The Plays of John Osborne, Part II: Experiments in Individuality

The playwright at rest, 1965. (Heilpern)

Part One here.

By 1959, John Osborne occupied an exalted cultural position. Having demolished notions of respectable theater, he inspired a new generation of writers from Alan Sillitoe to Edward Albee. "Come and help us make history," said Kenneth Tynan, inviting him to the National Theatre. "I've already made history," came Osborne's retort. His notorious "Damn You England" letter and arrest at CND's 9/17/61 demonstration established Osborne as a political pugilist. Then he moved into films, writing Tom Jones (1963) for Tony Richardson. Matched against his professional successes, however, were several failed marriages: Pamela Lane, Mary Ure and Penelope Gilliatt.

This post dissects 1960s Osborne, a playwright experimenting with diffuse dramatic forms. Now comfortable in his talent, Osborne tries several genres: musicals, historical pieces, a surreal character study. Yet the same anguish, penetrating insight and lacerating introspective remains - if anything, it's enhanced within new contexts. Despite a few missteps, it's Osborne's most interesting period as a writer.

The World of Paul Slickey (1959)

"One must be careful at all times not to hurt other people's feelings... Only an extremely vulgar mind pokes fun at such things."

Nothing's so perversely fascinating as an overachieving flop. Sometimes an artist at the height of their power crafts an ambitious, inexplicable failure, so grandiose in conception that it can't possibly work. The World of Paul Slickey has this in spades: a musical satire of the public's appetite for scandal, it's so top heavy with ideas that it bombs spectacularly.

Journalist Jack Oakham moonlights as Paul Slickey, a feared gossip columnist targeting the rich and powerful. His latest assignments include Lesley and Michael, two rich, pea-brained youths; out-of-touch aristocratic families the Mortlakes and Giltedge-Whytes; and pop singer Terry Maroon. But Jack comes to question the value of his work, even as his marriage falls apart.

Slickey was a notorious flop; opening night reportedly climaxed with actress Adrienne Corri flipping off the audience. The show hasn't improved with age. If its attack on media sensationalism remains evergreen, other aspects feel grounded in their time. The title character evokes '50s society writer William Hickey, while the story and music draw laboriously on contemporary events like German rearmament and Timothy Evans. One song even incorporates Anthony Eden's proclamation that Suez was not a war but an "armed conflict" as a lyric!

That contrived awkwardness characterizes Osborne's songs. The inspired ditties from The Entertainer give way to indigestible, inscrutable nonsense. This tortured song from a tour guide discussing an aristocratic family should suffice:

"If you don't want to be an unidentified mess
You must make yourself someone and be a success
You've got to understand the mechanics of success
If you've meaning to express you must spell it like success
If you're going to impress you must pander to the press
They'll want you to asses how much money you possess."

Just scan that verse and wonder what Osborne was thinking. Sour rhymes, indiscernible meter, painfully forced "wit." Not to mention Paul/Jack proclaiming himself "newspaper cold" and rhyming phlegm with apothegm, or Lesley singing about raping the tax man. (Glenn Beck, is that you?) Sure, it's words on a page - but what musical accompaniment could possibly sell it? Given the universal opprobrium leveled against Slickey (even John Heilpern calls it "wincingly off the mark"), I feel safe dismissing it at face value.

As for story... what story? Osborne conceives Slickey as a shotgun blast against modern England: the media, the aristocracy and political establishment, the facile public. He aims for so many targets that he scarcely nicks any. The characters are ludicrous cartoons: Lesley and Michael debate solving bad marriages with sex change operations, a joke that sounds funnier than it plays. More and more characters complicate the narrative, until Slickey collapses in a pointless non-climax.

Osborne's ambitions evaporate long before then, leaving only venom. George Wellwrath calls Slickey "pure spit and vomit thrown directly into the teeth of the audience." He fancies that a complement; I don't. Without focus, Slickey becomes meaningless spew rather than scathing satire.

Luther (1961)

Albert Finney as Luther, 1961 production. (source)

"Some interests are furthered by finding truth, others by destroying it."

