Olivia de Havilland, Angela Lansbury and Glynis Johns: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (29)

Inevitably most artistes simply fade away as the years overtake them, but I here celebrate three redoubtable old lady troupers of British origin who are now of advanced age but happily are still with us. They were all bringers of pleasure in their time and their famous roles are often re-run on television or available on other media, for the enjoyment of the present generation.

Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marion

                      

   

Angela Lansbury

                 

                                           Glynis Johns                                  

                                                                       

Olivia de Havilland was born in 1916 and is now a truly venerable 101. She was born in Tokyo, where her father Walter, of Channel Islands (Guernsey) origin, worked first as a university professor and then as a patent attorney; his brother Geoffrey founded the famous de Havilland aircraft company. Her RADA-trained mother, Lilian Fontaine, was an actress and Olivia had a younger sister, who became the celebrated actress Joan Fontaine. Returning to England, Olivia’s parents divorced when she was only 3 and she soon moved with her mother and sister to California, settling in Saratoga, South of San Francisco.

I will not describe her distinguished career in detail but concentrate on highlights. An apprenticeship in provincial US theatre blossomed as she was talent-spotted by Warner Brothers and she made her first film with Errol Flynn, Captain Blood in 1935 – they were to make nine films together. Their best was The Adventures of Robin Hood of 1938 with Olivia never prettier as Maid Marion, nor Flynn more athletic as Robin in the Technicolor classic graced also by Claude Rains, Basil Rathbone, Eugene Palette and Alan Hales. Olivia then landed the important supporting role of Melanie Hamilton in the 1939 epic and blockbuster Gone with the Wind. The film really belonged to Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh and was showered with honours, but Olivia, though nominated for an Oscar, lost out to her colleague Hattie McDaniel.

In her career Olivia made 49 films – she acted in Hollywood’s “Golden Age” of the late 1930s and 40s when the studios churned out product at an amazing rate and stars were treated as chattels. In 1943 when her contract with Warner Brothers expired, the studio insisted she worked for them for another 6 months to cover a period she had been suspended by them. Olivia sued, a brave decision in the industry climate of the time, and she won in a landmark case, ushering in what is still known as “the de Havilland clause”, whereby an artiste’s contract can be no longer than 7 years and studio suspension time counts towards the term of the contract. Olivia was still black-listed by the studios until 1946.

         

Olivia in The Heiress

Olivia made Westerns, notably with Errol Flynn, and some of her most memorable work was in melodrama. In 1946 she made Dark Mirror, a psychological thriller turning on the real nature of two identical twins, which I much enjoyed, and two years later came The Snake Pit an alarming indictment of the poor standards of mental health therapy in the US at that time. Perhaps her best post-war film was The Heiress, based on Henry James’ “Washington Square”, with plain-Jane Olivia beset by her abusive father, Dr Sloper (an excellent Ralph Richardson) and wooed by fortune-hunter Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift). Her final revenge on faithless Morris, locked out by Olivia and screaming her name, is a searing scene. Both Olivia and Richardson won Oscars for their performances.

Olivia appeared in TV series and cameo roles for some years but her great days were over. While she had her amours, James Stewart and John Huston for example, (but not Errol Flynn), she married twice, the second to French writer Pierre Galante. She has lived in Paris since 1955. Just 2 weeks before her 100^th birthday she was honoured as a Dame Commander of the British Empire – a fine actress indeed.

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By contrast, Angela Lansbury, born in 1925, is a mere stripling of 92. She was born in Regents Park, London, the daughter of Edgar Lansbury, a then prosperous timber merchant and erstwhile Communist councillor for Poplar, East London. Edgar was the son of George Lansbury, Leader of the Labour Party (1932-35), a street orator, pacifist and wholly ineffective Leader, rather in the image of today’s Jeremy Corbyn.

George Lansbury

  

Jeremy Corbyn

                      

Angela’s mother was the Ulster-born actress Moyna Macgill, well-known on the London stage, who encouraged her theatrical interests. Edgar died in 1935 and Moyna’s second husband proved to be a tyrant. In 1942 Moyna arranged for the family to avoid the dangers of wartime London and they settled in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.

With her talent and connections, Angela quickly achieved success in Hollywood. Before she reached the age of 20 she had earned two Academy Award nominations for supporting roles in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). Contracted to MGM she made many film appearances, often playing a villainess as in The Court Jester (1955) with Danny Kaye or as a sinister mother as in political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962) with Lawrence Harvey and Frank Sinatra, one of her best roles.

Angela with  Lawrence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate

Angela is a versatile artiste and had much success on the US stage in Mame, becoming in the process a gay icon, and later in Gypsy. In the public mind Angela is much identified with the role of writer/sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the TV series Murder, She Wrote (1984-96) whose 264 episodes are endlessly repeated. She had an earlier hit as a witch in Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and trod the boards as Madame Arcati in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit in both New York and London.

Angela as Great-Aunt Adelaide in Nanny McPhee

Angela is indefatigable, appearing in cameo roles in Nanny McPhee as great-aunt Adelaide (2005), filling in with some Shakespeare, then she pops up again as Aunt March in TV’s Little Women (2017); she even has a part in Mary Poppins Returns, already in the can and due for release in 2018. What a dame - indeed she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2014 – Angela is a phenomenon.

