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You know, I'm half inclined to believe that there's some rational explanation for all of this
I've still never seen Will Hay, but I just watched Michael Redgrave do a momentary impersonation of him in The Lady Vanishes (1938) with a pair of pince-nez and a mortarboard from a costume box—"Now, boys, boys, which of you has stolen Miss Froy? Own up, own up!"—vague, officious, distractedly gesturing, with a rabbit-nosed squint. There seem to be a bunch of his movies on YouTube, quality skeptical: Boys Will Be Boys (1935), Windbag the Sailor (1936), Oh, Mr. Porter! (1937), My Learned Friend (1943). I might as well find out how good Redgrave's impersonation was.
In other news, I remain very fond of Naunton Wayne.
(We now return to your irregularly scheduled, badly needed hibernation.)
In other news, I remain very fond of Naunton Wayne.
(We now return to your irregularly scheduled, badly needed hibernation.)
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Enjoy! I'll be curious to read your opinion on the matter, if you should feel like writing it up.
I hope the hibernation goes well.
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When I get to it, I shall do so. I spent the rest of the night reading instead. Hibernation is taking place.
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Anyhow, it's exactly as good as I kept being told, and amazingly ruthless ("No, it's all right...it's only my leg," as the Nun in High Heels says). And Miss Froy is a total happy, gentle old bad-ass.
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I had that happen with Jon Voight! I had only seen him as a much older actor and then I watched The Odessa File (1974) and realized how much he looked like his daughter (and how much more immediately attractive it looks on her, which I wasn't expecting: usually that kind of resemblance runs the other way). I'd at least seen Michael Redgrave before I became aware of his children and continuing dynasty. Also the time I turned on PBS and got an episode of Lewis with two Foxes: Laurence as the regular DS Hathaway and then his cousin Freddie as a fair-haired Oxford postgraduate, instantly recognizable even though I'd had no idea he existed before I saw his name in the credits. They had only a scene or two together: I think the show couldn't afford any more. They weren't playing relatives.
This is also where I jump up and down and evangelize about Redgrave in The Browning Version (1951), because it's an amazing, devastating, fragilely flickering movie, and even if I think the role of Crocker-Harris' wife doesn't need to have been written and directed quite so bitchily (it's not beyond plausibility, but I can see another production extending her more sympathy for the same actions), I love pretty much everything else unreservedly about it and most of it's Michael Redgrave.
and amazingly ruthless ("No, it's all right...it's only my leg," as the Nun in High Heels says).
And Cecil Parker's Todhunter, who doesn't even get the chance to alight from the carriage and wave his white flag: he just drops. I've never been able to decide whether we're supposed to hope he'll be able to pull himself together and fight with the rest—Charters and Caldicott do, and they've practically been isolationism walking—or whether all his earlier duckings and evasions are just paving the way for an unsurprising act of self-blinkered suicidal stupidity, but either way it's a jolt. No one in this movie has been casually dispensable. It was shocking enough when Charters got shot in the hand. You thought nothing but a bad day on the cricket pitch could get through to him.
And Miss Froy is a total happy, gentle old bad-ass.
I like her a lot.
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Those two were in so many movies (sometimes under different names) that it's my suspicion they were the backup agents on the mission, but not permitted to break cover unless there was absolutely no chance of anyone else completing it.
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I like the way the world looks from your brain.
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(I'm not sure if I told you that I bought a copy of Criterion's Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but I did. Am waiting for just the right moment to view it. Maybe I'll have to borrow that A Canterbury Tale disc I gave Mom and make it a Powell and Pressburger evening.)
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Highly recommended!
My DVD of A Canterbury Tale has been at
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I love The Lady Vanishes.
Nine
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Yeah, I'm inclined to feel warmly toward him for that alone. And he was not a casual private-life astronomer. According to this article, he not only discovered a white spot on Saturn, he owned several enviable telescopes and built more than one observatory to house them and there is now a mystery about where some of his equipment was dispersed to after his death in 1949. (Brother Guy Consolmagno figures in this story for a sentence, trying to run down whether the 6-inch Cooke refractor could have been donated to the Vatican observatory, Hay's widow being Catholic. Answer: no, apparently, but I still think it's great and kind of unsurprising he was the person to ask.) Taught astronomy and navigation to the Sea Cadet Corps in World War II. Spoke a lot of languages. Flew. I like that even if the London Evening News responded to the white spot discovery with a cartoon of Hay in his shifty schoolmaster persona, it was actually possible for him to be taken seriously in his scientific work at the same time as he was failing to keep any sort of order or authority on the screen. Yay for smart people.
I love The Lady Vanishes.
I've seen it like half a dozen times now, including last March at the Brattle with
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And I hadn't realized there was a film to go with the radio appearances! The future is a wonderful planet and the past is always weirder than I think. Thank you.