Book News

I am excited to share with you the news that my book on Margaret Lockwood, the British film star, will be published by Fantom Films in July. The book has been a labour of love and several years in the making, and it will be released ahead of Margaret’s centenary in September 2016. Although this is a new genre for me, it still fits on the spectrum of British heritage and is very much keeping within the era that I write about. My other forthcoming book, The Mistress of Mayfair: Men, Money and the Marriage of Doris Delevingne, is still on track for a November release.

Margaret Lockwood: Queen of the Silver Screen is available for pre-order.

Guest Blog: Wealth and Notability the Lockwood, Day and Metcalfe Families of Yorkshire and London by Robert Ward

Researching my latest book, ‘Wealth and Notability: the Lockwood, Day and Metcalfe Families of Yorkshire and London’, unearthed some surprising new findings about Margaret Lockwood’s family background. She clearly knew much more than she was prepared to reveal in her autobiographies, or to her 1989 biographer, Hilton Tims.

 

My own book tells the story of an extraordinary group of families, and their contingent of successful and notable people. It is one of two books that has emerged from many years of painstaking research into my wife’s family history. We have long known she has a large number of both notable and notorious ancestral connections, far more fascinating than my own, and a frequent jest is that she could have a whole series of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ just to herself. One of her ancestral lines is the talented and influential Lockwood family of Doncaster, from which Margaret Lockwood was also descended.

 

The earliest Lockwood we can identify with certainty is Margaret Lockwood’s great-great-great-grandfather, Joseph Lockwood (c1758-1837), a self-made man, twice Mayor of Doncaster, builder, sculptor, monumental mason and part owner of the Levitt Hagg limestone quarries near to the town. Some of the neo-Hellenic memorials designed by him and his son, also Joseph (1785-1842), are still around, one being inside the Parish Church at Blyth in Nottinghamshire. They suggest an artistic talent that was passed widely on to their descendants, notably Margaret Lockwood’s great-grandfather, Henry Francis Lockwood (1811-1878), the architect responsible for the Gothic design of Bradford Town Hall, the Corinthian Bradford St. George’s Hall, the philanthropic company town of Saltaire, and around a hundred other public and private buildings in Yorkshire, London and elsewhere.

An impression of Bradford Town Hall on the laying of the foundation stone in 1870

 

Success is often seen to run in families, and so we should not be surprised to find that the elder and younger Joseph had other notable descendants. These include:

Sir Frank Lockwood Q.C. (1846-1897) who served as Liberal M.P. for York, and as Her Majesty’s Solicitor General. He led the prosecution of Oscar Wilde’s retrial in 1895. He was also well-liked for his humorous cartoons of courtroom and Parliamentary scenes, a further instance of the Lockwood artistic gene.

Louis Lockwood (1864-1907), another architect, who made a name for himself in St. Paul, Missouri. His houses, such as Jared Howe’s house in West Grand Avenue, are admired to the present day.

Sir Joseph Flawith Lockwood (1904-1991) who became head of the EMI corporation and was responsible, among other things, for the Abbey Road studios and dealings with The Beatles. He also served for a decade as chair of the Royal Ballet. One of his brothers, a businessman, was twice kidnapped by guerrillas in Argentina. Another brother founded the Lockwood Donkey Sanctuary in Surrey, and once threatened to sue the Queen and Captain Mark Phillips for cruelty when Phillips was riding the Queen’s horse in the Badminton Horse Trials.

The actor Timothy West. His father was also a successful actor, Harry Lockwood West (1905-1989), and earlier members of their family owned and edited the Doncaster Chronicle newspaper.

We should also mention Charles Day (c1783-1836), brother of the younger Joseph Lockwood’s wife, Susannah Day (1785-1857), who made a colossal fortune from ‘Day and Martin’ blacking. His wealth passed widely around the family, providing all kinds of social and educational privileges. Joseph and Susannah’s son, Henry Francis Lockwood the architect (Margaret Lockwood’s great-grandfather) married a first cousin who was also a member of the Day family, thus receiving a double share of Charles Day’s fortune. It seems likely that it was Charles Day who helped him train under one of the leading architects of the time, and Charles Day’s money that enabled him to set up his own architectural practice.

Henry Francis Lockwood (1811-1878), Margaret Lockwood’s great grandfather

As well as artistic talent, another trait that seems to run through the family is what I refer to as the ‘Lockwood jaw’. Many of them have a long lower jaw tending towards what dentists refer to as an underbite, which is often visible in family photographs. It is apparent in Henry Francis Lockwood on the back cover of my book, and especially in Henry’s granddaughter Constance Metcalfe Lockwood whose portrait appears on the front. Sir Frank Lockwood’s sister, Lucy Ellen and her son Frank Lockwood Atkinson had it, and the portrait of the elder Joseph Lockwood on the BBC Your Paintings website also shows indications. It still appears in some present-day descendants. I can probably get away with pointing to Timothy West as an example, but I won’t embarrass anyone else by naming names.

