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‘Much Pleasure and Relaxation in These Hard Times’: Churchill and Cinema in The Second World War

2011; Routledge; Volume: 31; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439685.2011.620850

1465-3451

Charles Barr,

World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Cherie Blair, Speaking for Myself (London, 2008), 314–315. ‘He got all the new releases on DVD, he explained … There were armchairs ranged around, and I sat next to George, and he was soon laughing away.’ The memoirs of both men confirm the significance of this film show: Tony Blair, A Journey (London, 2010) 394–395; George Bush, Decision Points (New York, 2010), 230. The White House website has a lavishly illustrated section on The Family Theater: ‘The room is occasionally used to rehearse major speeches, like the State of the Union address each January, but much more often it is where the first family can indulge in one of the luxuries of the job—a movie of their choice screened at any time of day and night for themselves and their guests, often sent direct from Hollywood before its release.’ http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/east-wing/theater.htm, accessed April 2011. 2. See The Guardian, 4 June 2004, for an account of a wide range of presidential movie enthusiasms, going back to Wilson's viewing of Griffith's The Birth of a Nation in 1915: ‘The Best Perk in the White House’, by the paper's diplomatic correspondent Julian Borger: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/jun/04/1?INTCMP=SRCH, accessed April 2011. 3. R. J. Minney, ‘Puffin’ Asquith (London, 1973), 151. On Wilson's earlier involvement with the film industry, see for instance Paul Foot, The Politics of Harold Wilson (Harmondsworth, 1968); also the retrospective interview with him by Margaret Dickinson and Simon Hartog in Screen, 19(3) (Autumn 1981). 4. As Prime Minister, ‘sometimes he went to the theatre or cinema, but he had to be prodded into going’. Philip Ziegler, Wilson: the authorised life of Lord Wilson of Rievaulx (London, 1993), 84. Ziegler mentions just two film titles, the Hollywood musical Hello Dolly (Gene Kelly, 1969) and the British TV spinoff Till Death Us Do Part (Norman Cohen, 1971), both seen in a family party on special occasions. The latter film, as it happens, features Tony Booth, whose daughter Cherie would marry Tony Blair. 5. Quoted in Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill (London, 1979), 310. 6. Churchill to Major R. Baker, 19 June 1945. Churchill archives: CHAR 20/194 B. 7. Volume 11(3) (1991), 197–214. Short was the founding editor of the Journal, and Wenden a founding member of its editorial board: he died the following year, and Short's ‘Personal Tribute’ to him is found in 12(2) (1992), 180–181. Short himself died in 2007: see the editorial tribute to him in 38(1) (2008), 71–72. 8. Ronald Tree, When the Moon was High (London, 1975), 130. The Visitors Book, printed as an Appendix, shows that Churchill spent 12 weekends in all at Ditchley between November 1940 and September 1942, always with a variety of other guests, who ranged from Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to the actor David Niven and his wife. 9. John Colville, The Fringes of Power (London, 1985), 316 and 319. 10. Colville, 390. 11. Colville, 416. 12. Colville, 464, Saturday 25 May 1941. 13. Quentin Reynolds, All About Winston Churchill (London, 1964), 152. 14. Dallas Bower, interview by the author, 20 January 1989. Channel Incident, based on Bower's script, dramatised a rescue from Dunkirk by one of the celebrated little boats, and was one of the first in the Ministry's weekly series of ‘five-minute’ films distributed to all cinemas (in the week of 23 September 1940). Unlike most in the series, it used personnel from feature films rather than documentary: Anthony Asquith as director, Peggy Ashcroft and Robert Newton as stars. Table 1 confirms that Hellzapoppin was likewise shown at Chequers more than once. 15. C.R.T. (Treadaway) to E.T. Carr of United Artists, 4 April 1942. CHAR 2/443. 16. Colville, 372, diary entry of 7 April 1941. 17. H.V. Morton, Atlantic Meeting (London, 1943). See also The Autobiography of Howard Spring (London, 1972), which brings together three books originally published separately, including In the Meantime (London, 1944). Spring's account of the shipboard film screenings, first published in that 1944 volume, closely parallels that of Morton: Autobiography, 228–232. 18. Morton, 49. 19. Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters volume 3 1939–1945, edited by Nigel Nicolson (London, 1967), 166. Entry for 14 May 1941. 20. Sir Alexander Cadogan, Diaries 1938–1948, edited by David Dilks (London, 1971), 396. Morton, 62. Both quoted in Short and Wenden. 21. Roy Jenkins, Churchill (London, 2001), 664. 22. The Wartime Diaries of Oliver Harvey 1941–1945, edited by John Harvey (London, 1978), 27. Entry for 2 August 1941. The fourth viewing of Lady Hamilton had presumably happened earlier that weekend. 23. K.R.M. Short, That Hamilton Woman: propaganda, feminism and the production code, Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television, 11(1) (1991), 3–19. 