Winston S. Churchill: film fan

NOTES

• Churchill , R.S. 1966, 1967 . Winston S. Churchill , 1–2 Gilbert, Martin (1971–1988) Vols 3–8 (London, Heinemann).
   Google Scholar
• The most useful are Bryant A. The Turn of the Tide Collins London 1957, 1959 and Triumph in the West (London, Collins), both based on the war diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke; Colville, J. (1985) The Fringes of Power. Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 (London, Hodder and Stoughton); Dilks, D. (Ed.) (1971) The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, O.M. 1938–1945 (London, Cassell); Harriman, W. A. & Abel, E. (1976) Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin (London, Hutchinson); Lord Ismay (1960) Memoirs (London, Heinemann); Lord Moran (1966) Winston Churchill, the Struggle for Survival (London, Constable); Tree, R. (1975) When the Moon was High (London, Macmillan); Morton, H. V. (1943) Atlantic Meeting: an account of Mr. Churchill's voyage in H.M.S. Prince of Wales, in August, 1941, and the conference with President Roosevelt which resulted in the Atlantic Charter (London, Methuen). Henry Vollam Morton is last listed in the Who's Who for 1979–1980; for (Robert) Howard Spring, who died in 1965, see the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. When it was discovered that President Roosevelt had excluded the press from his party, it was decided that neither Morton nor Spring would write anything for ‘immediate publication’. Morton recalled that they had to confine their observations to the ‘happenings in our own ship and that we should not meet the President or visit any of the American ships”. The two ‘literary stowaways’ accepted the situation with ‘good grace’ and offered to write anything of a “character sufficiently colourless and anonymous to meet the needs of a delicate situation”.
   Google Scholar
• 5 April 1928, Chartwell Bulletin to Clementine, his wife: “I am becoming a Film fan, and last week I went to see The Last Command, a very fine anti-Bolshevik film, and Wings which is all about aeroplane fighting and perfectly marvellous. I was so much impressed by it that I went a second time and took the following party …” Gilbert Companion 5 1247 1247
   Google Scholar
• 10 Gilbert June 1946 8 236 236 Gilbert mentions that the film was shown again on 25 November 1951 at Chequers with a projectionist furnished by Gaumont British (p. 663). That summer Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh produced and acted in the two plays, Antony and Cleopatra and Caesar and Cleopatra on the stage in London. Winston and his daughter Mary saw the latter production. Winston by then once again Prime Minister, gave a forty-fourth birthday dinner for Larry at 10 Downing Street. Cited in: A. Holden (1988) Olivier (Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p. 268.
   Google Scholar
• Tree , R. 1975 . When the Moon was High , 130f – 130f . London : Macmillan .
   Google Scholar
• Gilbert , M. 6 946 – 946 . and Colville, J. op. cit., pp. 375–378
   Google Scholar
• Mentioned by Colville The Fringes of Power. Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 Hodder and Stoughton London 1985 446 446 on 24 May 1941. The American journalist Quentin Reynolds (By Quentin Reynolds, 1964, p. 207 [London, Heinemann]) described a visit to Chequers at the end of July 1941 in the company of Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman. “Churchill led us upstairs to a motion-picture projection room where Mary and her mother were already waiting. The film we saw was Target for Tonight. Enveloped in his cloud of cigar smoke, Churchill was as tense as any movie fan when things looked bad for the bomber that was over Germany. He chuckled when its bombs hit their target.”
   Google Scholar
• The Times reports that Wings would play at the Carlton Theatre for five weeks and that The Last Command March 1928 opened at the Plaza on 19
   Google Scholar
• His last visit to a cinema may have been on 6 June 1940. Colville writes, “The PM went to a cinema to see the Dunkirk film, and returned to Admiralty House in rather a bad temper.” Colville The Fringes of Power. Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 Hodder and Stoughton London 1985 175 175
   Google Scholar
• Kulik , K. 1975 . Alexander Korda , 288 – 288 . London : W. H. Allen . describes the mansion, where “beneath the glitter of Crystall chandeliers, you walk on Aubusson and sit upon Gobelins” and look out over “Hyde Park Corner, thereafter known by some as Hyde Park Korda … Number 144 became famous for its well stocked cellar and its first floor cinema which was used by the Royal Family”. Mary Soames (1969) Clementine Churchill (London, Cassell, p. 388) testified that her mother “always found the film sessions over-long at the best of times”. In his diary entry for 6 May 1944 Lord Alanbrooke, after four long years sighed, “We had a walk with Clemmie before dinner, and a film after dinner. Got to bed by midnight … The earliest I had ever been to bed at Chequers”. Quoted in Bryant, op. cit., p. 187.
   Google Scholar
• Tree , R. 1975 . When the Moon was High , 132 – 132 . London : Macmillan .
   Google Scholar
• Gilbert . 5 560 – 563 . 589–590n
   Google Scholar
• Barker Felix The Oliviers: a biography Hamish Hamilton New York 1953 221 221 footnote Although Barker does not provide a source for this anecdote, it would appear to be based on a retelling of the event by Korda. Churchill's purported involvement in Lady Hamilton seems quite in character. Churchill's interest in Lord Nelson also apparently extended to naming his huge black cat Nelson: “Bravest cat you ever saw. I once saw him chase a big dog right out of the Admiralty”, Churchill told Quentin Reynolds (op. cit., p. 204).