Having failed at contemporary satire, Osborne retreated to historical drama. Luther proved a popular success on both the West End and Broadway, featuring Albert Finney in the title role. Superficially the play resembles familiar dramas of conscience like A Man for All Seasons. Yet Luther's no saturnine period piece, casting the founder of Protestantism as a tormented rebel against Catholic dogma - and his personal demons.

The play depicts Martin Luther's emergence as leader of the Protestant Reformation. He defies his father to become a priest, but quickly proves unsuited for monastic life. After a violent, unexplained outburst ("I am not!") Martin grows increasingly skeptical towards Catholic teaching. He attacks the system of indulgences, earning him Rome's ire. Soon Luther's the head of a religious and cultural upheaval, staring down the Diet of Worms and inspiring a peasant uprising against the Holy Roman Empire.

Luther draws on Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther (1958), a psycho-biography framing Luther's theological struggle as an identity crisis writ large. Hence Luther's obsessive fretting over his bowels - he complains of being constipated, flatulent and uses scatological language to describe the Pope. "If I break wind in Wittenberg," he muses, "they might smell it in Rome." His mind's too inquisitive to fit into Church structures; taught to revere scripture, he cannot reconcile God's teachings with Rome's temporal corruption.

Osborne tries to frame the context in which Luther operated. Act II features John Tetzel, a priest happily hawking indulgences and holy relics to gullible believers. Here Osborne most strongly resembles Brecht, stopping the action cold for a digressive vignette. This imaginative sequence says more about Catholic corruption that any of Luther's eloquent disquisitions:

"My friend, the Pope himself has sent me with indulgences for you! Fine, you say, but what are indulgences? They're only the most precious and noble of God's gifts to men, that's all they are! Before God, I tell you I wouldn't swap my privilege at this moment with that of St. Peter... because I've already saved more souls with my indulgences than he ever could have done."

Unfortunately, he's less successful showing Luther's impact. Luther's confrontation with the Diet rings with stark clarity, but the resulting chaos remains ephemeral. His dealings with assorted German princes go unmentioned. Act III features a rushed scene with The Knight, a blood-soaked nobleman describing the Peasant's Revolt within Germany. These scenes are dramatically forced and historically inadequate, providing audiences a patchy understanding of the Reformation.

Osborne being Osborne, however, the personal portrait dominates. The play's most palpable scenes feature Luther butting heads with his father Hans. Hans expected Luther to become a "great man" within the temporal system, a lawyer or politician perhaps. Given subsequent events, he may have been right. Luther assumes its most roundly autobiographical element when the protagonist unleashes a cri de coeur against his father's presumed neglect:

"I loved you the best. It was always you I wanted. I wanted your love more than anyone's, and if anyone was to hold me I wanted it to be you. Funnily enough, my mother disappointed me the most, and I loved her less, much less. She made a gap which no else could have filled, but all she could do was make it bigger, bigger and more unbearable."

This becomes especially pointed if one's read Osborne's A Better Class of Person, or Heilpern's biography. The death of Osborne's father cast a long shadow over his life, while he expressed a venomous contempt towards his low-born mother. Osborne boldly invests his personal demons in an historical figure, remaining deeply felt as anything in Look Back in Anger or Inadmissible Evidence.

And throughout, it's Luther's dilemma that drives the story. He becomes a rebel not of choice or even passivity - it's his nature that drives him to doubt Rome's strictures. Like Redl in A Patriot for Me, he does everything he can to suppress his nonconformist streak, whether cleaning monastery privies or protesting that "I want to be still, in peace, and alone." But the Church won't brook even token criticism, forcing Luther into open defiance. Unlike Redl, Luther's dilemma has a happier personal outcome, but with more far-reaching (and destructive) consequences.

