The Brits Who Conquered Hollywood

[Mrs Vindecco]

I found this book the other day and decided to start reading it again after a two year gap. I actually got it for research, but I admit that I found it hard to put down... well, for the first few chapters, at least.

If you like books full of anedotes or snippets of information about various actors then this is the book for you.

It starts off at the end of the 19th Century, with Oscar Wilde visiting the west coast upto the success of Catherine Zeta Jones. Ok, I admit I'm not that interested in the later stuff, especially when I am at a loss as to why some actors from over here have "made it" over there. However I think the actual book is less interesting when we're introduced to the birth of air travel and jet setting film stars, that didn't need to live in LA all the time.

So, I'm really only interested in the pioneers, the individuals that really had to uplift their lives and travel weeks to get to the other side of the world. It's interesting to see the people that never really settled there, Olivier and Noel Coward (though Coward was loved and everyone including Bogie and Bacall seemed to throw a party in his honour), then there were the individuals who were more British than anyone living in Blighty ever were, but most interesting of all were the Brits that formed a community, a new Raj as Morley calls it. They worked for an American studio, but would never really associate with anyone other than their own countrymen, played cricket, proudly displayed the Union Jack flags in their gardens and drank gallons of teas as if it was going out of fashion.

Sheridan Morley was raised amongst these people. The son of actor, Robert Morley and grandson of Gladys Cooper, he was sent to live there during WW2 as an evacuee. So there is a strong sense of nostalgia in the first half of this book. He fondly reminisces about the mafia of English Mary Poppins-esque Nannies that were more in the know than Hopper or Parsons, his Grandmother's fondness for quiet Greta Garbo because she would always wash the dishes after tea, Nigel Bruce's habit of rounding up young actors to send them to war, the legendary rudeness of Mrs Patrick Campbell and the endless social gatherings.

While this is all written by someone on the inside, it isn't really too lovey or sentimental. As an experienced writer and critic, Morley does delve into the darker and more irrational side of Hollywood. He reflects on the many frustrated writers and producers that found the system impossible and what the rest of Hollywood thought of the new Hollywood Raj.

I find all this interesting. I was less interested in reading about Hugh Grants shenanigans in a car on Sunset Boulevard, which is an example of what features in the book later on .

So I recommend most of this book. ;D

[woofy]

There were German, French and Italian "communities" in Lala-land as well.
I know that when I was in Britain, I felt more American than I do here. I guess when one becomes a minority in a strange place, the natural tendency is to band together with other members of the same minority.
I think that Brits were attracted to Hollywood by the money. It certainly wasn't for any cultural attraction. But in exchange for the geld they were usually reduced to supporting roles, especially as butlers and eccentrics. (Rare exceptions would be people like Rathbone in the Sherlock Holmes films and Claude Rains in the Warner films.)
BTW, in modern times it's much easier for Brits to work in American films/tv than it is for Americans to work in British efforts. The British actors' Equity union places very tight controls on who can work over there. Americans have to get Equity permission to work over there and that's a very difficult task. (It's usually only granted to very famous Americans.) There are no such rules over here. American Equity recognizes the Equity cards of all nations and that's why there are so many Brits on American tv shows and films.

[Mrs Vindecco]

I know about the other communities, specifically the German emigres and I'm looking for a book about them, though if memory serves there is a good documentary on youtube. What I think is different about the Brits, is that a significant portion of the group tended to feel superior to their American hosts. That horrible Empire spirit was still very much alive then, with the Jubilee and Olympic nonsense it seems to be creeping back now, much to my disgust .

Anglophilia was quite popular in the 1930's and MGM was the studio that produced the most British style movies and employed most British actors. They even built a studio in Britain in the mid 1930's. There are some films and stars we forget about today. The book talks about Reginald Denny for example, who was one Hollywod's biggest stars at the end of the silent era (at one point his salary was second highest after Chaplin's) but a modern audience will only really remember him as Frank Crawley, Laurence Olivier's best friend in Rebecca.

True, there were few leading men. Cary Grant distanced himself as British and David Niven truly found success later on. Ronald Colman is probably the biggest star that became a leading man.
Potentially, Robert Donat could have become a huge star if it hadn't been for his ill health. As it stands he produced some memorable performances and stole the Academy Award in 1939. Then there was Charles Laughton, who was probably one of the most successful of character actors of the 1930's.

Claude Rains is never mentioned, probably because he wasn't contracted to MGM, plus unlike many of those who made it in Hollywood, he actually had a successful enough career in Britain.

Most British actors that "made it" there, were really nobodys here and been in Rep. Colman and Grant were Hollywood inventions. On the other hand, big stars here never seemed to make it in Hollywood. Ivor Novello, the British Valentino , didn't cause as much as a ripple.

