4 reasons to love Albert Finney

A friend of mine (whose artwork sits below where I am writing) is a close relative of Albert Finney so it was with a bit of a jolt that the news of the actor’s death caught me yesterday. I had last watched him on the obscure Channel 81 on Freeview (which is my favourite, random old movies from the 50s and 60s) in the somewhat bizarre (but very interesting) Gumshoe a few weeks ago.

Last night Erin Brockovich felt like the right celebration for a Friday night of a distinctive and charming actor. I’d forgotten that the movie was one of Steven Soderbergh’s, adding to the alignment as the sad news came in on the same day as posting this new article which brackets Soderbergh’s latest movie with my commission Missed Call and Sean Baker’s Tangerine.

1. Tom Jones (1963) as Tom Jones

From the year of my birth, derived from one of my favourite books, characterised by a youthful cheekiness.

2. Under The Volcano (1984) as Geoffrey Firmin

From my university days, watched at the Arts Cinema Cambridge (also sadly missed), I remember it as a deeply disturbing performance and movie.

3. Erin Brockovich (2000) as Ed Masry

Avuncular, great chemistry with his shining co-star Julia Roberts, still that cheekiness.

4. Skyfall (2012) as Kincade

Shot by my first boss (Roger Deakins), with the immortal line:

Welcome to Scotland!

as he shotguns two of Bond’s assailants. Cheeky and irresistible to the end.

 

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) as Arthur Seaton – bridging 50s Angry Young Men (here) and 60s Swinging England (Tom Jones)

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Postcard No. 3

 

The third from my random collection of old postcards.

I think I took this as Jesus when I bought it (for 30p) because I’m fond of a good Jesus. My favourite is Jeffrey Hunter in King of Kings (also Captain Pike, original commander of the USS Enterprise in the first ever Star Trek).

Jeffrey Hunter in ‘King of Kings’ (1961) Directed by Nicholas Ray

But this turned out to be Johannes or John, presumably John the Baptist. He has a big crook so is clearly also a shepherd of men. I presume he too is an actor as the card is marked (in German) as an ‘Official Postcard’ of the Passionspiele (passion plays) at O. -Ammergau, Oberammergau, a village in Bavaria where a passion play has been performed since 1634. So not mediaeval like Brit passion plays, such as the York Mystery Cycle which dates from the mid-fourteenth century, but a good effort nonetheless. The Oberammergau plays are performed on open-air stages.

This one is dated 1922 and seems to be No. 74 in a series – that’s a lot of characters.

The printer was F. Bruckmann of Munich – Friedrich Bruckmann (died 1898). His older son Alphons and younger son, Hugo (13th October 1863, Munich – 3rd September 1941, Munich) took over F. Bruckmann KAG on his death. Hugo and his wife Elsa were among the early promoters of Hitler, helping him gain access to upper-class circles in the city.

From 1928 the Bruckmanns backed the National Socialist Society for German Culture. And from 1930 Hugo was a board member of the ‘Kampfbund’ (Pressure Group) for German culture, founded by Alfred Rosenberg. He was an NSDAP (Nazi party) member of the Reichstag (German parliament) from 1932 until his death in 1941. In 1933 he became a member of the board for German museums. It is suggested his personal influence on the Fuhrer helped reduce political interference in the cultural sphere. An attempt to ban Jewish books from libraries was successfully opposed by Bruckmann. Because Hugo knew the big man after the outbreak of war his publishing house was declared of special importance for the war effort. He was honoured with a state funeral in 1941.

Also mentioned on the back is ‘the Munich graphic business’ Pick & Co. They seem to have been in book publishing too. Alongside is a reference to “Kupfertiefdruck” which seems to translate as “Rotogravure” (literally Copper Gravure – Gravure is “a printing method in which an image is applied to a printing substrate by use of a metal plate mounted on a cylinder” so the cylinder explains the “‘roto” bit). Whether this is a rotogravure… Jesus (No. 1) knows.

