Leslie Howard: On & Off Screen (original DVD of home movies, interviews etc.) 

Regent Street Theatre, London
December 17, 2015 – 19:30

Compelling documentary on the life of a great, forgotten star of the 1930’s. For those who only know Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, The Man Who Gave a Damn reveals a fascinating figure who was one of Hollywood’s true, quiet rebels. A haunting, enigmatic presence in such classics as The Petrified Forest and The Scarlet Pimpernel, yet a man with “a core of steel” who yearned for creative control over his work. This compulsion eventually took him to a unique position as the inspirational symbol of Britain’s war effort. As a director-producer he was responsible for some brilliantly effective films: Pimpernel Smith andThe First of the Few and his radio broadcasts revealed a talent for reaching into the minds and hearts of America, drawing that country into the war effort and making bitter enemies of the Nazis.

Followed by actor, singer and writer, Paul Ryan conducting an on-stage Q&A with Tom Hamilton (director) and Tracy Jenkins (producer)

I have just added a new page containing the plates from this book to my list of documents related to Romeo and Juliet. You can find it here.

It was 1943, the middle of World War 2, and while it might seem unlikely that passenger planes would fly over countries who were at war with each other – a limited number did – and since these flights flew from neutral countries such as Portugal and Switzerland, and these routes were useful to both sides, there was an unwritten agreement that neither country would interfere with these.

Yet at 12.35 on Tuesday June 1st, a frantic radio message was received at Bristol HQ: “We are followed by enemy aircraft” and then a final phrase – “we are being attacked” before the DC3 crashed into the water.

Why this plane was attacked, and whether the attack might have been prevented are just two of many questions surrounding this event. The deaths of those on Flight 777 – Leslie Howard and 16 other people – were considered a major tragedy of war and much was written about the case afterwards. However key documents,  which could fill in some gaps in the narrative have been kept under lock and key for 72 years. Why is it still considered necessary to keep these records secret?

The Mistery of Flight 777

A Hollywood Observer Finds Leslie Howard a Far Cry From the Old-Time “Scenery-Chewer”
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 19, 1935

Hollywood, Nov. 19 — Understatement is a virtue practiced by few artists. The general attitude seems to be that if a thing is good a lot of it makes it better.
We have found that one can use too much garlic, too many adjectives, too many superlatives, too much good nature, too much charity. Still, we are not an artist—only a critic.
Which brings us to the subject of acting. There has been considerable scenery-chewing masquerading under the name of dramatic art these many years. True, the days when the villain showed his manliness and the heroine showed her virtue are departed from this earth. No more do wandering boys come home in time to lift the mortgage. No more—or very seldom—do father caution their careless or indiscreet daughters about darkening the door. And certainly no more do little children go down to the corner saloons to fetch their rum-soaked daddies.
But heroes are still pretty heroic and villains are still pretty villanous. Scenery chewing and chest beating are prevalent on the stage and screen.
For all we know, Leslie Howard in his salad days may have eaten his share of scenery. But if he did he lost his taste for it long ago. Not since we saw him first in “Her Cardboard Lover” on the New York stage have we noticed a single tooth mark in the scenery around him.
Howard, as far as we are concerned, is a master of understatement. Whether it be comedy or tragedy, he underplays it.
Howard the comedian is a gay, charming fellow—but not too gay or too charming or too witty or too wise. He seems to sense the fine line between real comedy and buffoonery, and then stays well on the right side of the line.
Howard the tragedian is one of Thomas Wolfe’s “lost, and by the wind-grieved ghosts.” By that we mean he has a wraithlike, out-of-nowhere quality that is the essence of all real tragedians. It seems to us that Howard understands the meaning of the word—understands that sudden death, for instance, is not its only ingredient; that futility and defeat are more tragic than awful calamity.
We have never seen Howard as Hamlet, but we feel that he will underplay the part of the melancholy prince as he underplayed the strange, almost ethereal Peter Standish in “Berkeley Square.”
The other day we went out to the First National studio to watch Howard work in “Petrified Forest.” We wanted to know if his role of the swashbuckling Scarlet Pimpernel had changed his acting technique.
If anything, we found, Howard paints the character of Alan Squier with even more delicate strokes than he did in making his notable portrait of the hero of “Berkeley Square.”
In the scene we watched Howard was sitting at a table in a desert barbecue stand and opposite him was Bette Davis. He was telling her the story of his life and of his quest for some reason for living and dying. There was little actual movement in the scene. Two people faced each other and talked. But there was no feeling that the scene was static. Howard’s voice, the light smile touching his lips now and again, the lost and lonely look that seized him when he looked into the future gave it sweep and breadth. Not once did he raise his voice or make a violent gesture. Every action was underplayed. Every thought was understated. The scene was a moving, beautiful thing, and you could put your finger on no one thing that made it so.
And when he scene was done, we went away feeling that, though understatement may not be the only reason for an actor’s greatness, it helps a lot.

