Alexander Korda | The Private Life of Henry VIII / 1933

man and king

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lajos Bíró and Arthur Wimperis (screenplay), Alexander Korda (director) The Private Life of Henry VIII / 1933

 

Although it starred homosexual actor Charles Laughton as Henry VIII and his rumored “lavender” bride Elsa Lanchester as Anne of Cleves, one would be hardput to describe a movie about the Tudor King and five of his six wives, as well as two of his wives’ lovers within his court, Thomas Culpeper (Robert Donat) and Thomas Peynell (John Lodar), as anything other than reeking of heterosexual lust. But since this 1933 British concoction was cooked up by Hungarian-born director Alexander Korda and his Hungarian friend, novelist and playwright Lajos Bíró, there are the usual early 30s sissies among the numerous eccentric individuals who make up Henry’s court, first and foremost the French executioner (Gibb McLaughlin) who we see busy sharpening his sword with which to sever Anne Boleyn’s (Merle Oberon) lovely head.

     The English Executioner (Sam Livesey) is quite distressed that they’ve called in a Frenchman for the task when there are plenty of unemployed English executioners. But the Frenchmen assures him, in unequivocal terms, that the English headsmen are only fit to sever the bull-necks of their countrymen with a cleaver. “But a woman’s neck, a queen’s neck, that calls for finesse, for delicacy, for chivalry; in one word a French man,” as he flutters his fingers in the proper supplement to his words. The English headsman growls, “Well I can think of another word.” So too can we.

      The second major pansy to haunt the castle halls is the official Wedding Bed Preparer—who’s even given a name in the script, Cornell (Claud Allister), presumably because he’s a busy man given the king’s six wives. He struts around, hands on his hips, ordering up bedding pans, hot water bottles, and men to poke swords under the bed for suspect intruders, as well as fighting consistently with the King’s Nurse (Lady Tree) who each time before Henry lays down in his bridal bed, attempts to slips her “charms” under his pillow, which she assures Cornell will produce a male heir. At least with his third wife, Jane Seymour (Wendy Barrie), the charms indeed succeeded.

     Finally, although his character is meant to be heterosexual, Laughton, always the ham actor, portrays a Henry VIII in a manner that is often so over-the-top that it borders on camp. His Henry early in the film never walks or even struts, but scurries across rooms is short steps, grabbing up individuals, such as his scatter-brained new wife Jane Seymour the very moment he hears the bells announce Anne Boleyn’s death, rushing forward with acts he has clearly not properly thought out.

      Although the real Henry VIII was evidently a well-mannered diner and fastidious with regard to his body, Laughton’s Henry devours an entire capon, pounding it apart and greedily ripping off its wings and thighs as he chews up the meat before tossing the bones over his shoulder—all the time lecturing on his assertion that good breeding and manners have disappeared from British life. He is furious that after Seymour’s death in childbirth that his advisers and even his barber is demanding that he marry yet again! Henry himself bemoans his condition: “Am I the king or a breeding bull?!”

      But it is his next wife, Anne of Cleves, performed by Laughton’s real-life wife, Elsa Lanchester who releases his most comedic sequence of the film. Lanchester—who in her autobiography explains the reason they never had children is that Laughton was homosexual, suggesting that they did not have much of a sexual life—is here the one totally disinterested in having sex with the man she has been forced to marry in order to keep the German-French peace. Anne, represented as a great beauty in Holbein’s portrait, shows up in Henry’s court as a tripping, screw-faced near idiot who even practices in the mirror the ugly faces that might help distort any of her true beauty. On the wedding night, she juts out of her lower lip as if practicing for her very next major movie role, The Bride of Frankenstein, to say “no” to all of mankind. She appears utterly clueless about what plans he may have for her in bed. As Henry is forced to attempt to explain about the “birds and bees” to her, it becomes apparent to him that there is no hope, as he wonders aloud what he might do with her. Coyishly, she suggests, “Chop off my head?” But when she hints of divorce, Henry’s entire demeanor improves as they quickly plot out the divorce settlement, allowing her also to take her secret lover, Thomas Peynell with her.

      To while away the rest of the night, they play cards. Henry, who claims to be the best card-player in the kingdom (like a former US president, who resembled a mad, fornicating king, claiming he was the sanest man on the planet, Henry makes a lot of rash assertions, later suggesting soon after that he is the still, now in his 50s, the best wrestler in Britain), quickly loses to Anne, who demands cash payment before they can even continue their game. Strangely, she is the only one of his first five wives with whom he maintains a friendly relationship, perhaps because she outlived all the others.

      His next bride, hand-picked from the court itself is the beautiful Katherine Howard (Binnie Barnes), who, if you believe any of Korda’s historical hokum, is the only woman he truly loved. Katherine, on the other hand, is the only woman who has no interest whatsoever in the “man” who is King, interested only in his crown, a theme reiterated again and again from the very beginning of the film when he overhears her about to say something terrible concerning him, beginning with the half-sentence, “If the King were not a king I’d call him….” Demanding to know what she would call him, the King interrupts her comments, as she, cleverly catching herself, bows and finishes her sentence with the word “a man.” When he later arrives at her bedroom one evening to have sex, indicating that he has left his crown outside her door, she rejects him, who as a “man” might destroy her reputation.

     Clever and manipulative, Katherine gets the crown, but also falls truly in love with the man whose affections she has previously only toyed with, Culpeper, and their secret meetings result in both of their undoings, as she meets her death just as Anne Boleyn did—although in truth Boleyn was innocent while in real history Katherine had had even an affair before her clandestine meetings with Culpeper. When Henry hears of her deceit, he breaks down in tears.

     And it is with Katherine, moreover, that this comedy turns more serious, as in his old age, we find the King who has lived a life of sexual philandering, is now lonely and disappointed with his inabilities to properly rule. Anne returns to point out a suitable sixth wife overseeing his children Edward and Elizabeth, both later rulers. Perhaps the perfect wife for an aging ruler, this Catherine nags him in the manner that Lanchester scolds Laughton to help keep him in good health in Witness for the Prosecution (1957). When she leaves the room, Henry turns to the camera, declaring to his audience: "Six wives, and the best of them's the worst."

     Korda’s comic fantasy was such a big success that he was able to establish his production company, London Films, and make many another movie that helped to keep British films interesting throughout the rest of the 1930s.

 

Los Angeles, January 29, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2023).