   Google Scholar
• Dilks . 1971 . The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, O.M. 1938–1945 , 396ff – 396ff . London : Cassell . Lieutenant-Colonel Jacob's unpublished diary is cited by Gilbert, Vol. 6, p. 1158.
   Google Scholar
• Public Record Office, Kew, London INF 6/333 London A viewing print of Atlantic Charter is available at the Imperial War Museum
   Google Scholar
• Gilbert . 8 988n – 988n .
   Google Scholar
• Colville . 1985 . The Fringes of Power. Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 , 496 – 496 . London : Hodder and Stoughton .
   Google Scholar
• Gilbert . Companion Vol. 5, part 2 contains several references to the Californian tour in September 1929.
   Google Scholar
• Dilks . 1971 . The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, O.M. 1938–1945 , 396 – 402 . London : Cassell . Although Cadogan reported that Churchill ‘hated’ Saps at Sea, Morton (recalled in an uncredited editorial comment by Dilks in Cadogan—p. 402) reported that Churchill commented in public only that it was “gay but inconsequent entertainment”. Cadogan's comments (other than those already noted in the text—Saps at Sea, Comrade X and Lady Hamilton) were: The Devil and Miss Jones—“Bad”; High Sierra (Warners, 1941)—“Bad film … Awful bunk. But the P.M. loves them and they keep him quiet”; 12 August—unnamed [Ghost Breakers] but “the world's worst”. Cadogan attended only seven of the 10 film shows, missing those of the 14, 16 and 17 August.
   Google Scholar
• Lieutenant-Colonel Jacob reported that [Churchill] quite obviously enjoyed [Pimpernel Smith] very much. “He had not done a stroke of work during the day and was in a thoroughly good temper. We all went to bed about midnight, and very soon afterwards the ship began to heave …” Quoted in Gilbert Companion 5 1158 1158 part 2 vol. 6
   Google Scholar
• Harry Hopkins, formerly head of the New Deal Works Progress Administration, functioned throughout the war as Roosevelt's confidential assistant, travelling in this instance to the Soviet Union. See in particular Sherwood Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins Eyre and Spottiswoode New York 1948
   Google Scholar
• Cadogan's, as yet, unpublished diary entry concerning the reception of Lady Hamilton was quoted approvingly by Churchill The Second World War: the Grand Alliance Cassell London 1950 429 429 in his Cadogan recorded in his diary for 8 August: “Film Lady Hamilton after dinner, excellent, P.M. seeing it for the fifth time and still deeply moved. At the close he addressed the company: ‘Gentlemen, I thought this film would interest you, showing great events similar to those in which you have just been taking part’”. The importance given to the Royal Navy's recent sinking of the Bismarck, might well have formed a loose analogy in Churchill's thinking to the Battle of Trafalgar.
   Google Scholar
• See K. R. M. Short (1991) That Hamilton Woman (1941): propaganda, feminism and the production code, (Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 11(1)). Churchill's enjoyment of Lady Hamilton also may have been heightened by the fact that he was reading C. S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower novel Flying Colours. British Minister to Egypt, Oliver Lyttelton, had given the copy to Churchill, who found it “vastly entertaining”. Churchill recalled with amusement that after he had finished the novel he had sent Lyttleton a message which said simply “Hornblower admirable” and that the message caused consternation in the Middle East for fear that ‘Hornblower’ was a code word for an operation of which they had not been told. See Churchill The Second World War: the Grand Alliance 1950 429 429
   Google Scholar
• Colville . 1985 . The Fringes of Power. Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 , 317 – 317 . London : Hodder and Stoughton .
   Google Scholar
• Holden . 1988 . Olivier , 268 – 268 . Weidenfeld and Nicolson .
   Google Scholar
• Gilbert . 8 484f – 484f .
   Google Scholar
• Gilbert . 8 988n – 988n .
   Google Scholar
• Rotha , Paul . 1930 . The Film Till Now London revised 1949, 1960, 1967) was a pioneering study.
   Google Scholar
• The film is discussed in Richards J. Visions of Yesterday Jonathan Cape London 1973 For Churchill's hostility to the project see the article by D. Badder & I. Christie (1978) in Sight and Sound, 48(1); I. Christie (Ed.) (1978) Powell, Pressburger and Others (London, BFI); I. Christie (1985) Arrows of Desire, the Films of M. Powell and E. Pressburger (London, BFI); J. Richards & A. Aldgate (1983) The Best of British Cinema and Society, 1930–1970 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell) and finally M. Powell (1986) A Life in Movies, an Autobiography (London, Heinemann).
   Google Scholar
• Bialer , U. 1980 . The Shadow of the Bomber, the fear of air attack and British Politics, 1922–1939 , London : Royal Historical Society .
   Google Scholar
• Kirkpatrick , Ivone . 1959 . The Inner Circle , 97 – 97 . London : Macmillan .
   Google Scholar
• Gilbert . Companion to Vol. 5 1420 – 1420 . 1425) includes correspondence between Churchill and Sheriff about the play Journey's End. A decade later, Sheriff was a scriptwriter for Lady Hamilton in Hollywood.
   Google Scholar
• Gilbert . 8 1183 – 1183 .
   Google Scholar
• Gilbert . 8 1336 – 1336 .
   Google Scholar