Raus, Untoten!

My latest foray into the world of fiction is a short story, Shadows in the East , which will appear next year in the third volume of a new anthology, Raus, Untoten! published by Fringeworks.

Raus, Untoten! is – as the title suggests – concerned with the German undead: including, but not limited to, that curious creature in horror films, the ‘Nazi zombie’. The editor of the anthology, Matthew Sylvester, wanted contributors to avoid the usual cliches of the genre and try approaching the subject from from unusual angles. I am dying (pardon the pun) to see how imaginative other authors have been, but clearly there was no shortage of enthusiasm: the anthology will be published in four volumes, as follows:

Volume One – October 31st 2013
Volume Two – January 31st 2014
Volume Three – April 30th 2014 (which will include my story)
Volume Four – July 31st 2014

The authors are an eclectic mix from both sides of the Atlantic and include Warhammer novelist Graham McNeill, and choreographer David Thomas Moore.

Matthew Sylvester has also written a story for the first volume. He interviewed me the other day, and our discussion can be read on his website at http://matthewsylvester.com/2013/08/23/author-interview-james-downs

My contribution was inspired in part by my fascination with the workings of German film studios during the 1930s and 1940s, particularly the vast complex at Babelsberg, home to UFA. I have seen many photographs of the studio buildings, both interior and exterior shots, and felt that these could be the ideal setting for my story. Originally, I intended there to be much more cinematic content, with allusions to Doktor Kaligari and other film themes woven into the narrative; as the story developed, it moved in a different direction and some of this material fell by the wayside – possibly no bad thing, either. Sometimes what writers want to write is not what their readers want to read, and there comes a point when an author has to decide who he wishes to please. I am hoping the anthology will be well received and look forward to posting more news about its progress here.


Vivien Leigh and Anton Walbrook

Today’s post celebrates the opening  of the exhibition ‘Vivien Leigh: a Century of Fame’ at Topsham Museum, which runs from the 3 August to 31 October 2013.

The actress, best known for her role as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1938) was born Vivian Hartley in India on 5 November 1913. Like Walbrook, she was educated in a Catholic religious school; he was taught by the Christian Brothers in their ‘Lazarenkloster’ school
in Schopenhauerstraße, she by the Sacred Heart runs at Roehampton and elsewhere. She showed a talent for drama from an early age and took a leading part in several school productions. The last two years of her education (1929-31) were spent at a finishing school at Bad Reichenhall in the Bavarian Alps, run by Baron and Baroness von Roederer. From here she regularly crossed the border into Austria to attend operas in Vienna and Salzburg. She also spent ten days in Munich at the end of March 1931 and sat through eight hours of Parsifal. Walbrook was at this time in Berlin, appearing in Eine königliche Familie, Victor Barnowsky’s production of the Broadway hit poking fun at the Barrymore acting family. By this time Vivian spoke both French and German, but she returned home too soon to see Walbrook’s first sound film: Salto Mortale was released in August 1931.

Back in England, the Hartleys settled in Devon for the winter, staying at a bungalow called Troy near Polzeath. Vivian went to stay with her friend Mills Martin at Teignmouth, and it was thanks to him that she met her husband, Herbert Leigh Holman. Martin took Vivian to the Hunt Ball at the Two Bridges Inn on Dartmoor-  this was in February 1932 – where she was introduced to Holman, a well-established barrister whose family lived at nearby Holcombe Down. (There is another version of this story that claims they met at the South Devon Hunt Ball on Torquay Pier, although this seems less credible.) Holman’s family had a long connection with Topsham, the port town on the edge of Exeter.

After a short courtship Vivian and Leigh were married on 20 December 1932.  Her new husband requested that she drop her studies at RADA and abandon thoughts of an acting career, but even after the birth of their daughter Suzanne the following October, her desire to return to the stage persisted. Leigh finally relented, and as her theatrical agent did not like ‘Vivian Holman’ as a stage name, she took her husband’s first name instead and altered the spelling of her own. She appeared in four minor films in 1935: Gentlemen’s Agreement, Look Up and Laugh, Things are Looking Up and The Village Squire.