On the front is written “Traut photo.”. Traut seems to be H. Traut of Munich. Here’s one of his from 1906:

Photographer: H. Traut of Munich (1906)

Atelier Henry Traut was in business from 1857 to 1940. It was based at Herzog-Wilhelm-Straße 32, Munich.

Here’s one of his ‘glamour’ photos:

And here’s the gen on him from the reverse of a postcard:

So his speciality was taking portraits in private houses in daylight and artfully lit. There are whole books about him.

I found one other of his 1922 photos online:

I”m not sure which number or character this is.

Other similar images from later years:

Another John from 8 years later (1930) actor Hans Lang

Also from 1930, Jesus & Mary

An early one from 1900 – Mary’s farewell to Jesus

A later one (1950) Judas’ kiss featuring actors Anton Preisinger (Jesus) & Hans Schwaighofer (Judas)

At last No.1 Anton Preisinger as Jesus, complete with autograph (probably 1950)

Anton Preisinger as Jesus (probably 1950)

I like my one best.

Lost Postcards No.2

The second recently re-found old postcard from my small, random collection

This one cost me a massive 20p (pencilled on the back). I think I bought it because it reminded me of Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde.

Aubrey Beardsley (1872 – 1898) by Frederick H. Evans (c.1894)

The postcard was “Manufactured in Berlin”. Oddly it specifies “For Inland use only” – as it’s written in English I assume it means in Britain not Germany.

The sitter is quite androgynous as you can see.

Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas (1870–1945) is best known as Oscar Wilde’s lover, and is often blamed for his downfall.

The name ‘Henry Ainley’ is printed at the bottom.

It turns out Henry Hinchliffe Ainley died the same year as Bosie. His dates are 21st August 1879 – 31st October 1945. He was an English actor of stage and screen, specialising in Shakespeare.

He was born in Leeds and brought up in Morley by father Richard, a cloth finisher, and mother Ada. He moved to London to pursue his career in acting. He made his professional stage debut as a messenger in Macbeth with F.R. Benson’s company.  Later he joined Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s company. He first came to prominence in 1902 as Paolo in Paolo and Francesca.

He played Gloucester in Henry V at the Lyceum in London. Ainley returned to Leeds to appear at the Grand Theatre. Later roles included Oliver Cromwell, Mark Antony in Julius Caesar and the lead in Macbeth. In 1912 he portrayed Malvolio and then Leontes under the direction of Harley Granville-Barker. He played Hamlet several times, including a 1930 production which was selected for a Royal Command Performance.

John Gielgud thought highly of Ainley and had a long-standing ambition to perform with him which he eventually fulfilled when he played Iago to Ainley’s Othello in a 1932 BBC Radio broadcast. Gielgud however described Ainley’s Prospero as “disastrous”, recalling it in 1996 (in The Sunday Times).

Ainley played Shakespeare on screen in Henry VIII (1911) and As You Like It (1936), the latter alongside his son Richard and Laurence Olivier.

Among the other roles Ainley played were: Robert Waring in The Shulamite (The Savoy Theatre, London, 1906.); Joseph Quinney in Quinneys (on stage in 1915 and on film in 1919); in A. A. Milne’s The Dover Road opposite Athene Seyler (1922); the Bishop of Chelsea in Bernard Shaw’s Getting Married (The Haymarket Theatre);  James Fraser in St. John Ervine’s The First Mrs. Fraser (1929 on stage, 1932 on film); and he starred in James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan (on stage and on radio). He was an early example of stage-screen crossover.

His films include:
She Stoops to Conquer (1914)
Sweet Lavender (1915)
Sowing the Wind (1916)
The Marriage of William Ashe (1916)
The Manxman (1917) – not to be confused with the second silent adaptation, directed by Hitchcock twelve years alter (1929)
Build Thy House (1920)
The Prince and the Beggarmaid (1921)
The Royal Oak (1923)
The First Mrs. Fraser (1932)

In 1921 Ainley became a member of the council of RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) and was its president from 1931 to 1933.