 

Margaret Lockwood’s own grandfather and father did not, however, have such successful lives. When Hilton Tims wrote his biography of Margaret Lockwood in 1989, there was no way he could have efficiently searched through overseas newspapers and other sources as the technology was not yet sufficiently developed, and so the life story of her grandfather, Francis Day Lockwood (1851-1907), was entirely hidden from him. He says simply that he “retreated into obscurity” and assumes he was earning a good living somewhere abroad as an architect.

 
In fact, although he did start out as an architect with his father, there is no evidence he actually qualified, and after his father’s death in 1878 he gave up the profession, and went off gold prospecting in New Zealand with two of his brothers. It seems possible that his wife, Sarah Maria Elizabeth Miller (1859-1893), went with him, but they returned around 1891. Francis then sailed off on his own to Perth, Western Australia, in 1892, leaving Sarah to die of chronic alcoholism in a London boarding house in 1893, and their son (Margaret Lockwood’s father) to be brought up by a relative, ‘technically orphaned’. If Sarah had indeed been to New Zealand with Henry, it seems likely it would have at least exacerbated her problems with alcohol, and could well have been the direct cause, because they suffered terrible privations there. One of Francis’s brothers was driven to suicide in 1886 in a near-inaccessible hut in the reefs at the end of the Wilberforce River, a remote area of the Southern Alps, and the other brother who went to New Zealand, died there in 1891, aged only 51, in the Christchurch hotel he ran.

 

On arriving in Australia, Francis first took a job as a hospital orderly, working ninety-hour weeks in terrible conditions. He then became a health inspector, and after marrying again in 1896, was appointed Chief Inspector to the Central Board of Health in Perth. Sadly, however, he appears to have driven himself obsessively into overwork, perhaps a trait we see later in his granddaughter, but in Francis’s case it brought mental breakdown, and he died by self-poisoning in Perth in 1907.

 

It is not clear whether Margaret Lockwood herself knew any of this, but had she done so, it is easy to see how it could have damaged the gloss of her film-star glamour. It would have been very much in her interests to keep it to herself.

 
What is undeniable though, is that she knew a lot more about her father than she revealed. Hilton Tims outlined the basic story, that Henry Francis Lockwood (1879-c1956, presumably named after his architect grandfather) had three wives, that he was a railway administrator in India, and that he had two other children, Margaret Lockwood’s brother ‘Lyn’ (1912-1987), and her half-brother Frank (1908-1979). But Tims’s account contains a number of errors and omissions.

 

Firstly, he tells us that soon after Henry Francis Lockwood’s first marriage in 1900, his wife, Jessie Ramsay, then “simply disappeared from the records.” Both Margaret Lockwood and her mother Margaret Evelyn, clearly knew that this was not the case. Jessie had at first travelled to India with Henry, but then returned because she could not bear the conditions and the heat, and lived out most of her life in London. Not only that, Henry and Jessie had a son, John Alexander Lockwood, born in London in 1898, before the marriage, registered with the surname Ramsay. Had Tims been able to search the 1901 census electronically, he would have found the three of them living at Kingston upon Thames, before Henry and Jessie left for India, leaving John with his Ramsay grandparents. Jessie later moved to York where she died aged 80, in 1957.

 

Various circumstances strongly suggest that John was indeed Henry’s biological son, which means that Margaret Lockwood had another half-brother not mentioned in any of her (auto)biographies and obituaries. According to his son, John actually met Margaret twice, once to sort out loose ends relating to their father’s estate, and again after Jessie’s death in 1957. John found these meetings disappointing, Margaret being neither as friendly, nor as glamorous as he had anticipated. John also very much doubted that his parents’ marriage had ever been legally annulled, which would have given Margaret Lockwood very good reasons for wanting to conceal his and Jessie’s existence.

 

Tims is also sketchy about Henry’s second wife, Marie Ann, who, he tells us, died shortly after Frank’s birth in 1908. This is not the case. Tims seems to have based his assertion on a Roman Catholic burial record he found for a Mary Lockwood of Gorakhpur, wife of Mr. Lockwood of the Bengal and North West Railway Printing Press, who he assumes was Henry’s wife. It is the wrong record. In fact, Henry and Marie Anne, whose maiden name was Whitmarsh, appear never to have uprooted themselves to Gorakhpur. They remained in Saidpur where they had a second child, Anne Felicity Whitmarsh Lockwood, in 1910. So here is another half-sibling, a half-sister, also absent from biographies and obituaries.

 

If Henry’s second wife died shortly after giving birth, it was after Anne Felicity’s birth rather than Frank’s. It makes much more sense that Henry’s third marriage in 1911 took place within six months of Anne Felicity’s birth and Marie Anne’s death, as he desperately needed someone to care for his two children. His third wife, Margaret Evelyn Waugh, mother of Margaret Lockwood, has been described unflattering as a plain old maid, but a trained nurse and perfect homemaker. It seems possible she had previously been the family governess.

