Tag Archives: A Christmas Carol

Frightfulness II: Funny Halloween Fare, 2014 Edition

The Invisible Man

Invisible Man Poster

Claude Rains made his Hollywood debut in “The Invisible Man” (Universal, 1933). In an irony worthy of the man himself, he played the leading role in a picture he doesn’t appear in, and it made him a star overnight. Every time I watch “The Invisible Man,” Rains’ performance reminds me why he will always be my favorite actor. In scene after scene, I find myself thinking, “Who else would even dream of reading the line that way? Who else could read it that way?” One of the hallmarks of Rains’ acting style is his stupendous gift for infusing humdrum dialogue with life and wit, for making “heavy ignorance aloft to fly” — but he’s hardly the only actor with such a gift. Walter Huston, a great leading man who became one of Hollywood’s finest character actors, put it this way: “Hell, I ain’t paid to make good lines sound good. I’m paid to make bad lines sound good.” Spinning leaden text into gold is what great actors are supposed to do. Many fine actors — William Powell, Melvyn Douglas, Ralph Richardson, to name but three — rival the Immortal Claude at making bad writing sound better than it is, though none surpasses him. Some great actors — Olivier, Gielgud, Plummer, for instance — nearly always make bad material worse by failing to conceal their contempt.

Keeping under wraps: Claude Rains as Dr Jack Griffin, the Invisible Man.

Keeping under wraps: Claude Rains as Dr Jack Griffin, the Invisible Man.

I know of only one time when Claude Rains made a bad part worse (as the pixieish father of “Four Daughters”). His mistake was to play up the sickening coyness, instead of playing against it. Some years later, when it was remade as a Frank Sinatra/Doris Day musical, “Young at Heart,” cadaverous, bleary-eyed, thin-skinned Robert Keith played the role. Keith was a journeyman hack, but he played that one rotten part better than Rains; Keith had no imagination and very little skill, so he said his lines quickly and got out of the way. In “The Invisible Man” Rains never puts a foot wrong. It’s one of the greatest debuts in movie history and one of his very best performances.

What he does in “The Invisible Man” is quite remarkable. On the surface, he gives a first rate rendition of a cartoon Mad Scientist, but beneath this cartoon exterior Rains brings seething emotional intensity. Rains slices the ham very thick in this one, but his technique is such that he can deliver one line like a Victorian actor/manager and then speak the next one with such simplicity that he seems perfectly natural. He modified his style over the years, but not greatly. He was old-fashioned in the way he worked out line readings and pauses — David Lean claimed he could see Rains counting out the beats for some of the pauses he took in “The Passionate Friends” — he approached his dialogue in much the same way as a musician approaches phrasing. On the other hand, his technique had much in common with Stella Adler’s: the use of imagination, careful analysis of the script, making interpretive choices according to their “worthiness for the stage.” Rains was the embodiment of Adler’s favorite admonition: “Don’t be boring.”

Enter Claude Rains

“I want a room and a fire.” Those are the first words Claude Rains ever spoke in a motion picture. James Whale shoots him from below, which makes his entrance immensely impressive. And a few moments later, you hear The Voice — with all the velvet and gravel in it. There’s not another voice I’d rather listen to.

Rains always said that the sound of his voice was mostly due to the damage done to his throat and vocal cords by a gas attack while fighting in the Great War. Rains entered the London Scottish Regiment as a Private, along with Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman and Herbert Marshall; at war’s end, he had risen to the rank of Captain. The gas attack left him nearly blind in one eye for the rest of his life.

The fabulously antic landlady is Una O’Connor, who gave essentially the same performance throughout her entire career. Her publican husband is Forrester Harvey.

Rains Gets the Heave-Ho

One of the only objections H.G. Wells had about the adaptation was that his scientist, as written by R.C. Sherriff and portrayed by Rains, was mad from the moment he arrived, rather than slowly going out of his mind. It’s certainly true that in the screen version, Dr Jack Griffin (in the book he’s known only as Griffin) has a volatile temper from the moment he enters the inn, but it doesn’t look like madness to me. I’d say he becomes increasingly erratic over the course of several weeks. His mind begins to crack when the landlord tells him to pay up and get out.


“I implore you to let me stay! I beg of you!” he cries with the heavy tremolo and sob of a stentorian Nineteenth century ham pitching his bathos to the last row of the gods. I can hear the ghost of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (Rains’ first theatrical mentor) in the way he delivers that line. The old-fashioned declamatory techniques he uses, the showy theatricality of his acting style (what Christopher Plummer calls, with a graceful sweep of the arm, “the Grand Manner!”) and, above all, his white hot intensity make it an audacious performance. When you remember that this was his first Hollywood picture (and only his second picture ever: the first was a silent he made in England in 1920), his audacity is almost beyond belief: how easily it could have gone wrong! And that’s the second hallmark of Rains’ acting style: outrageousness, backed by superb technical skill and absolute commitment. In “The Invisible Man,” the violence of his first outburst is so explosive, it’s hard to believe he’ll be able to surpass it. He does. As a demonstration of technical skill, Claude Rains’ sustained temper tantrum in “The Invisible Man” is hard to beat. He may be the only actor I’d ever want to see play Timon of Athens.