Vivien’s rising career was watched with interest by her sister-in-law Dorothy Holman, who carefully collected press-cuttings and photographs. Over the next two decades Vivien visited Dorothy many times at her house in Topsham, at No.25 The Strand. This lovely building, which dates back to the late 17th century, became the Topsham Museum after Dorothy Holman’s death. The memorabilia collected by Dorothy is on display in a special room. It is rather remarkable that Dorothy and Vivien remained on such friendly terms, given that the Holman’s marriage broke down following her affair with Laurence Olivier.

Vivien first met  Olivier in 1935 and they grew closer during the filming of the historical drama Fire Over England in which she played Cynthia, lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I (Flora Robson) and lover of  brave sailor Michael Ingolby (Olivier.)  The film was a typical blend of patriotism and propaganda by Alexander Korda, with Spain standing in for Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition representing the Gestapo. While they were filming Fire Over England, Walbrook had left Germany and was on his way to Hollywood, which he would dislike almost as much as Vivien. In the meantime she was acting alongside another anti-Nazi emigre, Conrad Veidt, in the spy drama Dark Journey. Here she played Madeleine Goddard, a Parisian costumier working as an undercover agent in Sweden during WWI, who falls for German spy Baron von Marwitz. Watching the film is rather a dark journey itself, due to the various murky plot twists that can leave viewers confused about what’s going on, but it’s worth watching for the performances of the two stars. I find Vivien more beautiful here than in Gone with the Wind and the chemistry between her and Veidt more compelling than that with Clark Gable.  Although Veidt hated the Nazis with the same fervour as Walbrook, the two actors undertook opposing methods of fighting fascism: Veidt specialised in playing sinister German officers such as Baron von Marwitz, Captain Hardt and Major Heinrich Strasser, while Walbrook played ‘good Germans’ such as peace-loving Hutterite Peter, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff and Kurt Muller, all of whom deliver eloquent and impassioned condemnations of Nazi ideology. Both actors were effective in teaching British filmgoers to hate the Nazis – although the wartime experience must have done a great deal to achieve that anyway. The cameraman was Georges Perinal, who would later film Walbrook in Dangerous Moonlight, Colonel Blimp and Saint Joan.

Fire over England had its London premiere in February 1937 and six months later Vivien left her husband and moved in with Olivier at his Chelsea home. In the autumn she was in Hollywood for the filming of  A Yank at Oxford co-starring Robert Taylor and Lionel Barrymore, while Olivier worked on The Divorce of Lady X with Korda’s wife Merle Oberon (for whom the early version of The Red Shoes was originally written.) Olivier then accepted the role of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – starring opposite Merle Oberon, and joined Vivien in America. Leigh Holman filed for divorce in January 1940; this was granted on 26 August, allowing Vivien and Olivier to marry in California on 31 August 1940. The next two months saw them acting together as Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton in Korda’s That Hamilton Woman (1941) –  rather ironic, given that it depicted a semi-public and scandalous relationship similar to the one they had just formalised by getting married. Korda’s main aim with the film, however, was to encourage America to support Britain’s war against Nazi Germany. This was also the intention of Powell and Pressburger’s 49th Parallel which starred Olivier and Walbrook as – respectively – a French Canadian trapper and a Hutterite leader, who come face to face with Nazi submariners in Canada. Also in the film was Leslie Howard, who had played Ashley in Gone with the Wind and with whom Vivien did not get on. Olivier by this time was serving as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, having joined in April 1941. He would have taken the starring role in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp had it not been for Churchill’s opposition to the film – as a consequence, the Fleet Air Arm refused to release him, and we got Roger Livesey instead (D.G.)