 

Anne Felicity, known as Fay, was then brought up by her step-mother, and lived with her and Margaret at 18a Highland Road after they moved back to England. She married from that address in 1930, when Margaret’s mother and brother ‘Lyn’ signed the marriage certificate as witnesses; one could even imagine Margaret as a bridesmaid. Why Margaret failed to mention Anne Felicity to Tims and others seems a mystery, but it could have had something to do with the well-known rift that developed between Margaret and her mother, or perhaps Anne Felicity simply did not want the attention that would have arisen from being Margaret Lockwood’s sister. She died in Blackpool in 1988, aged 77.

 

There are many other other tales of success and tragedy, fulfilment and infidelity, within the Lockwood, Day and Metcalfe families. Many of them may not be so famous as Margaret and other Lockwoods, although among the Metcalfes we find Priscilla Countess of Annesley, the Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne, and the brother and sister musician and actress Nick and Gabrielle Drake. But famous or not, their stories are every bit as fascinating.

Guest blog: The Slipper & The Rose by Terence Towles Canote

In 1976 it had been 21 years since Margaret Lockwood had made her last film (Cast a Dark Shadow in 1955). She had kept busy in the intervening years. She appeared regularly on stage, in productions of Peter Pan, Signpost to Murder, An Ideal Husband, and other plays. She had guest starred on such television programmes as The Royalty, Saturday Playhouse, and The Human Jungle. In 1965 she starred in the BBC television series The Flying Swan with her daughter Julia. In 1971 she began playing barrister Harriet Peterson on the ITV programme Justice. The programme proved to be a hit, running for three series.
While Margaret Lockwood had never faded entirely from view in the United Kingdom (indeed, she is still quite popular), there can be little doubt that Justice gave her greater exposure than she had gotten in many years, and it introduced her to a whole new audience of younger fans. It should then be little surprise that Bryan Forbes, the director of such films as Whistle Down the Wind (1961), Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), and The Stepford Wives (1975), would persuade her to take the role of the Stepmother in his big budget musical adaptation of the fairy tale “Cinderella”, The Slipper and the Rose. It would be her final feature film. The Slipper and the Rose was filmed over 22 weeks, both at Pinewood Studios in London and on location in Austria and England. It was released in the United Kingdom on 11 April 1976.

On the surface, a musical adaptation of “Cinderella” would not appear to be a particularly original idea. The 19th Century alone had seen several ballets and operas based on the fairy tale. The 20th Century would be no different with “Cinderella” adapted several times as a musical film well before The Slipper and the Rose. The most famous musical adaptation may well be Walt Disney’s 1950 animated film Cinderella. In 1955 MGM released The Glass Slipper, a musical version of the fairy tale starring Leslie Caron. In 1957 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II adapted “Cinderella” as a musical for television starring Julie Andrews. Rogers and Hammesteins’ Cinderella was revived for television in 1965, this time starring Lesley Ann Warren. The Deanna Durbin musical First Love (1939) was essentially a modernised version of the fairy tale.
Despite the fact that several film musicals based on Cinderella predated The Slipper and the Rose, it still proved to be a very original film. Indeed, it must be noted that in most previous film versions of the fairy tale the Prince is little more than a cypher. More often than not he is a simple cardboard figure who rescues Cinderella from her wretched life with her stepmother and stepsisters. This is not the case with The Slipper and the Rose, which devotes as much time (if not more) to its prince (Prince Edward of Euphrania in the film, played by Richard Chamberlain) as it does Cinderella herself. Indeed, Prince Edward is the first character to appear in the film and also gets the honour of singing its first song, well before Cinderella (played by Gemma Craven) makes her first appearance on the screen. What is more, Prince Edward is a fully developed character with his own motivations well beyond finding the pretty girl who wore the glass slipper to the ball.
The prince is not the only character from the fairy tale that is given an actual personality. In most versions of “Cinderella”, the Wicked Stepmother is little more than a stock villain. There is no explanation, explicit or otherwise, as to why she resents Cinderella or why she treats her so badly. The Stepmother in The Slipper and the Rose actually has reasons for treating Cinderella so badly, unjustifiable though they may be. What is more, as played by Margaret Lockwood, she is both beautiful and stylish. Even her daughters, Cinderella’s stepsisters, are given more personality than they are in most adaptations of the fairy tale. They are vain, selfish, and spoiled, a result apparently of their mother doting upon them. It is also notable that unlike most adaptions of the fairy tale they are not at all ugly, so that their resentment of Cinderella is rooted in matters beyond simple envy of Cinderella’s appearance.

The emphasis that The Slipper and the Rose placed upon characters other than Cinderella is not the only way in which it differs from previous musical adaptations of “Cinderella”. The magic in The Slipper and the Rose is much more subdued than in previous film versions of the fairy tale, particularly Disney’s version. For instance, we never actually see the creation of Cinderella’s exquisite ball gown–it is simply and suddenly there. When we do get an actual glimpse of magic, it is generally restrained. An example of this is the creation of the legendary glass slippers, which the Fairy Godmother pours from an ordinary mop bucket. What is more, magic in The Slipper and the Rose operates under its own strict rules. Indeed, the Fairy Godmother can perform no magic for herself.
 The Slipper and the Rose benefits from some very fine performances. This should not be surprising given its credits reads like a Who’s Who of British Cinema. Aside from the legendary Margaret Lockwood, the film also featured Michael Hordern (who had appeared in Miss Lockwood’s films A Girl Must Live, Girl in the News, and Highly Dangerous) as the King, Lord Peter Graves (who appeared with Miss Lockwood in I’ll Be Your Sweetheart and Give Us The Moon) as the General, Kenneth More as the Chamberlain, and the legendary Dame Edith Evans as the Dowager Queen.

