A Tribute to The Archers: 49th Parallel

Today it is my pleasure to join devoted film fans by posting a contribution to the Classic Film and TV Tribute to the Archers: A Powell & Pressburger Movie Blogathon.

Although the first film to officially feature The Archers onscreen logo is 1941s One of Our Aircraft is Missing I believe The Archers as a team was destined from birth to create some of cinema's most uniquely personal artistic triumphs and the greatest of these during the upheaval of wartime.

Director Michael Powell was raised in Canterbury with the poetic soul of his ancestors. His love of film led to his working in the industry in the 1920s, learning much from the Dublin born legend Rex Ingram in Hollywood on the classics Mare Nostrum and The Garden of Allah. He returned to England and began a prolific director of what he referred to as “quickie quota” films.

Hungarian born Emeric Pressburger was a writer who plied his craft throughout Europe one step ahead of the rise of Adolph Hitler. He found his home in England and work with producer Alexander Korda. The London Films (Korda) release of 1939 The Spy in Black starring Valerie Hobson and Conrad Veidt brought Pressburger and Powell together for the first time. The movie gods smiled. In 1940 they again joined forces with Hobson and Veidt for Contraband, one of the first movies to feature London during wartime with a timely plot and an Alfred Hitchcock like ambiance. Hitchcock was an admired associate and friend of Michael Powell’s.

It is an undeniable paradox that the movie 49^th Parallel aka The Invaders manages to be both a government sanctioned propaganda and a deeply personal statement. Emeric Pressburger had experienced the tyranny and oppression of life under Nazi rule and now his adopted countrymen were in the same battle. It was his duty and his privilege to strike a blow in that battle.

The Ministry of Information tasked Powell and Pressburger with creating a film which would not only show Britains what they were up against and what they were fighting for, but would strike a chord with American audiences whose participation in the conflict was considered essential for victory. It was while staring at a map of North America that Emeric was inspired to set the story in Canada. As a member of the Commonwealth, Canada was already at war and American audiences would have no difficulty identifying with their friendly neighbour to the north. Not only did the Ministry approve and provide funding, but Michael Powell was excited about the prospect of exploring and filming in Canada. The Canadian High Commissioner in London (later first Canadian born Governor-General) Vincent Massey provided letters of introduction and recommendation, and the film crew sailed the perilous Atlantic in April of 1940.

Powell and Pressburger traversed the country from New Brunswick to Ontario to Manitoba to British Columbia, interviewing and researching the vast Dominion. Emeric completed the first draft of the script on the boat back to England having decided on the format of four acts with Nazis stranded from a U boat encountering the citizens they plan to conquer while their meager force is steadily depleted.

Upon returning to England, Emeric Pressburger, an alien, was arrested and threatened with deportation. He and his loyal partner Michael Powell spent an uncomfortable night in jail until the Ministry intervened. For the next month, while he worked on the script of 49^th Parallel, Emeric Pressburger had to report to the police daily until his papers were straightened out. However, because of fear of further red tape, he did not return to Canada with Powell when location shooting began on the picture.

Raymond Lovell, Eric Portman, Niall MacGinnis

Peter Moore, John Chandos, Basil Appleby

49^th Parallel begins with the German U Boat 37 sinking a Canadian naval vessel in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They evade the enemy by heading to Hudson’s Bay where a landing party of 6 is set ashore to secure fuel and supplies. When the Canucks destroy the submarine, the landing party is left on their own to reach neutral territory, the United States.

Our stranded Germans are a mixed bag of characters as Emeric did not want to merely show cardboard villains. Eric Portman is Lt. Hirth, a fully indoctrinated Nazi with a single-minded sense of purpose and unshakeable belief in his Fuhrer and his ideals. Second in command is Kuhnecke played by Raymond Lovell. He chafes at being second and is a bit of a small time bully. Niall MacGinnis plays Vogel, a sympathetic every man at the mercy of politics. Three younger sailors are the sneaky Lohrmann played by John Chandos, the nervous Kranz played by Peter Moore and the over-eager Jahner played by Basil Appleby.

Ley On, Laurence Olivier, Finlay Currie

Johnny the trapper: "He Canadian. He Canadian. I'm Canadian."