The Rains Cackle

In this next clip, the local constable (E.E. Clive, in a very funny performance) comes to the inn to restore order and to ask, “‘ere, wot’s all this, then?” E.E. Clive always lifts my spirits. This is the first time we get to hear the full Rainsian cackle. Once he begins to cackle, that’s when it is clear that his most sovereign reason is now blasted with ecstasy.

You can hear torment in his famous cackle, which has been endlessly imitated. Mimics usually can reproduce Rains’ pitch and volume accurately enough, but nobody ever gets the brain fever and the fury that is in Rains’ shrieking laughter. It’s grandly theatrical — funny and thrilling at the same time — but there’s great passion in it too.

Rains of Terror

These next two clips show Rains hatching his very nasty schemes. His authority absolutely amazes me. William Harrigan is the terrified wretch whom Rains is pressing into service. Harrigan is very good, but the plain fact is that even though you can’t see Rains, you can’t take your eyes off him.

Rains Goes on a Power Trip

In this clip, Rains speaks to his fiancee about his plans. Though besotted with love for him, the young woman can plainly see he is barking mad. My favorite line is Rains’ response to her speech that begins, “Jack, I want you to let my father to help you. You know how clever he is.” Or, more accurately, his response is my favorite line reading. It’s a perfect example of the way Rains has of putting great zest and pizzazz into a line of no great merit.

“Your father, clever? You think he can help me? He’s got the brain of a tapeworm, a maggot!” The energy and heat Rains puts into that line gives me a thrill every time I hear it. His scorn for her father’s intelligence is so ferocious, and his indignation at the comparison is so extreme — all I can do is laugh. What makes it even more hilarious, he is, after all, speaking of her father. Calls him a tapeworm, a maggot. What is he, nuts? The girl is Gloria Stuart.

The Ghoul

Ghoul Poster

Boris Karloff is certainly the most famous actor in “The Ghoul” (Metro, 1933), but he is surrounded by several of Britain’s finest and most eccentric actors. A very young Ralph Richardson (he was not yet a knight) makes his screen debut in a small, amusing role; the sublimely witty oddball, Ernest Thesiger, plays Karloff’s sepulchral Scottish butler; Kathleen Harrison (perhaps best known for her performance as Alastair Sim’s housekeeper, Mrs Dilber, in “A Christmas Carol”) is in it and up to her old tricks; and there’s a very droll performance by Cedric Hardwicke, who plays a cantankerous, shifty-eyed solicitor. He was not a knight yet, either. His investiture took place the following year, and was performed by King George V. The cares of state had made the monarch old before his time; by 1934, he was almost deaf and a little bit dotty, but he performed the ceremony perfectly until the last moment. The knight-elect knelt upon the knighting-stool before The King, who duly laid the sword blade on Hardwicke’s right and then left shoulder. Then followed several seconds of uneasy silence; the new knight remained motionless, waiting for the royal command to rise. But His Majesty, as an unperfect actor on the stage, had gone up on his lines. At length, a courtier prompted the befuddled sovereign. Then spake King George in a loud, clear voice: “Rise, Sir Cedric Pickwick.”

There are many fun sequences in “The Ghoul,” and a lot of good acting, but the flat-footed direction is so lethargic that it feels much longer than its 77 minutes.

Richardson Calls, Thesiger Answers

Karloff is upstairs on his deathbed. Ralph Richardson, a burglar posing as a clergyman, comes to the door to offer comfort or, if need be, last rites to the unfortunate sinner. Ernest Thesiger is having none of it. To be honest, there’s not a lot going on in this scene, but the very idea of Ernest Thesiger and Ralph Richardson acting together in a horror picture makes me happy.

Thesiger Takes Karloff’s Last Orders

Here we have dear old Ernest being given instructions by Karloff.

Thesiger Takes Command

Karloff has died. Ernest has much to do. Sir Cedric Hardwicke comes looking for something he doesn’t find and promises to make trouble. Ernest and Sir Cedric make a very funny pair. I wish they had done “Waiting for Godot” together.

The Black Cat

Poster for Swedish release.

Poster for Swedish release.

