Edward VIII, Madonna and Mederic Martin

Well, with Madonna’s new movie about Wallis Simpson WE making the Film Festival Rounds, I thought I’d write about Edward’s visit to Montreal in 1927.

I have finished the first draft of Threshold Girl, about young college girl, Flora Nicholson, in 1911 www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

And I’m working on a word and picture story about her older sister, Edith, who loses her ‘great love’ in a hotel in 1910 and who becomes interested in the suffragettes. www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf.

And I in the early stages of a story called Milk and Water, about my grandfather, Jules Crepeau in 1927 Montreal. He was Director of city services and I think he’s in this picture, at the top. The guy in bow tie.

I got this picture this morning at Montreal City Hall. I asked for anything they had on the visit.The only other document was the invitation to the gala at City Hall.

It was for Son Altesse Royale le Prince de Galles et Son Altesse Royale le Prince George, his little brother, not the guy who became King George VI. He was Albert, “Bertie” remember. And you do remember, as you saw the King’s Speech Right?

It was on August first at 10.45 in the morning, in Le Hall D’honneur.

Was my grandfather invited? Who knows. He very very likely organized the whole thing, since he seemed to organize all the Royal Visits.

He had nothing much to do. It is very likely his family was away at Old Orchard for the Summer.

The Montreal Gazette has a bit on the busy schedule of the Princes. They played 18 holes of golf the next day in Laval des Rapides. And there was a garden party on the Summit in Westmount.(By the way, Prime Minister Baldwin was also there..Is he in the picture? No.. That’s Mayor Mederic Martin in the long robes.

Mederic had all the fun, my grandfather did all the work. According  to some sources, Mederic and the King liked to party together. That’s a key point for my story. It’s the glue.

Laziness is the Cause of all Progress

Cubist Marion Nicholson taking tea in her white dress 1910

You have to know, dvd’s are going the way of the DODO. (I almost wrote dildo.)

I was in the soon to be defunct Zeller’s the other day and they had boxes and boxes of dvd’s for sale. I said, “Maybe I can find Miss Potter,” and I did.

And I pointed out to my friend, who has just bought her first dvd player, and seldom uses it, that the dvd format is defunct, and I’m the reason why.

I had a good ‘media day’ the day. I had watched a new Big Bang, a new 30 Rock, (with my husband at lunch before he went to work,at 2pm) and bit of Funny Girl (that I had taped)mostly for the wonderful 1910 era costumery and the songs and the entire All the President’s Men. And then I listened to a BBC Radio Four Afternoon Play starring Patrick Stewart which was terrific. It was a comedy about Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler penning the script for Double Indemnity. (A movie I can’t recall ever seeing.)

Before he left for work my husband pointed out that we had the dvd of ATPM, and I pointed out that that wasn’t the point.

(I’m just too lazy to pop in the dvd, despite the fact we have a new Playstation and no longer use that ridiculous BlueRay machine that takes ages (well, 5 minutes or so) to load.

(I vividly remember a certain exhibit in the Man and the Community Pavilion at Expo. It was little miniature bedroom with wooden doll-humans. A man and women were in bed and all their worldly needs circulated on a conveyer belt around the bed. Over the bed was a sign that said: Laziness is the cause of all progress.)

Anyway, All the President’s Men is one of my favorite movies and it never fails to please me at each viewing. It’s just a great newsroom drama. I can’t believe it didn’t win the Oscar for best picture. What did? Let me check. Oh, it was a great year for film. Network, Taxi Driver, Rocky… And the winner is Rocky, the one that packs the most emotional punch and is formulaic. Posterity has decreed Taxi Driver was the best picture of the year, although I’d take Network, because it is so freaking prescient! ATPM did win best screenplay (adapted)however and a couple of technical awards.

Well, as it has been pointed out by many commentators this year, because the King’s Speech might win Best Picture over The Social Network, that the Best Picture winner at the Oscars is seldom the year’s best picture – as in best execution of the moving making craft.

OK. I was wrong about ATPM. But it really irks me that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof didn’t win Best Picture – against Gigi (which is a lovely movie about a whore-in-training, but totally dumbed down from Colette’s book.)

