Anton Walbrook as Saint Sebastian

Posted on January 20, 2014January 30, 2018 by James

Today the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Saint Sebastian, an early Christian martyr who became the patron saint of athletes, soldiers, pin-makers and plague-sufferers. (The Eastern Orthodox Church keeps his feast on 18 December.) Today’s blog post therefore features an image of Anton Walbrook as Saint Sebastian.

This image appeared in a German newspaper in 1936, responding to a scene in the film Der Kurier des Zaren which was released in Germany on 7 February. Adapted from Jules Verne’s 1876 novel Michael Strogoff, the film tells the tale of a Russian courier named Michael Strogoff who has to dash across Russia with a vital message for the tsar’s brother, wrestling with bears and fighting off ferocious Tatar rebels along the way. Captured by the Tatars, he is brought before their leader and blinded with a red hot sword by the executioner. It is this scene, depicting the actor in torn clothes and bared torso, lashed to a wooden pole, that evoked the comparison with ‘Captain Sebastian.’

So who was this saint?

According to legend, he was born in Narbonne in Gaul but brought up in Milan before travelling to Rome where he joined the army of the emperor Carinus. Sebastian was later promoted to captain of the Praetorian Guard under Diocletian, but the emperor condemned him to death because of his success in making Christian converts. He was taken out to a field where, according to the 14th century Golden Legend, ‘archers shot at him till he was as full of arrows as an urchin.’ Left for dead, he was found to be alive by a pious widow who came to bury him; she nursed him back to health, whereupon he returned to confront Diocletian and was promptly martyred a second time, being clubbed to death before his body was thrown into a sewer. This was around 288 AD. His remains were retrieved and reburied near the catacombs; the Basilica of San Sebastiano on the Appian Way became a site of medieval pilgrimage.

Sebastian’s story may seem to have little connection with the life of Walbrook, but the cartoon’s caption makes more sense if we unravel a little about the development of the saint’s iconography.

Shortly before facing the executioner, Michael Strogoff raises his eyes heavenwards, imitating the traditional pose of Christian martyrs.

Representations of the saint appeared as early as the sixth century, but these portraits followed the formal conventions of Byzantine art and made little effort at natural realism. In the early middle ages, paintings of the saint began to adopt more distinctive features; he was shown as youthful, clean-shaven rather than bearded, and the emphasis moved almost exclusively to his ‘first’ martyrdom – the shooting by arrows. Renaissance artists could not resist the opportunity to paint a beautiful youth, nearly naked, in a contorted pose of alluring vulnerability, and over the next few centuries depictions of Saint Sebastian were undertaken by, among others, Hans Memling, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Piero della Francesca, Sandro Botticelli, Andrea Mantegna (three times), Pietro Perugino, Giuseppi Cesari, Carlo Saraceni, Giovanni Bazzi (known as ‘Il Sodoma’ for reasons mentioned in my book A Carnal Medium), Tintoretto, Titian, Guido Reni (seven times), El Greco, Gerrit van Honthorst and Peter Paul Rubens. These paintings celebrate the saint’s physical perfection and thus succeeded in recasting the image of Saint Sebastian in popular culture, from a middle-aged martyr to an icon of Apollonian beauty, imbuing him with a particular appeal for 19th century aesthetes who already idolised Hellenic youth.

Examples can be found in John Addington Symonds’ Sketches in Italy (1883), Walter Pater’s short story Sebastian von Storck (1886), Anatole France’s satirical novel The Red Lily (1894), John Gray’s poem Saint Sebastian (1897) and Montague Summers’ Antinous and Other Poems (1907.) Oscar Wilde viewed Reni’s Saint Sebastian in Genoa in 1877 on his way to Rome, where he visited Keats’ grave and made a strong association between the two dead youths: in his poem The Grave of Keats he calls the poet ‘Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.’ The title character of Wilde’s novella The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) wore a cloak studded with ‘medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian’ and after Wilde’s release from prison he moved to France under the pseudonym of Sebastian Melmoth. Another of Reni’s Sebastian paintings inspired Frederick Rolfe to write ‘Two Sonnets for a Picture of Saint Sebastian the Martyr in the Capitoline Gallery, Rome’ which was published in The Artist magazine in June 1891. The same portrait had a profound effect on Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, who – shortly before his death – had himself photographed as Saint Sebastian by Kishin Shinoyama. This was nothing new – Jean Reutlinger did the same in 1913 and models posing as Sebastian had been captured by the cameras of Victorian and Edwardian photographers from Oskar Rejlander (1867) to Frederick Holland Day (1905-7.) Even a cursory perusal of these writings and images reveals the extent to which Sebastian had become a homoerotic icon by the beginning of the century. Audiences – including tuned-in newspaper readers – knew what was being hinted at when an actor or artist was presented as another Saint Sebastian.

