Category: london

cinema experiences classic film london vivien leigh

Cinema Experiences: Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail

By

Austrian actress Anny Ondra as Alice White

Consider this a new feature here at the vivandlarry.com blog.  I’m going to write about my classic-film-going experiences here in London; not films I watch as part of my course, but films I see at the BFI or elsewhere on my own time for fun!

Halloween always brings a handful of classic horror films back onto the big and small screens.  This Halloween, I went with my friend Riikka to see Alfred Hitchcock’s last silent film/first sound film Blackmail at the Barbican Centre.  The film stars Anny Ondra as a saucepot named Alice who ends up murdering a suitor after he tries to rape her.  Her boyfriend, a detective at Scotland Yard, finds one of her gloves at the crime scene–a piece of evidence that would prove her involvement.  The couple is then blackmailed by an ex-convict who saw Alice that night.  Also appearing in the film are Charles Paton and Sara Allgood (whom fans of Vivien Leigh may remember as Emma Hamilton’s silly mother in That Hamilton Woman).

Blackmail was the last film Hitchcock directed in the 1920s, and was also filmed for sound around the same time, as talkies were just coming into existence.  Like many early films of directors who would turn out to be the best in the business, Blackmail was very popular at the box office, but not so much with critics.  However, the film uses techniques and motifs that would later become standard in Hitchcock films: staircases, chase scenes, people falling off buildings, etc. It also featured several well known locations in London such as the British Museum and Whitehall (complete with view of Trafalgar Square).

Currently, the British Film Institute (BFI) is raising money to restore all 9 of Hitchcock’s remaining silent films, with Blackmail getting one of the first digital make-overs.  The print was gorgeous and crisp.  Audience members also got a huge extra treat:  the BBC Symphony Orchestra played Neil Brand’s complete new score for the film live on stage while the footage ran behind them.  It was extraordinary!  Usually silent films are accompanied with a guy and his piano, but this was the real deal.  Brand, an expert in scoring silent films was inspired by the music of frequent Hitchcock collaborators Bernard Herrmann and Miklos Rozsa.  I think the most mind blowing thing for me was that the orchestra managed to keep exactly on track with the film, without being able to see the images in front of them.  The live music really added an extra dimension of excitement to the film and made it seem very of-the-moment.

I wouldn’t be lying if I said this was the best cinema-going experience of my life up until this point.  It was absolutely fabulous!

book news london vivien leigh

The Vivien Leigh and Jack Merivale Papers

By

I don’t talk about Jack Merivale on vivandlarry.com very much at all, mostly because he came after Laurence Olivier in Vivien’s life and since the site focuses on Vivien and Larry, Jack has always been sort of peripheral.  But in this instance I think he deserves some space of his own.

Today I had the opportunity to look through the Vivien Leigh/Jack Merivale papers at the BFI Library in central London.  These papers, among those of many other British film luminaries, are held in special collections and are only viewable by appointment after having purchased a BFI membership and library card.  As a researcher of Vivien Leigh or anyone else in the film world, really, the BFI and other similar archives are essential to getting an in-depth, inside look at someone’s life and career.  The project I have been working on for ages (I think I’ve mentioned it here before in passing) has required extensive archival research, particularly of photographs.  The Leigh/Merivale collection only had a handful of photos related to Vivien, but the rest of the material was equally as fascinating.

The papers were donated to the BFI by Merivale’s wife Dinah Sheridan, whom he married after Vivien passed away, and they contain letters from Vivien to Jack (in her always difficult to decipher handwriting)–letters from the Civil War centenary/GWTW re-premier in Atlanta talking about drinking mint juleps and eating at “Aunt Fanny’s Cabin”, from New York, from India, from everywhere.  It seems she and Jack traveled solo about as much as she and Larry had previously–hundreds of condolence letters from Vivien’s friends and fans after her passing, letters from Larry Olivier to Jack on the eve of his and Vivien’s divorce, a psychiatric report from a couple different psychiatrists, and a few photographs of Vivien in the late 1950s.

Knowing to some extent what Vivien went through in her struggle with bipolar disorder, I’m really glad she had Jack to just…be there when she obviously needed someone to keep an eye on her.  I think he was a gentle and kind soul, a genuinely good guy, and just what she needed at the end of her life after all she’d been through with her divorce from Larry and life in general.  I know Larry was grateful for Jack’s presence in Vivien’s later life.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Vivien Leigh lived such a full life in such a short time, but the letters from her famous friends and fans after she passed away are a true testament to just how much she gave to the world.  Jack got letters from Lauren Bacall, Celia Johnson (who I didn’t know was even friends with Vivien), Cole Leslie, Binkie Beaumont, Rachel Kempson, Diana Cooper, Deborah Kerr, Ursula Jeans and Roger Livesey, John Mills, David Niven, and Victor Stiebel, among others.  In these letters, many of her friends mentioned how they knew she loved him very much and how he made her happy in the last few years of her life and enabled her to carry on as long as she did.  And he responded to every single letter that was sent to him.  Jack Merivale, I salute you.

The archive is nowhere near as extensive as the Olivier archive in the British Library, but for what it’s worth, I thought it was informative and obviously lovingly cared for.  If you’re ever doing a project on Vivien Leigh’s later life, this is a good place to start.

events laurence olivier london theatre

Inside the National Theatre Archive

By

This afternoon I had the great pleasure and opportunity to visit the National Theatre Archive to lend a hand with some video footage for next weekend’s Olivier’s Shakespeare: Violence and Memory colloquium and reception.  It started with meeting author Terry Coleman (Olivier the authorized biography) for tea on Tuesday at the Royal Academy of Art.  He will be presenting at the reception, and, being a visitor of vivandlarry.com, he knows my appreciation for Sir Laurence and asked if I’d like to help with some media.  I said “yes,” so he put me in touch with Gavin Clarke, the archivist at the National Theatre in London.

The NT Archive isn’t housed at the actual theatre on the South Bank, but rather at the National Theatre Studio in The Cut, right next door to The Old Vic, and the old offices occupied by the likes of Laurence Olivier and other executives were in Aquinas Street right behind the building.  This is because the National Theatre Company was based at The Old Vic until the NT on the South Bank was completed in 1976.
… Continue reading