It should have won for the mere fact that never in cinematic history have the two most beautiful people in the world acted so well in such a classic tale.

Yes, it’s a bit stagey. But it’s adapted from famous play. In fact, in this week’s Big Bang, Sheldon refuses to act out a bit from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof…

And, although I’ve never seen Double Indemnity, I have seen the Going My Way(rather recently on TCM) and frankly, I can see why Billy Wilder, at the end of this BBC Four radio play, is pissed his play lost out for best picture to that film. He won the next year for Lost Weekend, and it suggested he based the lead character in that film on Chandler.

So, it goes.

I personally loved the King’s Speech and want to see it again, but I can see why many believe that it’s not nearly as a good a picture as the Social Network, which I liked, except for the lack of real fleshed-out female characters and the surfeit of fratboy fantasy images;

The Social Network is this year’s Network, it’s about Media and it is forward-gazing. The King’s Speech (also about media, in a way, the radio medium) is a Rocky style movie, that pulls all the right strings although it, too, is formulaic. And it’s backward gazing.

Come to think of it, my favorite movie of all time, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie that is as anti-formualic as can be, didn’t win best picture either, although it did win best screenplay. Crash won, which certainly wasn’t a feel-good movie.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with Flo in the City, except that the 1910 era was the Nickelodeon era, the birth of cinema.

Edith and Flora and Marion went to theatre plays at His Majesty’s and the Princess, and Marion and Hugh preferred the Orpheum, a Vaudeville House and Marion, went at least once to the NICKEL where she saw Man in the Box, with Mack Sennett, who was from her home town, Richmond -but she likely didn’t recognize him.

There was an opera house in Richmond, but no Nickel. But in Montreal, along downtown St. Laurent (St Lawrence, back then) in the 1910 era, every third address housed either a motion picture house, cabaret, or vaudeville theatre, or all the above at once.

In their letters, the Nicholsons were always ‘reviewing’ sermons they heard. Just as with a movie, sometimes the sermon could barely keep you awake and sometimes it was so good it stayed with you for days.

Everything is Point of View

Flo and Marion in their big hats 1911 circa

You know, when I first found these Nicholson letters and decided to write a YA book, I contacted Canada’s top author of historical fiction for young people and she told me point blank: forget about the history, go for the story.

I didn’t want to do that, so it’s taken me 7 years to complete enough background research to make sense of the letters.

I was also invited early on to turn my website http://www.tigsolas.ca/, with its letters, into a social studies book (on the condition that I won a certain humanities grant from the government.)I didn’t want to do that: these books are priced too high and are read only by scholars.

Since then I stumbled upon Nella Last and the three wonderful books based on her diary and I realized I wanted to do something similar with the Nicholson Letters.

Nella Last’s “War” and “Peace” and “in the 1950′s” are all highly compelling as a narrative and character study and also true to history, although they were ‘edited which means the editors added their point of view, by virtue of what they left in AND what they left out. So, I’m going in that direction.

I read an article the other day, in the Guardian, (originally in Slate) criticizing the movie the King’s Speech because it rewrites history: Churchill was on Edward VII’s side; the Royals were appeasers.

Imagine that! A movie that rewrites history. I’m floored.

I think some message board commentators got it right: The story of the King’s Speech isn’t about George VI’s (Colin Firth) politics in the 1930′s but about his character, his struggles and the inspiration he provided to the British public at the onset of the War. (Here in the colonies, too, I suspect.) As it was pointed out, Churchill was voted the Greatest Briton and he was a bastard, but, as it happens, the right bastard at the right time.

Any critical thinker must know already that movies re-write history. Even if what they put into a movie is mostly ‘good’ history – there’s always what they leave out. Even documentaries are ‘point of view.” (I recall a National Film Board Director telling me that in the 80′s… That they were going to call all their critically-acclaimed docs “point-of-view documentaries”.)

Even news reports are point-of-view and these days these news reports mostly re-write history while the digital ink and pixels are still drying (they call it ‘spin’ ) and that’s much more worrying, I think. Because these revisionist versions get out so early, they get ‘etched’ into people’s brains as the definitive version. (As in WMD and Saddam.)

