David Farrar – Gone to Earth 1950

Interesting article in the 1951 Film Parade about David Farrar who would have been at the peak of his career at this time.

I have held the opinion that David Farrar might not have been the most friendly of people – his attitude appears quite supercilious to me in many of the roles he had at that time. Later when he was not getting the leading roles and was getting older, he packed in with films – he obviously didn’t want to be lower down the cast list.

Gone to Earth is really a  Victorian melodrama – a lecherous squire deflowers simple country girl who has married local vicar – and the dialogue is curiously stilted. However this hardly matters in a work cinematically choreographed with such brilliance by Michael Powell and Emric Pressburger . The final foxhunting sequence, where the film’s many strands are brought together, is visually  one of the most spellbinding in all cinema.  One Reviewer I read said that ‘The huntsman’s cry of “Gone to earth!” at the very end has haunted me for well over half a lifetime’

There is also this really good colour still of him in Gone to Earth:

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NVS0544

Back in 1947 or 1948 a group of school pupils had a tour of Denham Film Studios and the film being made at the time was a favourite of mine – Mr Perrin and Mr Traill.  If you can please get a copy of this please do , and watch it – a really good film. Anyway here are the comments made about the visit :-

There are six stages at DENHAM, three large and three smaller. We walked on to one of the large stages, where Laurence Huntingdon was directing Hugh Walpole’s school story, Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill, from the script by L.A.G. Strong.

We talked with Edward Chapman, one of the supporting players of Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill whom you will remember as George Sandigate in It Always Rains On Sunday. He said, “I’m playing with David Farrar, Marius Goring and Greta Gynt. I’m the only sane man on the staff; I make rude remarks about all the others.”

Hardly had we finished with Mr. Chapman when we were whisked away to meet David Farrar, and an utterly bored David Farrar. A big, beefy man with a still camera took three publicity photographs of David Farrar showing two young enthusiasts around the studios. As soon as the photographs were taken, our guide disappeared into his dressing-room and was never seen again.

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