]]> https://inafferrabileleslie.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/master-of-understatement-1935/feed/ 2 The Petrified Forest inafferrabileleslie https://inafferrabileleslie.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/june-1st-in-memory-of-leslie-howard/ https://inafferrabileleslie.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/june-1st-in-memory-of-leslie-howard/#comments Sun, 31 May 2015 22:19:26 +0000 http://inafferrabileleslie.wordpress.com/?p=5338 ]]> https://inafferrabileleslie.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/june-1st-in-memory-of-leslie-howard/feed/ 5 thumbnail inafferrabileleslie https://inafferrabileleslie.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/leslie-howard-at-the-museum-of-the-city-of-new-york/ https://inafferrabileleslie.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/leslie-howard-at-the-museum-of-the-city-of-new-york/#comments Mon, 11 May 2015 19:32:29 +0000 http://inafferrabileleslie.wordpress.com/?p=5293 Continue reading →]]> If you are interested in Leslie Howard’s appearances on the Broadway stages, you will be certainly thrilled, as I was, when doing a simple “Leslie Howard” search in The Museum of the City of New York website.

To cite just a few examples (but you really should see all those wonderful things!), you can find photos of Escape, Berkeley Square, Candle-Light, The Green Hat, Her Cardboard Lover, Hamlet… and some beautiful caricatures of Leslie.
These are a few gems you can find in that amazing site:

Leslie Howard and Valerie Taylor in Berkeley Square, 1929

Leslie Howard and Henrietta Goodwin in Escape, 1927

Leslie Howard and Frances Fuller in The Animal Kingdom, 1932

Leslie Howard as Hamlet, 1936

Is the tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet” possible to-day? Read the interesting and varied opinions of the artistes cast in this picture

by Gladys Hall

The most beautiful love story in the world is screened, Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard, as “Romeo” and “Juliet,” find that all of happiness and all of grief lie within the circle of their arms

Is dying for love outmoded to-day?
Could Romeo and Juliet live and love and lose their lives for love in this push-button-and-get-girl Twentieth Century? Or rather, would they?
Would the young Romeo of 1936 keep that fatal final assignation in the Tomb of the Capulets—or would he go on to other assignations, less fatal and certainly less final, with other and less sleepy Juliets?
Would the young Juliet of 1936 look upon the lover lost in death and wield the blood-red blade or would she dial another Romeo and wield the blood-red lipstick?
Do we die for love to-day ?
Or do we live–and love–again ? And then again–and yet again?
I asked the starry cast of ” Romeo and Juliet.” I asked Norma Shearer, who is Juliet. I asked Leslie Howard, who is Romeo. I asked John Barrymore and Basil Rathbone and Edna May Oliver and most of that glittery galaxy which, on the M.-G.-M. lot, was bringing that immortal love and those immortal lovers to the silver screen.
I said to each and every one of them separately and individually: “Tell me, is dying for love outmoded, out of date to-day? Is the will to die for love as dead as the two young lovers? Is the tomb–or the cocktail bar–the final rendezvous of love to-day? Did Great Love die in Verona in the tomb of the Capulets?”
I asked Juliet herself. Norma, in the broidered robes of the young Juliet, as we sat on a marble bench directly beneath that legendary balcony from which wafted the immortal love words–and there were pear trees in the Spring all round about us… real pear trees an it please you… dripping white blossoms upon her lovely head–and it seemed, not Norma, but Juliet herself who spoke to me, her young eyes prescient of that last long sleep she was to sleep for love… it seemed not a set wherein we sat, but veritably the garden of the Capulets.

“Yes, oh yes,” murmured Norma, her usually direct, incisive voice hushed by the burden of beauty, “yes, I do believe that young people of to-day love just as desperately as they did in the time of Romeo and Juliet. Conditions are easier for them now, that is the one great difference. Situations of such stress do not so frequently arise and so the boys and girls of our time are not so often compelled to summon death as their sad solution. Parents, not young hearts, have grown wiser. For I believe that if parental opposition to young love were as strong and as prejudiced to-day as it was in those days, we would read of many more suicide pacts than we do.
“It isn’t,” continued Norma softly, that love is weaker to-day but that freedom is greater. Freedom to love. There are no obstacle to-day other than financial obstacles or, perhaps, ill-health. And Youth, given wings, given freedom, is so gloriously courageous that now, instead of dying for love, it lives for love.
“No it isn’t great love nor the capacity for great love which has been removed from the hearts of men and women, boys and girls of this our day… The change comes from without, not from within. For love, like Time, never dies…”
Thus spoke Juliet in the scented garden of the Capulets…

