Hubert Gregg –

Hubert Gregg (1914-2004) was an actor, songwriter, author, director and radio presenter – among other talents – as if that isn’t enough. His career spanned 70 years in theatre, film and radio.

The picture above  shows Hubert Gregg in his role as the evil Prince John in Walt Disney’s live-action movie, the Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952). In my opinion, his performance as the ‘sneering’ brother of King Richard the Lionheart is very underrated and is up there with the likes of Claude Rains and Guy Rolfe.

This is a excerpt from his autobiography Maybe It’s Because… :

‘It was during a tour of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow that I got a telephone call to say that I had been asked to test for the part of Prince John in the coming Walt Disney production The Story of Robin Hood. I was told that Ken Annakin was directing. He had directed me in a pot-boiler called Vote for Huggett and we got along well together.

I made my first film at Denham Studios – I hadn’t set foot there since In Which We Serve – and the final choice seemed to be between Kenneth More, Geoffrey Keen and myself. I won by a short beard.

The Disney Robin Hood was a new screen experience and one I wouldn’t have missed for seven whodunits in a row, director or play. Peter Finch was cast as the Sheriff of Nottingham and we shared a crack of dawn car to the studio each day. It was a colour movie with absolutely no expense spared. The costumes were beautiful, if unnecessarily weighty in their adherence to medieval reality. One cloak was heavily embroidered and lined with real fur: it cost more than a thousand pounds (a good deal of money in pre-inflationary days) and took all my strength to wear. In one scene I had to ride into the town square, leap off my horse and enter the treasury building in high dudgeon.

To add to the reality our saddles were fitted with medieval pommels at the back that had to be negotiated carefully when dismounting. In the first take, I lifted my leg as gracefully as I could the necessary six inches higher than usual and leaped beautifully off my steed. As my feet touched the ground the weight of my cloak carried me completely out of frame to the left.

One day on the set, a week or two after shooting had begun; I heard a quiet voice coming from a chair on my left.”How are you, Mr. Gregg? My name is Disney.” I looked surprised at this modest newcomer to the studio – he had arrived from Hollywood the day before. “I’d like to thank you….” he was saying, adding flattering things about my performance, which however he referred to as ‘a portrayal’. The choice of word was typically American and the modesty typically Disney.

I enjoyed every moment of the filming but had to put my foot down over a suggestion from the publicity department. They wanted to send me by car, in costume and make-up, to Alexandra Palace where I would appear on television singing Maybe it’s Because I’m a Londoner!’

Richard Todd and Walt Disney, July 1952

Richard Todd, the fine British actor  was Walt Disney’s first adult live-action star and his good friend. Todd’s second movie for Walt (after The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men) was The Sword and the Rose, which was filmed in England in 1952 and released in the U.S. in July 1953. I recently acquired this publicity photo for Sword and the Rose which shows Walt with Todd, and with Glynis Johns, Todd’s co-star, around the start of the shooting of that film at the Pinewood Studios. The occasion was the filming of costume tests.

The photo is undated, but it most likely was taken early in July 1952. Walt and Lillian Disney, their daughters, Sharon and Diane  and Lillian’s niece, Marjorie Sewell Bowers, sailed from New York on the Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday, July 1, 1952. They arrived at Southampton on Sunday, July 6, and proceeded to the Dorchester Hotel in London. The Hollywood Reporter for July 17, 1952, in a dispatch from London dated Friday, July 11, reported:

Walt Disney arrived in town this week and got right down to work on his new British picture, “The Sword and the Rose.” Already he has visited Pinewood studios and had conferences with producer Perce Pearce and writer Lawrence Watkin, inspected art director Carmen Dillon’s set designs and given artists’ and make-up tests the once-over. After expressing his complete satisfaction with the pre-production planning and progress to date, he took a quick look at the sound stage where the first set is being built in readiness for interior shooting to start Aug. 5. This set, on which the opening scenes will be filmed, depicts part of the grounds and battlements of Windsor Castle in 1515 during the early years of Henry VIII’s reign. Location shooting will be done by a second unit at Wilton Park, Beaconsfield, about 20 miles out of London, and will start next Monday.

The Disneys and Marjorie Bowers left Europe on Monday, August 25, 1952, sailing from Naples, Italy, aboard the Independence, and arrived in New York on Wednesday, September 3. I don’t know if they flew or took the train to Los Angeles, but, in any case, Walt was back in his Burbank office the following Tuesday, September 9, the day after Labour Day.