The stranded Nazis first encounter with the Canadian character is at a Hudson Bay outpost run by a Scottish Factor played by Finlay Currie, with untimely visitors in a trapper played by Laurence Olivier and his Eskimo partner Nick played by Ley On. Johnny the trapper has been in the wilds for many months and is shocked to learn of the war and Canada’s, particularly French Canada’s participation. Olivier’s performance perfectly embodies the independent spirit and joyously irreverent accent of the rural Quebecois. Johnny’s devil-may-care combative attitude and humour confound his German captors.

Research in Canada unearthed the existence of the Hutterites, a Lutheran sect living in communal settlements throughout the prairies. Emeric Pressburger was determined to use them in the film and created the role of Peter, the leader, for the incomparable Anton Walbrook. The Nazified Germans think that at last they have found their people, but their arguments of the bond of racial superiority are firmly discarded by Peter/Anton’s understated, yet impassioned response.

Anton Walbrook

"Someone has given you, no doubt deliberately, a completely false impression of us. We are only one amongst several foreign settlements in Canada. There are thousands of them in this part of the world. And they have been founded - some recently, some 80 years ago by people who left their homes in Europe because of famine, because of starvation because of racial and political persecution. Some, like ourselves, because of their faith. Some came only to find new land, new boundaries, and new worlds. But all have found here in Canada security, peace and tolerance, and understanding which in Europe it is your Fuhrer's pride to have stamped out.

You call us Germans – you call us Brothers! Yes, most of us are Germans. Our names are German, our tongue is German, our old hand-written books are in German scripts. But we are not your brothers. Our Germany is dead. However hard this may be for some of us older people, it is a blessing for our children. Our children will grow up against new backgrounds, new horizons and they are free. Free to grow up as children. Free to run and to laugh without being forced into uniforms. Without being forced to march up and down streets singing battle songs!

You talk of the New Order in Europe! A new order where there will not be one corner, not a hole big enough for a mouse, where a decent man can breathe freely. You think we hate you, but we don't. It is against our faith to hate. We only hate the power of evil which is spreading over the world. You and your Hitlerism are like the microbes of some filthy disease filled with the longing to multiply yourselves until you destroy everything healthy in the world. No. We are not your brothers."

Glynis Johns

The Hutterite sequence features a young Glynis Johns in the role of Anna whose parents were killed by Nazis. She replaced the originally cast Elisabeth Bergner who left the production to join her husband in America. Glynis became an immediate audience favourite.

The depleted landing party hits the big town when they land in Winnipeg, giving urban audiences a chance to see a familiar setting and experience the unsettling thought that the fellow next to them in a diner just might be the enemy.

Leslie Howard, Eric Portman

Traveling cross-country and taking what they want, the displaced sailors reach Jasper National Park. In the park, there are only two remaining when they cross paths with the dilettante author Philip Armstrong Scott played by Leslie Howard. Perceived as the decadent weakling of a morally corrupt society our wandering Nazis once again find themselves up against sterner stuff – and then there was one.

Eric Portman, Raymond Massey

The backtracking and unrepentant Hirth, a hero to his countrymen, makes his way to southern Ontario and a train heading stateside at Niagara Falls. The Hollywood-New York-London actor Raymond Massey, brother of the aforementioned Canadian High Commissioner, plays my favourite character in the movie. Andy Brock is a Canadian I can understand and relate to. Brock is a slightly AWOL soldier sneaking back to camp. He doesn’t think of himself as a criminal, just somebody who is fed up. He gripes about life in general and the army in particular with a sardonic sense of humour and sees the world through his own code. The exchange between Hirth and Brock tickles me greatly as the narrow-minded Nazi has not been able to figure out that individual humour and the freedom to express it is the basis of the Canadian character. A sense of humour is also finely tuned in our American cousins as well and the border inspector’s role in dashing Hirth’s escape is one of the all-time great movie punch lines this side of I Know Where I’m Going!.

In some ways, time has taken the edge off of a movie made for a specific audience and purpose at a specific time in history. In other ways, 49^th Parallel holds up as entertainment and a window into that other time. It was the only feature film to be funded by Britain’s government and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Story.