Olivier was not the only one from theatrical circles who joined the forces. Ralph Richardson served alongside Olivier in the Fleet Air Arm, while Vivien’s co-star from Gone with the Wind, Clark Gable, became a captain in the US Air Corps and flew on bombing missions over Europe. Rex Harrison, with whom she starred in Storm in a Teacup (1937) also joined the Royal Air Force. He had appeared with Walbrook and Diana Wynyard in Noel Coward’s play Design for Living, first in the west end and then – after the outbreak of the war – travelling around the provinces. At this time Walbrook was in a relationship with Norwegian artist Ferdinand Finne, who had joined the Norwegian Air Force after the invasion of Norway in April 1940. He had been working as a costume designer for the Norwegian National Theatre when he first met Walbrook on a train in France in 1938.  They returned there in 1939, travelling together through Brittany and the South of France, as well as staying in Paris where Finne’s circle of acquaintances included Coco Chanel and Somerset Maugham. After the German attack on his home country, Finne reported immediately to the Norwegian Embassy in London (where the above photograph was taken) which became the organizational base for Norwegian resistance. King Haakon and his son, Crown Prince Olav, resided at the Norwegian Legation in Kensington. Finne helped set up ‘Little Norway’, a training base in Canada for exiled Norwegian Air Force personnel. He was posted there while Walbrook was filming Dangerous Moonlight. The photograph shows Leigh, Walbrook and Admiral Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, founder of the Norwegian Air Force and the first commander of Little Norway.


PictureAfter the war, Walbrook joined Finne in Norway, spending time at the actor’s home and visiting places such as Lillesand, Langoya and Fornebu (west Oslo.) After Finne was asked to design the sets for a west end production of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s dark family drama, The Wild Duck, he suggested that his friend audition for the lead role of Hjalmar Ekdal. Walbrook got the part, and appeared in The Wild Duck at St Martin’s Theatre from 3 November 1948 to 26 March 1949.  Their relationship ended that same year, which also saw Walbrook’s disastrous and short-lived return to Germany. In the meantime, Vivien had appeared in a series of critically-acclaimed stage plays – many of them with Olivier – culminating in her brilliant performance as the tragic Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Olivier at the Aldywch Theatre (where Walbrook had starred in Watch on the Rhine in 1943.)   She went on to win an Oscar in the 1951  film version, having already won the same award in 1940 for playing another, very different, Southern belle. She died on 8 July 1967, one month before Walbrook.

Topsham Museum is open from 2pm to 5pm on Mondays, (Tuesdays this month only), Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Admission is free, and a new booklet about Vivien has been produced to mark this centenary exhibition. 


The Red Shoes premiere 22 July 1948

On this day, sixty five years ago, The Red Shoes received its world premiere at the Gaumont Haymarket and Marble Arch Pavilion. Both cinemas were part of the Gaumont chain, which was then owned by Rank – the decision to hold the premiere here, rather than at the prestigious Odeon in Leicester Square, was a mark of Arthur Rank’s lack of appreciation for the film. It nonetheless proved highly popular with British audiences – and international ones too, as these Spanish posters indicate.  To celebrate today’s anniversary, I’m posting a series of film stills – in black and white, alas, rather than glorious Technicolour.



In this scene Lermontov’s jealousy impels him to criticise Julian’s score for La Belle Meuniere as ‘childish, vulgar and completely insignificant’ – a rare lapse in his professionalism, revealing the intensity of his feelings about Vicky’s career. For him, there can be no compromise. Julian, however, dismisses ballet as ‘a second rate means of expression,’ perhaps recognising that he lacks the same dedication to art that Lermontov and Vicky possess.

 

 

 

Vicky confronting Lermontov at the station in Monte Carlo in a vain effort to prevent him returning to Paris. He tells her he can make her ‘one of the greatest dancers the world has ever known.’ She knows this, but his cruelty towards her only serves to drive Vicky into Julian’s arms.