Ainley led his own own theatre company. In 1932 he helped save the debt-laden Sadler’s Wells theatre. Ainley thought Sadler’s Wells regular Samuel Phelps the “greatest actor of all” and Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson “the greatest of Hamlets”.

Ainley was married three times – to Susanne Sheldon, Elaine Fearon and novelist Bettina Riddle (aka Baroness von Hutten zum Stolzenberg). He had several children, including actors Henry T. Ainley, Richard Ainley and Anthony Ainley, as well as non-thesps Sam and Timothy Ainley. Another off-spring was Henrietta Riddle, who was briefly engaged to journalist Alistair Cooke in 1932.

15 letters in the possession of Olivier’s widow, Joan Plowright, suggest that Ainley may have had a sexual relationship with Dear, Dear Larry in the late 30s. The letters suggest that Ainley was infatuated with Olivier.

Ainley died in London and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. I’ll go visit next time I’m over that way.

As Romeo in ‘Romeo and Juliet’

The photo in my postcard seems to have been taken by Lizzie Caswall-Smith.

Lizzie Caswall-Smith (1870-1958) (possibly without hyphen) is pretty interesting in her own right. She was a British photographer who specialised in society and celebrity studio portraits. These were often used for postcards.

Caswall-Smith was associated with the women’s suffrage movement and photographed many suffragettes including Christabel Pankhurst, Flora Drummond and Millicent Fawcett. The other actors she photographed included Camille Clifford, Sydney Valentine, Billie Burke and Maude Fealy. She photographed Florence Nightingale in 1910 (which fetched £5,500 (Nov 2008)). On the back of that particular photograph she had jotted in pencil: “Florence Nightingale taken just before she died, House nr Park Lane (London). The only photograph I ever took out of studio – I shall never forget the experience.”

Caswall-Smith operated the Gainsborough Studio at 309 Oxford Street from 1907 until 1920 when she moved to 90 Great Russell Street. She stayed at that address until her retirement in 1930 (aged 60). She exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society in 1902 and 1913. Her portraits of Peter Llewelyn Davies and J. M. Barrie are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

 

 

The Casting Game No. 45 – Gumshoe

Frank Finlay and Billie Whitelaw in ‘Gumshoe’ (1971) dir. Stephen Frears

The Remake: Jake Gyllenhaal as Frank Finlay as William Ginley

The remake: Sue Johnston as Billie Whitelaw as Ellen

Quote of the Day: The 60s

 

Get Carter (1971)

 

… the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us, you left your class and colour and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.

Michael Caine, actor

Let people talk about what they want (Michael Apted)

Michael Apted back in the day

Yesterday evening I went to see documentary & movie/drama director Michael Apted speaking at MIA (Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo) in Rome – where I have been speaking on short-form video. He was in conversation on stage with an Italian journalist, Marco Spagnoli. A big focus of the interview was the Up series, the longitudinal documentary series from Granada which started with 7 Up in 1964 and gets to 63 Up in May next year on ITV. He has been filming with the same cohort (and largely the same crew) for 54 years – shooting with them once every 7 years. It is unique in the history of documentary film, enabled by starting in the right place (Granada in the era of World In Action) at the right time (a golden age for British factual TV). It couldn’t happen now. It was actually a World In Action colleague who had the idea to revisit what was originally a single doc 7 years later and then the snowball got rolling…

The Up series

Michael Apted now

The most important thing he has learned over the years is to go into the interviews, not with a list of questions, but ready to talk about what the contributors want to talk about. He does jot down his key questions but he leaves them back at home and just as a rough mental checklist against the free-flowing conversations.

Stardust (1974)

I asked a question about Stardust, as I remember it making a big impact on me as a teenager, a really freaky strange world (and I always liked David Essex as both an actor and singer).