Although the examples I’ve cited above are drawn from English and French language sources, there were plenty of ‘Sebastian’ references in German literature, including the works of Walbrook’s favourite authors. In January 1912 Franz Kafka wrote in his diary ‘I am supposed to pose in the nude for the artist [Ernst] Ascher, as a model for a St. Sebastian.’ Alas, no record remains of this painting, if it was ever made. Egon Schiele, who went to the same school as Wohlbrück, Klosterneuberg, painted a self-portrait as Saint Sebastian in 1915. Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Sankt Sebastian was written between 1905 and 1906 when he was working at Meudon as secretary to sculptor Auguste Rodin. It was published in his Neue Gedichte in 1907:

Like one lying down he stands there, all
target-proffered by his mighty will.Far-removed, like mothers when they still,
Self-inwoven like a coronal.And the arrows come, and, as if straight out of his own loins originating, cluster with their feathered ends vibrating.But he darkly smiles, inviolate.Only once his eyes show deep distress, Gazing in a painful nakedness; Then, as though ashamed of noticing, seem to let go with disdainfulness those destroyers of a lovely thing.

[J.D. Leishman’s translation]

‘I have a favourite saint. I will tell you his name. It is Saint Sebastian, that youth at the stake, who, pierced by swords and arrows from all sides, smiles amidst his agony. Grace in suffering: that is the heroism symbolized by St. Sebastian. The image may be bold, but I am tempted to claim this heroism for the German mind and for German art, and to suppose that the international honour fallen to Germany’s literary achievement was given with this sublime heroism in mind. Through her poetry Germany has exhibited grace in suffering.’

These words are from Thomas Mann’s speech in Stockholm on 10 December 1929, given at his acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The prize had been granted in recognition of novels such as Buddenbrooks (1901) and The Magic Mountain (1924) rather than the novella Death in Venice (1912), to which Mann appeared to allude in his acceptance speech. The following passage occurs in the second chapter of Death in Venice:

‘a keen essayist had remarked once: that he was the conception of “an intellectual and ephebe-like masculinity that stands silent in proud shame, clenching its teeth while it is pierced by swords and spears.” That was beautiful, intelligent, and correct, despite its somewhat exaggerated accentuation of passivity. Because grace under pressure is more than just suffering; it is an active achievement, a positive triumph and the figure of St Sebastian is its best symbol…’

The novella recounts the final days of a middle-aged writer, Gustav von Aschenbach, who has become obsessed with a beautiful young boy he has seen while on holiday in Venice. A year before Wohlbrück began filming Der Kurier des Zaren, his name arose in discussions about a film adaptation of Death in Venice. Mann had his doubts, however, feeling that Wohlbrück was zu schön (too handsome) for the lead role of Aschenbach. The character is actually in his early fifties and clearly past his prime; towards the end of the story, he resorts to make up to disguise his age. Wohlbrück at this time was only 37. The film was never made, and audiences had to wait until 1971 when Dirk Bogarde played the part at the more appropriate age of 49. The German newspaper’s suggestion [above] that Wohlbrück should appear in a film about Saint Sebastian, ‘made in the style of Cecil B De Mille,’ was not taken up either. The first, to my knowledge, was Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane (1976.)

