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Mountbatten goes to the movies: Promoting the heroic myth through cinema

2006; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680600799421

1465-3451

Adrian Smith,

South Asian Cinema and Culture

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1 Mountbatten was unique in having been promoted to a service chief during the Second World War—as first Chief of Combined Operations (1941–1943) and then Supreme Commander South East Asia Command (1943–1946)—before, with an interruption as first Viceroy and then Governor-General of India (1947–1948), resuming a normal career path in the Royal Navy. He became First Sea Lord in 1954, and served as CDS from 1958 to 1965. 2 Report of KRS/RNFC dinner in ‘Long Shots’, Kinematograph Weekly, 10 November 1960. With six years service in the RNVR, Kenneth More was well qualified to star in Sink the Bismarck! (Lewis Gilbert, Fox; UK, 1960), and his casting was clearly intended to placate the real ‘Captain Shepherd’, who complained to the CDS that the original script portrayed him as a ‘pretty nasty character’. Kenneth More, More or Less (London, 1978), 179, and Admiral Sir Ralph Edwards to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, 5 April 1959, Mountbatten Papers, L156. 3 Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley (eds) The Noel Coward Diaries (London, 1985/1998), 23 June 1957 and 28 February 1960, 357 and 429. Lean was recruited to edit In Which We Serve (Noel Coward/David Lean, Two Cities; UK, 1942), but the novice Coward publicly acknowledged his enormous contribution as co-director. Kevin Brownlow, David Lean: a biography (London, 1996), 162. 4 Conversation with Lord Brabourne, Centre for the Study of Britain and its Empire conference on ‘Earl Mountbatten and constitutional monarchy’, University of Southampton, 12 July 2004. 5 Miscellaneous correspondence, Civil Life August 1965—The Society of Film and Television Arts Limited, Mountbatten Papers, L155. Brabourne's co-founders of BAFTA were Richard Attenborough and Peter Morley. 6 Herbert Wilcox, Twenty-five Thousand Sunsets: the autobiography of Herbert Wilcox (London, 1987), 191–193 and 196–200; Herbert Wilcox to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, 14 September 1956 and 5 April 1957, and Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to Herbert Wilcox, 9 April 1957, Mountbatten Papers, L188. 7 Payn and Morley (eds) The Noel Coward Diaries, 27 October, 9 November, and 31 December 1942 and 26 July 1966, 19-20 and 634; Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to T.L. Rowan [PPS to the PM] and to Admiral Sir Arthur Pugh, 29 January 1946, Mountbatten Papers, C127; Wilcox, Twenty-five Thousand Sunsets, 200-201. 8 Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (London, 1989), 566-571. Ibid., pp 257-262 for the then Defence Secretary's profile of Mountbatten as CDS. 9 The attraction was as strong at the end of his career as at the beginning and during the war. Janet Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten: a life of her own (London, 1991), 146–147 and 206; John Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten (London, 1968/1970), 62–63; Philip Ziegler (ed.) From Shore to Shore: the diaries of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, 1953–1979 (London, 1989), 11 October 1958 and 20 March 1965, 26 and 117–118. 10 Seminar contribution of the Countess Mountbatten, Centre for the Study of Britain and its Empire conference on ‘Earl Mountbatten and constitutional monarchy’, University of Southampton, 12 July 2004. 11 Mountbatten was indebted to Skouras for ensuring all the major American studios continued to supply films free to the Royal Navy. Ziegler (ed.) From Shore to Shore, 11 October 1958, 26. On the need to reciprocate for Skouras’ financing of Brabourne's first film production, see John Brabourne to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, 26 December 1958, Mountbatten Papers, L156, and Brian Hoey, Mountbatten—The Private Story (London, 1994), 252–253. 12 On Zanuck's elaborate and excessive requirements in order to restage the landing on Sword Beach, see J.A. Drew, CDS Briefing 110/039, 27 April 1961, ibid. Mel Gussow, Zanuck: don’t say yes until I finish talking (London, 1971), 106 and 218–220. 13 Special guest Eric Johnston was, according to Mountbatten, ‘a right hand man of President Eisenhower, and one of his special ambassadors’: Kinematograph Weekly, 10 November 1960. 14 In Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger, Columbia; USA, 1962), the President chooses a deeply unpopular Secretary of State, and the subsequent melodrama revolves around blackmail and suicide. Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to M. J. ‘Mike’ Frankovich, 8 November 1962, Mountbatten Papers, L156. Macmillan's published diaries reveal his deep antipathy towards the ‘Orléanist’ Mountbattens (and their nephew) in the aftermath of Indian independence and throughout the 1950s, for example, Peter Catterall (ed.) The Macmillan Diaries: the Cabinet years 1950–1957 (London, 2003/2004), 9 August 1951, 93–94. 15 Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to M. J. Frankovich, 21 November 1963, Mountbatten Papers, L156. 16 Miscellaneous correspondence, First Sea Lord 1955–59 Films, ibid. 17 On Mountbatten's recollection of his early promotion of both recreational and instructional films, see Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, 69–70. On his 1930s lobbying of the Admiralty and the film industry to secure free films for bored crews, see Philip Zeigler, Mountbatten: the official biography (London, 1985), 100. Miscellaneous files re the RNFC, including an account of the inaugural screening on HMS Ark Royal in Portsmouth in April 1939 when, to Downing Street's considerable annoyance, journalists were informed that the absence of off-duty sailors was a consequence of rumours that Germany was about to launch a pre-emptive strike, Mountbatten Papers, L160. 18 Miscellaneous correspondence, Civil Life August 1965—Films, Mountbatten Papers, L148. 19 Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to Morris T. Young [MD, Rank Film Distributors], 13 February 1979, Mountbatten Papers, L148. 20 Correspondence between Lord Brabourne and the Imperial War Museum, 1970–1979, ibid. 21 Zeigler, Mountbatten, p 39. 22 Morgan, Edwina, 146–147. Mountbatten cheerfully accepted Chaplin's insistence that he was a terrible actor, as was Edwina. Ibid., 148, and Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, 63. 23 Lord Louis Mountbatten to Douglas Fairbanks Jr, 30 October 1927, Mountbatten Papers, J161; Countess Mountbatten, University of Southampton, 12 July 2004. Fairbanks had a long and complex relationship with Mountbatten, and one rooted in mutual admiration, not least since after a brief if difficult period at Combined Operations the Anglophile film star enjoyed a ‘good war’ in the US Navy: See 1940–1945 correspondence in Mountbatten Papers, C105/11–48. 24 ‘But the highlight for me [Mountbatten, in 1922] was Hollywood—the film capital of the world. Films fascinated me; they always have. I already possessed my own portable 35-mm camera, but now I was taught the art by the topmost professionals, like Cecil B. de Mille.’ Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, 63. 25 R. W. Emerson, ‘Heroism’, Emerson's Essays (London, 1971), 141; Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’, Russian Thinkers (London, 1979), 41–42. 26 As well as the loss of Canadian soldiers at Dieppe, other factors included a deep hostility towards Coward and In Which We Serve, Beaverbrook's suspicion that his mistress had an affair with Mountbatten in 1931, the latter's role at SEAC in fostering anti-colonialism, and above all, ‘the sack of India’. For a full discussion of the vendetta, see Anne Chisholm and Michael Davie, Lord Beaverbrook: a life (New York, 1993), 441, 493–494 and 491; and, more sympathetically, A. J. P. Taylor, Beaverbrook (London, 1972/1974), 689–690 and 814–815. 27 Berlin, ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’, 22. 28 Despite charges that as a serving officer he was too closely associated with the Attlee Government, discretion and common sense ensured Mountbatten's silence when Edwina was posing as a committed socialist in the mid-1940s. ‘To the Tories it is, above all, the feeling of betrayal that makes them criticise the Mountbattens’: Kenneth Young (ed.) The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart 2: 1939–1965 (London, 1980), 21 February 1947, 586. 29 Philip Ziegler (ed.) Personal Diary of the Lord Louis Mountbatten Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia 1943–46 (London, 1998), 4–10 December 1943, 40; Penderel Moon (ed.) Wavell The Viceroy's Journal (Oxford, 1973), 7 December 1943, 40. 30 Ibid. 31 Field Marshal Lord Carver, Tightrope Walking: British defence policy since 1945 (London, 1992). 32 Mountbatten falsely claimed that his Admiralty post was in Naval Intelligence. Kenneth Young (ed.) The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart 1: 1915–1938 (London, Macmillan, 1973), 24 September 1936, 355–356; Ziegler, Mountbatten, 97–98. 33 Anthony Adamthwaite, The British Government and the media 1937–1938, Journal of Contemporary History, 18 (1983). For a characteristically critical view of the Royal Navy operations in the Mediterranean on the eve of war, see Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War Volume 1: the gathering storm (London, 1948), 275–277. 