24. Short and Wenden, 204–205, quoting Morton, 79–80. 25. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol 3: the grand alliance (London, 1950), 382. 26. Cadogan, 396: entry for Friday 8 August 1941. Despite referencing this publication, Short and Wenden miss the discrepancy between the Cadogan and Churchill versions, as does Martin Gilbert. 27. Telegram to Korda, 15 June 1941. CHAR 2/419. 28. Telegram by R.E.K. Hill, Churchill's Personal Private Secretary, to Korda, 20 March 1942. CHAR 2/443. 29. Korda to Churchill, 19 June 1942. CHAR 2/443. 30. Short and Wenden, 213. 31. Born in 1921, Durbin made 21 films between 1936 and 1948. She subsequently retired to France, and has since kept up a Garbo-like resistance both to film offers and to publicity. For a study of her enormous popularity in Britain before and during the war, see Annette Kuhn's essay, in: Christine Gledhill and Gillian Swanson (eds), Nationalising Femininity: culture, sexuality and British cinema in the Second World War (Manchester, 1996), 186–192. 32. Eric Ambler, Here Lies (London, 1985), 175. In fact it is not the conductor who is punched on the jaw, but the businessman who is threatening to withhold sponsorship of the orchestra. 33. Holmes diary, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: volume VII, Road to Victory (London, 1986), 666. 34. Jenkins, 728. 35. NA INF 1/129. 36. Holmes, diary entry for 5 June 1943, quoted by Gilbert, 427. 37. Two typed and annotated lists, held in CHAR 2/444. Hill's letter of thanks for the original list is dated 8 October 1942, and Lejeune's reply enclosing the supplementary list is dated 10 October. Her help was acknowledged by the gift, for her young son, of a copy of Churchill's book My Early Life. 38. Colville, 583. 39. Colville, 529. 40. Letter of 2 June 1941 to G.W. Parish, in the Lance Comfort Collection held at the British Film Institute library. Quoted by Caroline Levine in Propaganda for democracy: the curious case of Love on the Dole, in Journal of British Studies, 45 (October 2006), 849. Thanks to Penny Summerfield for alerting me to this article. 41. CHAR 20/21 B. 42. Tree, 163. 43. Joyce Grenfell, Darling Ma: Letters to her Mother, edited by James Roose-Evans (London, 1988), 213. The export of A Letter from Home in June 1941 is recorded in the Roster of M.O.I. Films, published in Documentary News Letter, 2(10) (October 1941), 185. 44. Michael Balcon, A Lifetime of Films (London, 1969), 133–134; Caroline Moorehead, Sidney Bernstein (London, 1984), 148–149; Jeffrey Richards, British wartime audiences and the class system: the case of Ships with Wings, Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television, 7(2) (1987), 129–141. 45. A Lifetime of Films, 134–135. See also Jeffrey Richards on The Next of Kin, in Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, Britain Can Take it: the British cinema in the Second World War, 107. 46. The Zanuck correspondence is found in NA/PREM 14/138; I am grateful to Richard Farmer for alerting me to this rich material. Zanuck's letter to Churchill of 11 June 1942 is sent from the American Embassy and follows a meeting between them the previous day. As well as arranging for the immediate despatch to Chequers of The Young Mr Pitt and the rejected This Above All, he suggests that Churchill might like to see some of his earlier historical productions such as The House of Rothschild (1934), Clive of India (1935) and Lloyds of London (1936). A scrawled marginal note indicates ‘I shd like these, WSC’; in turn this is ‘Noted, CRT, 12/6’ [C.R. Treadaway of Films Division]. The Bernstein records (Table 1) show that this was quickly acted on, since both Lloyds of London and Clive of India had been seen at Chequers by the first week in July. There had been no delay at all in seeing The Young Mr Pitt, since Churchill's telegram to Zanuck—‘Thrilled by your splendid Pitt film’—is dated Saturday 13 June. 47. Barry Day (ed.), The Letters of Noel Coward (London, 2008), 469–470, quoting Churchill's letter to Mountbatten of 26 October 1942. Thanks to Victor Perkins for providing this reference. In view of Churchill's concern that the flashback-based time structure should be clarified, it is interesting to note that this was directly inspired by Citizen Kane, which he had so much disliked. See Kevin Brownlow, David Lean (London, 1996), 154. 48. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol 4: the hinge of fate (London, 1951), 661–662 (exchange with Roosevelt) and 675 (exchange with Stalin). For details of negotiations over editing and commentary, see Anthony Aldgate, Creative tensions: desert victory, in: Philip M. Taylor (ed.), Britain and the Cinema in the Second World War (Basingstoke, 1988), 144–167. 49. Kevin Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger: the life and death of a screenwriter (London, 1994), 224–225. 50. On the Colonel Blimp saga, see Ian Christie, The Colonel Blimp file, Sight and Sound, 48(1) (Winter 1978–9), 13–14, and James Chapman, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) reconsidered, Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television, 15(1) (1995), 19–54. 51. Kinematograph Weekly, 29 July 1943, 43. 52. Churchill to Butler, 11 November 1943. NA PREM 4/11/5.