Of course, I should mention the "Sirs", like Aubrey Smith or Cedric Hardwicke, whose careers had started to dwindle in Britain and then they went out to the States, where they seemed to get work purely because they had a title. To be fair to Hardwicke, he did have quite a successful career in the States and was also intrumental in creating the now forgotten, curiousity piece "Forever and a Day", which seems to have nearly every British/ Hollywood actor in it. I've never actually seen it, as it is a fortune to buy, but it's on my list to watch.

Then there were the British inspired stories that mainly MGM produced in the 1930's. When making The Citadel, the studio considered authenticity important enough, that they sent director King Vidor off to Wales to research the poverty at the centre of the movie and the original. How Green Was My Valley, the various Dickens adaptions, The Mutiny on the Bounty, Goodbye Mr Chips were all pretty popular films and into the forties, the studios wanted to produce very merry old England style films as propaganda, starting with Mrs Miniver, then feel good films like Lassie Come Home and National Velvet.

Sorry I'm blabbering....

The reason there isn't many American actors in British stuff these days is because there isn't much of a British film industry. There was a boom a few years ago, but financing has gone.

Having said that, I'm not sure why there are so many British actors playing Americans in Hollywood films. I find Ewan McGregor, Kate Winslett and Gerald Butler performing in American accents incredibly annoying and I'm not sure how authentic these accents sound. There also seem to be a lot of Austrailians pretending to be American these days.

[woofy]

First of all, you're not blabbering. I find what you have to say fascinating.

I'm never sure what constitutes an "American accent". When I go to Colorado, my western relatives rag me about my Philadelphia accent. We had a TV show here called Hill Street Blues. It was set in Chicago, but almost all of the actors used "Nu Yawk" accents because they couldn't manage the authentic one. (The exception was Dennis Franz who actually WAS from the Windy City.) The so-called "southern accent" is actually about twelve distinctly different accents; someone from North Carolina doesn't sound the least like someone from South Carolina, etc.
But to answer your question, most of the Brits who "do" an American accent tend to do it very well. It seems that phonetics is now a part of their studies and that seems to make all the difference. Hugh Laurie on House sounds more American than I do. (You also have John Barrowman who was born in Scotland of Scottish parents but who grew up in the American Midwest. Of course, his American accent is real. I'll leave it to you to evaluate his Scottish accent.)
I think Rod Taylor was the first Aussie to feign an American accent. He did a pretty good job, although he slips up a bit here and there. Ditto for Steven Boyd who was from N. Ireland. Those two gentlemen were forced by the studios to lose their native accents for film work.

[Mrs Vindecco]

I never realised Boyd was from Northern Ireland The only thing I knew about him was that Gore Vidal apparently told him that the character of Messala was gay in Ben-Hurr, "but for God sake don't tell Chuck Heston that!"

In a country the size of the States, there will be, of course, regional differences. Personally I can only detect the Southern accent (or perhaps what I percieve to be the Southern lilt) the very New Yoik, I think Brooklyn sound and Boston is quite distinctive. Someone once told me that a genuine Mid-Western accent tends to be flat and I think I know what they meant by that.

You'll know by visiting our tiny Island that the British accents vary greatly. Even Scotland with a teeny population of five million has it's variations.

It's funny you mentioned John Barrowman (his Aunt used to work in the same bank branch as I did) because when I first remembered him presenting kids TV back in the early 1990's, I used to think his US accent sounded forced and this was before I knew he was even British. Recently I realised he tends to do (what we call) a Lulu, though he has tried to justify it in his interviews.

[woofy]

We have about two dozen regional accents in the USA. In Britain there are more than 500(!).
I can't speak for Barrowman's Scottish accent, but his American accent is very typical of the American Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, etc.). It's a bit over the top when he acts, but I think that has more to do with his acting technique than his accent.
The only Scottish accent I hear on a semi-regular basis belongs to Craig Ferguson. He's an American citizen now, but he's from Glasgow (Glaswegian?).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAHSUTB5BJc

[woofy]

BTW, the character of Messala is not gay in Lew Wallace's novel.

[Mrs Vindecco]

Sept 12, 2012 0:16:29 GMT woofy said:

BTW, the character of Messala is not gay in Lew Wallace's novel.

Yeah, I thought that would probably be Gore Vidal's doing and not the work of the Union General that signed Billy the Kid's warrant. ;D

I can barely remember Craig Ferguson when he worked over here. He was the typical Glaswegian bloke (basically a beer guzzling, heart attack waiting to happen) that appeared in random Scottish things and then he disappeared, only to emerge years later in the States, talking about his healthy and wealthy lifestyle.