34 Lord Louis Mountbatten, Synopsis for ‘March of Time’ film on the Royal Navy, 22 March 1939 and Raimund von Hofmannsthal to Lord Louis Mountbatten, 18 and 25 March 1939, Mountbatten Papers, A67. S. P. MacKenzie, British War Films 1939–1946 (London, 2001), 63. After the newsreel was finally released Mountbatten insisted on the Royal Navy's need to generate yet more film publicity: Nigel Nicolson (ed.) Harold Nicolson Diaries and Letters 1939–45 (London, 1967), 7 December 1939, 47–48. 35 The Life and Times of Lord Louis Mountbatten (Peter Morley, Thames TV; UK, 1969); Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, 95–98; In Which We Serve. 36 On the historiography of Appeasement, see individual national and thematic essays in Robert Boyce and Joseph A. Maiolo (eds) The Origins of World War Two: the debate continues (Basingstoke, 2003). ‘Cato’, Guilty Men (London, 1940/1998), 7–14. Frank Owen, one of the three Beaverbrook journalists who comprised ‘Cato’ was later recruited by Mountbatten to edit SEAC, the forces newspaper distributed across the south-east Asia theatre of operation. 37 Yangtse Incident (Herbert Wilcox/Michael Anderson, Metropolitan; UK, 1957). Despite Mountbatten insisting it be seen and digested by every trainee seaman, the film was a commercial failure, coming, in Wilcox's opinion, too soon after Battle of the River Plate. Wilcox, Twenty-five Thousand Sunsets, 196–200; Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to Herbert Wilcox, 9 April 1957, Mountbatten Papers, L188. On a mixed critical reception, see MacKenzie, British War Films, 147. 38 Ibid., 144 and 148–149. 39 Michael Powell, Million-Dollar Movie: the second volume of his life in movies (London, 1992), 287. 40 Following a joint triumph at the Royal Film Performance in October 1956, Mountbatten and Powell met only once more, in March 1960 when the sudden arrival of the CDS and his staff interrupted location shooting in Libya for Powell's documentary-style The Queen's Guards. Ibid., 261–315 and 413. For a succinct account of the making of Battle of the River Plate (Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, UK, 1956), and its critical reception, see MacKenzie, British War Films, 144–147. After senior officers viewed the battle sequences Mountbatten applauded a potential ‘masterpiece’, unique in portraying ‘such really exciting and at the same time artistic views of ships at sea.’ Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to John Davis, 17 August 1955, Mountbatten Papers, L158. 41 Only in Powell's final years did a later generation of directors and critics, notably Martin Scorsese and Ian Christie, reaffirm the importance of his and Emeric Pressburger's contribution to British film-making. See Ian Christie, Arrows of Desire: the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (London, Faber and Faber, 1994). Brownlow, David Lean, 151–152. 42 First Sea Lord signal to C-in-C Mediterranean, 1 July 1955, Mountbatten Papers, L158; Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to John Davis, 17 June and 21 July 1955, ibid.; John Davis to Lord Louis Mountbatten, 19 July 1955, ibid. The BFPA appointment set a precedent in that 1 year later a vice-admiral retired to become president: MacKenzie, British War Films, 159. 43 John Davis to Lord Louis Mountbatten, 5 February 1957 and 9 January 1956; ibid.; Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to John Davis, 15 February 1957 and 10 January 1956, ibid. 44 Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to John Davis, 6 November 1956 and 4 January 1957, ibid. 45 Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to John Davis, 6 November 1956, ibid. 46 Michael Powell to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, 6 December 1957 and Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to Michael Powell, 9 December 1957, Mountbatten Papers, L156. 47 Powell, Million Dollar Movie, 208 and 267. Internal objections to recommissioning Vanguard for filming as a fake pocket battleship, and murmurs inside Whitehall of too many favours being given to Brabourne, left Mountbatten keen to hand the project on to his successor as First Sea Lord. Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to John Brabourne, 1 July 1958 and 2 February 1959, Mountbatten Papers, L156. 48 The Man Who Never Was (Ronald Neame, Fox; UK, 1956). Mountbatten knew Neame as the cameraman on In Which We Serve, and the production company was owned by Twentieth Century-Fox hence Skouras's involvement. Goodwill towards the project was partly the consequence of Mountbatten's satisfaction with the recreation of a wartime Commando raid in Cockleshell Heroes, previewed for senior officers in the autumn of 1955. MacKenzie, British War Films, 144. On the popularity of ‘fooling the Jerries’ films in the 1950s, see Nicholas Rankin, ‘What never was’, London Review of Books, 23 July 2004, 12. 