That’s why I like letters in general, and especially my Nicholson letters, because they are as close to the ‘truth’ as you get. And they still leave a great deal up to interpretation.

Anyway, the other day my husband saved a Turner Classic Movie for me, So Long at the Fair, from 1950 with Dirk Bogarde and Jean Simmons that takes place at the 1889 Paris Exposition. He knows I like watching the 1900 the French Exposition videos on YouTube. I’m glad he did, because it was entertaining in an Hitchcock (ian)? way. A brother and sister from England visit Paris for the Exhibition, check into a busy hotel, and over night the brother goes missing. Indeed, all trace of his existence are erased.

Scary.

The odd thing about this movie, it was bilingual. (Now, that’s fine for me but how about everyone else? Here in Quebec they can make bilingual movies ( Bon Cop Bad Cop) was a funny movie only Quebeckers get. They are coming out with another one, Funkytown, about the disco scene in the 70′s in Montreal. The movie centers around a place called the Limelight, Montreal’s Moulin Rouge in the era. (Or is that Club Super Sexe?) I never went to the Limelight (I think) but some of my weirder friends did – and often. I guess that’s why I didn’t go there. (I was at college in the 70′s.)

Anyway, this So Long at the Fair movie wasn’t true to life either. I mean the lead characters go to the Moulin Rouge for a night out. It is hardly likely that a respectable young girl touring Europe would be taken there by her brother in 1886. The place was a kind of brothel, after all.

There’s a Moulin Rouge act in Montreal during the Tighsolas era. I can pretty well guarantee Marion, Flora and Edith didn’t go. (Herb, maybe.)

The ending made no sense either. But, then, IT’S A MOVIE!

The Movies are All Right

Beautiful Helena Bonham Carter from a King’s Speech Promo.

I was watching this week’s Sunday Morning and they had a feature of handwriting. Was it an antiquated activity? they asked.

I asked the same thing, but back in 1998. I wrote an essay “The Handwriting on the Wall” for a magazine. My son was in the third grade and getting poor marks for his handwriting. I wondered if that mattered, anymore.

Technology has advanced some since 1998, well advanced SOME, and an expert said the jury is in: kids learn to compose English faster on keyboards. There’s still a place for handwriting, he said, the old technology of pencil on paper.

Weird. Oh, during the show they played a long promo for the King’s Speech, showcasing the ‘acting royalty’ in the British movie, Derek Jacobi and Claire Bloom,etc.

(I must say, I, Claudius and Brideshead Revisited are two of my very top television experiences.)

I also saw a live (or close to live) interview with Colin Firth on NBC. He seemed very happy about the Academy Award nominations for his film and he never seems happy in interviews.

I hope all the hoopla doesn’t make him too big for his wet clingy britches. (I had to get that in.)

(Now he’s been in other highly-praised Best Pictures of the Year, Shakespeare in Love and The English Patient, but he had been one of the players and here he’s the title character.)

Meredith Vieira was fawing all over him. I don’t know how these celebrities do it. I once spent two days being treated like a queen at a conference where I was a prominent speaker and it went to my head. I didn’t like it, actually. Seemed unnatural. (Reminds me of the 30 Rock episode where Liz Lemon has the handsome boyfriend, the guy from Madmen, John Hamm is it?)

When I worked in TV I met many celebrities, minor and major, on a professional level, and frankly, they all seemed, how can I say, a little fragile. Scared.

Or I could sense they were scared, behind whatever facade they were presenting.

Colin Firth was described as ‘delicate’ (I think) by the Director of the English Patient, Anthony Minghella.

And once I met a world famous celebrity, an icon, in odd circumstances. He had walked into a telethon and no one had been there to greet him. (Everything was so disorganized.)

So I tried to smooth out things. But the famous man was very calm about it: he didn’t mind being treated like a nobody, for half an hour anyway. His manager was a little frazzled, but even he was nice, considering how unready everyone was for him. He told me. “It’s always like this in TV.”

Anyway, I had mentioned to my husband that I thought the Social Network was ‘sexist’ and he had replied “What are you talking about?” But I now see that I am not the only one who thought this: it’s a major criticism of the film. Aaron Sorkin has had to spend time defending his script to the media.