Luther's staging explicitly recalls Brecht's Galileo, the template for most similar dramas. Hence the episodic plot, the elaborate staging (Luther's appearance before the Diet backgrounded by a political cartoon!),  characters breaking fourth wall and the emphasis on tableaux over narrative. But Osborne's no Marxist, downplaying Luther's individual achievements for their effect. Nor is he Robert Bolt, whose Sir Thomas More is deliberately established (via the fourth-wall breaking Common Man) as a Great Man above us mere mortals. Martin Luther remains the play's focus - a living, thinking, suffering human being, who shapes history yet remains identifiable.

Plays for England: The Blood of the Bambergs and Under Plain Cover (1963)

Osborne returned to the Slickey vein with two short plays attacking English society. With weightier works to consume, we'll dispense succinctly with these.

Anyone nauseated by 2011's Royal Wedding might appreciate The Blood of the Bambergs. A loose reworking of The Prisoner of Zenda, it details the marriage of Bamberg's Princess Melanie to Prince Willy, heir to a foreign throne. But Willy dies driving to the wedding, leaving officials in a bind. The solution: swap Willy with Russell, an uncouth Australian who bares a striking resemblance to Willy. Russell's reluctant at first, until exposed to the job's perks - especially the gorgeous Princess.

Bambergs provides rather sophomoric satire of the hysteria surrounding royal pageantry. It's central conceit isn't bad, with all corners of society (from the press to the Socialist Prime Minister) conniving in the coverup. And it must be said that Russell provides some laughs, especially when he admits changing mind due to "the long, thrusting, sexual stimulus of the Crown." But in short form, it's too superficial to make much impact. The play's nothing more than an amusing trifle.

But that makes it superior to Under Plain Cover, little more than a fleeting skirmish against good taste. Osborne shows a reporter investigating a seemingly normal couple, Tim and Jenny, who turn out to be brother and sister. There's nothing more to it, and this V.C. Andrews twist seems an improbable vehicle for social satire. Osborne probes again the press's intrusion into private lives and misguided public morality, but elicits few laughs or shock, only mild surprise. For Osborne completists only.

Inadmissible Evidence (1964)

Douglas Hodge as Bill Maitland in Donmar Warehouse's 2011 revival. (Source)

"I succeeded in inflicting, quite certainly inflicting, more pain than pleasure. I am not equal to any of it."

Osborne returned to vitriolic introspection with Inadmissible Evidence. Heilpern calls it "a dreamplay of grubby futility and self-loathing in the losing battle against irredeemable mediocrity." Long, rambling and bursting with indigestible bile, it makes Look Back in Anger look like Coward's Private Lives. Yet for all its off-kilter structuring, it's more gut-wrenchingly effective than that earlier play.

Bill Maitland experiences a crippling midlife crisis. A mildly successful barrister, he's grown stale in cases of fraud and divorce, which considers a waste of talent. His flagrant womanizing jeopardizes his marriage, his domineering personality isolates friends and colleagues. Indeed, everyone seems eager to leave Maitland: favored secretary Shirley goes on maternity leave, his assistants entertain job offers, his wife Elizabeth finally prepares to leave him. Haunted by delusions and very real abandonment, Maintland's driven over the edge.

From page one, Evidence bleeds existential rot. Consider Maitland's monologue to the Judge in the opening dream sequence, admitting his sins:

"This can't hide the fact from me, and never has done, that I am by nature indecisive...I am almost 40 years old, and I know I have never made a decision which I didn't either regret, or suspect was just plain commonplace or shifty or scamped and indulgent or mildly stupid or undistinguished... I have depended almost entirely on other people's efforts. Anything else would have been impossible for me, and I always knew in my own heart that only that it was that kept me alive and functioning at all..."

This extends beyond self-deprecation to psychosis. It's a cry for a help from someone who's seen his ambition and dreams turn to ash, who's destroyed everything good in his life. He'd be a monster if he weren't so cripplingly self-aware. Even the few moments of hope - assistant Hudson, considering Bill's offer of a partnership; wife Liz trying, against all odds, to patch things up - drive Maitland further into despair. He makes George Dillon and Jimmy Porter look George Bailey.