49 See, for example, Brownlow, David Lean, 151–168, Philip Hoare, Noel Coward A Biography (London, 1995), 322–331, and best of all, MacKenzie, British War Films, 72–81; also Coward's enlightening and yet less than frank version of events in Future Indefinite (London, 1954), reprinted in Noel Coward, The Autobiography of Noel Coward (London, 1992), 420–432. ‘Dickie told whole story of the sinking of the Kelly. Absolutely heart-breaking and so magnificent. He told the whole saga without frills and with a sincerity that was very moving. He is a pretty wonderful man, I think’: Payn and Morley (eds) The Noel Coward Diaries, 3 July 1941, 7. 50 Mountbatten's influence is reflected in the speed with which Coward found himself in Plymouth—less than three days after leaving Broadlands with a rough outline of ‘White Ensign’. 28–29 July and 1 August 1941, ibid., 9–10; Coward, The Autobiography, 480–481 and 426–427. 51 Payn and Morley (eds) The Noel Coward Diaries, 28 October and 12 December 1941, 12–13. Lean similarly relied on Mountbatten when reworking the last of Coward's several drafts into a shooting script: ‘Even after all these years a sort of tingle of electricity goes through me when I think of that man coming into a room and starting to talk. And he gave us a lot of help behind the scenes.’ David Lean quoted in Brownlow, David Lean, 156. On Coward's account of his court cases, and Mountbatten and his fellow officers’ indifference to ‘palpable celebrity-baiting’, see Coward, The Autobiography, 427–431. 52 Payn and Morley (eds) The Noel Coward Diaries, 17 December 1941, 14. ‘As usual he was wise and clear, and said that he would handle the whole affair … Dickie's militant loyalty, moral courage and infinite capacity for taking pains, however busy he is, is one of the marvels of this most unpleasant age’: ibid., 22 December 1941, 14–15. Bracken was persuaded once he had seen the final script, not least because he was ‘lent on’ by Buckingham Palace and No. 10, and later conceded that In Which We Serve was ‘a first-class film and was only too delighted to find that his judgement had been better than his film advisers!’: Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to Noel Coward, 2 October 1942, Mountbatten Papers, C58. 53 Payn and Morley (eds) The Noel Coward Diaries, 8 April 1942, 16; Coward, The Autobiography, 422–423. Following the King's visit Mountbatten reported that he and Churchill were full of admiration for what Coward was doing, and that the PM was ‘most distressed’ over his humiliation in court. Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to Noel Coward, 16 April 1942, ibid. Bernard Miles interview in Filming For Victory: British cinema, 1939–45 (Christopher Frayling, BBC2 TV; UK, 1986). 54 Ziegler, Mountbatten, 171; Bernard Miles interview; Coward, The Autobiography, 425–426; miscellaneous correspondence with the Admiralty, Board of Trade, and Ministry of Labour, Mountbatten Papers, C58; The Daily Express shot was the idea of producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, and in October 1942 Mountbatten told an irate, threatening, and unappeased Beaverbrook that he had sought its removal from the finished film: Payn with Day, My Life With Noel Coward, 154. Lean and Neame were appalled when Coward readily accepted Mountbatten's suggestion that the film's title be taken from the Royal Navy's morning prayer. Brownlow, David Lean, 166 and 159. 55 On the positive response of both the Admiralty and the film critics, see MacKenzie, British War Films, 80–81. Despite soaring studio costs, In Which We Serve cleared £60,000 in the UK and grossed $180,000 in the USA, where Coward was awarded several honours, including a 1943 Academy Award. Kelly veterans deemed the drama to be ‘astonishingly accurate’, and in November 1943, a Mass Observation survey found the film the most popular of the previous 12 months. Brownlow, David Lean, 167–168; Jeffrey Richards and Dorothy Sheridan (eds) Mass Observation at the Movies (London, 1987), 220. 56 Loring Villa floated the unconvincing idea that Mountbatten saw Coward's film as a vehicle for securing his elevation above the other service chiefs. Brian Loring Villa, Unauthorized Action: Mountbatten and the Dieppe raid 1942 (Oxford, 1989), 200–201. 57 On a shift in public perception of the Royal Navy, 1941–42, see MacKenzie, British War Films, 81–82. 58 ‘The most gratifying thing of all is that even the commonest journalistic mind has observed that it really is a dignified tribute to the Navy … a definite contribution to the war effort by showing the public what the Navy really is like’: Payn and Morley (eds) The Noel Coward Diaries, 25 September 1942, 18. ‘From the beginning he [Mountbatten] saw the idea as a tribute to the Service he loved, and he supported me through every difficulty and crisis until the picture was completed’: Coward, The Autobiography, 421. 