It should come as no surprise to her fans that Margaret Lockwood delivers one of the best performances in the film. While the part of the Stepmother is not a particularly big one , it one that is pivotal to the film and Miss Lockwood makes the most of it. Miss Lockwood’s Stepmother is beautiful, stylish, and deliciously self-centred. The role is a very flamboyant one, yet Margaret Lockwood never plays it over the top. Indeed, she says more with the subtle arch of an eyebrow than many lesser actors could with a soliloquy. Although it was definitely not one of her larger roles, Margaret Lockwood’s performance as the Stepmother in The Slipper and the Rose is one of the best of her career.
As far as the rest of the cast, Michael Hordern delivered a fine performance as the King. As a monarch who is concerned that his line continue, not to mention worried that his tiny kingdom of Euphania might be taken over by its larger and more powerful neighbours, Mr. Hordern strikes the proper balance necessary between humour and seriousness for the role. It is little wonder that he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Kenneth More, a veteran of such films as Genevieve, A Night to Remember, and Sink the Bismark, was also very effective as the Chamberlain. Mr. More’s Chamberlain is as pompous and traditionalist as one would expect a king’s lord high chamberlain to be, yet Mr. More endows the character with a heart. In the end the Chamberlain is a much more sympathetic character than he might have been in the hands of another actor.
What could be the film’s best performance is that of character actress Annette Crosbie as the Fairy Godmother. There can be little doubt that it was one of the more difficult roles in The Slipper and the Rose, one in which it would have been easy for an actor to ham it up or slip into outright camp. Fortunately Miss Crosbie did an admirable job of playing the Fairy Godmother, giving the character just enough humour to be fun, but never so much as to be over the top.
The film’s two leads also did an admirable job of playing their respectable characters. Admittedly, Richard Chamberlain had the meatier of the two roles as Prince Edward. Prince Edward is a rational young man with his own mind who essentially wants to be himself, regardless of tradition. Strangely enough given the film’s subtitle The Story of Cinderella, newcomer Gemma Craven may have had the most thankless role in The Slipper and the Rose. Miss Craven’s Cinderella is sweet, innocent, and naïve, as one might expect and she also shows occasional flashes of spirit (as when she tells her stepmother, “I hate you!”). Unfortunately, she also seems quite passive at times. Indeed, rather than Cinderella speaking up, it is the Fairy Godmother who suggests that Cinderella wants to go to the ball, not Cinderella herself. Of course, this is not Miss Craven’s fault, but rather that of the script and a fairy tale in which the heroine was not particularly proactive to begin with.

Of course, The Slipper and the Rose is a musical, and musicals often succeed or fail based on the strength of their songs. Fortunately, The Slipper and the Rose does not fail on that account. The songs were written by the Sherman Brothers (Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman), who were also responsible for the scores of Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Tom Sawyer. While the Sherman Brothers’ songs on The Slipper and the Rose are not as strong as those from Mary Poppins or The Jungle Book, they are much stronger than their work in some other films (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang being a prime example) and altogether quite enjoyable.  “The Slipper and the Rose Waltz (He Danced With Me/She Danced With Me)” stands out as one of the Sherman Brothers’ most memorable compositions (it was nominated for the Oscar for Best Music, Song). The songs “Protocoligorically Correct” and “Position and Positioning” are both quite fun, while “Once I Was Loved” and “Tell Him Anything (But Not That I Love Him)” are lovely ballads.
Of course, much of the credit for The Slipper and the Rose’s high level of quality must go to director Bryan Forbes. Mr. Forbes had helmed such classic films as The L-Shaped Room, Séance on a Wet Afternoon, and The Wrong Box. He not only directed The Slipper and the Rose, but co-wrote the screenplay with the Sherman Brothers. As an actor himself Mr. Forbes had an uncanny knack for bringing out the best in his performers. As a director he had a gift for realism of the sort seen in the British New Wave and he was able to bring that gift to his more fantasy oriented films. One can see it in his camp classic The Stepford Wives and one can see it to a degree in The Slipper and the Rose as well. Despite the fact that there is a good deal of comedy and even magic (although much more subdued than in many fantasy films) in The Slipper and the Rose, it also seems much more grounded and realistic than many adaptations of “Cinderella” and other fantasy films as well.

The Slipper and the Rose proved to be moderately successful in the United Kingdom. It was even chosen for a Royal Command Performance in 1976. Unfortunately The Slipper and the Rose did not do well in the United States. Reviews of the film were lukewarm for the most part. Even worse, The Slipper and the Rose bombed at the box office in the United States. Despite the big names associated with the film, The Slipper and the Rose then remains largely forgotten in the U.S. for that reason.