It was a dark and stormy night. In a gloomy old mansion, the elderly millionairess, Henrietta Winslow, lies abed, at the very brink of death. Her poor relations are gathered downstairs, waiting impatiently for the wretched old invalid to die. Old Mrs Winslow keeps refusing to heed the fatal summons; she is therefore murdered; more will follow her to the grave. An old dark house, terrible weather and a murderer on the loose: that’s the set up for “The Black Cat” (Universal, 1941). It should have been great, yet it is a terrible picture — needlessly terrible. It’s not a total loss, however: there are plenty of pleasures mixed in with the dreadfulness. Every second that Basil Rathbone, Gladys Cooper, Cecilia Loftus and Gale Sondergaard are onscreen, the picture’s a lot of fun. Rathbone, alas, has not nearly enough to do, but he does everything to perfection. This may be the tawdriest picture Gladys Cooper ever appeared in, but it’s very probably the juiciest part she ever played on screen. She made her Hollywood debut only a year before, playing Laurence Olivier’s sister in Hitchcock’s “Rebecca.” Later that year, she played Dennis Morgan’s regal, Philadelphia snob mother in “Kitty Foyle.” It was only her second Hollywood picture, and for the rest of her career she was typecast as imperious widows and seriously displeased doyennes, usually with at least one child who was likely to be the death of her (Charlotte Vale’s mother in “Now, Voyager,” Mrs Railton-Bell in “Separate Tables,” Henry Higgins’ mother in “Pygmalion” and again in “My Fair Lady”). The Scottish character actress, Cecilia Loftus, plays the batty old millionairess who, after not-quite-dropping dead once too often, is murdered. This is the first picture Gale Sondergaard made after she played the spooky Eurasian widow who murders Bette Davis in the last moments of “The Letter”; in this one, she plays the spooky housekeeper.

Unfortunately, the desperately unfunny Hugh Herbert and Broderick Crawford are thrown in (up?) as comic relief. Crawford plays a big, loudmouth jerk — it’s a stretch. About halfway through the picture, he becomes a semi-love interest. (What were they thinking?) Crawford is obnoxious and repulsive, but then there’s Hugh Herbert, who gets my vote as the most insufferable, wearisome low clown in pictures. His popularity in the thirties and forties has always mystified me. I never laugh at the Three Stooges, but I understand why others do. I’m rarely amused by gross-out humor, but I recognize it as humor. But Hugh Herbert? He pats his palms together, flutters his fingers and emits little falsetto hoots — that’s his act. In “The Black Cat,” he bumbles into a scene, brings the action to a halt, inadvertently knocks something over, stammers something incoherent, does his little falsetto woo-woo, then bumbles off. That’s his shtick. Half a minute later he bumbles into another scene and does the same thing. And so on for the rest of the picture. A Star Is Born. André Previn, in his memoir about his years at MGM, “No Minor Chords,” wrote that his idea of Hell is being forced to watch the last half hour of Norma Shearer in “Marie Antoinette” for all eternity. I’d take that form of damnation over ten minutes in the presence of horrible, exasperating, unfunny Hugh Herbert.

The Vultures in the Parlor

This is the first scene in the picture. Alan Ladd plays the son of Basil Rathbone and Gladys Cooper — not, I may say, entirely believably.

What I like best about this picture is its musical score, which is a compendium of spooky movie clichés played with great brio and flair. “The Black Cat” is unquestionably a low budget B picture, but the score is far more exciting and entertaining that what pass for musical scores in today’s A budget pictures. Shamefully, the three composers who scored the picture are not listed in the onscreen credits. They are: Hans J. Salter, who composed more than a dozen horror picture scores in the forties. His first horror score was “The Invisible Man Returns” (1940), his last was “Attack of the Slime People” (2008). Frank Skinner, who scored all the big, plush Douglas Sirk pictures in the fifties also contributed. Stock music written by Charles Previn is also used.

Sondergaard Laughs!

In this scene, we come upon Mrs Winslow, down in the family crypt, where she is busy incinerating one of her beloved cats. Poor little friend! Oh, it’s all very queer, and that’s a fact: there was nothing at all the matter with the poor little fellow. How could it have happened? One moment he’s lapping milk intended for Mrs Winslow and the next moment he’s as cold as any stone.

Gale Sondergaard made her Hollywood debut in 1936 in “Anthony Adverse,” for which she became the first winner of the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, which category was introduced in 1937. She tied with Mme Maria Ouspenskaya for being the first actress to be nominated for her debut performance (Ouspenskaya was nominated for her amazing turn in “Dodsworth”). Sondergaard usually played villainesses; she was one of the inspirations for the Evil Queen/Witch in Disney’s 1937 “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” In “The Black Cat,” which was released the year after “Rebecca,” she’s pretty obviously doing a parody of Judith Anderson’s Mrs Danvers, but Sondergaard’s fearsome dolor makes Dame Judith Anderson seem like Little Miss Muffett by comparison.

