and focused on the queen’s relationship with Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex – the character played by Anton Walbrook in Elisabeth von England and discussed here.  This time her romantic interest is Devon-born Sir Walter Raleigh, played by Richard Todd. Beginning in 1581 after Raleigh’s return from fighting in Ireland, the film follows his arrival at the queen’s court – achieved through an old family connection with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (played by Herbert Marshall, who had starred opposite Bette in The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941) both directed by William Wyler.) Standing apart from the obsequious etiquette of other courtiers and royal confidantes with his direct speech and soldier’s boldness, Raleigh quickly attracts the queen’s attention. A distinguished career at the court seems assured, but Raleigh’s only wish is to sail Her Majesty’s ships on an expedition to the New World, and for this he needs her support. For Raleigh, serving the queen loyally is a means to this end. But for her? – the rest of the film explores the question of what Elizabeth sees in him, and how their conflicting interests and desires affect their relationship.

As this outline suggests, this story is really about Raleigh, not Elizabeth. In fact, the original treatment for the film was entitled Sir Walter Raleigh and was intended as a vehicle for Richard Todd. It had been over two years since Bette Davis last made a film, and Darryl Zanuck knew he could only lure her over to his studio, 20th Century Fox, with a juicy part. The Raleigh script was therefore substantially revised by screenwriters Harry Brown and Mindret Lord to give Queen Elizabeth a much more prominent role. This was almost the reverse of what happened in 1939, when the star status of Errol Flynn forced the insertion of his character’s name in the title. Todd was no Flynn, however, and both his character and his performance were totally eclipsed by Davis’s portrayal of the queen. Although Todd’s character is more aggressive than the Earl of Essex, no-one could buckle a swash like Errol Flynn, and Raleigh never really captures the same level of charismatic charm.

The Virgin Queen was filmed in CinemaScope, a relatively new widescreen technology that was well-suited to sumptuous costume dramas. It was directed by Henry Koster, who had shot the first CinemaScope film – The Robe – in 1953, and has also just finished working with Richard Todd in A Man Called Peter (1954.) As the pictures (above and below) demonstrate, the CinemaScope format captures a wide panoramic sweep of detail, which in turn placed particular demands on the actors: they had to enter and exit scenes neatly, and remain in character even at the edges of the action.

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The queen’s rival in love: Lady Beth Throgmorton (Joan Collins)
There was at least one point that made the role easier for Bette. The Private Lives had followed the queen right to the end of her reign, meaning that the 31-year-old actress had to play a woman almost twice her age. When filming for The Virgin Queen began in February 1955, she was 47, much closer in age to the real queen during this period – the film ends almost a decade earlier with Raleigh’s departure for South America.  Not only was Bette freed from the temptation to make strained efforts to capture the physical effects of old age, but her experiences during the last sixteen years meant that she was able to bring greater empathy to the role of the ageing monarch. This is a more subdued Elizabeth than that of The Private Lives – even the most ferocious outbursts are underscored by a vulnerability that brings poignancy and depth to her character. This is particularly evident in her dealings with one of her ladies-in-waiting – Lady Beth Throgmorton (played by a young Joan Collins), whose romance with Raleigh causes the queen pangs of jealousy. When she reveals her feelings about age, beauty and fertility, the audience realises that her harsh reactions may not be quite as superficial and petulant as first appear.

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The costume designer, Mary Wills, was nominated for an Academy Award.
Despite this sense of inner empathy between actress and character, Davis in no way shrank from physically portraying the queen’s age. Ten years earlier in The Corn is Green (Rapper, 1945) she went against advice and insisted on making herself look older and dowdier than was required for the part. For The Virgin Queen, she went even further. Although many other distinguished actresses have played Elizabeth I – it’s a role that has attracted those of the calibre of Sarah Bernhardt, Glenda Jackson, Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett – only Bette Davis went to the lengths of having her hair shaved. Although this might have deterred lesser souls from appearing in public – far less acting as a presenter at the Academy Award ceremonies – Bette dressed in a pseudo-Elizabethan costume and headpiece to present Marlon Brando with the Best Actor award at the Oscars on 30 March 1955. ​

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Bette Davis after presenting Marlon Brando with his Academy Award for ‘On the Waterfront’, alongside Grace Kelly with her Oscar for ‘The Country Girl.’
She may have once referred to herself as ‘the Marlon Brando of my generation’ but Bette certainly did not share the actor’s reputation for mumbling, and her acerbic delivery of some of the film’s witty rejoinders still zing and sparkle, even if her accent is a curious blend of mock-Cockney and her natural clipped New England tones. ​There are numerous other historical oddities and anachronisms in the film, from the jumbled chronology to the presence of telescopes and the name of Raleigh’s ship. The underlying negativity about powerful women could also be classed as a ‘historical oddity’, reflecting as it does more than a little of the gender stereotypes of the 1950s – which is not to say that some contemporary opinions expressed on women’s roles seem even less enlightened than those of the Elizabethan era.