"There were girls like Maureen, and even with you there were difficulties but not revolting or upsetting. At least, not much, I don't think so. You weren't reluctant, you should be happy, you didn't cling on to it like it was the crown jewels. You were generous, loving, bright, you should have been able to cope. I should have been able to cope."

Osborne vomits his neuroses upon the page. As in Epitaph of George Dillon, the middle-aged fear of accomplishing nothing dominates the story. How palpable are such feelings emanating from a successful writer! Maitland's neuroses about disappointing women drives him to despair - this from a man with five wives, whose prickly personality alienated even close friends. Osborne feared isolation most of all: two years after Evidence, triggered by the loss of loved ones, he experienced a comparable nervous breakdown (of which more later). It's ugly to watch or read, but darkly compelling.

Osborne borrows from Strindberg not only his vulgar nihilism but an air of despairing unreality. Highlighting his paranoid state, Maitland drifts between reality and fantasy. He starts the play asleep, dreaming of prosecution by a universal Judge who finds him lacking. In Act II carries on phone conversations, ostensibly with his various lovers - though Osborne's directions emphasize "a feeling of doubt as to whether there is anyone to speak to at all." This disconnect reaches its extreme form when Bill, meeting with his clients, talks past them, as if the divorcees describe his life. It's The Ghost Sonata reshaped into a character study

Inadmissible Evidence is stifling in a way that neither vulgar innuendo ("You could stick a bus ticket in there!") nor Maitland's ludicrous clientele (selfish hausfrau Mrs. A, shamed homosexual Marples) can alleviate. Few plays match it for depressive, soul-consuming nastiness. The converse of individualism is loneliness - uniqueness can be a blessing or a curse. For Bill Maitland, it's hell on Earth.

A Patriot for Me (1965)

Mark Crook plays Redl in The Actor's Company's 2008 production. (Source)

"We all play parts, are doing so now, will continue to do so...Perspiring gaiety and pointlessness."

Osborne finished destroying traditional theater with A Patriot for Me. This play about Alfred Redl, notorious Austrian traitor, so infuriated the Lord Chamberlain that he refused to license its performance. The Royal Court rebranded itself a private club, hence beyond the government's reach - an act of defiance which destroyed the Lord Chamberlain's censorship power. Critics were divided, while the show (starring Maximilian Schell and Jill Bennett) did lukewarm box office. A 1983 revival with Alan Bates proved more successful.

A Patriot for Me is Groggy's favorite Osborne play. Far more than Luther, it uses the trappings of the historical pageant (familiar names, faraway settings, fancy costumes) to tell a deeply personal story. It's explores the cost of conformity, mixing baroque satire with personal tragedy.

Alfred Redl is a promising officer in the Austrian Army circa 1900. By all outward appearances he's a model soldier: punctilious, disciplined, class conscious, loyal. But Redl hides damaging secrets: his Jewish ancestry, profligate spending - and homosexuality. While Colonel in charge of Austria's military intelligence, he moonlights in Vienna's gay society and gains the attention of Russian spies. Redl's blackmailed into sending Russia military secrets, disastrously confronting the contradictions between his public life and private desires.

A Patriot for Me came after plays like A Taste of Honey and films like Victim punctured holes in censorship. Gay rights became a public issue in England following Lord Montagu and John Gielgud's arrests for sodomy; 1967's Sexual Offences Act effectively demolished existing legal strictures. Yet homosexuality remained identified with crime and subversion, heightened by exposure of the Cambridge Five: queers selling out the Empire. Osborne's provocative Patriot provided the final nail in the Lord Chamberlain's coffin. Yet we must tread warily before proclaiming Osborne a cultural hero.

Like many of his generation, Osborne campaigned for nuclear disarmament, the issue which provoked his "Damn You England" letter. He was arrested during CND's 9/17/61 protest in Trafalgar Square, alongside Robert Bolt, Vanessa Redgrave and others. But Doris Lessing opined "he didn't understand politics at all... he was just a natural rebel." He gradually drifted from anti-establishment posturing to Little England conservatism. More relevant here: Osborne peppered friends Tony Richardson and George Devine with homophobic slurs, while denouncing sodomy laws as "pointless, stupid and vindictive." A cynic wonders whether Osborne held genuine convictions or merely enjoyed playing the contrarian.