As to why The Slipper and the Rose failed in the United States, it is perhaps that it was a bit of an anachronism when it was released. Despite the success of such big musicals as Mary Poppins (1964), My Fair Lady (1964), and The Sound of Music (1965), movie musicals went into a swift decline in the Sixties, with bombs far outnumbering hits by the end of the decade. By the Seventies it was a rare thing for musical films to do well at the box office. It seems quite likely that had The Slipper and the Rose been released twelve years earlier it could have been a smash hit in America.
Despite its failure at the box office in the United States upon its initial release, The Slipper and the Rose has developed a cult following over the years on both sides of the Atlantic. There are probably numerous reasons for this. Much of it may be due to the fact that it was one of the very last big budget, original musicals (that is, one not based on a stage play) ever made. Much of it also probably has to do with its rather original take on the fairy tale “Cinderella”, as well as the fact that it features one of the Sherman Brothers’ best scores.

Of course, there can be little doubt that much of The Slipper and the Rose’s cult status is largely due to the presence of Margaret Lockwood. Even for viewers unfamiliar with her earlier works there can be little doubt that Miss Lockwood is one of the film’s star attractions. Her Stepmother (of the fact that she is wicked there can be no doubt) could well be the best in any adaptation of “Cinderella”. That Margaret Lockwood’s stepmother would be beautiful would be expected (she was never anything less), and costume designer Julie Harris insured she was stylishly dressed. That having been said, it was Miss Lockwood herself who endowed the character with archness, vanity, vindictiveness, and malevolence rarely seen in other portrayals of the character. It was a great performance in a film filled with great performances. While The Slipper and the Rose may not have been a box office hit in the United States, it was certainly a fine swan song for one of Britain’s greatest film actresses.

 

About the Author: Terence Towles Canote runs the pop culture blog A Shroud of Thoughts (http://mercurie.blogspot.com/). He is the author of Television: Rare & Well Done: Essays on the Medium. His book Imaginative Television will be published later in the year.

 

Margaret Lockwood Jewellery Auction

I’m excited to share with you the info about Margaret Lockwood’s jewellery auction at Lawrences auction house, 16th January at 10am. Click on each photograph to find info on its estimate price etc. If you cannot make it to the auction in person you can also complete an online bidding form by clicking here. Alternatively you can telephone the auction house at 01460 270799. Remember to have your lot numbers handy!

 

Jean Kent

I always used to say that when they opened the script and saw ‘girl appears in Cami knickers‘ they’d send for me – Jean Kent

It is a sad day for fans of British cinema and for all of us over at the Margaret Lockwood Society. Our friend and the last of the Gainsborough Girls, Jean Kent, died yesterday morning. Vibrant until the very end, Jean brought joy to so many people’s lives through her films. She could be called upon to deliver a first rate performance, be it in a tiny role as Jackson’s doxy in The Wicked Lady or the troubled tearaway in Good Time Girl, the harrowing portrayal as Agnes in The Woman in Question or the unfaithful wife in The Browning Version.

Gainsborough could rival any Hollywood studio; it was a stable of household names who lit up the cinema screen and with beautiful Margaret Lockwood as its chief star it could have been easy for an actress to get lost amongst its superstars. But not Jean, she stood out from the beginning. This is best viewed in 1944’s Two Thousand Women, a sort of war effort film which cast the best of British female talent (albeit Margaret Lockwood), it had Phyllis Calvert, Anne Crawford, Renee Houston, Flora Robson, Patricia Roc, Dulcie Grey, Thora Hird, and yet Jean shone. It was the type of  witty, streetwise personality which she would use in the Madonna of the Seven Moons, Fanny by Gaslight and the iconic Caravan co-starring Stewart Granger. The aforementioned films were classic Gainsborough and the public lapped them up. A trained dancer and an accomplished singer, Jean’s musical talents were put on show in Bees in Paradise and Trottie True.

As she reached her forties, when most actresses played to their vanity and opted out of screen roles, Jean was a good sport and played the part of Julia Lockwood’s mother in Please Turn Over, a comedy based on the West End play, Book of the Month. It is interesting to note Jean’s participation in Please Turn Over because during a brief stint in the mid 1950s she had very small roles in Hollywood films such as The Prince and the Showgirl opposite Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier and in the Deborah Kerr, David Niven and Jean Seberg film, Bonjour Tristesse. Being able to move from small role to leading role as fluently as Jean did singles her out from the major movie stars. What other important star would demote themselves (if you will) to play opposite other leading stars? This is what I love about Jean and she said it better herself in a round of interviews two years ago as she celebrated her 90th birthday, acting was simply a job to her and she loved to work. In the ’80s and ’90s Jean kept busy with television appearances on popular shows such as Crossroads and Lovejoy.

Behind the camera, Jean lived a simple life. She was married to her husband Josef Ramart until his death in 1989. A star without a star’s temperament, Jean was active in her local community and always courteous towards her fans.