Muriel Marjorie Sewell Bowers, daughter of Lillian Disney’s sister Hazel Sewell and the stepdaughter of Walt’s longtime employee Bill Cottrell, married Marvin Davis, one of Disneyland’s key designers, in 1955. He died in 1998. Marjorie Davis died in December 1999, at the age of 83.

The Picture below shows Walt Disney arriving here in 1949 for the making of Treasure Island

1949 – Accompanied by his wife and daughters – Diane, 16 and Sharon, 13 – Hollywood film producer Walt Disney arrives at Southampton aboard the Cunard- White Star liner ‘Queen Elizabeth’. Disney has come to Britain to film ‘Treasure Island’.

The Sword and the Rose was the third film made with the locked revenue from Disney films released in the U.K. during the war. Many of the people responsible for making the film also worked on the previous British Disney film, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, including director Ken Annakin, producer Perce Pearce, and star Richard Todd, who played Robin Hood. Glynis Johns was cast as Mary Tudor.

I don’t seem to remember this film at all but After the Ball is a 1957 British biographical film directed by Compton Bennett.   It portrayed the life of the stage performer Vesta Tilley.

It stars Pat  Kirkwood, Laurence Harvey.   ‘After the Ball’  was  filmed on a quite a low budget and was made by British Lion Films.

The most interesting scenes are Tilley’s interactions with various British and American theatrical figures. In New York City, she works for impresarios Tony Pastor and Oscar Hammerstein: the latter is not the lyricist, but his  grandfather.

It is the story of Vesta Tilley

This film charts the life and loves of a music-hall singer.    Vesta Tilley (Pat Kirkwood) is the daughter of a music-hall Chairman who watches shows from the wings with great enthusiasm.   One day her father finds her dressed as a boy and singing to an audience consisting of dolls. Her act, he believes, is good enough to be performed in front of a live audience. As time goes on, word of her spreads.

She was viewed as the first male impersonator, her fame leads her into marriage to a nobleman.

Above – Leonard Sachs and Laurence Harvey in a scene from the film

Above: Pat Kirkwood in a scene from After The Ball. 

I did notice also the Hubert Gregg had written the screenplay for this film starring his wife. He was such a talented person. I can’t think of anyone else who was so good at so many aspects of theatre and film. He was just phenomenal !!!

Laurence Harvey.

This film was made just before his greatest role as Joe Lampton in Room at the Top.

His career was cut short by illness and he died at the young age of 45. His only child – his daughter who was only a small toddler when he died – lived to an even younger age and died aged 35. She is buried with her father in the cemetery at Santa Barbara, California.

HONDO 1953 

HONDO  1953, Batjac Prod., 83 min. Tribute to John Wayne & Batjac Productions CAST:  John Wayne, Geraldine Page, Ward Bond, James Arness. DIRECTOR:  John Farrow.

—————————————————————————————————————–

HOUSE OF WAX 

                    

 

60th Anniversary Screening HOUSE OF WAX – 1953, Warner Bros., 90 min. CAST: VINCENT PRICE, PHYLLIS KIRK, FRANK LOVEJOY DIRECTED BY: ANDRE DE TOTH COLOR:

———————————————————————————————————

THE MAZE  –  as featured before on this Blog.

THE MAZE — 1953, Allied Artists (Paramount), 80 min. CAST: RICHARD CARLSON, VERONICA HURST DIRECTED BY: WILLIAM CAMERON MENZIES COLOR: b/w VIEW TRAILER FORMAT:

————————————————————————————————————————–

BWANA DEVIL

BWANA DEVIL — 1952, U.A., 79 min. CAST: ROBERT STACK, BARBARA BRITTON, NIGEL BRUCE DIRECTED BY: ARCH OBOLER COLOR: color VIEW TRAILER FORMAT:  Dual 35mm

Welcome to 2013 World 3-D Film Expo

Hondo   3D screening

The third World 3-D Film Expo kicks off September 6, 2013 at the Egyptian Theatre, with a rare 3-D screening of Hondo (1954).  Above, that’s John Wayne on the ladder watching as a shot it being set up (that gigantic thing on the lift is the Warner Bros. All Media Camera).