Thomas Mann’s family were intimately involved in the theatrical and cinematic circles frequented by Adolf Wohlbrück. The film that made Marlene Dietrich a star, Der Blau Engel (1930), was based on the novel Professor Unrat by his brother Heinrich Mann. Thomas’s son Klaus Mann was engaged to actress Pamela Wedekind, while his daughter Erika was married to Gustaf Grundgens for three years. Klaus portrayed his brother-in-law in his 1936 novel Mephisto, criticising him for compromising with the Nazis. Grundgens’ marriage to Erika Mann was thought to have been a lavender marriage, as was his later marriage to Marianne Hopper. After they separated in 1929, Erika embarked on a series of lesbian affairs, beginning with Pamela Wedekind. She opened a cabaret in Munich, Die Pfeffermühle, where anti-Nazi sketches were performed. Pamela Wedekind later married Charles Regnier; their son Anatole referred to Wohlbrück in his memoirs.

The writings of Thomas and Heinrich Mann had been publicly burned by the Nazis in May 1933, and both authors had left the country before Wohlbrück’s name was suggested for Death in Venice. Although the Manns were joined in exile by a great many other writers, actors, directors and leading figures from the arts, for the time being Wohlbrück, Gründgens, Schünzel and others continued to work in Germany. The choice was not simply one of staying or leaving: remaining in Germany raised questions about how to live with the Nazi regime. One could endure for a while, emulate Saint Sebastian’s ‘grace under pressure’, but it was impossible to sustain the act for long. By the time Der Kurier des Zaren was released, Wohlbrück was looking for ways to leave Nazi Germany.

‘Grace in suffering: that is the heroism symbolized by St. Sebastian.’ – Thomas Mann

Happy Birthday Anton!

Posted on November 19, 2013January 31, 2018 by James

Seasons of Mist

Posted on October 12, 2013September 7, 2020 by James

This was the view from my bedroom window a couple of days ago, and when driving up through the Exe Valley last week I noticed thick banks of white mist hanging over the fields to the side of the road and thought of Keats’ lines in Ode to Autumn:
Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.
Autumn is almost upon us now, and I like the pleasing contrast between the white mist and the piles of bronze and gold leaves that are starting to accumulate on the ground. I call it ‘mist’ rather than ‘fog’ because I’ve always associated the latter with the sea. Strictly speaking, however, the distinction lies in visibility: fog is thicker than mist, and there is a precise point at which one becomes the other. Hill-walkers, drivers, seafarers, pilots and others have good reason to dislike such treacherous conditions: routes are hidden from view, dangers concealed, sounds are muffled and distances become hard to judge. Fear of what lies within the mist, or fog, is also a familiar trope from the worlds of film and literature. Perhaps the most notorious example would be London’s ‘pea-souper’ fogs, which have provided the atmosphere (literally) for numerous acts of murder and skulduggery by Victorian villains.

Contrary to popular belief, Conan Doyle never used the term ‘pea-souper’ in his Sherlock Holmes stories. Another common misconception is that the Whitechapel murders ascribed to ‘Jack the Ripper’ took place in thick fog, when in actual fact the killings ceased during the month of October 1888 – the only time when there really was a pea-souper. These murders provided the inspiration for Hitchcock’s silent thriller The Lodger (1927), starring Ivor Novello as the suspected serial killer. Its full title is The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. Although Novello’s appearance matches the description of the killer as ‘wearing a scarf over the lower part of his face’ (above) many Londoners at this time would have masked their faces in the same or similar ways to protect themselves from the damp unhealthy air. Is the lodger the killer? Viewers’ inability to decide is just another aspect of the fog’s power to dull our powers of perception.

There is more confusion over mistaken identity in the film Footsteps in the Fog (1955), set in the early 1900s and based on a short story by W.W. Jacobs, the author of the classic horror tale The Monkey’s Paw. It starred the then husband and wife team of Stewart Grainger and Jean Simmons, caught up in a dark plot of murder and blackmail. The basic set-up – murderous husband teaming up with flirty maid – recalls the dysfunctional household in Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight which was filmed in 1940 by Thorold Dickinson and then remade in Hollywood in 1944. Again, fog is used to hint at villainy – when we first see Paul Mallen (Anton Walbrook) leave the house and sets out on one of his nocturnal missions (below).