Above all else Jean was simply a nice person.

From the archives: An article on Julia Lockwood

Click here to read the original article.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 1960.

In England, complete with a newly remodeled nose-“”it gives me more confidence”- and teeth filed level-“”it gives me a better smile,” young film actress Julia Lockwood stepped into the last of her teen years transformed from a pretty miss into a glamorous, sophisticated stage star.

The rapid transition has been so successful that “Toots,” as she has been called from childhood, may soon be on her way to Hollywood. Maxwell Arnow, the same man who discovered Kim Novak, flew to London to search for new faces recently and one of the actresses he singled out was the young Miss Lockwood.

The promise of a film test by Columbia Pictures that resulted from the interviews is responsible for the “new look” with which she is emerging. As well as the new nose and filed teeth, there’s a shoulder length, curly golden wig that’s filling in until her own pale blondy straight hair has reached the length she wants.

Soon-when she’s had her tonsils removed-she’ll be taking the giant step towards independence by moving into a bachelor-girl flat in London’s Dolphin Square. “I thought it was time to get away from home,” she explained.

All this artificiality and independence seems out of character for a girl described by cynical show-page reporters as: “Absolutely adorable-shining, wholesome and sweet.”

But, although for the sake of career the “new look” Julia Lockwood resembles the type of screen beauty seen all too often in Hollywood pictures, people who know her-ranging from the callboy on the film set to her teenage friends-all day: “Everyone loves her. Her sincerity and youthful charm remain un-spoilt.”

“She has always been a very homey child,” says Miss Hettie Hollick, her nanny since she was three months old. “When she was cross, the worst thing she could do was not to say goodbye to me as she went out. But she would always come back and make it up.”

“She has all the teenage enthusiasms,” said a friend. “She is a personality in the theatre. Yet she’s as wild about Cliff Richards and cha-cha as all the other kids.”

She is a born organiser and the “Peter Pan” company during its stage run in London a few months ago (Julia played Peter Pan) had a saying in an emergency: “have no fear, Toots is ‘ere.”

Charming to her elders, popular with the children, and one of the most eligible young women about town, Julia at the moment has her heart set very firmly on a career. “When I’m not working I get bored,” she says. “I don’t expect to marry until I’m at least 25.”

Her romantic crush at the moment is Cary Grant. “I think he has a wonderful face,” she says. “But I doubt if I shall marry an actor. I prefer boys who are not in show business. With young actors you never know whether they’re acting or not. They’re always over confident. Other boys are more sincere.”

An acting career was mapped out for Julia when, at the age of five, she was enrolled in a theatrical school. From then on, she’s been knee-deep in a show business atmosphere. Her move into the limelight was a foregone conclusion. “I wouldn’t have minded being a children’s nurse,” Julia says. “I love children. When I marry I shall have a large family. I don’t believe in raising an only child.” An only child herself, “I’ve been pretty lonely at times,” she says.

“My parents parted when I was about five and were divorced when I was eight. I spent a great deal of time being looked after by Nanny. I think a girl needs a father, even more than she needs a mother,” she added, rather surprisingly, in view of the fact that her actress mother, Margaret Lockwood, has probably done much to guide her pretty daughter along an acknowledged tricky course.

Julia has a few memories of her mother’s famous films-including daring pictures like The Wicked lady. “Mummy made so many pictures that I haven’t seen more than a few of them,” she says. “My earliest memory is being carried out screaming in the middle of one of her films because I was frightened when I saw someone strike her on the screen.”

For that reason, most of her acting talents were learned at school rather than from her mother. And probably for that reason too, Margaret Lockwood still remains her daughter’s best friend. “She sits on my bed sometimes till four in the morning,” says her mother. “She tells me what she’s been doing, what her friends are doing and what the party was like. Toots is in love with people and life itself. She gives a lot. And that is why she gets such a lot back.”

 

From the Archives

Thanks to Tania for sharing these gems from her Margaret Lockwood collection!

Guest Blog: Terence Towles Canote on ‘Bank Holiday’

Like most Americans I discovered Margaret Lockwood through the classic Alfred Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes (1938).  Miss Lockwood impressed me in a way that only a few other actresses had before. In fact, she would join my ever growing number of classic film crushes, a number that includes such actresses as Audrey Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, and Grace Kelly. It was not just a case that Margaret Lockwood was incredibly beautiful. The character she played in the film, Iris Henderson, was independent, intelligent, resourceful, and charming. What is more, Miss Lockwood played the role very convincingly.

Given the impression Margaret Lockwood made upon me, it was natural that I sought out her other films. Unfortunately, living in the United States this would not prove to be easy. While The Wicked Lady and Night Train to Munich were shown on American television from time to time, her many other films were rarely shown. And many of them were hard to find on VHS or DVD. It would be literally years after I first saw Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes that I would finally get to see what would become one of my favourites of her films, Bank Holiday (1938).  The fact that Bank Holiday was one of the early films of Carol Reed, a director whose films I admire, made me want to see it even more.