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Glynis Johns, now 94, was born in South Africa where her actor father Mervyn Johns and concert pianist mother Alys Steele were touring. But both were Welsh and Glynis remains proudly Welsh. Glynis was a child actress and appeared in many minor roles in the early 1940s. Her breakthrough came with the 1948 film Miranda where she played a coquettish mermaid.

   

Glynis Johns as Miranda

Mervyn Johns as Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol

                            

Glynis had a notable stage success in 1956 with Major Barbara in London and New York and in the same year blossomed in The Court Jester with Danny Kaye and Angela Lansbury.

Glynis with Kaye and Lansbury in The Court Jester

Glynis had a diet of comedies and swashbucklers and was admired in the Australian-set The Sundowners (1960) with Robert Mitchum. She shared in the triumph of Mary Poppins (1964) as the suffragette Mrs Banks but a more solid achievement was her role as Desirée Armfeldt in the Sondheim Broadway musical A Little Night Music in 1973 where the song “Send in the Clowns” was composed for her. Her husky voice and seductive eyes were always distinctive. She worked on and one of her last film parts was in the Sandra Bullock – Bill Pullman vehicle While you were Sleeping in 1995.

Now retired, Glynis brought glamour and vivacity to stage and screen.

These 3 ladies of the entertainment industry will have tumultuous memories of their careers and give hope to those following that success will not burn them out and that longevity brings many opportunities.

SMD

31.12.17

Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2017

BREXIT BRINKSMANSHIP

We have just had a torrid period for Brexit, beset by knotty problems of debatable financial obligations, rights of residence, the limits of EU jurisdiction and the openness or otherwise of the South-North Irish border. The EU imposed deadlines and made no concessions, true to its imperialist mind-set, our Remainers gloated and sowed discord, while we Brexiteers were disturbed by the less than sparkling performance of the government and wondered whether a hard Brexit on WTO terms was the only way forward. Yet we did not despair; any moderately competent politician can find the re-assuring words to satisfy the Irish while the Brexit exit bill and the judicial turf-wars were more or less sorted. On Friday gallantly persistent Theresa May popped over to Brussels, endured a pawing and slobbering Juncker, and signed up a Brexit divorce agreement. Progression to trade talks, likely to be equally fraught, will now bore and upset us for the next 12 months. But at least a first step to the exit door has been achieved.

Relief all round as Theresa May pulls off a deal

It is impossible to tell currently whether an acceptable trade deal can be delivered. Any deal emanating from Brussels is likely to be unfavourable to the UK – maybe a free trade arrangement for manufactured goods but nothing for services – attacking Brussels’ bête noire, the City of London, a vital earner for Britain. Nor will the EU easily agree to repatriate our fishing rights (a hot issue in Scotland) and some university research funding will be withdrawn to the synthetic horror of many academics. The EU itches to punish the UK for its temerity in seeking to quit its control and wants to discourage any other leavers. But its malignity will have its prudential limits; already Mrs Merkel is seeing the collapse of German car sales in the UK, a trend which can only increase as the EU’s popularity here evaporates.

Recent events underline the wisdom of Brexit. Juncker was singing the praises of a European Army in his September “State of the Union” message and Germany and France are pressing on with plans for centralised training, weapon procurement and command – functions already provided by NATO. They have no democratic mandate for such policies. Martin Schultz, German Social Democrat leader and would-be Chancellor, proclaimed yesterday his aim to create a United States of Europe by 2025. Many European countries may favour this aim, good luck to them, but it was certainly never on the UK’s agenda, and the wide differences between North and South Europe and Eastern and Western Europe are likely to doom this grandiose idea to a forgotten corner of a cobwebbed vault in downtown Berlin.

Martin Schultz, unrealistic Eurofanatic

Staying inside the EU is like being locked in a runaway train with careless unqualified drivers mowing down the views of national electorates. The EU rushes on with “forward” policies – viz. the ill-starred attempt to rope in Ukraine to its sphere of influence – and do not be surprised if a future UK government paraphrases Bismarck on the Balkans and opines “ Eastern Europe is not worth the bones of a single British Grenadier”.

For the next stage of negotiation, the UK needs to sharpen up her act. David Davis is a solid citizen but our overstretched civil service sometimes briefs him inadequately and his competence is challenged. I would like to see a greater role for incisive Michael Gove and Boris should be ruffling more feathers in Europe’s chancelleries. Theresa May can take much credit for the reasonably satisfactory outcome of Phase 1, but progress has been crab-like and at times the UK dithered. Mind you, with all the conflicting pressures and her weak parliamentary position, not to mention her daily private fight with type 1 diabetes, Theresa has overall battled through admirably. Her cabinet, her party and indeed the UK parliament sadly does not have an embarrassment of talent at this crucial juncture.

The UK Parliament, repository of great historic talent

The UK does hold a few high cards. Her £39bn conditional pledge makes a large difference to the EU’s finances, and Angela Merkel is particularly influenced by budgetary considerations. Europe badly needs a cooperative UK for defence and security purposes and the size of her economy makes the open UK a highly desirable trade partner to almost anyone.

Can a final deal be reached? We Brexiteers have to concentrate on the essentials – access to global markets, effective independence judicially, sensible concurrence with the EU when useful – no doubt with compromises at the edges. Theresa May needs and deserves to collect more parliamentary support, 10 or so Labour or Lib-Dem defectors would make a huge difference. On balance I believe she can lead us out into the sunlight of our Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey.

SMD

9.12.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017