After learning of Vicky and Julian’s marriage, Lermontov consults his lawyer, Boisson, about taking out an injunction to prevent them from presenting an independent production of The Red Shoes. Boisson was played by Scottish actor Hay Petrie, who died just a few days after the premiere. He gave memorable performances in several Powell & Pressburger films, including The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940),  The Thief of Baghdad (1940), One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942) and A Canterbury Tale (1944.) After The Red Shoes he played the part of Walbrook’s servant in The Queen of Spades – his last role, before his untimely death in London on 30th July 1948.

Danger of death…indeed.

An advert for the Columbia record of the score from The Red Shoes. Mathieson was musical director for many of Walbrook’s British films, including Victoria the Great (1937), The Rat (1937), Sixty Glorious Years (1938), Gaslight (1940), Dangerous Moonlight (1941) and 49th Parallel (1941). In 1935 he  married an up-and-coming ballet dancer, Hermione Danborough, who was familiar with the world portrayed in The Red Shoes – she had worked with Robert Helpmann, who plays Ivan Boleslawsky, and in 1929 auditioned before ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev, founder of the Ballets Russes and an obvious inspiration for the Lermontov character.  After marrying the composer, Hermione retired from ballet, even though she had only just turned twenty: the very ‘fate’ from which Lermontov was determined to save Vicky.

Silent Cloisters

Following on from last month’s post about nuns photographs, I have looked out a postcard this time of a scene from the silent film The Convent Gate (1913.) This was directed by Wilfred Noy and adapted from a scenario written by Marchioness Townsend (1884-1959) that involved a jilted bride, insanity and a life-threatening blaze, in addition to the nunnery.  In her autobiography It Was – and it Wasn’t (1937) the Marchioness revealed how the screenplay was developed with the help of a model theatre in her garden and cardboard cut-out nuns. Whether or not this led to two-dimensional characterisation, this postcard makes me sorry that The Convent Gate has not survived. 


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The film’s leading lady, Dorothy Bellew (right), was photographed by Bassano four years later – and she certainly does not look like a nun in this portrait.


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This postcard shows a scene from The Monk and the Woman , which was released four years after The Convent Gate. On the left is Australian actress Maud Fane, playing Liane, a young French girl who finds shelter in a monastery while trying to escape the attentions of lecherous Prince de Montrale. The character on the right is young monk Brother Paul, played by Percy Marmont. Brother Paul has been given the job of watching over Liane, but (surprise!) ends up falling in love with her, leading him to clash with his abbot, the prince and the king….

Both the play and film caused controversy when released in Australia, being condemned by Archbishop Michael Kelly of Sydney. An austere prelate of puritan piety, Kelly remained at odds with the modern world all his life. He argued that The Monk and the Woman presented a distorted view of Catholicism that was offensive to the faithful; his views were supported by the Australian Catholic Federation, whose members boycotted screenings and applied pressure on advertisers to withdraw their custom. Critics, on the other hand, applauded the warmth and humanity shown in the film, as well as the performances by Fane and Marmont. Again, I’m disappointed to find that this film too is considered lost.


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This is a still from Häxan: witchcraft through the ages (1922) an extraordinary silent film in seven chapters by Danish director Benjamin Christensen. Thankfully, this film has survived and is easily accessible on DVD: I’ve had the opportunity to watch it many times and it still retains the power to shock and mesmerize. Mixing documentary segments, slide lectures and dramatized horror sequences – including infanticide, witches’ sabbaths and the torture of suspected witches – the film has an avant-garde, surrealist feel that accentuates its nightmarish subject. Inevitably, however, this weakens Christensen’s rationalist argument: if his aim was to condemn medieval superstition and ignorance, why spend so much of the film experiencing false visions, and imbuing them with a power that only enhances viewers’ horrified fascination? 

