End of an era, quite literally. Edward VII laid to rest.
Today, I enter 1910 into YouTube, because I’m always on the lookout for new footage from the era and especially for anything filmed in Montreal.
As I wrote earlier, Ernest Ouimet, the Canadian cinema entrepreneur who opened the 2,500 seat Ouimetoscope on Ste. Catherine, did take some film footage of various and sundry events in the city, but it was lost. He said as much in a 1960 interview I saw on the CBC archive website.
(Earlier this week, on a BBC Radio Four programme, Going to the Flicks about early cinema in Britain, they quote one of the famous movie mogusl (forget which one) who claimed that modern cinema was born in 1913, when the first fancy movie palaces were erected.)
The Ouimetoscope was opened in 1906, remember. How odd!
Of course, some era commentators claimed that the film medium took off in North America with the visuals of the new King, George V’s, Coronation in 1911. (I’ve written a bit about this on this blog.)
Anyway, scoping YouTube, I once again fell on a piece (or pieces) showing Edward VII’s funeral. He died in May 1910. (I recall poring over newspaper microfiches at McGill from that era looking for the obituary of Edith’s great love, only to find pages and pages on this monarch’s death.
Well, that footage on YouTube led to all kinds of footage of early Royals, (I think more and more of this footage is being put on YouTube because of the Wedding of William and Kate coming up.)
And then I stumbled on something else, a TV movie called Bertie and Elizabeth, from 2002, in 11 10 minute parts. The copy was perfect, so I watched the whole thing.
The movie covers much the same territory as this year’s favourite flick, the King’s Speech and in much the same way, except it has more lavish production values. It’s kind of a costume drama, making the Queen Mum seem a little more stylish and thin than she was, I think, although she was thin when young. Wallis Simpson, the Mother of all emaciates, made fun of her fashion sense, apparently. I guess that is the one thing she had over her.
Bertie and Elizabeth was apparently commissioned for the Diamond Jubilee and played only a few months after the Queen Mother’s Death.
I imagine it was commissioned before she died (it must take time to mount such a production) so this story circulating about the King’s Speech, that The Queen Mother didn’t want the story of her husband and Logue told until she died seems a bit, ah, bogus. But this is the movie biz, after all.
Logue figures in this Bertie and Elizabeth movie, but only incidentally, but they do allude to the psychoanalytic and unorthodox side of his therapy, and to the fact that he got in tight with the Prince of Wales.
This flick really disses David, or Edward VIII and Simpson. They come off like Nazi Sympathizers. (Remember, in the US, their story has been portrayed as romantic and even heroic.) And the movie also contains a scene where the Duke of Windsor is very mean to his brother, but that occurs AFTER the war, when Bertie is King, which makes it all the more cruel and ironic.
Anyway, the King’s Speech won the Producer’s Guild top award which means it may indeed win Best Picture at the Oscars, just in time for the Royal Wedding, and I think that’s one reason it may, indeed, win.
Bertie and Elizabeth earns a 7.0 rating on IMDB.
At least two of the actors in the production have been in productions with Colin Firth: the actor who played Mr. Fitzherbert (Titspervert) in Bridget Joneses’ Diary (Paul Brooke)and the actress who played his mom in What a Girl Wants, (Eileen Atkins) which is basically the same part she plays here, aristocratic mom. Oh, and also Barbara Leigh-Hunt who played Lady Catherine de Burgh in P and P and the Mom in Tumbledown.
Funny, these are the Firth movies which play over and over again on the satellite. These two and Love, Actually. So that must be what people watch.
Never Fever Pitch which is a highly entertaining movie, I think. Or Firth’s other early ones, like Tumbledown. But you can watch those on YouTube, too.
They have a scene where Edwards stamp is being discussed. It made me think, do I have these stamps on Nicholson letters from the 30′s? Must check.
You know, in the Protestant system in Montreal in the 60′s and 70′s we all took 2 years of Canadian history (Canada Then and Now) and two years of British History and one year of World History (10th grade matrics).
But I could never get my Kings and Queens straight. All I recall is the War of the Roses Chapter from the British History. Pretty title, you see. I got a good final mark in my matrics in History because the question was on the Industrial Revolution and its impact and I could get my brain around that as it was social history, ideas not dates and names.
That’s what Flo in the City is, Social History.
My Mom, educated in the old fashioned way could ramble off the names and numbers of all the Kings and Queens of England, despite being French Canadian. All they did was memorize in those days and she had a great memory.