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Bette Davis eyes….
At Bette’s request The Virgin Queen received its premiere in Maine, preceded by a cocktail party at her home, Witchway. Thousands of people crowded the streets outside the Strand Theatre in Portland, Maine, for the screening on 22 July 1955. It was not the huge success that Zanuck had hoped for, however, and less than overwhelming box office returns were not helped by the studio’s overly-pessimistic approach to publicity. Although colourful and adorned with magnificent costumes, audiences found parts of the film too stagey and dialogue-heavy. Overall, it is perhaps fair to say that it lacks the sparkle and visual spectacle possessed by The Private Lives, but the fearless and regal performance of Bette Davis is essential viewing: in the hands of a lesser actress, this version of Elizabeth could have been a comic monstrosity.
The film’s legacy has also proved enduring. Discernible borrowings can be traced back to The Virgin Queen from most subsequent Elizabethan biopics, whether in the films themselves or the promotional imagery.  Joan Collins revealed that much of the imperious bitchiness she brought to her role thirty years later as Alexis in Dynasty had been learned from Davis during the filming of The Virgin Queen, while Bette’s striking make-up provided the template for Helena Bonham Carter’s appearance as the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland (Burton, 2010.) This royal performance continues to cast a long shadow.

For those interested in reading more about this and other film portrayals of royalty, I can recommend the newly-published collection edited by Mandy Merck, The British Monarchy on Screen (Manchester University Press, 2016) which includes no less than three essays on Elizabeth I as well as my own contribution on Anton Walbrook’s portrayal of Prince Albert.

This was written as part of The Bette Davis Blogathon and there are a whole host of wonderful posts available to check out there.

’I Wouldn’t Leave My Little Wooden Box for You’ – Premature Burial, Postcards & Poe

 

Premature burial is no laughing matter. In fact many people found the idea of being buried alive so terrifying that they went to great lengths to ensure it couldn’t happen to them. Before his death in 1912 Archdeacon Thomas Colley specified in his will that his body was to be sent to a hospital for dissection in the aid of medical science, ensuring that any signs of life would be noticed by doctors in the event that he was still alive. A few years earlier, the  Third Marquess of Bute requested that doctors wait for unmistakable signs of decay before removing his heart, which was then sent for burial in Jerusalem. (See Rosemary Hannah, The Grand Designer: Third Marquess of Bute (Birlinn, 2012) p. 354. ) Aware of these and many other instances, I was intrigued to find the concept treated with great lightheartedness in the postcard below, which I purchased last week from an antique shop.
My hopes that a closer look at the card would make more sense have since been dashed. Is there any significance in the name on the gravestone? While pondering the images on the card, I was reminded of Harry Clarke’s chilling illustration for Edgar Allan Poe’s tale The Premature Burial (below.)

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“The Premature Burial” (1919) by Harry Clarke (1889-1931)
Dublin-born Clarke was a leading light of the Irish arts & crafts movement and provided the illustrations for a posthumous edition of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination (London: George Harrap & Co. 1919.) This was later adapted for the cinema as the third in Roger Corman’s ‘Poe Cycle.’

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Poster for ‘The Premature Burial’ (Roger Corman, 1962)

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Poster for ‘The Oblong Box’ (Gordon Hessler, 1969), based very loosely on Poe’s tale of the same name.

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This poster for the first of Corman’s Poe adaptations – ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1960) echoes of Clarke’s drawing, with the vertical orientation and the sinister tree.

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Although this poster shifts the layout, the premature burial is still placed in the foreground. The screenplay for the movie was written by Richard Matheson.
I’ve just been teaching Poe’s Corman cycle to film adaptation students which is why these images were so much in my mind, and why the comic postcard seemed so incongruous. It took on a slightly different hue when I realised that the words ‘I would’nt leave my little wooden hut for you-oo’ are actually the refrain from a popular song, written in 1905 by Londoners Tom Mellor (1880-1926) and Charles Collins (1874–1923.)
Although Mellor and Collins are almost totally forgotten now, they were both prolific songwriters whose comic ditties were hugely popular in Edwardian music halls.  Their work received recognition in the film I’ll be Your Sweetheart (Val Guest, 1945), starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Rennie – who appeared together the same year in The Wicked Lady. The film opens with the words ‘This film is dedicated to those grand old song writers of yesterday whose melodies are the folk songs of today. Their battle against the music pirates who robbed them of their just rewards, is the inspiration for this story.’ This is a reference to the absence of proper copyright protection for songwriters at the time ‘I Wouldn’t Leave My Little Wooden Hut for You’ was written.
As you can see from the lyrics, the song is about an unsuccessful courtship on a desert island and has absolutely nothing to do with premature burial. However, the association of ‘wooden box’ with ‘coffin’ was clearly suggestive, and my postcard was not the only one to use the phrase with in a macabre context:

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Although this was clearly the work of a different artist, the idea is similar.