49^th Parallel was an amazing accomplishment and a fully realized opportunity to contribute something concrete to the war effort. Michael Powell considered the film one of his finest achievements and it held a place of special pride in Emeric Pressburger’s heart.

Clivey Rules!

E.E. Clive (1879-1940)
The Hound of the Baskervilles

The character actors who grace our favourite classic movies came from varied backgrounds and brought a wealth of talent to their screen portrayals. E.E. Clive (his parents named him Edward) was born in Monmouthshire in Wales in 1879. Clive was 22 when he decided to abandon the path of respectability as represented by his medical studies to pursue a life in the theatre. Was it an easy decision? Had he found himself bilious at the sight of blood? Was he always the class clown who liked the attention? Did a pretty girl lead him astray? His wife's name was Eleanor Ellis. It could be the name of an actress. Whatever the reason, switching careers was the correct decision.

E.E. Clive, known as Clivey to his many friends, was successful and respected in his new life. For many years he toured the provinces becoming a master of every dialect the British Isles possessed. His facility for dialects would serve him well later in Hollywood where he could portray every sort of British character from crooks to butlers to peers in such films as Captain Blood, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Earl of Chicago, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula's Daughter, Tarzan Escapes, Congo Maisie, The Great Garrick, Arsene Lupin Returns, Foreign Correspondent and Pride and Prejudice. Clivey even taught William Powell how to fish in Libeled Lady.

Seeking new worlds to conquer, E.E. Clive emigrated to America in 1912 where he ran a company at the Copley Theatre, located near the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. Clivey produced, directed, acted in plays and mentored the young people who luckily found a start to their careers in the company, including Walter Pidgeon and Rosalind Russell. In her 1977 autobiography Life is a Banquet written with Chris Chase, Roz describes the theatre as a place where the kettle was always boiling for tea and where she learned much not only by performing, but by observing the professionals in the troupe. Here she describes a lesson in negotiation:

"...By now, though I'd been working a year and wanted more money, I didn't know how to approach Clivey. Having suffered the experience of graduation day, I wasn't anxious to see yet another manager backing out of a room gasping like a fish and trying to get his breath to call the cops. But I knew I deserved a raise. So I turned in my two weeks' notice, in writing. It'll kill 'em, I thought. They'll fall apart; the theatre will have to close.

And I waited. The first week went by. Nothing happened. Nothing. I started gibbering to myself. So we were into the second week, at the end of which I would have to leave. Miss Smart-Ass, hoist by her own presumption.

Clivey was not only our director, he sometimes acted with us, and he happened to be in the Ian Hay play. I started timing my entrances for the curtain call so that I'd walk up the stairs right in front of him. Or I'd stand next to him in the wings, ostentatiously asking him how he was tonight. On the stairs he didn't chat; in the wings he said only, "Fine, Rosalind, very fine."

It came down to the matinee of the last performance. My two weeks were up. I knew I'd have to go to the hotel - I was living at the Copley - and pack. After the curtain fell, Clivey finally spoke to me. "Come into my dressing room for a minutes, will you?"

In his dressing room he was a kindly uncle. For two weeks he'd been teasing, now he really wanted to know. "Why have you done this?" he said. "Has somebody been rude to you?"

"No, no," I Said. "I just feel I should have some more money."

"How much more money do you think you should have?" he said. My original plan had been to ask for a bundle, but I settled on fifty dollars. "Fifty dollars a week."

"I'll give you twenty-five," he said. "Now go back to work."

E.E. Clive and Claude Rains

Constable Jaffers confronts The Invisible Man

As he once crossed the Atlantic to broaden his career which included producing, directing and acting on Broadway, in the 1930s E.E. Clive crossed the continent to give Hollywood a whirl. He made an impression in the first of seven movies with director James Whale as the stubborn and doomed constable in The Invisible Man. Rosalind Russell and Clivey would cross paths in three movies, 1936s Trouble for Two based on Robert Louis Stevenson's The Suicide Club, 1937s Live, Love and Learn with a screenplay by Charles Brackett, and Emlyn Williams' Night Must Fall. Jacqueline Lynch's detailed look at Night Must Fall can be found at Another Old Movie Blog. I particularly like Clivey's role in the movie as an entrepreneur who conducts tours of a murder site. Proof positive that human nature hasn't changed much through the years.