That laugh! The first time I saw her do that take, I couldn’t stop laughing for the next ten minutes. The more Gale Sondergaard pictures you’ve seen, the funnier it is likely to seem. She was not a merry presence.

Miss Cooper Misbehaves

From the mid-Nineteen-teens through the Nineteen-twenties, Gladys Cooper was the unrivalled queen of the West End stage. She was never a truly inspired actress; it doesn’t appear that she possessed the sacred fire that greatness requires. For the first several years of her career, critics complained that her stately, almost immobile acting style had plenty of tableau about it, but skimped on the vivant. Of her performance in W. Somerset Maugham’s “Home and Beauty” (1919), Aldous Huxley wrote: “Miss Gladys Cooper hardly does justice to the part of Victoria. She is too impassive, too statuesque, playing all the time as if she were Galatea, newly unpetrified and still unused to the ways of the living world.” None of this seemed to matter to audiences, who loved her long before she began to impress the critics favorably. Whatever she may have lacked in fire and music, she made up for in diligence and commonsense. The improvement she made in her technique impressed Maugham so deeply that, in an essay he wrote some thirty years later (in 1953), he praised her for “turning herself from an indifferent actress to an extremely competent one.”

She played Peter Pan for the 1923 and 1924 Christmas shows at the Adelphi Theatre. Much as I love Gladys Cooper, I can’t imagine her in that role; had I been a child in the audience when she came swooshing in through the nursery window (she was the first Peter Pan to enter on a wire), I believe I’d have been distill’d almost to jelly with the act of fear. Her glacial austerity is impressive, majestic, worthy of veneration, but it’s not a quality that causes children to frisk about. (She would have been well cast as Frosty the Snowman’s trophy wife.)

It’s not every day you see Miss Cooper murder Bela Lugosi in cold blood. She had, of course, famously shot a man before: she was the original Leslie Crosbie in the stage version of Maugham’s “The Letter.” Just as Bette Davis did in the excellent movie adaptation, Miss Cooper started the evening by shooting her lover in the back, then followed him as he staggered on to the veranda, where she shot him five more times, twice while he staggered and fell, thrice when he was down. People who saw her in that part said no other actress ever came close to matching her performance. But that was in 1927, when she was still considered the most beautiful and glamorous woman in England and the toast of the West End, with a theatre named after her.

L to R: Gladys Cooper in the 1910s;  Hugh Cecil's 1926 portrait; Cooper on stage, circa mid-1920s.

L to R: Gladys Cooper in the 1910s; Hugh Cecil’s 1926 portrait; Cooper on stage, circa mid-1920s.

Miss Cooper, the Human Torch

Having been a great beauty for many years, Miss Cooper had little patience for unattractive actors. She especially admired actors who began as models, as she had, who had struggled and fought to be taken seriously as real actors. In 1916, while starring in “The Misleading Lady,” she was quite taken by the twenty-five year old Ronald Colman, who played a tiny part. One night he overheard a remark she made about him while she stood in the wings waiting to make her entrance: “Such a handsome young man, but why does he have to be such a terrible actor? So very clumsy — and those feet!” I invite you to keep this in mind while you watch Miss Cooper share the screen with that study in dishevelment, Broderick Crawford. How she must have loathed him! But can you blame her?

I think it’s safe to say that “The Black Cat” is the only time you’ll ever see Miss Gladys Cooper run from a room, shrieking and flailing her arms and engulfed in flames. But even without the fire, she probably would have made the same exit to remove herself from Broderick Crawford’s odious presence.

You can see last year’s edition by clicking here: “Frightfulness: Funny Halloween Fare.”

‘Goodbye, Mr Chips’: Grey Old Age Dreaming over a Crowded Past

Poster from Post-Academy Awards Re-release.

Poster from Post-Academy Awards Re-release.

The importance of first impressions seems to be especially true with motion pictures. When I see a bad picture for the first time under favorable circumstances, it’s likely that I will happily overlook its faults and then continue to have warm feelings for it long after I’ve become fully aware of its overt, unmistakable crumminess. For instance, it strikes me that “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” apart from Audrey Hepburn, Givenchy, the fantastic opening song (“Moon River”), and the extraordinarily well staged party scene, has little else to recommend it, and plenty to despise. Yet the first time I saw it, I was eleven years old — exactly the right age for it — and it got me so crazy in love with the idea of New York City that I continue to love the picture, even though I can’t remember the last time I was able to sit all the way through it. George Peppard makes me almost physically ill, as does Mickey Rooney (though I confess I find his racist turn as Mr Yunioshi at least as funny as it is offensive). Buddy Ebsen actually does make me physically ill; the sight of him makes me recoil in horror and disgust. But none of this is enough to make me stop loving “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”; that first impression went so deep that I am still pleased to be reminded of how sophisticated it made me feel when I was eleven. I also like the kittycat.