Sergeant Rough, wrapped up against the London fog with the same thoroughness as Ivor Novello – although falling short of the latter’s sartorial elegance – is able to use the fog as a cover for following Mallen as he crosses the square.

Gaslight was set around 1885, but as late as December 1952 thousands of Londoners died during a dense smog that enveloped the capital for several days. This led to the Clean Air Act (1956) which sought to banish black smoke in urban areas through the introduction of smokeless fuels. It took many years, but London’s pea-soupers eventually became a thing of the past. Times were changing in other ways, as the televised Coronation in March 1953 encouraged huge numbers of British households to invest in TV sets. The 1950s are now regarded now as the ‘golden age of science fiction’ and programmes made for television began exploring themes of space travel, frightening technology and strange creatures from other worlds. Most of these were aimed at young audiences, but a six-part series The Quatermass Experiment – broadcast in six half-hour episodes on Saturday evenings in July-August 1953 – was aimed at adults, and proved amazingly popular: when the last episode was broadcast on 22 August 1953, audience figures were estimated at around 5 million. The film industry took notice, and Hammer Films bought the rights, releasing The Quatermass Xperiment in cinemas in 1955. In America, it was renamed The Crawling Terror and was equally successful.

Although less famous, The Trollenberg Terror followed a similar trajectory to Quatermass. Occupying the same Saturday evening slot, it was broadcast in six episodes between 15 December 1956 and 19 January 1957, and then quickly bought up and remade into a film for release in 1958. In America it was renamed The Crawling Eye, possibly to capitalise on audience’s familiarity with the Quatermass film, although ‘crawling eyes’ is a perfect description of the monsters. Their appearance, however, is concealed until the end of the film by a cloud of mist; this aspect of the film, one might argue, was a direct influence upon later horror films such as The Fog (1980) and The Mist (2007.)

Most of the action takes place on the Trollenberg, a mountain in the Swiss alps which has been partially covered by a mysterious cloud that remains static over the south slopes. The phenomena is being monitored by scientists from a nearby observatory, led by Professor Crevett (actor Warren Mitchell, soon to become better known as Cockney bigot Alf Garnett), who has detected high levels of radioactivity in the cloud. This is not the only sinister happening: since the cloud’s appearance, mountain climbers have been found with their heads torn off. Crevett is joined by his old friend Alan Brooks, a United Nations expert who investigated similar goings-on in the Andes three years earlier. He arrived at Trollenberg along with two sisters, Anne and Sarah Pilgrim.

Anne Pilgrim (played by the lovely Janet Munro) is in fact telepathic, and has just finished performing a mind-reading show in London with her older sister Sarah (Jennifer Jayne.) Later, Anne’s psychic powers forge a link with the alien creatures in the mist, allowing her to visualize events on the mountainside and direct rescue operations. The aliens sense her power and try to have her killed by human ‘zombies’ whose minds they control. The presence of the sisters is one of the more intriguing elements in a film that – although full of absurdities – I have enjoyed watching several times.

John Carpenter saw The Crawling Eye as a child, and provided at least some of the inspiration behind his film The Fog (1980.) During their commentary for the 2002 special edition DVD of The Fog both he and producer Debra Hill refer to it as one of their favourite films. Carpenter’s image of the fog billowing under Dan O’Bannon’s doorway and entering his room is just one of several incidents that are reminiscent of those that took place on the Trollenberg. Another source of inspiration was a visit to Stonehenge made by Carpenter and Hill in 1977 when they witnessed a fog bank ‘just sitting on the horizon, way past Stonehenge’ causing Carpenter to wonder ‘what if there’s something in that fog?’

The malevolent beings concealed within the fog are, in this film, ghostly rather than alien: exactly one hundred years earlier, in 1880, the founders of the Antonio Bay community lit false beacons to lure a ship onto the rocks – a cruel trick allegedly employed by wreckers in Devon and Cornwall in years gone by (as depicted in Jamaica Inn for example), although there seems to be little documentary evidence to support these tales. All those aboard died in the wreck, but their vengeful spirits have returned on the night of the town’s centenary celebrations, and are intent on claiming the lives of six descendants of the original murderers.