Other 3-D Westerns being shown during the expo: Douglas Sirk’s Taza, Son Of Cochise and Budd Boetticher’s Wings Of The Hawk (both 1953). Julie Adams will be on hand for Wings Of The Hawk.

Who knows how many more 35mm 3-D presentations we can count on?

GRAUMANS EGYPTIAN THEATRE – Hollywood USA

The Egyptian Theatre was built by showman Sid Grauman and real estate developer Charles E. Toberman. The Egyptian Theatre cost $800,000 to build and took eighteen months to construct.

The Egyptian Theatre was the venue for the first-ever Hollywood premiere, Robin Hood,  starring Douglas Fairbanks, on Wednesday, October 18, 1922.

Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre exterior, 1922

 

Above:  The courtyard circa 2007

In 1996, the city of Los Angeles sold the theatre to the American Cinematheque for a nominal one dollar with the proviso that the landmark building be restored to its original grandeur and re-opened as a movie theatre. The Cinematheque committed to raising the funds to pay for the restoration and to using the renovated theatre as home for its programs of public film exhibition.

The Egyptian Theatre was re-opened to the public on December 4, 1998, after a $12.8 million renovation. The original theatre seated 1760  patrons in a single auditorium. In the restored Egyptian the building has been reconfigured to add a second screening theatre. The main theatre now accommodates 616 patrons. The smaller, 77-seat theatre is named for Hollywood  Steven Spielberg.

 

Really good film this one.I never saw it on the big screen sadly but a number of years ago on TV. It is a good story – as you know it would be from the pen of Nicholas Monsarrat – and well filmed with a cast of top British Actors.  Richard Attenborough plays the heartless – and merciless – character who along with his pal from wartime days gets into smuggling – and worse.

George Baker is the good man here, his friend, who in the end just can’t take what is happening.

People these days when thinking of George Baker would come up  Inspector Wexford or another TV role but I think of him first in the swashbuckling ‘The Moonraker’ and then in this one – The Ship That Died of Shame

 The cast includes such actors as Virginia McKenna, Bernard Lee, and Roland Culver

The Storyline is concerned with the ship of the title  1087 which is a British Royal Navy motor gun boat that has faithfully seen its crew through the worst that World War II can throw at them and it has been a proud and heroic ship.   After the end of the war, George Hoskins (Richard Attenborough) convinces former skipper Bill Randall (George Baker) and Birdie (Bill Owen) to buy their beloved boat and use it for some harmless, minor smuggling of black market items like wine.

 They find themselves transporting ever more sinister cargoes – mainly because of the greed of Richard Attenborough –  counterfeit currency and weapons. Their beloved faithful craft had been utterly reliable and never let them down in wartime, but as if troubled by the work it is now doing,  it begins to break down , as if ashamed of its current use. The crew revolt when they are used in the escape of a child murderer.  At the close of the film George Baker realises that the ship just has had enough and realises she is dying of shame.

 Above – Bernard Lee ‘smells a rat’

This film is based on a Nicholas Monsarrat short story. It is brilliantly crafted and plots the downfall of two men – and the ship that served them faithfully through WWII. The logic of the tale is that the ship itself is so ashamed of the terrible things it is made to do that it “dies” despite the hard-headed sailor’s belief that this is impossible.

Earlier in 1955 (April, in fact), another of Ealing’s fascinating final films – the genre hybrid The Ship That Died of Shame – hit British screens. The ship in question is actually a Royal Navy motor gun boat. These were small, fast vessels, equipped with a mix of guns and big enough to carry a crew of up to 30 men. The Ship That Died of Shame follows the life of one boat, MGB1087, starting from the peak of its wartime glory, through to its postwar inactivity and its rebirth in a new role: a pattern that parallels the lives of its crew.

In a performance that compares well with his crazed delinquent, Pinky, in Brighton Rock (1947), Richard Attenborough gets his teeth into the role of 1087’s spivvish ‘number one’, George Hoskins. A star first mate, whose quick thinking and opportunistic instincts served him well in military life, Hoskins persuades his old skipper, Bill Randall (George Baker), to rescue their derelict former boat. They intend to fill a gap in the black market, pitched by Hoskins as a necessary and almost benevolent activity in a ration-weary Britain.

It’s here that The Ship That Died of Shame parts company with other British war movies, taking a sudden nosedive into murkier waters. The producer/director team of Michael Relph and Basil Dearden navigate into thriller territory as rival gangs, a nervous crew, the port authority and other parties with a stake in postwar dignity – including the boat herself – react to Hoskins and Randall’s new enterprise.