The fabled year of Hollywood greatness, 1939, would see Clivey featured in 13 movies, many fondly recalled by fans including The Little Princess, Raffles, Rose of Washington Square and Mr. Moto's Last Warning. He would cross paths twice with Mr. Sherlock Holmes. In The Hound of the Baskervilles he is a cabby with a startling revelation. In The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes he is a stubbornly wrong-headed Inspector Bristol.

Warner Oland and E.E. Clive
Charlie Chan in London
"I must write that down. That's our method here, Mr. Chang."

Since my movie universe revolves around the Charlie Chan series, it is an especial treat for me to watch E.E. Clive as Detective Sergeant Thacker in 1934s Charlie Chan in London. The Sergeant is wary of the courtly and famous Inspector from Hawaii, but gradually comes to respect Chan and take pride in helping solve the case. Clivey is but one of the joys of the movie which features a young Raymond Milland, and some of the loveliest evening gowns this side of Gosford Park (wink).

Reginald Denny, John Howard, E.E. Clive, John Barrymore
Algy Longworth, "Bulldog" Drummond, Tennison, Colonel Nielson

Clivey also spent time in an official capacity, that is portraying Bobbies, with some other crime solvers in 1934, Walter Connolly as Father Brown, Detective and Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back.

Bulldog Drummond would figure prominently in Clivey's career when Paramount would bring "Sapper" McNeile's intrepid adventurer back in a series of movies with a cast that included John Howard (The Philadelphia Story) as Drummond, and John Barrymore (Twentieth Century) and later H.B. Warner (It's a Wonderful Life) as Colonel Neilson of Scotland Yard. Reginald Denny (The Lost Patrol) plays Hugh's pal Algy, the sort of amiable twit who would fit in quite nicely at P.G. Wodehouse's Drone's Club. Heather Angel (The Last of the Mohicans) was the actress most often cast as Phyllis, the more than understanding love interest. Fun trivia: Barrymore and Denny co-starred in 1922s Sherlock Holmes.

Clivey plays Drummond's valet Tenny, or Tennison for the more formal among you. Tenny was often annoyed at the complications brought into the household by Captain Drummond's exploits, but he was ever loyal, frequently resourceful, witty, and a vital part of the team. There were seven Bulldog Drummond pictures made between 1937 and 1939 and I find something to enjoy in each of the titles.

A popular performer until his untimely death from a heart attack at age 61, once seen on screen there is no doubt that Clivey Rules!

The Return of Caftan Woman and Dr. Moreau

The old PC has been in mothballs for the past month while the homestead has been undergoing renovations. I can hear you now - "Really, Caftan Woman, it's a wireless world. What is your deal?" Well, my deal is that all the cool, new toys will have to wait until I've finished paying for the renovations, and by the time I've finished paying for the renovations we'll all be communicating telepathically!

And speaking of communicating telepathically, I hope you woke early on March 3rd for what would have been Caftan Woman's Choice for March on TCM, Paramount's 1932 production of Island of Lost Souls, the first screen version of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Charles Laughton is magnificent as the maddest mad doctor of them all. Driven from his native England for his obscene experiments, the scientist rules over a Pacific island where he plays god, trying to turn animals into humans, creating tortured nothings. Bela Lugosi (Dracula, The Black Cat) is the leader of the unfortunates. Into this garden spot comes shipwreck victim Richard Arlen (Wings, The Virginian, Artists & Models). At first grateful for rescue by Moreau's alcoholic assistant Arthur Hohl (The Scarlet Claw, Moontide), our hero quickly assesses the true nature of the island. Luckily, his fiancee Leila Hyams (Freaks, Ruggles of RedGap) plans a rescue. Maybe not so lucky. Moreau sees in the new arrival a substitute for his diabolical plans for a Panther Woman played by Kathleen Burke, a beauty contestant who won the role.

How will it all end? It ends as it must for all mad scientists. A true horror film that plays on deep fears and ethics, with Laughton as enjoyable to watch as his character is abhorrent.

TCM's next screening of Island of Lost Souls is June 6th at 2:15 pm. Don't miss it!