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This early 1900s postcard comments upon current fears about badly-preserved foods, due to an ongoing scandal about malpractice in the American meatpacking industry.
If anyone knows of other examples of old postcards using this song title, or can cast further light on the graveyard humour of the first image, I’d be very pleased to hear of it.

Bear essentials

With barely 24 hours to go before the 88th Academy Awards ceremony, there’s a buzz of anticipation this year over whether or not Leonardo DiCaprio will win his long-awaited Oscar for The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015.) Much of the discussion about this film has concentrated on the infamous bear scene, during which DiCaprio’s character is badly – and graphically – mauled by a grizzly bear. But haven’t we seen something like this before…?

The cover of ‘Michael Strogoff’ (London: Readers Library, 1927), a tie-in to the silent movie ‘Michel Strogoff’ (Tourjansky, 1926)

Jules Verne’s novel Michael Strogoff: the Courier of the Csar was first published in 1876 and is regarded as one of his finest works. It is a stirring tale, concerning the adventures of Michael Strogoff, who acts as courier for Tsar Alexander II and has to dash across Siberia to warn the Tsar’s brother – governor of Irkutsk – of planned treachery by a local Tartar warlord named Ivan Ogareff. Strogoff encounters various characters on his journey – Nadia, daughter of a political exile, two journalists reporting the war – as well as his mother in Omsk, where he is captured while visiting. Nadia and Strogoff’s mother are forced to watch as Michael is (apparently) blinded with a hot blade by the cruel Tartars, but he later escapes and reaches Irkutsk where Nadia’s father helps defeat the rebellion, before giving Strogoff his daughter’s hand in marriage.

The novel was adapted for the silent screen in 1926, with Ivan Mozzhukhin in the title role – the same actor also played Hermann in an early silent version of The Queen of Spades (Protazanov, 1916), endowing him with the rare distinction of prefiguring AW’s roles in two films.  In 1935, although less than ten years had passed since Tourjansky’s movie, it was decided that the time was ripe for a remake (as I said above, nothing is new in the movies!), taking advantage of the advent of sound and improved technology.

I’ve written elsewhere about certain scenes in the film where AW’s posture evokes the iconography of Saint Sebastian but here I want to focus on his fight with the bear. As readers of this blog are probably aware, the actor was actually a great animal lover, and I’ve collected together a number of postcards and images celebrating this here. The scene perhaps jars less with the actor’s personal attitude when it is understood that Strogoff kills the animal while defending a helpless woman who has fainted in fright at the bear’s feet.

In the novel, the incident occurs in Part I, Chapter XI (pp.76-77 in my copy of the film tie-in shown above) and differs considerably from the screen versions. Here, Strogoff and Nadia are travelling through the forest in the company of the two journalists when ‘a monstrous bears’ bursts out the trees and attacks their horses. Nadia tries to defend the horses with her gun, but Strogoff leaps between her and the animal, knife in hand, and swiftly despatches the bear, executing ‘in splendid style the famous blow of the Siberian hunters.’

​In the film Der Kurier des Zaren (Eichberg, 1935), the bear attack takes place on board a ship. Strogoff and Nadia (Maria Andergast) are among many passengers watching a group of gypsies on deck, one of whom is goading a ‘tame’ bear to perform tricks for their entertainment. The animal is startled by the magnesium flash on the journalists’ camera, attacks its trainer and breaks free. Strogoff runs forward to save an elegantly-dressed lady (Hilde Hildebrand) who has collapsed in fright, little knowing that she is in fact Zangara, the lover of Ogareff, who will later betray him.

The bear approaches

Out with the knife

No caption required

All over
Der Kurier des Zaren was released on 7 February 1936, with a French language version, Michel Strogoff, following a few days later.  As most readers of this blog will know, AW left Germany in the autumn to travel to Hollywood where he had been contracted to film an English language version, incorporating additional scenes directed by George Nicholls. The resultant concoction was released under the name The Soldier and the Lady as well as The Adventures of Michael Strogoff. Both leading ladies were English actresses then based in Hollywood: Zangarra was played by Margot Grahame (with whom he would work again twenty years later in Saint Joan), with the role of Nadia taken by Elizabeth Allan. They both appear in the re-edited bear sequence, which incorporates additional shots of AW’s combat inserted into the original sequence.
It’s all over in a few moments, thankfully, and – unlike The Revenant scenes – is unlikely to cause audiences to shudder in horror: in several frames, the fact that we’re watching a man in a bear suit is blatantly obvious. Our hero displays his Herculean courage and strength, while the damsel in distress lives to swoon another day (and also to betray her saviour, although he wasn’t to know this at the time.) It’s far from being Anton’s finest moment, nor could the film ever have been in the running for an Oscar – but the Academy’s failure to grant Walbrook any award for his acting during his long career is a staggering oversight that – in my opinion – overshadows their treatment of DiCaprio.