“Goodbye, Mr Chips” (Metro, 1939) belongs to a similar, yet quite different category. For one thing, it is not remotely what I’d call a “bad” picture, though there are many things about it that I disapprove of and dislike. It is sentimental, coy, manipulative; structurally, it’s awkward and badly made (it’s what a clever brother of mine has called “a heap”); in some parts of the picture, the years hurry forward too precipitously; in other places, episodes linger too long; in other places still, scenes cut off abruptly when a point (not necessarily the most interesting one) has been made. Experience has taught me that when I am not entirely in the mood to have my emotions trifled with, the story’s emotional pull is eminently resistible — risible, too: the more insistently it jerks at my tears, the more it provokes my scornful laughter. As a rule, however, the picture wins me over, and very quickly; I find it to be a deeply satisfying emotional experience, even though I nearly always feel as if I’m being had.

Remembrance of Things Past

What the picture has in common with “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is that I first happened to see it at the precise moment in my life when it had the best chance of making the deepest impression; moreover, as with “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the affection I have for it goes far beyond the bounds of its actual merits. No matter how many times I see “Goodbye, Mr Chips,” it never fails to bring to mind the memory of the first time I saw it, and the extraordinary number of ways it moved and delighted me. To this day, its ability to release an almost overwhelming flood of reminiscence is uncanny.

I first saw “Goodbye, Mr Chips” back in 1978, under ideal circumstances — stupendously ideal circumstances, in fact. It was on a double bill at a charming revival house in Seattle called The Harvard Exit. I saw it on a beautiful Thursday evening exactly one week before I moved to New York City. Seattle is a place that invites feelings of nostalgia (at least it did back in the seventies, when it was still a reasonably sleepy, charmingly shabby backwater), and my awareness that I was a week away from leaving my hometown presumably forever intensified each experience during that final week with the anticipation that, in the years to come, it would be the subject of nostalgic reflection. Throughout the preceding year, I had gone to The Harvard Exit, just a few blocks from my apartment, at least three times a week, and had already accumulated a load of nostalgia for the place, even while it was a pleasure still being enjoyed, and long before it had become a memory. I went to see “Goodbye, Mr Chips” with the knowledge that it would be the last picture I’d see at The Harvard Exit, and my emotions were exceptionally lively that night. And there was something else, too: Of all the anxieties I felt about moving to New York, the sharpest was about making a good first impression — or at least, not making a seriously bad one. The fear of making a bad first impression had preyed on my mind for several months. As I was soon to learn, the importance of first impressions is a key element of “Goodbye, Mr Chips.”

Richard Addinsell

I particularly like the school song that Richard Addinsell wrote for the picture. You’ll hear it under Robert Donat’s dialogue in his first scene (shown below), but here it is, at the end of the opening credits. The words are almost impossible to understand without help, so I’ve included them immediately below the clip.

Let the years pass, but our hearts will remember
Schooldays at Brookfield that ended too soon.
Fight to the death in the mire of November,
Last wicket rattles on evenings in June.
Grey granite walls that were gay with our laughter,
Green of the fields where our feet used to roam;
We shall remember whate’er may come after
Brookfield, our mother, and Brookfield, our home.

The lyric is nothing if not banal, but that’s in the nature of school songs. (I’m not persuaded that it is wise or appropriate to include the word death in a school song, but the lyric is hardly Addinsell’s fault.) Addinsell’s music adds greatly to the exquisite adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” (or “Scrooge,” to use its original title), starring Alastair Sim. His music is less evident in “Goodbye, Mr Chips,” but it’s used to great effect; the school tune is used repeatedly as the years fly forward and we see parades of boys go through roll call and touch the brims of their ever-changing hats. Addinsell’s score for this non-musical version of the story, when compared to the ghastly Leslie Bricusse score for the 1969 musical adaptation, begins to sound like something approximating genius.

David Tree

The picture begins very well. As you will hear, Headmaster Marsham (Frederick Leister) and the young Mr Jackson (David Tree) both have beautiful, interesting voices that are a pleasure to listen to for their own sake. I particularly like David Tree’s voice, which conveys intelligence, charm, youthful exuberance and a very becoming politeness. And like all good actors, he listens well. In the second half of the scene, notice how he listens to the Headmaster’s speech to the boys. Instead of fixing his eyes directly on the Head, he casts his gaze downwards; you can see that he is clearly listening and appreciating what he hears; the Head has his full attention, but he gives his attention modestly. It’s a small matter, but it is out of such small matters that first rate performances are born.