And after the session I got to have a chat with him. He had talked about how he once, as a young director, saw Pasolini in a hotel lobby in Rome and froze, didn’t exchange a word. So I wasn’t going to do a Pasolini – we spoke a little about Charles Furneaux who was a 7-year-old contributor in 7 Up and a fellow Commissioning Editor with me at Channel 4 when I started (he must have been 46 at the time). He talked about his generation at Cambridge, which included Stephen Frears and the Pythons, and how motivating it was to feel part of that movement.

Thunderheart (1992)

Whether he’ll make it to shoot 70 Up is probably a bit touch & go but for all his extensive filmography from Bond to Thunderheart (which was shot by my ex-boss Roger Deakins) without a shadow of a doubt his legacy will be Up. In 2005 the Up series topped the list of the 50 Greatest Documentaries in a Channel 4 programme.

I walked to the Apted session along the Via Veneto from the Villa Borghese gardens. I was sitting on a marble bench there dealing on the phone with a casting problem on a documentary I am currently working on on prejudice against facial and neck tattoos. It is a follow-up to In Your Face which did very well on Real Stories channel earlier this year (over 50 Million views). While I was on the call, which was addressing the fact that one of our contributors had gone AWOL, a heavily tattooed couple sat down beside me. I took a surreptitious picture of them and sent it to the producer on the other end of the line saying as a joke “Shall I book these two?”

Jessica Rebell of Melbourne

After the call, as the couple got up to go, I decided not to do a Pasolini and asked the woman if she got any gip over her neck tattoo, a high collar of leaves. She said in Rome yes, noticeably, whereas it was all par for the course in Melbourne where she lives. Rudeness, aggression and dismissiveness have all been visited on her in the Eternal City. London and Paris nothing worse than a bit of staring. Both Jess and Stephane are tattoo artists working at the same Melbourne tattoo. We had a long chat during which I flagged up a few of my 50+ tattoo docs for their viewing pleasure.

It was one of those chance encounters which makes la vita dolce.

Via Veneto in La Dolce Vita (1960) – Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee (Dir: Federico Fellini) [Photo courtesy of The Kobal Collection]

***

Some of my tattoo films/series (over 40 films just here):

• Tattoo Twists (Channel 4 – 8 episodes)
• My Secret Tattoo (Channel 4 – 9 eps)
• SeXXXy Tats (Channel 4 – 6 eps)
• My First Tattoo (Channel 4 – 10 eps)
• The Male Body Handbook: Tattooed (Channel 4 – 1 ep in a non-tattoo series) [link to film]
• In Your Face (Real Stories – single doc) [link to film]
• Tattoo Fails (Channel 4 – 6 eps)

 

The Casting Game No. 76

SuperMario

to play

Mark Rylance playing Iago at the Globe (July 2018)

Coincidences No.s 210 & 211 – Radio radio

22.iii.18

It is 4.30 in the morning. I hear the cat out on the landing. I come out of the bedroom and it seems a bit frantic. I shoo it downstairs and as I follow it to lock it in the kitchen I notice movement in the downstairs hall. A mouse. I chase the mouse into the kitchen, close the door, open the back door and shoo it out with a brush.

I go back to bed and turn on the radio to lull me back to sleep. The programme on BBC World Service that comes on is talking about getting rid of mice and how do you know that you’ve got rid of them all.

24.iii.18

Nick Kegan / Jeff Bridges 1979

I decide to watch a slightly obscure 70s movie on Saturday night – ‘Winter Kills’. It is about the aftermath of the assassination of a popular young US president and the conspiracy theories which follow his shooting. The main character, Nick Kegan, bears more than a passing resemblance to Robert Kennedy.

I stop the movie to go into the kitchen to turn off the dinner. On the radio, which has been left on, is Robert Kennedy in an archive programme on BBC Radio 4 about the killings of both Kennedy (RFK) and Martin Luther King (MLK).

Robert Kennedy 1961

 

The Casting Game No. 367

Joe Pesci

AS

Eli Wallach

Pesci

Wallach

The Casting Game No. 366

Joaquin Phoenix

The Emperor

as

Elvis Presley

The King