Anyway, even if we regret and abhor the cruelty of religious persecution, and the sufferings caused by ignorance, I doubt the sort of secular rationalism advocated by Christensen would really have helped matters in medieval Europe.  Ninety years have passed since he made Häxan and aspects of his solution appear almost as dated as the medieval mindset he mocked. Christensen’s attempt to compare witch’s behaviour to that of hysterics treated by Professor Charcot (Chapter Seven) is one particularly unconvincing argument – Charcot’s category of ‘hysteria’ has now as much credibility as the demonic creatures depicted during the witches’ ritual in Häxan.  Christensen can be forgiven for that, though, as he raises some challenging points about the misuse of power and shows real compassion for the unfortunate women, old and young, who became victims of witch trials. 


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The film is fairly anti-clerical throughout, portraying gross, lustful and gluttonous friars in addition to the cruel Inquisitors. A short sequence set in a convent shows the devil (played by Christensen himself) causing appearing to one of the nuns and inciting her to stab a consecrated host – an outrage that throws the rest of the community into a frenzy of writhing and, well, hysteria.


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The resulting scenes of bedlam bear strong similarities to those in the late Ken Russell’s film The Devils (1973), which was based on Aldous Huxley’s books, The Nuns of Loudun, although the events in Loudun took place over 100 years after those depicted in Häxan. In his rendering of church interiors and religious garb, Christensen is to be commended for his attention to detail and efforts at historical accuracy. 

The Rat (1937)

This is a promotional still for The Rat, a romantic melodrama set in the Paris underworld and starring Walbrook as jewel thief Pierre Boucheron. The character contrasted starkly with the role of Prince Albert, whom he had just played in Victoria the Great – a deliberate decision, no doubt, to demonstrate his versatility. The photograph emphasizes Walbrook’s muscular masculinity, which – juxtaposed with Ruth Chatterton’s curves and moon-eyed gaze – underscores his new image as a male pin-up. 

In the film he is portrayed as irresistible to women. Chatterton’s character, Zelia de Chaumont, is a Parisian socialite who gets a thrill from mixing with the criminal low-life who frequent the White Coffin Club, ‘the worst place in Montmartre.’ She grows intrigued about Boucheron after watching him in a fight and the two of them enjoy a series of romantic trysts around Paris; her aim is to turn him away from crime, while his interest is really in her pearls.  Their two worlds collide when Zelie’s wealthy, middle-aged fiance develops an unhealthy interest in Boucheron’s innocent young ward, Odile (played by René Ray.) Murder ensues and the film climaxes with a dramatic courtroom scene.

The story was based on a play co-written by Constance Collier and Ivor Novello, who starred together in both the stage version and the 1925 silent film. Herbert Wilcox, who had directed Walbrook in Victoria the Great (1937) and would do so again in Sixty Glorious Years (1938), delegated direction of the film to Jack Raymond, but the film retained the hallmarks of a Wilcox production: it was made under the auspices of his Imperator company, for RKO distribution, with dialogue provided again by Miles Malleson. Filming took place in the summer of 1937 while Victoria the Great was in post-production; actors such as Felix Aylmer, Gordon McLeod and Hugh Miller appeared in both films. Shooting finished at the end of September 1937, allowing Walbrook to take his mother over to France to see Paris. Although most of it was shot at Denham Studios or in nearby countryside (e.g. the village of Harefield),  the film also used some real Parisian locations such as the Luxembourg Gardens.

Shortly after filming of The Rat was completed, Walbrook’s former co-star at UFA, Renate Müller, was killed in a mysterious fall from a hospital window. They had starred in four films together: Walzerkrieg (1933),  Viktor und Viktoria (1933), Die englische Heirat (1934) and Allotria (1936.) The Nazis had tried to make her an Aryan pin-up girl, urging her to make anti-Semitic propaganda films and even attempting to force a romantic match with Hitler. Instead, she had continued her relationship with her Jewish lover, ending her life hounded by the Gestapo and addicted to morphine. Her death on the 7th October provided a dark reminder of the fate that might have awaited Walbrook had he remained in Nazi Germany. The Rat was released on the 11th November 1937.