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KEEP COMING TO AMERICA!
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The invasion of Hollywood by British actors is a bonus
By CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com
Two hundred years
ago, the British invaded America, burned down the White House
and generally raised hell with the young country known as the
United States of America.
They were finally defeated by Andy Jackson, winner of later fame
on the $20 bill, at the Battle of New Orleans. (“Elevate
them guns a little lower, boys,” Andy is said to have
instructed his cannoneers).
A century or so later, the Brits invaded again. This time, the
invasion was by invitation and it’s still under way. I refer
to the army of British actors who came to the far shores of the
colonies to seek their fortunes in the new motion picture industry.
It’s a phenomenon that has shaped the entertainment industry
on both sides of the Atlantic well into our 21st Century.
British stage actors in the 1890’s had begun to hear about
some newfangled thing called motion pictures. The idea was that
you acted--if that’s what you could call it, sniffed these
stage actors--before a camera, and then the photographs were
arranged in some fashion so that a person could peer into the
peephole of a machine and watch you.
Indeed. "Might provide a little
bit of extra income, but don’t tell
anyone that Clive and I are doing it, darling."
Then, as the 20th Century came along, this business of photographed
plays became, rather rapidly, an industry. And there was some
real money to be made, old chap, even if one had to cross the
Atlantic and then a whole bloody continent to get to where these
things were being made.
And on they came to this exotic place called “Hollywood.”
Motion pictures were manufactured there on a grand scale. Charlie
Chaplin arrived in 1910, describing Los Angeles as “an
ugly city, hot and oppressive," and by 1916 had signed
a contract worth a warm $670,000 a year. Hundreds of people were
employed to appear on the screen as featured players or extras,
and thousands more were working as set builders, makeup artists,
cameramen, painters and publicists.
Charlie was to spend the next 40 years
in Hollywood; his friend Stan Laurel spent 50 years there. Both
were propelled to worldwide fame by the power of those black-and-white
projected images created in southern California.
Chaplin and Laurel were first-rank entertainers. But they were
only two among many: Ray Milland, Ida Lupino, Claude Rains, Cedric
Hardwicke, Merle Oberon, Charles Laughton and Herbert Marshall,
to name only a few, made their way across the pond during the
first half of the 20th Century to find fortune under the palm
trees.
And it wasn’t just actors. P. G. Wodehouse came to Hollywood
twice in the 30’s with the idea that he would write screenplays.
He was bewildered by the way the studios did things, and wrote
uproarious magazine articles about receiving huge amounts of
money for doing essentially very little, in fact, just about
nothing.
In an article quoted in Sheridan Morley’s "The Brits
in Hollywood", Wodehouse told the world what it was like:
"In every studio in Hollywood, there are rows and rows
of hutches, each containing an author on long contract at a weekly
salary,” P. G. wrote. “You see their anxious
little faces pressing through the bars. You hear them whining
piteously to be taken for a walk.”
Hollywood did take a little getting used to. There was the eternal
sunshine, for one thing. And then the studio bosses had a habit
of changing the concept of a picture repeatedly--a domestic drama
might be changed abruptly into a spy thriller and end up as a
musical comedy, all with the same cast of actors. And it wasn’t
a place for serious work. Films were made out of sequence; techniques
were far different -what was a grand gesture that thrilled them
in the back rows of West End theatres looked ridiculous magnified
on the screen.
But there were other advantages besides the money. A third-rate
actor in London could scrape up the money, make his way to California,
appear in gradually more important roles in talent-hungry Hollywood,
and go back to London to be lionized by audiences who loved those
American films.
During the 20s, the British tended to look down on movies as
a second-rate art form, and the Americans tended to look down
on the British because they seemed incapable of producing movies
that anyone wanted to see.
The heyday of British actors in American studios came in the
20’s and the 30’s, when for a while being British was
all the thing. The British got a big break after the arrival
of sound in 1927 boosted British fortunes immensely. Hollywood
was casting about desperately for actors who had resonant voices
and could deliver dialog convincingly. They came to the new sound
stages from Broadway and the West End.
Among them were David Niven and Ronald Colman, both terribly
good looking and debonair, with the ability to deliver lines
convincingly.
Niven abandoned his burgeoning Hollywood career to return to
England and re-enlist in the British Army during World War II.
He did some public relations work, served for a while as a liaison
officer, made some movie appearances and, seeking action, landed
on the Normandy beaches shortly after the initial invasion.
Niven liked to tell the story of a conversation he had with Winston
Churchill. “What you did for your country was a truly
marvelous thing,” Sir Winston told him. “Mind
you, if you hadn’t done so, it would have been despicable.”
Niven did return to Hollywood, picked up his abandoned career,
and went on to even greater successes. His friend Errol Flynn,
born in Tasmania, had no such patriotic leanings about the British
Commonwealth. He stayed in Hollywood and played heroes in war
pictures.
“You can always count on Errol to let you down,”
Niven observed. Niven never seemed to be terribly critical of
Flynn, but he had unbounded contempt for James Mason, another
Brit who did not return to England to serve king and country.
Today, the invasion continues, but with a twist. Instead of bringing
class to Hollywood with their plummy southern England accents,
British actors are landing roles as Americans.
Vivian Leigh was a pioneer, playing southern women in “Gone
With the Wind” and”A Streetcar Named Desire.”
More recently, we had Damien Lewis leading a company of American
actors in HBO’s “Band of Brothers”; Hugh Laurie
as the doctor with the world’s worst bedside manner in “House”
and Dominic West as the Baltimore detective in “The Wire.”
In each case, it is impossible for the viewer to tell that these
are actors with a natural British accent who are imposing upon
themselves an artificial
American accent.
The second invasion has been a good thing all ‘round. For
100 years, American audiences have had the benefit of some of
the world’s greatest actors, and the actors have had their
wallets benefitted from lots of American dollars. Three cheers
for the Stars and Stripes. Pass the Yorkshire pudding.
©2012 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photos of Charles Chaplin and Stan Laurel are courtesy of Wikipedia. The photo of Ray Milland is courtesy of Film Bug.com;. The photo of David Niven is couortesy of the Internet Movie Data Base. This column first posted Aug. 20, 2012.
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