Random Shavian Semi-Review

[moon_custafer]

Still working through a watching of Major Barbara (1941, thanks for the link sovay ) because I get overwhelmed* life keeps interrupting.

Also stopped to find out Robert Morley’s age at the time of filming (thirty-two or -three), because he’s blatantly younger than Andrew Undershaft, like, high-school-play teenager-in-a-fake-moustache younger. Works for the character, though.

O HAI Emlyn Williams, we meet again! *checks rest of cast* OK, I did not recognize Stanley Holloway in the opening scene, I think I’m used to seeing him at least a decade older.

I wonder if Newton’s casting as Ferrovius in Androcles and the Lion (1952) had anything to do with his role in the earlier movie — there’s a scene where Newton (as Bill Walker) spits in Todger Fairmile’s eye and Todger refrains from striking him, and the framing and expressions are strongly reminiscent of the scene between Ferrovius and Metellus, though with a different vibe and a (somewhat) different outcome. Google says Androcles and the Lion the play was written five years after Major Barbara, so it’s probably deliberate. You could give a worse description of Ferrovius than “he’s Bill Walker, but he’s trying to be Todger Fairmile.”

As Walker— yeah I nodded when Prof. Adolphus “Dolly” Cusins excitedly said of him “that’s exactly what an Ancient Greek would have done,” although thinking it over I’m not sure if Walker really is like an Ancient Greek, or even a pagan, so much as he is a Victorian idea of one, if that makes sense?

*I may never finish Starmaker (Live on Grenada TV, 1974), which I’ve also been watching intermittently. It’s like Harold Pinter: The Musical, and I’ve reached the part where the bleakness is definitely winning out.

Comments

[sovay]

Robert Morley’s age at the time of filming (thirty-two or -three), because he’s blatantly younger than Andrew Undershaft, like, high-school-play teenager-in-a-fake-moustache younger.

Major Barbara is not the first movie in which I saw Robert Morley, but it is the first movie in which I saw Robert Morley to know him, which in retrospect is just funny.

(I like Robert Morley; he's an ornament to anything he turns up in, including his five minutes as an impenetrably dense MP in The Small Back Room (1949) and his five minutes as a full bore Gothic George III in Beau Brummell (1954) and his rather more than five minutes as an under-the-table Q in Topkapi (1964). I've never seen him play anything resembling a normal human being and am intensely curious about his Oscar Wilde.)

O HAI Emlyn Williams, we meet again!

He probably would have been a hell of a Caligula in the 1937 I, Claudius. I keep meaning to watch the surviving footage, but I literally just lent my box set of the 1976 BBC series to nineweaving and rushthatspeaks.

OK, I did not recognize Stanley Holloway in the opening scene, I think I’m used to seeing him at least a decade older.

It's also existentially confusing when he's not singing. I have now seen him in multiple movies where he doesn't sing and it remains confusing! If you watch This Happy Breed (1944), which I would recommend for its highly unusual Technicolor alone, you get him as the next-door neighbor and old army buddy of Robert Newton.

there’s a scene where Newton (as Bill Walker) spits in Todger Fairmile’s eye and Todger refrains from striking him, and the framing and expressions are strongly reminiscent of the scene between Ferrovius and Metellus, though with a different vibe and a (somewhat) different outcome.

I've never gotten around to Androcles and the Lion because it's supposed to be the least as well as the last of the Pascal–Shaws—not helped by interference from Howard Hughes—but you make a compelling case for it.