Film is a male medium. That’s not news. And deconstructing ‘sexism’ in one film (as opposed to the entire industry) is a complex business. I personally didn’t buy Sorkin’s excuse, that he was portraying an angry and sexist environment and really had no choice. Where was the omnicient eye? Harvard women, all high-achieving women, deserved better.

Even the female characters in the King’s Speech are kind of cliche, good wife and whore. If you think about it. But then this Good Wife wore the pants in the relationship, as Helena Bonham Carter said in a BBC interview. ( If you deconstruct the story-line of the abdication, it’s about two women, really. The men are sort of pawns. But the King’s Speech movie is really about ‘an ordinary man’ overcoming a fear. I think actors like playing aristocrats because aristocrats are ‘actors’ – ordinary people playing extraordinary ones.)

But then there is the Kids are All Right. And the Black Swan. Films about women. Oh well, oh well. And I haven’t seen True Grit, but the critic in salon.com said it is a ‘chick flick.’

So now I must see it.

King’s Speeches and Sex Comedies

Santa and My art nouveau vases.

Yesterday I watched a 1963 “sex comedy” with Jane Fonda called Afternoon in New York, on the HD which accentuated its sixties flavour, orange and electric green in the women’s clothes, neat and clean bachelor ‘pad’ for a setting.

The film was stagey, but the acting good, and although it was ‘outdated’ How could it not be? I enjoyed it. Especially since I was just in New York.

Of course, what passed for a sex comedy back then, isn’t what passes today. Get Him To the Greek it hardly was. Fonda plays a smart and sophisticated young woman of 22 who is confused by the concept that “Good Girls Don’t.” A woman of her time.
A good piece to consider with respect to Flo in the City, my novel in progress about a girl in the 1910 era.

The sixties set design and hair and makeup styles made me nostalgic. (My husband thought Fonda looked ‘old’ to play a 22 year old (she was 26) and that was because her heavy eye-liner reminded him of his mother. I thought she looked very very young.)

So I took a tour of Time Magazine articles of the era to futher immerse myself in the 60′s. My family subscribed to Time, so that magazine evokes memories for me, the covers especially.

I used to read the articles too, although, re-reading some articles, I realize I hardly could have understood all the vocabulary. (Time had that hybrid style, using big words when small would do, contrasting with an easy-breezy by-the-numbers journalist technique, quasi-academic sounding, to give the content ‘weight’ I guess, but essentially diversion mind-candy.My father read the magazines back to front, over months.)

I entered ‘sex’ or something into the search engine and the first article I got was this cover story from 1964 on the sexual revolution. “Everything you want to know about the history of sex and society in 11 short pages.” Lot’s of mention of Kinsey. And the article made passing reference to the “new woman” of the Edwardian era, who, they said, “wanted pleasure.” Sure, (that’s a theme of my Flo in the City book) but not sexual pleasure….so they skirted the issue.

I don’t recall reading this article as a kid (I would have been in 4th grade) but the article is interesting to read from this era’s perspective. The author opened by talking about Reich’s Orgasmatron (or whatever) which reminded me of college film class where Dusan Makaveyev was a guest and we had to sit through his porny art-house documentary. My boyfriend, who came to the showing, was grossed out, I pretended to be cool.

Anyway, this article assumed that they’d reached the outer limits of sexual expression in 1964- and that the future only held horrors, because you just couldn’t possibly show more T and A, could you? without it being porn. HA. (I just saw this OK mainstream movie with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhal, Love and Other Drugs, where they did nothing but boink.. But they are very talented and easy on the eyes, so hey.)

The author of the Time article claimed European movies were less confused about sex than American movies, and featured more beautiful actresses. (I’ve always thought so, because the actresses were chosen for their faces and ability and not their Playboy bunny bodies. Well, like Helena Bonham Carter.)

