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The film was stagey, but the acting good, and although it was ‘outdated’ How could it not be?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.

Churchill Speaks in Montreal 1900

Harrow School.

I just watched the 1972 TV movie Young Winston. I remember watching it and liking it A LOT when I was 17. I can’t imagine why. I wasn’t into history then. Not a bit. The movie has no romance at all and lots of war scenes. And as for those Edwardian fashions, well, at that time I couldn’t care less.

I remembered just one aspect of the movie: the fact that Winston Churchill had been a lousy student. (I didn’t recall that funny scene where he writes nothing on the examination paper for entry into Harrow, but gets in anyway. (Digression: I visited Harrow in 2006, as my cousin teaches there. I was offered a nice meal at the cafeteria. My son was there,too. We two often joke how impressed we were as James Callis, who played our favorite character Baltar on Battlestar Galactica, attended that school. Some other famous people too, apparently!)

Upon rewatching Young Winston, just one scene seemed like deju vu: the one where the shop keeper tells Anne Bancroft, playing Lady Randolph Churchill, that he’d never get out of bed if he was married to her. (Something to that effect.) That scene is especially ironic, in that the couple were no longer having sex, but I missed that back then too. (In fact, Churchill’s portrayal of his parents (cold to children, preoccupied with social standing and together only as a business proposition) seems cliche, with respect to Edwardian marriages. I guess cliches start somewhere.)

Anyway, at the end of the movie, it’s made clear that Churchill, a self-promoter (perhaps trying to prove himself to an unloving, legendary father)made headlines for his Boer war exploits.

Well, this isn’t 1972, it’s 2010, so I went straight to the page on my computer with Google News Archives and punched in “Winston Churchill” for 1900. Sure enough, it was true!

And even better, there was a Montreal Gazette article from December 1900, reporting on a talk Churchill gave in the Windsor Hotel.

Well, he gave a speech chronicling his war exploits (which were already well known through his newspaper stories) to a crowd of 200 VIPS, including the Master of Ceremonies, Hon. Senator Drummond (the hubby, I guess, of Julia Parker Drummond, social activist.)

“Lord Randolph’s son has a very taking way with him and after the first few sentences of his talk, caught the interest and sympathy of his audience and kept it throughout. His humourous asides and running comment were not the least effective of his methods in attaining this result, and that he knows how to get in touch with his hearers was incontestably proven last night.”

The Mayor of Montreal also was there. I wonder if my own grandfather was. Not that likely. Churchill was taken to dinner at the Mount Royal Club after it all. (He also spoke at Yale on the same tour.)

Now, as I watched, I thought Anne Bancroft’s costumes were too soft and pretty for the era, but looking at pictures of Lady Churchill, I can see she was a real clothes horse, with a great figure and unique dress style, lots of feathers and furs and frou frou (a rather severe expression in her pictures; the same severe expression that served her son so well in his later days.)

Churchill, of course, would visit Quebec, twice, I think, during the war…

Young Winston (which has a young Ian Holm which would impress my son) ends with film footage of Old Winston on that balcony with King George VI and Queen and Princess Elizabeth. I couldn’t help thinking That’s the King Colin Firth plays in The King’s Speech.

It’s a little humbling: More time has passed since Young Winston was made (38 years) than had passed between WWII and the year the movie was produced, 1972…32 or so years.

Shades of Winston to Come…

Churchill at Yalta with some cronies… My son visited Yalta a few weeks ago.

I have been reading an awful lot about Churchill lately, as I have been reading about England in the Edwardian Era and he was Home Secretary.

I also listen a lot to the BBC where it’s all War all the time and I researched and wrote my own grandmother’s WWII story, Looking for Mrs. Peel, published at www.tighsolas.ca/page745.html.

It’s only a recent interest, although a while back, many years ago indeed, I enjoyed a production called Young Winston, with, I think, Simon Ward.

Anyway, I found this little article as I was poring over the November 28, 1910 Montreal Gazette. I was looking for a report on Laurier’s speech on the Naval Bill, which led to his Liberals losing the next election and messing up Norman Nicholson’s life on the railroad.

“Suffragists committed serious disturbances at a meeting at Lambeth tonight, at which Winston Spenser Churchill was speaking.After several men (sic) had been thrown out, Mr. Churchill strongly denounced the suffragist’s tactics and said “I am told that individuals are to be singled out for violence. If that is their language, there is only one answer and that is ‘Come On’”.

Hmm. Edith Nicholson, and I have mentioned often in this blog, was a militant suffragist (suffragette) sympathizer. I wonder how she would have held up in a one-0n-one with Sir Winston. She was Commandant of the Quebec Red Cross during WWII.)

The December 1, 1910 newspaper also has an article about a pro suffrage talk given by a Dr. Charles Zueblin of Boston to the Montreal Women’s Club. He says that the Anglo Saxon woman is more than ready for the vote and has proven it with her public service and community activities. He says that although there isn’t a man on the street who does not feel himself to be superior to a woman, that is protozoan thinking. (ouch!)

He says that women are suffering a similar plight to the Negroes. He cites the trials of the brilliant Booker T. Washington as an example of how Negroes have been oppressed. Well, he used the word ‘handicapped’ rather than oppressed. (In a 1905 letter from Normal School Marion Nicholson writes about attending a talk by Booker T. Washington. She says he is a terrific speaker and that he told some great jokes.

The Dr. also said he believed women should be educated, although they should take different subjects, perhaps meeting at meal times, as men seemed to have lost the art of conversation.

Tell that to the great orator Winston Churchill.