59 Ibid., 422; Ziegler, Mountbatten, 172. 60 Ibid. Like Mountbatten, Kinross announces that ‘out of 240 men on board this ship, 239 behaved as they ought’, but gives the unnamed yet ashamed Richard Attenborough a second chance on the grounds that the captain must be at fault for not ensuring every crew member knew what was expected of him once in action. The real stoker was the only Kelly veteran not to retain contact with his shipmates. 61 Powell, Million-Dollar Movie, 260. Despite his disappointment over Lean's defection Powell liked the film, but felt Coward casting himself ‘had spoilt the ship with a ha’pence of tar’. When the Daily Express campaigned against ‘me writing and acting Lord Louis Mountbatten’ [note the absence of disguise] Coward secured powerful support within the Admiralty and the MoI on his own initiative: Payn and Morley (eds) The Noel Coward Diaries, 2 and 17–18 September 1941, 10–11. Criticism of In Which We Serve largely focused upon Coward's performance, for example, see Richards and Sheridan (eds) Mass Observation at the Movies, 257 and 267. 62 Hoare, Noel Coward, 326. 63 Celia Johnson as Alix Kinross is preparing her stiff upper lip for Brief Encounter, memorably switching to discussion of the chintz when her husband concedes that a war is likely; her two perfect children are implausibly named Bobbie and Lavinia. Ironically, the lower middle-class and working-class domestic scenes are far more convincing. Hands Across The Sea A Light Comedy in One Scene from To-night at 8.30 (1935) in Noel Coward, Plays: three (London, 1979), 306–333. Graham Payn with Barry Day, My Life With Noel Coward (London, 1994), 151. Mountbatten was again recreated on stage as a ‘bright young thing’, along with Coward, in Jeremy Kingston's Making Dickie Happy, performed at London's Rosemary Branch pub theatre in September–October 2004—‘The Master’ would have been horrified at the venue. 64 Coward, The Autobiography, 422. 65 Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to Noel Coward, 11 September 1953, Mountbatten Papers, H66; Payn and Morley (eds) The Noel Coward Diaries, 1 October 1953, 221. A disenchanted Coward only saw the Mountbattens intermittently sin the late 1950s, and relations became quite frosty. Close friendship with Dickie was reforged following Coward's inauguration as an honorary member of the ship's company at a Kelly reunion: ibid., 30 May 1966, 632. 66 Burma Victory (Roy Boulting, Army Film Unit; UK, 1945). Ziegler, Mountbatten, 255 and 345–346; David Cannadine, ‘Lord Mountbatten’, The Pleasures of the Past (London, 1989/1990), 67. 67 Ziegler, From Shore to Shore, 18 November 1976, 355. 68 Brabourne joined the board of Thames Television in 1975, as a consequence of his involvement with the film division of owners Thorn EMI, and was chairman 1991–1993, during which time a superior bid from Carlton led to loss of the franchise. 69 ‘6th Lord Brabourne’, http://www.TerraMedia.co.uk, 24 February 2004. D.J. Mitchell [PM's principal private secretary] to D.J. Trevelyan [Lord President of the Council's Office] 25 March 1968, Admiral Lord Mountbatten, ‘PAY TV’ memorandum to the PM, 18 July 1968, J.J. Nunn [Home Affairs Committee] to the PM, 23 October 1968, and ‘Note of a conversation between Mr Halls [No. 10] and Lord Mountbatten on Friday, October 25, 1968, PREM 13/1951, National Archives. The presumably weighty presence within the Pay-TV consortium of Field Marshal Slim, lining up alongside Lawrence Olivier and Margot Fonteyn, was surely Mountbatten's suggestion. 70 In retirement, Mountbatten's fund-raising focused upon the United World Colleges, as ever exploiting his show business contacts to the full. He was also prominent in the Variety Club, with the Hollywood establishment orchestrating a grand award ceremony in Puerto Rico at which he received Variety International's highest honour. Brabourne ensured that eventually Mountbatten's life story was retold for a mass audience, to his genuine surprise, via Thames's veteran ex-BBC programme, This Is Your Life. Ziegler (ed.) From Shore to Shore, 27 April, 5 May and 8 May 1970, and 19 April 1977, 191–193 and 363–365. 71 Ziegler, Mountbatten, 667–670; Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, passim. 72 Director Peter Morley was retained from the TV series. Miscellaneous correspondence on the ‘Mountbatten Archives Film’ in Civil Life August 1965—Films, Mountbatten Papers, L149. 73 Suez file and 1971 correspondence with the Earl of Avon in ibid. On evidence that Mountbatten misread the feelings of Conservative shadow ministers after August 1947, see footnote 13. 74 In Which We Serve. 75 MacKenzie, British War Films, 163. 76 Noel Coward to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, 19 August 1942, Mountbatten Papers, C58.