I sat with Romeo in a motor-bus!
I had wandered forth to the back lot of M.-G.-M., there to keep my date with young Mr. Leslie Howard Montague. The back lot stretched before me, transformed into a street scene in Verona. And there, armed with a tiny camera, taking shots of the scenes in which he does not appear, was Leslie Howard Montague, clad in sky-blue doublet and hose, a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles atop his classic nose, a crimson bath-robe girt about his middle, his golden hair curling about the nape of his neck. He suggested that we find a secluded spot wherein to hold sweet converse. And we found a seat in the back of a mammoth bus parked near the set in readiness to take the several hundred extras to and fro.
Romeo in a bus!
Did I–or Shakespeare–ever?
Said Romeo, sensibly “Yes, there is just one stratum of society left to-day in which the catastrophic tragedy of Romeo and Juliet might happen–namely, among the gangsters!”
I gasped. Romeo lit a cigarette.
“No, but figure it out,” quoth Romeo with sweet reasonableness, “the Veronese were a desperate lot, most of them. Feuds existed among the Montagues and the Capulets even as feuds exists among the gangster of to-day. In no other class of society do such feuds exist except, perhaps, among some remote mountain tribes. Yes, the Montagues and the Capulets still carry on among our passionate Public Enemies from one to one hundred. Mercutios are slain. Bloody Tybalts still fester in their shrouds. The sword has been replaced by the machine-gun, the fiery steed by the armoured car, but the results thereof compare quite favourably . So much for that.
“Then, too, there are no women in any class of society to-day who are so secluded, so jealously guarded, so spied upon, so puritanically protected as are the gangsters’ ‘Molls’. Fancy the ‘Moll’ of one gang leader going over to an opposing gang leader–suicide and murder would be inevitable. Yes, it is quite conceivable that in the ranks of the still medieval Underworld a Montague and a Capulet feud might bloodily arise, a Mercutio and a Tybalt meet their deaths, a young Romeo and Juliet die, caught in the tangle of love and fear and complexity.

“There are a great many analogies once yo get started. The Veronese of the 14th Century lived with imminent death for their daily bread. They never knew, in the morning, whether they would be among the Quick or the Dead by night. Ditto, certainly, our gangsters.
“Yes, yes,” continued Leslie, amused with his amazing similes, “among the gangsters the Capulets and the Montagues live again. And, even as these old Veronese lived, richly caparisoned and housed, armed with dark vendettas and secret cabals and mysterious intermediaries, so do our underworld brethren live to-day. In the dank tomb of the Capulets young Romeo and Juliet fled a life too sinister, too complex, too arrayed with dark forces, dark poltics and passions for them to cope with. In the dank cellar of gangsterdom to-day, it is conceivable that young lovers might also flee a life too sinister, too complex in its politics and passions for them to cope with.
“it’s a novel thought, at any rate,” smiled Leslie, bemused, “and I really think it’s true that in no other social sphere to-day would such a desperate love be liable to exist. There’d be no reason for it in any other sphere. There are many Don Juans to-day, but few, very few Romeos.
“Modern times and casual circumstances make it difficult, really, for young men to follow in the footsteps of the world’s most poetic lover. It is very hard to imagine any modern young man loitering beneath milady’s balcony making a plea for his beloved’s undying love, when, no doubt, a telephon is jangling to right of her, a radio blaring swing music to left of her and a cacophony of motor horns in the street is adding punctuation to his appeal.

“Some men still die for love, of course,” said Leslie, more gravely now, “but I think they die living deaths. I mean, I think they go about much as they always did, living to all outward appearances, but with death in their hearts, where life and love once reigned, disillusionment in their soul, which once harboured dreams… a living mental and spiritual death rather than the final and perhaps more dignified death of the body.
“And I do believe this–that whenwe see Romeo and Juliet on he screen, we are going, for the first time, to understand them fully; we are going to understand the really complex and ingenious plot of the play as we have never been able to understand it before because of the limitations of the stage. We will underastand fully and in detail just why they died… Not only was parental law against them but civic and military as wel. Romeo had murdered a man. He had that to face. He never got the message which was to tell him that Juliet was but feigning sleep. That whole business–the plague infected area which trapped the message–the whole involved and intensely thrilling plot will be made clear as it never has been clear before.”

At which exact moment Mercutio, in the dramatic person of John Barrymore, rose from the dead and came toward me… Leslie Made way for his friend. John joined me in the motor-bus. […]

(Picturegoer, August 29, 1936)

Pages and Photos from Magazines

1930-1931	1932
1933	1934
1935	1936
1937	1938
1939	1940-1941
1942-1943

Many other pages will be added in future!