The horrific killings take place within an eerie bank of glowing fog, that rolls in from the sea. As in The Trollenberg Terror the cloud of fog defies nature, moving against the wind. Local radio broadcaster Stevie Wayne (played by Carpenter’s then wife Adrienne Barbeau) plays a key role in the night’s events, as her radio station is located in a lighthouse overlooking the bay. From this vantage point she is able to provide a running commentary on the inexorable progress of the fog to her listeners. For me, the most memorable part of the film is listening to her voice:

‘It’s moving faster now, up Region Avenue, up to the end of Smallhouse Road…just hitting the outskirts of town…Broad Street…Clay Street… It’s moving down Tenth Street, get inside and lock your doors, close your windows…there’s something in the fog. If you’re on the south side of town, go north. Stay away from the fog…Richardsville Pike up to Beacon Hill is the only clear road. Up to the church. If you can get out of town, get to the old church. Now the junction at 101 is cut off..if you can get out of town, get to the old church. It’s the only place left to go. Get to the old church on Beacon Hill.’

Oddly enough, in James Herbert’s novel The Fog an empty church is also a place sought for sanctuary – but it is the fog that takes refuge there, rather than its victims. Apart from sharing the same name there is no relation between Carpenter’s film and Herbert’s novel, which was published in 1975. Interesting to note, nonetheless, that both men turned to the theme following their first big breakthrough. After a few minor films, Carpenter had just enjoyed his first great commercial success with Halloween (1978) and invited several of the actors to take roles in The Fog. Herbert’s first novel The Rats (1974) had sold out within weeks and attracted a great deal of attention – not all of it positive by any means – due to the graphic descriptions of death and violence. The Fog was written in the same vein and expanded upon The Rats’ theme of natural disaster brought upon by misguided government experiments; this would also form the basis of Stephen King’s novella The Mist. Herbert’s tale begins in Wiltshire when an earthquake unleashes a foul yellow fog that erupts from a crack in the earth and begins drifting through the southern counties of England. Those who are caught by it are affected mentally and the novel progresses through a series of horrific episodes in which the madness leads to murder, mass suicide, mutilation and sexual violence. The fog here does not conceal any monster other than itself; the fog is the horror, and it is slowly revealed that is has a biological life of its own.

The horror within Stephen King’s Mist shares more similarities with that of the Trollenberg cloud than either of the Fog stories. The first film Stephen King remembers seeing was The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), and he was about eleven years old when The Crawling Eye was released in the USA. The film is referred to in his 1986 novel It, which is set around the time of the film’s release in the summer of 1958. King’s youthful immersion in popular culture – early horror and science-fiction films, radio drama serials such as Dimension X and E.C. comics like Tales from the Crypt – were important influences on his later writings.

‘There’s something in the mist!’

There are a few superficial parallels between The Trollenberg Terror and the 2007 film The Mist, which was director Frank Darabont’s adaptation of King’s novella of the same name, first published in the Dark Forces collection (1980). I was on holiday in Cornwall when I first read the story in 1985, after it had been republished in another anthology, Skeleton Crew. It is by far the longest story in the collection but I read it all in one continuous session, curled up in a dormitory bed with my borrowed book and a packet of biscuits. It made quite an impression on me, and the only other story I can remember from that collection is The Raft. My vision of the scenes differed rather a lot from that of Frank Darabont, who had already brought two of King’s other stories to the screen – The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999.) Many of King’s fans were displeased at the shocking twist – not in the book – with which Darabont decided to end the film. Personally, I approve of the ending. Few modern horror films contain genuine shocks; the final frames of The Mist have an undeniable impact that has unsettled audiences. The ending neatly confirms what has been true of all the films above – fog and mist not only conceal terrifying threats, but they cloud judgment as well as vision, rendering opaque the distinction between innocence and guilt

So when I’m walking across the fields again this week and happen to see banks of mist (or worse still, fog) drifting over the ground towards me, the question is bound to come to mind….what lies within?

Vivien Leigh and Anton Walbrook

Posted on August 4, 2013November 5, 2020 by James

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.

After 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

Posted on July 22, 2013January 31, 2018 by James

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.