Wonderful David Tree! “Brookfield School: One can almost feel the centuries . . . Grey old age, dreaming over a crowded past.” It’s not every actor who could speak such a line and get away with it; Tree does more than get away with it: he makes it wonderful. He avoids the mistake of going for realism, and doesn’t try to sneak it past us in a hurry: the line works because he emphasizes its poetic artificiality; he lingers over it, even allows a bit of old-fashioned tremolo to color the word “age”; yet he’s also amused by his oratorical extravagance. He means what he says, but he also sends himself up for the sentimentality he cannot hide. Mr Jackson is a tiny part, but he sets the tone for all the rest.

David Tree’s personal history is almost unbearably moving. His mother was Viola Tree, a highly regarded actress of the Edwardian Era; his grandfather was Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who was, along with Sir Henry Irving, one of the most impressive actor/managers of the second half of the Nineteenth Century. (It was about Beerbohm Tree’s Hamlet that Oscar Wilde (or W.S. Gilbert, depending on your source) famously remarked, “Funny without being vulgar.”) David Tree’s first big success in pictures came a year prior to “Goodbye, Mr Chips,” in 1938, when he played Freddy Eynsford-Hill in the Leslie Howard/Wendy Hiller “Pygmalion.” The last picture he made was “Major Barbara,” after which he joined the Royal Artillery. In 1941, he was wounded while on duty and subsequently lost one arm to the surgeon’s knife. After the War, he did not attempt to return to acting, but took up farming instead. He did, however, make one more picture several decades later — he played a small part in Nicholas Roeg’s 1973 thriller, “Don’t Look Now.” (The beginning of that picture was filmed at Tree’s cottage.) Of course, I knew nothing of David Tree when I saw “Goodbye, Mr Chips” for the first time, but I do now, and the knowledge makes everything he does seem tremendously poignant. I shake my head and sigh his loss. A really wonderful actor.

Robert Donat

Immediately after the opening scene, we meet the main event, played by Robert Donat. I’m bound to observe that Donat’s elderly gentleman is decidedly more adorable than I think necessary or advisable, but there are so many praiseworthy things in his performance that I’m willing to accept his semi-excruciating quaintness. If you agree that he’s just too cute for words, you may be sure that he more than makes up for it in later scenes. I was not bothered by anything he did the first time I saw it; my first impression was one of unreserved admiration and affection.

In 1939, Donat’s performance was so universally admired and beloved that when he won that year’s Academy Award for Best Actor, absolutely no one grumbled that Clark Gable (in “Gone with the Wind”) or James Stewart (in “Mr Smith Goes to Washington”) had been robbed. Gable himself approved of the Academy’s choice; no doubt Stewart did, too. Donat’s performance is certainly very likeable, but his sentimentality, in several scenes, can be awfully sticky. Yet even with the mawkishness, I still enjoy his sprightliness, and I find that his performance grows on me as the picture progresses, especially when cocktails are being served. His hamming has a paradoxical naturalness to it. His rather high, muzzy voice is grateful to the ear, and then there are those eyes of his! They communicate deeply felt emotion more clearly and precisely than pages of dialogue could hope to do, and they shine with a benevolent sagacity that has never been equalled by any other actor. Donat was adored by his colleagues; nobody ever had a bad word to say about him. John Mills agreed to play a tiny part in “Goodbye, Mr Chips” simply for the opportunity of working with his idol.

Here’s Donat’s next scene, in which he offers advice to David Tree. Once you’ve seen this clip, you’ve seen Tree’s entire performance.

Some years later, Donat observed, “As soon as I put the moustache on, I felt the part, even if I did look like a great Airedale come out of a puddle.” He does, at that. Far more importantly to me, he also looks a lot like my dear old friend, Marvin Einhorn, who died this past April at the age of ninety-three. Now whenever I see Donat in his false whiskers and greasepaint decrepitude, I’m reminded of Marvin, a man whom I adored. He was far more debonair and urbane than Donat, but their faces were remarkably similar. Through much of the eighties, Marvin was nearly a second father to me, and now the memory of him, as soon as Donat skips into view, gives the picture a tremendous emotional hold on me — a hold which it certainly hasn’t earned. But then, in the movies, no holds are barred.

Forgive me, but I really must digress for a moment. A long time ago, Marvin Einhorn directed me in a Noël Coward comedy, in which I had to tie a bow tie onstage, without the benefit of a mirror. I’d never tied one before, so Marvin, being the excellent father figure he was, took the responsibility of teaching me. As it happened, he favored bow ties, and I’ve never forgotten his exact instructions: “First, you make like you’re tying your shoelace — let the front flap be longer than the one in the back. Now fold the back in half . . . and then, God willing, there’s a hole. Push the front through the hole, pull it tight and there it is.” To this day, whenever I tie a bow tie, I say aloud, “And then, God willing, there’s a hole.” I bring all this up because in some scenes, Donat looks so much like Marvin, that whenever he pauses for effect, I say: “And then, God willing, there’s a hole.”