Today, Patriot's gay content seems rather tame. In its day however, the outre decadence and language led some crass critics to question if Osborne drew from personal experience. ("You just wonder... where he acquired all this information," James Fenton insinuated.) Consider Redl's sensual snarl to the Countess marrying his past lover, which surely raised the Lord Chamberlain's hackles as much as the infamous drag ball:

"I'll tell you this. You'll never know that body like I know it. The lines beneath his eyes... And the scar behind his ear, and the hairs in his nostrils, which has the most, what color are they in the light? The mole on where?.... You'll never know like I know, you can't... His thick waist, and how long are his thighs, compared to his calves, you've not looked at him, you never will."

Again, one shouldn't focus excessively on Redl's proclivities. Patriot's point isn't championing gay rights but lauding the individual against conformity, Osborne's hobby horse. The Austro-Hungarian Empire exemplifies this: in a polyglot state with dozens of nationalities, a lower peg like the Galician Redl is expected to not only display extraordinary merit, but act with appropriate deference to his Austrian betters. This drives the play less than Istvan Szabo's Colonel Redl, but Redl's ethnicity marks him as an outsider as surely as his sexuality.

Hence the second act drag ball, a mirror society embracing the misfits cast off by bourgeois society. Some characters even joke about forming a "queer empire" to oppose Austria's heterosexual conformity. As The Baron, the formidable transvestite nobleman, observes:

"This is the celebration of the individual against the rest, the uses and the thems, the free and the constricted, the gay and the dreary, the lonely and the mob."

Yet Redl's out of place even here. Tellingly, he arrives at the ball in full uniform, drawing disapproval from his cross-dressing compatriots: "I'm surprised they let you in," the Baron scolds. Unlike others, Redl's uncomfortable with his desires even when he gives in. He knows an improper word, indiscreet liaison or untoward glance could destroy his life's work.

Patriot teaches us the nonconformist never wins. Act I sees Redl seconding a young officer, Siczynski, in a duel where the latter's mortally wounded. The doomed man represents Redl's Id: unabashedly Jewish, openly gay and self-confident. His death imparts a cruel lesson to Redl: quoting biographer Robert Asprey, he learns to "[impart] humility, lofty ambition, duty, loyalty and honor" in everything. His utter obsequiousness marks him for advancement as a "a damned fine officer." No room for gratification or honesty. When confronted by superior officers at a society ball, Redl protests his adherence to class strictures:

"I am proud to be despised by some men, no perhaps most men. Others are to be tolerated and ignored. And if they do the same for me, I am gratified, or at least relieved."

And Osborne repeatedly shows honesty being punished. Act I ends with soldiers finding Redl in bed with another man, then savagely beating him. After giving into his desires, Redl's almost immediately blackmailed by Russian spymasters. (These scenes recall Terence Rattigan's Ross, where Turkish officials plot to expose T.E. Lawrence's latent tendencies.) Redl less resents being blackmailed into treachery than his inability to fit in anywhere. It's a palpable portrait of individualism crushed by social pressure.

Against such richly textured drama, Patriot's flaws are minor. One awkward thread has a Freudian psychologist lecturing on homosexuality, an aside which serves little purpose. The Countess, a foxy villainess working for the Russians, shows again that Osborne's women are either passive simps or malicious whores. And the build-up to Redl's suicide feels perfunctory and rushed. I happily acknowledge these flaws while proclaiming A Patriot for Me John Osborne's greatest achievement.

* * *

For anyone who's read this far, I'm keen on hearing your opinion. Do you find these articles entertaining and informative? Or merely long-winded and boring? Let me know in comment or email!

The Plays of John Osborne, Part I: Angry Young Man

John Osborne (source)

Lately, Groggy's strayed from movie reviews into more diffuse cultural analyses. As last fall's looks at Robert Bolt and Terence Rattigan germinated from Lawrence of Arabia, so our present article stems from May's analysis of The Charge of the Light Brigade. In upcoming posts, we'll examine playwright John Osborne (1929-1994), the enfant terrible who decisively reshaped English theater.