Mixing genres – war, crime, the supernatural – is a risky strategy, but it pays off here. The Ship That Died of Shame opposes the war film’s proud sense of propriety with the deviant cynicism of the crime film. In contrast with the optimism of many of Ealing’s postwar films – with their crowds pulling together; their defence of small communities against outsized corporations; the dreamlike vision of a new Britain forged in history but emboldened by progressive ambition – The Ship That Died of Shame reveals a darker side to the golden years of postwar reconstruction.

 Who’d have thought that the studio that gave us the giddy celebrations of George Formby, Passport to Pimlico (1949) and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) could sober us up with this tale of the sour taste of victory?

Well I think this film just gets into the FIFTIES although it was actually  released here in England in 1949.  I have memories of the film – not so much about the film itself which I only saw on TV years later BUT my Mother and Dad bought me a jig-saw puzzle of a scene from the film – a scene in which  the two young people on the island are leaning  against an upturned boat on the beach. What an exotic scene that is.

Only recently have I managed to acquire all FOUR in the set, of the puzzles from the film – including the one mentioned.

 Jean Simmons in a beautiful colour shot from the film.

 Jig Saw Puzzle – Emmeline warns Michael above – which was No.4 in the series of four.

Original Film Still above

Another Original  Still from the film – above

Film Still from overseas – above – This picture would definitely be taken in Fiji !!!

Film Poster – above.

There will be more on this film in the future !!

In the book Richard Burton Prince of Players –  in the chapter “Lust and Life at 20th Century Fox”, there is this paragraph where the author recalls Richard Burton telling him that one of the pleasures of making The Robe was working with Victor Mature.
Richard Burton said:
“I’ve never known an actor so happily aware of his limitations. He rejoiced in them. He liked to joke that he was no actor and he said he had 60 films to prove it. But against him I looked like an amateur. We had a scene where the robe falls on to me and I scream like a girl before becoming overcome with religious fervour. And all the time Victor just stands there gazing into heaven with great conviction. I asked him, “How do you do it? What are you thinking?” He said, “I’m thinking of the money they’re paying me”. What a wonderful man.”

Above – Victor Mature in The Robe kneels before the cross. 

Just watch this Youtube clip of The Robe Premiere below:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1CfMl1AJ7M&feature=player_detailpage#t=0s

Another Story about Victor Mature – The film composer, William Alwyn, used to tour film societies showing a clip from a western, in which Victor Mature played a settler who had just found his family massacred by Indians.

The director, according to Alwyn, had spent multiple retakes trying to conjure grief from Mature’s rocklike expression. The actor became the joke of the set. However when the film was previewed, audiences during the scene in question wept.

“That man knew something about film acting which we didn’t,” Alwyn said.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Jim Backus told this story about working with Victor Mature on the 1952 period film “Androcles & the Lion,”which was set in ancient Rome. Both actors were playing Roman soldiers from that era,Victor Mature as a captain,Jim Backus as a centurion.On a lunch break they walked into a restaurant,fully dressed in their Roman military costumes.The owner of the restaurant simply stared at them in mute disbelief when Mature asked for a table.  Finally Victor Mature said to him “What’s the matter,don’t you serve men in uniform?”

This was a good Boys Own Type British Adventure film  set in India

This is British Cinema at it`s best, a rousing Northwest Frontier picture with all the right ingredients, lots of ‘goodies’, a real ‘baddie’, and a dashing hero, with a fiesty female lead in the form of Lauren Bacall.
Things do pile up on the characters in the old train as it goes from place to place in an effort to save a young Prince, but things never go over the top, and the acting is first rate, as well as the direction.

Kenneth More, as always, is top rate, also note worthy is I.S.Johor as the train driver, Wilfred Hyde White as the British Diplomat, and Herbert Lom as as bad a baddie as l have ever seen him….