A Bad Start to an Illustrious Career

After our introduction to Chips, most of the story is told as a flashback. The well-beloved, ancient schoolmaster, Mr Charles Edward Chipping (in the book, his first name is Arthur), dozes by his fireplace and recalls the events of his generally happy and almost entirely useful life. From his recollections, however, we learn that Mr Chipping’s early career was not a success. On his first day of teaching, he loses control of his class, and makes a very bad first impression.

Lyn Harding, resplendent in his storebought whiskers, is the superbly funny actor who plays the terrifying Dr Wetherby, Headmaster of Brookfield School. Harding possessed first-hand knowledge of formidable authoritarians. He was descended from a long line of rigorous Welsh Congregationalist preachers. His father, the Rev. Richard Harding, expected him to enter the church and was duly appalled by his son’s idiotic, wicked choice of profession. Many years later, the Rev. Harding finally saw his son perform on the London stage. After the performance, the old man emerged from the theatre ashen-faced and murmured, “I have been in Hell tonight.”

The solitary misfortune of having made a bad first impression leads Mr Chipping, for the next two decades, to go against his kindly impulses and to turn himself into a martinet. Here we see him some twenty or twenty-five years later. His loneliness is terrible. He has played the martinet for so many years that his natural kindliness has become somewhat strangulated. What was once his natural inclination has become stiff, brittle and self-conscious. He’s clearly a well-meaning fellow, but he fails to please the boys and his colleagues, and he seems destined to drag out his days in a waste of unhappy mediocrity and solitude.

My God, Donat’s suppressed look of grief as his doom is pronounced: Wilkinson, a less senior man, is to be housemaster! It is but one of a few dozen similarly exquisite, nuanced moments in his performance. He’s best in his middle aged scenes before geriatric quaintness begins to fill his diapers.

I Lost My Heart High on an Indoor Alp

Then, by a happy turn of fate, he is offered — and bullied into accepting — an invitation by Paul Henreid (then known as Paul von Hernried) to go on a walking tour of the Tyrol. A few moments later, we see Mr Chipping, who has gotten himself lost in the mist, high upon an indoor Alp, when he hears the call of a woman’s voice. At great risk to himself, he clambers up the muslin and plaster crags until he comes upon the owner of the far-off voice: a charming, headstrong young woman named Katherine (Kathie) Ellis (Greer Garson). The alpine mists are especially fraudulent looking: you can practically see the stagehands just outside the frame, in their clothcaps, boiler suits and hobnail boots, pumping away at their smoke-filled leather-and-oak bellows. The artificiality of the stagebound Tyrol is, I think, so berserk as to work in the picture’s favor. Overt artifice removes the scene from reality to romantic fantasy, elevates it from Meet Cute to Fairy Tale. Here in this world of unreality, Chipping makes yet another strong first impression, but this time it’s a favorable one. Miss Ellis likes what she sees and hears. She’s a Modern Woman, so she’s happy to tell him so.

Kathie’s little extempore encomium on the Teacher’s Life is a wonderful piece of writing of the “In a Perfect World” school of thought. I find it very moving indeed. And as she speaks it, you can see the moment that Mr Chipping begins to lose his heart to her — completely, irretrievably. By the time they descend from the thin soundstage air, they are deeply, but timorously, in love. The waltz they dance together in a later scene brings them closer still, and then, at their tongue-tied parting at the Viennese train station, before you can say: Was ever match clapp’d up so suddenly?, they are engaged — I promessi sposi.

Greer Garson

This was Greer Garson’s first Hollywood picture, and she was furious when she discovered that the role was actually very small. In the years immediately prior to Garson’s association with Metro, Greta Garbo had been making a nuisance of herself, even while her popularity had been steadily declining. Louis B. Mayer was therefore looking for another Grand Lady actress who could take Garbo’s place, so when he saw Garson in a London stage play, he was impressed by her regal bearing and promised her the moon in order to get her to sign a long-term contract. Then a full year passed before he found this role for her. (Quite apart from all other considerations, it seems that Garson didn’t photograph well: it took a long time for the makeup and lighting departments to figure out what to do with her. Once you’re aware of this, you may find, as I do, that any time she’s badly lighted and she gets up on her high horse — her favorite mount — she doesn’t look like an imperious marchioness, but an uppity Polish laundress.) It’s a striking coincidence that Greer Garson and Greta Garbo share the first three letters of both their first and last names, but the similarity between the two ends there. How Mayer thought Garson could possibly be any sort of Garbo replacement is a mystery that has never been explained to my satisfaction.