Anyway, then I entered ‘suffragette’ into the engine and a 1971 TV review page came up. That week a show about Lady Randolph Churchill (Lee Remick)was going to air as well as Shoulder to Shoulder, a mini series about the suffragettes, (which I’ve seen bits of on Youtube.) They cleverly segued from one review to another by describing how much Winston Churchill despised the suffragettes. (I’ve written about that on this blog). They suggest it is because his mom was such a free-spirit, “new woman” or upper class tramp, depending on the point of view.

I have to try to see this Shoulder to Shoulder mini series in full.
And, then, to end I looked up George VI, (as ads for the King’s Speech are playing everywhere: during my husband’s newscast,and on Salon.com before you enter.) I found his obituary in Time.

This obit made me realize (again) how unpopular (or boring) Bertie seemed to the public because of this dashing headline-grabbing older brother, a point only touched upon in the movie. Edward was described as a ‘brilliant’ heir to the throne, and his brother was sickly, and a stammerer (nor was he as good-looking as Colin Firth -who is an actor, after all). Both boys, according to the article, were ignored by Dad except when in need of discipline. (So The King’s Speech and Firth’s performance, seem to be true to history. Come to think of it, the King in his thin tie and grey overcoat reminds me of my father.. Oooohhh.)

Anyway, the short obit said King George VI proved himself a good and steady man to the people in the end, especially during the war, where he suffered through the blitz like everyone else and even changed into workman’s pants once a week and made munitions or something on the assembly lines -instead of running off to safer places to party, as his brother did.

There’s an anecdote about his stammer which didn’t make it into the screenplay. Apparently, starting a speech at Wembley, he said something like “This b b b bloody thing isn’t working!” referring to the microphone. (I think the swear word was bloody. Maybe d d d amn.) But the mike was on, so everyone in attendance heard him.

The King’s Speech and Margaret’s Clippings

Queen Mary from a 1937 Marie-Claire.

Well, I drove into town and watched the second showing of the King’s Speech (as I am busy this weekend with parties ) and yes, I can honestly say, in my educated opinion, this is Colin Firth’s best performance ever, no question, and that’s saying a lot.

(And I’ve seen practically every one.)

I didn’t feel that way about A Single Man, where I felt he gave a little more breadth to an aspect of what he does very well.

And Firth even performs a few Darcy flourishes, here, and why not? He’s playing an aristocrat in this movie, too. I think he carries the film and that says a lot, too, considering the film is filled with acting royalty. Jennfier Ehle seems to have forgotten to age. Claire Bloom played Queen Mary, above, but I couldn’t quite place her.

Helena Bonham Carter is so beautiful (I’ve always thought her the most beautiful of actesses) and I had to keep myself from reaching into the screen to pull the pearls off her bodice. I love pearls and she looks good in them.

So, it was worth getting caught in rush hour traffic on the way home, although my dogs likely wouldn’t second that.

Must say, I was almost put off right at the onset by one of the paid ‘ads’ at the AMC cinema. Almost ruined my Firth afternoon out. Seems the Harper government is spending MY money promoting his “law and order agenda.’ This piece of propaganda featured some oustandingly beautiful young people, all white, I think, except for one Chinese girl, walking out onto a stage and saying “I never thought it would happen to me.” I wanted to puke. As if only young white people are victims of crime. I’m guessing they are the least vulnerable group.

I couldn’t help think of the Social Purity movement of the 1910′s.

Anyway, what does The King’s Speech have to do with the Nicholson girls? Lots, it seems. You know, they left behind newspaper clippings, mostly about suffrage. But the next biggest topic in the stash of clippings was the abdication in 1937. This must have been Margaret, who moved out of Tighsolas the next year.

When the I found the Nicholson letters and other stuff, I couldn’t figure out why they cut out so many items about Edward and The Woman he Loved. (I think I tossed them all. Maybe not.) But now I realise this event must have really upset them, even though they were Scotch Canadians who hated “Englishmen” for the most part. Actually, I have letters from 1936-37. That’s when the letters end. Maybe I should read them.

I myself have never thought much of the Edward VIII, even after watching a few tv movies about him. No, his brother makes for a far more interesting story.

July 1911 – Long Hot Summer

I took a look today at the July 1, 1911 edition of the Montreal Gazette. I have recently read The Perfect Summer 1911, by Juliet Nicolson, about England in 1911, where there was a Coronation and a heatwave.