                                                                                                                 Herbert  Lom

The  Story –

A young prince who is the sole survivor of a massacre that includes his family escapes a revolution with the help of Kenneth More and a band of supporters – at least we think so.  Their means is an old steam engine and a short train of wagons and carriage. With this, they run a blockade and must escape from the ‘Northwest Frontier’.
Set at the turn of the (20th) century, Kenneth More is, as usual cast as the thoroughly decent and honourable Brit. The cast in a shrewd mix of popular characters. Lauren Bacall provides an unlikely American love interest for More as the boy-prince’s governess. Wilfred Hyde-White does a great dithery bachelor inclining to old-age. Herbert Lom is a mixed-race reporter and Eugene Deckers does well as an arms dealer.   Ursula Jeans is the modestly authoritative MemSab.

I always remember the first time I ever saw the film at the cinema on the big wide Cinemascope screen, the scene where the main characters  are very high up on a broken bridge and have to walk along a single rail line which is still intact – and the prince has to do this with that enormous drop below – and waiting to catch him is Herbert Lom, who we just know by that stage is not exactly a force for good.

I S Johar turns out to be the most appealing character playing  ‘Gupta’ the Indian engine driver, with humorous and sympathetic panache.
Along the way, there are adventures. But no less entertaining is the spirited dialogue between the passengers, each of which has a conflicting or complementary viewpoint as the conversation waxes.
Although a tongue-in-cheek adventure movie, it doesn’t shy away from the darker elements of human nature. These are explored in the intelligent dialogue, but exposed in the circumstances too. At one point, they encounter an earlier train which has been intercepted by bandits. Everyone aboard has been slaughtered. It is very simply but grimly presented. No needless gore; just a sad pensive silence broken by the buzzing flies and caw of vultures. Herbert Lom’s character isn’t the impartial observer he pretends to be because he sympathises with the insurgents, and means to murder the boy himself if he can.

The movie is beautifully filmed, with great vistas of wilderness and excellent colour. Train-spotters will enjoy the railway details.
This is highly recommended family viewing that – like so many of those 50’s adventure tales – it  is great fun !!!
Great actors, good script, fine views, bags of excitement, a villain in the party and moral messages. What more do we need from a movie?

Doreen Hawkins

Doreen Hawkins, who has died aged 93, was a member of an Ensa unit which toured the battlefronts of Africa, India and Burma during the Second World War; after the war she married her glamorous boss, Col Jack Hawkins, who would become one of Britain’s most respected actors.

Doreen Hawkins with her husband Jack boarding the boat train at Waterloo bound for America in 1956

Subtitled ‘Wartime adventures of an actress’, it follows her life  high-spiritedly from her first stage appearance at the age of four, through her  time as an enthusiastic teenager in the flourishing weekly repertory theatres;  from there to a hasty ill-starved marriage after the outbreak of war and a  period as an ambitious hard-working actress performing amidst the blitz and the  blackout.

Soon she joined the Indian Repertory Company – the first acting troupe to be  sent abroad to entertain the forces. They were the product of ENSA: the acronym  for Entertainments National Service

Association or, according to Tommy Trinder, Every Night Something Awful.

Subsequently in Bombay Doreen met Jack Hawkins, later to be a major film star  but already an established stage one in charge of ENSA in the Far East. Their  mutual falling in love is very convincingly described. After a harrowing time in  war-devastated Burma and a further engagement in India Doreen returned to  austere post-war London.

She faced a freezing winter and an acrimonious divorce suit. Undaunted she  rented a cheerful bohemian flat near Convent Garden and resumed life as an  actress on home territory. At last she was granted a decree absolute and was  free to marry Jack Hawkins. She gave up her acting career as his flourished more  than ever.

Even if this book had been a duller one, it would have been well worth  writing. It gives a uniquely detailed documentary account of life in a war time  entertainment company of which fewer and fewer people can have first-hand  memories. Doreen Hawkins memory is quite simply phenomenal; her story far from  dull. It is romantic, often drily humorous, also dramatic, moving and at times  horrific with near-death, illness and nightmare journeys on primitive trains and  packed troopships; war continually raging in the background.

Doreen herself seems an admirable character – starting as an exuberant  stagestruck girl, briefly engaged to an equally exuberant Peter Cushing. She  inevitably matures with her marriage breakdown and gruelling wartime experiences  but seldom complains and never loses her wide-eyed curiosity.

From her brief comments on her craft, I imagine she was a charming, skilful  light comedy actress; her company providing sparkling entertainment for  exhausted and wounded troops.

Her eye for detail is outstanding – whether describing revolting food or  glamorous clothes. Her unpretentious writing brings past events back to life as  fresh as if they had happened yesterday.