Greer Garson has been irritating me for so many years, I always have to remind myself that the first time I saw her in this, I thought she was wonderful. She’s just as artificial, prim and supercilious as always, but in this one picture, I quite like her. Almost certainly this is largely because in this one, she looks very much the way a friend of mine named Colleen looked in 1978. Colleen had moved to Manhattan the previous year. When she came back to Seattle for the summer, she suddenly looked like Greer Garson as Kathie Ellis Chipping. Colleen was and is a first rate singer, a fine actress and a tremendous friend. Garson only looked like Colleen in this one picture, and Colleen only looked like Garson in the summer of 1978, but that summer they could have passed for twins. At my first sight of Greer Garson simpering through the manmade mist, I let out a gasp. This is yet another way in which the picture has emotional claims on me that it didn’t really earn, except by coincidence.

Though Kathie is indeed a small part, she has the single largest effect on our hero’s life; without her, there would be no story, for she quickly identifies his central problem: he is too full of the skim milk of human kindness. With warmth and vigorous churning, she soon turns thin liquid to cream. Here is how James Hilton describes Kathie’s effect on Chipping in the novella:

But most remarkable of all was the change she made in Chips. Till his marriage he had been a dry and rather neutral sort of person; liked and thought well of by Brookfield in general, but not of the stuff that makes for great popularity or that stirs great affection. He had been at Brookfield for over a quarter of a century, long enough to have established himself as a decent fellow and a hard worker; but just too long for anyone to believe him capable of ever being much more. He had, in fact, already begun to sink into that creeping dry rot of pedagogy which is the worst and ultimate pitfall of the profession; giving the same lessons year after year had formed a groove into which the other affairs of his life adjusted themselves with insidious ease. He worked well; he was conscientious; he was a fixture that gave service, satisfaction, confidence, everything except inspiration.

And then came this astonishing girl-wife whom nobody had expected — least of all Chips himself. She made him, to all appearances, a new man; though most of the newness was really a warming to life of things that were old, imprisoned, and unguessed. His eyes gained sparkle; his mind, which was adequately if not brilliantly equipped, began to move more adventurously. The one thing he had always had, a sense of humor, blossomed into a sudden richness to which his years lent maturity. He began to feel a greater sureness; his discipline improved to a point at which it could become, in a sense, less rigid; he became more popular. When he had first come to Brookfield he had aimed to be loved, honored, and obeyed — but obeyed, at any rate. Obedience he had secured, and honor had been granted him; but only now came love, the sudden love of boys for a man who was kind without being soft, who understood them well enough, but not too much, and whose private happiness linked them with their own.

It’s fair to say that this is the best passage in the book, which is far more maudlin than the picture. And this passage is beautifully played out in the picture, with great subtlety and distinction.

Hæc Olim Meminisse Iuvabit

At some other time, I’d like to discuss the use of Latin throughout the story, but for now, I’ll confine myself to a single example. This next clip is Chips’ farewell address to the school upon his retirement. There are many other scenes that I like as much as this one, but this was the scene that meant the most to me when I saw the picture for the first time.

The moment that meant the most to me came the end of his speech, when he spoke the words, “. . . hæc olim meminisse iuvabit. I need not translate, of course.” That the quotation was in Latin was all I knew about it. I didn’t know what it meant or where it came from. And yet, the sound of the words brought tears to my eyes and made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I took “I need not translate” as a reproach: I was supposed to know the line, but didn’t. The moment was over so quickly, I had already forgotten the words as soon as they’d been spoken. So I sat through the picture a second time, but this time, I had my pen out, and wrote the words down on a copy of the monthly schedule that I had picked up in the lobby.

Following the example of many revival houses of that era, somebody from The Harvard Exit’s staff always made a brief introductory speech before each picture. When I was leaving the theatre after the showing, I spoke to the guy who had done the introductions that evening and asked if he could tell me anything about the Latin quotation. He was pretty sure it was from “The Æneid.” The next day, I went to the main branch of the public library a few hours before I had to be at work, and went through “The Æneid,” line by line, until I came across a line that looked similar to what I’d written down the night before: “HEC OLEM MEMMUNISSEE JOOVABIT.” It was my good luck that the line occurs in the very first book, on line 203. Roughly translated, it means “it may be that in the future you will be helped by remembering the past.” But that is a very rough translation, and even Robert Fagles, whose translations of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” were bestsellers in the nineties, spoke to a reporter from the New York Times about the extreme difficulty of translating the line. “Forsan et hæc olim meminisse iuvabit. One of the most beautiful lines in Latin, and also one of the most famous. I know the translation police will be looking, as well as good readers. ‘A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this.’ It is about loss, about overcoming the worst, but the word ‘perhaps’ is important. It may not be a joy to remember. It may be a bloody misery.” Fagles certainly gets the sense right, but the sound of his line is all wrong, alas. If Robert Fagles can’t render it into beautiful English, what chance have the rest of us got? John Dryden translated it so freely that it hardly approximates the original: “An hour will come, with pleasure to relate/Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate.” Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jack!