Well, there was a heatwave in Quebec, too. I have the Nicholson letters from the summer of 1911 to prove it.

And there was a coronation too. The same one, of course, as Canada was (is) part of the British Empire.

The film of the Coronation made it to Montreal and was shown at King Edward Park as part of the Dominion Day Celebrations. King George had been crowned but a week before, and a negative copy of the film of the Coronation was put directly on a boat to Canada and developed en route, so that Canadians could, without delay, hear The King’s Speech (I’m not referring to Colin Firth’s new movie, here, although it is supposedly terrific and a crowd-pleaser, but to the Daddy) as well as see footage of Sir Wilfrid and other Canadian luminaries who attended. (Apparently, it had taken a month for news of Queen Victoria’s Coronation to reach Canada so this was proof of the great advances in technology since that time.Well, duh. )

No doubt Sir Wilfrid wanted the exposure as an election was coming up and his Free Trade stance was not popular.

This July 1st Edition of the Montreal Gazette has as editorial about the Coronation, “In some sense and fashion, the Coronation of George V and Mary may be said to have awakened the enthusiasm of loyalty, patriotism and Imperial oneness.”

This edition also had an article claiming that vacationers were leaving the city in record numbers although no mention is made of the heat. Nicolson, in her book, talks about the sea side vacations taken in 1911 by Londoners, upper and middle class, to escape the record heat.

Trains to Portland (for Old Orchard Beach, Maine) were packed. Also trains to Halifax.

But for those who stayed in the city, this 1911 Dominion Day there was always Dominion Park where you paid extra to see Fighting the Flames “The Greatest Spectacle ever Seen” and some minstrel singers and a singing comedienne and North America’s greatest illusionist. They appeared to have cornered the market on hyperbole in that era. Today we have marketingese, another kind of slight of hand, illusion – or is it delusion.

And for those who want to escape the heat, the Princess Theatre was hosting a travel show, “ideal location as the theatre is always cool” with ‘scenes’ films or just photos? of the South Pole with penguins and ice floes and polar bears (What?); A Day in Venice; Milan Cathedral; Hawaiian Surf and the Life of the Butterfly (with slo-mo I guess) and Danish Dragoons on horseback and a big dog show.

If there were indeed pictures of of the South Pole, they must have been from Scott’s first expedition. In 1911 he was on his ill-fated second expedition. (I loved the book Scott on the Antarctic, which I read in elementary school.)

And at Sohmer Park there were some minstrels, again, offering up “representations of Southern Fun” and some jugglers and the Field Brothers, a song and dance team and some strong men. The usual

What were the Nicolson women doing on July 1, 1911? Well, I have no letters for that exact date, (in other years they attended Dominion Day celebrations in Richmond) but I know that Marion finished school on the 25th of June and went up to Hudson, Quebec (where her grandson and his wife (me) would make a home) and sailed on the Ottawa River, and she then took some car trips around Richmond, Quebec. Edith went to Sherbrooke with friends and then entertained the daughter of the Principal at her school at Tighsolas. And Flo, well, she failed French and was upset, but she still got into teaching school. It had been so hot in Richmond in June, Margaret and Flora had slept out on the verandah. They hadn’t been scared, because they had Floss, their dalmation, for protection – and their neighbours were doing the same. (Tramps from the trains were always a fear.)

The Nicholson women were ‘cash-poor’ middle class, but they did not lack for friends, well off professional class friends with automobiles who could take them on car excursions to the countryside or surrounding towns or even as far as Montreal. And as I have written before, in the 1910 era, car rides were considered a terrific form of entertainment. Indeed, cars rides were cutting into the theatre business’s profits, according to a 1910 article in the New York Dramatic Mirror.

The next year Edith and Marion would visit Boston relations in the summer. Flora had gone out to Boston in 1908 and that figures largely in my book Flo in the City, about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/

For a July 6, 1911 letter written by Margaret with some cute anecdotes www.tighsolas.ca/page168.html

At the end she warns husband Norman not to get too personal in the letters as you can never tell who will read them. (Like anyone in the world in 100 years’ time.)