For those who have never seen the film, it is perhaps easiest to describe Bank Holiday as a particularly British variation on the “Grand Hotel” theme, in which storylines involving different characters are linked by a specific locale or event. In the case of Bank Holiday, the storylines are joined together by the fictional, seaside town of Bexborough, on which the various characters converge during an August Bank Holiday weekend. Among the storylines in Bank Holiday are one involving a Cockney couple (Arthur, played by Wally Patch, and May, played by Kathleen Harrison) and their rather unruly children and one involving a young woman named Doreen (Rene Ray), who is competing in a beauty contest as Miss Fulham. Central to the film is Margaret Lockwood’s character, Catherine Lawrence, a nurse from London. She has agreed to spend the weekend in Bexborough with her fiancé (Hugh Williams), a situation about which she has very mixed feelings. This is complicated by her concern for an extremely distraught widower (John Loder), whose wife has just died in childbirth.

When I first watched Bank Holiday I must say that I was surprised. At the time the only British films from the Thirties I had seen were those directed by Alfred Hitchcock, films that did not stray too far from the Production Code of the United States that dictated what is and what is not acceptable in American films. Bank Holiday was a far cry from most of Hitchock’s films and an even farther cry from American films of the same era. At a time when American films portrayed married couples sleeping in separate beds, Bank Holiday featured a not yet married couple who planned to spend the weekend in the same room (and the same bed at that).  What is more, one of Miss Fulham’s rival beauty contestants, Miss Mayfair (Jeanne Stuart), plies her feminine wiles on a judge in an effort to win the contest.  Bank Holiday had a sexual frankness that I had only seen in the Pre-Code films of Hollywood and films from later eras. I certainly did not expect to see it in a British film released in 1938.

Beyond its uncompromising approach to sexuality, I was also surprised that Bank Holiday largely centred on working class characters. By the time I first saw Bank Holiday I had already seen films from the British New Wave, not to mention various British sitcoms over the years, but I had never seen a portrayal of the British working class prior to the Fifties. Most of the central characters belong to the lower classes. Beauty contestant Doreen (“Miss Fulham”) and her friend Milly (Merle Tottenham) are both shop girls. Arthur and May, the Cockney couple with the rambunctious kids, are virtually stereotypes of the British working class. The working class characters of Bank Holiday are not portrayed with the reality of the later kitchen sink films (as I said earlier, Arthur and May are virtually stereotypes), but the fact that they were present in a British film made in 1938 rather opened my eyes.  As an American I tended to forget that prior to the Fifties, not every British subject was an aristocrat.

Bank Holiday is not a perfect film. There are portions of it that do seem contrived, particularly portions of Catherine’s storylines. What makes the film work are Carol Reed’s attention to details and Margaret Lockwood’s performance. Many of Carol Reed’s touches, such as the rush at Victoria Station and the crowded beach at Bexborough, give it a reality that might have been denied by some of the weaknesses of the film’s plot. As to Miss Lockwood, she makes Catherine seem like a real person despite the occasional unreality of her storylines.  Given the weepiness of some of the material, many actresses may well have overplayed the part of Catherine. This is not the case with Miss Lockwood, who gives a very nuanced performance in the role. She is convincing even when the screenplay isn’t always.

Given its sexual frankness, I wasn’t surprised to learn that Bank Holiday ran into trouble when it was submitted to the Production Code Administration (the PCA) in the United States. After all, Catherine’s liaison with her fiancé violated part of the Production Code. While Joseph Breen, head of the PCA, thought Bank Holiday was a “very, very good picture,” he did not think it could be re-cut in such a way as to conform to the Production Code. Gaumont British had the PCA watch Bank Holiday again, after which Gaumont British agreed to find an editor who would remove all objectionable material from the film. Ultimately, 1450 feet of film (about five minutes) was removed from Bank Holiday in order to make it conform to the Code. It was released in the United States on 1 June 1938 under the title Three on a Weekend (it was presumed most Americans would not know what a “bank holiday” was). The United States was not the only country in which Bank Holiday faced censorship. Several cuts had to be made to the film before it could be shown in the Republic of Ireland as well.  I don’t know about the Republic of Ireland, but fortunately the original, uncut, British version of Bank Holiday would eventually become available in the United States.

Ultimately Bank Holiday made me fall even deeper in love with Margaret Lockwood. It also made me realise that sexual frankness and portrayals of the working classes existed in British films prior to the British New Wave. For all its weaknesses, it has over time become one of my favourite Margaret Lockwood films and one of my favourite Carol Reed films as well. Whatever the flaws of the film’s screenplay, Carol Reed’s direction and Margaret Lockwood’s performance more than compensate for them. In the end Bank Holiday is a film in which its sum is definitely greater than its parts.

Terence Towles Canote is the author of Television: Rare & Well Done: Essays on the Medium. Click here to visit his pop culture blog, A Shroud of Thoughts.

Vivien Leigh

As Scarlett O’Hara

‘Hey Genius, meet your Scarlett O’Hara!’ Myron Selznick called to his brother, the Hollywood producer, David O Selznick, as he stood amongst the flames and stuntmen on a studio backlot in Culver City. Vivien Leigh emerged from the car, her tiny frame wrapped in a mink coat. Eying up this unknown English actress, Selznick took the biggest gamble of his career- he fired his leading lady, Paulette Goddard, and casted Vivien in the movie the whole world was talking about, Gone with the Wind. It was the stuff fairy tales were made of, and it launched her celebrity to astronomical levels. But behind the glittering facade, lay a deeply troubled woman whose entire happiness was built on the foundation of other people’s misery.

At the age of 22, Vivien had set her eyes on an unknown stage actor, Laurence Olivier, who was appearing in Romeo & Juliet. ‘Look at him,’ she whispered to her friend, ‘that’s the man I’m going to marry.’ She was relentless, and after watching Olivier perform night after night, and bumping into him at his favourite haunt, the Savoy grill room, the two fell in love. They were the epitome of a Noel Coward lyric; young, beautiful, talented…but they were married to other people- Vivien to Leigh Holman with whom she had a child, and Olivier to the famous stage actress, Jill Esmond, who was expecting their baby. It was an unstoppable force, driven by lust and plagued by guilt, both had been the product of a religious upbringing, Vivien, schooled in a convent and Olivier, the son of an Anglican clergyman. Their affair was common knowledge amongst the theatrical set, and after starring together in the historical drama, Fire over England, the two left their respective spouses to set up home in at Durham Cottage in Chelsea.

From the beginning their relationship was tempestuous; Vivien was prone to hysterics, often lynching him with a tirade of insults backstage: ‘She clawed and scratched and looks lovely doing either,’ said the smitten Olivier. He, too, was fueled by jealousy; she had been the bigger star on screen, and he had been a dynamic force on the stage, both wanting what the other had, and would go to lengths to compete. When Vivien won the Academy Award for best actress in 1940, Olivier wound down the car window and hurled the statue onto the road. On the way to their wedding, the two got into a furious row, hurling abuse at one another, but managed to calm down to say, ‘I do.’

In 1947, at the height of their fame, Olivier was knighted and they became Sir Laurence and Lady Olivier. With their 12th century manor house, Notley Abbey, and their pairing onstage, the two became the royal family of the British theatre. Such respected stars, the Oliviers represented King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on a goodwill tour of Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, the cracks really began to show.

Peter Finch entered their lives like a whirlwind. Olivier was intrigued by this arrogant actor who staged plays on factory floors. He was the incarnation of Olivier, himself, and Vivien did not fail to notice his immense charm and physical attraction. Finch followed them back to England where Olivier signed him to LOP [Laurence Olivier Productions] whereupon he began an affair with Vivien. Olivier, by his own account, was content with the situation–his energy went into acting, and he had little else left over for Vivien. ‘I am going to bed,’ Vivien announced as she stood in the doorway, wearing a flimsy nightdress. ‘Which one of you is coming with me?’ Finch and Olivier responded with peels of laughter and the three sat up, drinking through the night.

Vivien was slipping into the depths of manic depression brought on by an earlier miscarriage – for years her symptoms went undiagnosed – and in 1953 she had been institutionalized where she underwent brutal treatments of ECT and ice baths in a bid to cure her. The aftermath of such treatments ravaged Vivien, and Olivier admitted the cruel procedure of ECT had wiped away any familiar traces of her once vibrant personality.

Courtesy of Kendra Bean @ vivandlarry.com

Finch eventually departed from their lives, and a reconciliation with Olivier was brief. Vivien suffered another miscarriage, and Olivier began an affair of his own, with the young actress Joan Plowright. For twenty years, their lives had been bolstered up by their international stardom, the accolades and public’s worship, but in the confinements of their home, and her deteriorating mental health, things finally crumbled. Vivien was plagued by guilt, having abandoned her child to go off with Olivier, and he was seeking a stable personal life. They finally divorced in 1960, their lives taking a dramatic turn.

Olivier became the father to three children, though the lure of the theatre was always a priority over family life. Vivien sought companionship with a young actor, Jack Merivale, and had grown close to her daughter and grandchildren. Though she seemed better, death was waiting in the wings; Vivien’s old ailment, tuberculosis, had returned. On the evening of July 7 1967, at the age of 53, Vivien succumbed to the disease.

It was one hundred years ago that Gertrude Hartley, a young woman, of Irish descent, stood at the window of her palatial home high in the hills of Calcutta, gazing at the Himalayas in the distance. She believed the stunning beauty of the mountains would pass on to her unborn child and bless its life with riches. On 5 November 1913, Vivian Mary Hartley was born. ‘Why are there fireworks, mummy?’ the little girl would ask, unaware it was Guy Fawkes night. ‘They’re celebrating your birthday, darling,’ came the reply. It seemed a fitting response for the girl who would grow up to become Vivien Leigh.

Rare newspaper clippings

A wonderful fan kindly sent me her collection of Margaret Lockwood clippings to use as research for my biography of ML. If you click on the images you should be able to read the interviews etc. Margaret is very funny and witty in her responses, I imagine she was a little like Harriet Peterson in real life!