Osborne's a challenging writer. Volume is one reason: Osborne authored 19 stage plays, excluding ephemeral lost works like The Great Bear, unproduced scripts like Jack and Jill and classical adaptations (including A Place Calling Itself Rome, a modern-dress update of Shakespeare's Coriolanus). Compared to Bolt, who penned just eight extant plays, Osborne requires considerable legwork and planning.

Osborne contrasts with Bolt and Rattigan, too, in that his work was revolutionary. When tasteful comedies and staid dramas dominated the English stage, Look Back in Anger (1956) was a revelation both in its youth focus and visceral rage. The Entertainer (1957) proved equally subversive, casting Laurence Olivier as a stand-in for post-imperial ennui. A Patriot for Me's (1965) homosexual content destroyed the Lord Chamberlain's censorship power. George Devine labeled Osborne's work "the bomb that [blew] a hole in the old theater and leave a nice-sized gap, too big to be patched up."

Finally, it's not easy to digest the plays themselves. Even Osborne's strongest works are deeply flawed, from his idiosyncratic style to near-nihilistic pessimism. His raw emotion and self-evisceration often overwhelm his literary gifts: one sympathizes with the critic who called Anger "a self-pitying snivel." Unpleasant too is Osborne's misogyny, rivaling August Strindberg in his unbridled hatred of women. Biographies of Osborne bear this out, from his contempt towards his mother to his disastrous marriages to Penelope Gilliatt and Jill Bennett.

Yet great art is often frustrating, frequently repulsive and always challenging. Osborne's plays are hard to "like" in the sense of enjoying, say, Shakespeare or Noel Coward. There's little catharsis in watching Jimmy Porter or Bill Maitland tear themselves apart. But underneath the nastiness lies a penetrating, often-perceptive look at personal dissatisfaction and cultural malaise. We can't ignore Osborne for being unpleasant.

Without further adieu, let's plunge into Osborne's plays. I'll sketch in biographical details where appropriate, but this will remain principally a literary analysis.

The Devil Inside Him (1950)

Iwan Rheom in Cardiff's New Theatre production, 2010. (source)

"When others are at peace with God and asleep, you are fighting at the crumbling edges of the Earth."

Popular repute labels Osborne an overnight success with Look Back in Anger. Yet Anger was actually his fifth play. One, The Great Bear, remains lost to posterity; from available descriptions it sounds like an embryonic Anger. Another, Epitaph for George Dillon, wasn't produced until after Anger's success. Two others, The Devil Inside Him and Personal Enemy, were also believed lost until 2008, when the University of Sheffield's Theatre Archive Project uncovered their manuscripts among the Lord Chamberlain's Archive.

Osborne wrote The Devil Inside Him (1950) as a 21 year old struggling actor, with the help of theater director Stella Linden. Predictably, it's a formative work, identifiably Osborne for all its crude craftsmanship. Its main asset is remarkably powerful language, which commands attention even when the story doesn't hang together.

Huw is a working class Welshman scorned as an outsider. He befriends Dilys, the pregnant servant of the Prossers, a respectable couple who loathe him. Huw's only real friend is Burn, a medical student. Hounded by the Prossers and religious zealot Gruffyud, Huw confides his thoughts in a diary. Glancing through the book, Dilys discovers the truth: that Huw isn't merely discontent but a perverted maniac.

On one level at least, The Devil Inside Him impresses. Osborne produces reams of cutting dialogue, scarcely a dull or cloying phrase among them. If this makes his characters unreasonably articulate, it at least provides literary appeal. Gruffuyd's rants about atheist Huw facing a "black, terrible nothing," Mrs. Prosser denouncing her husband's complacent sexism ("I am your wife, but I am still myself") and especially Huw's climactic monologue all provide delicious phrasing. The play's worth reading if only for Osborne's denunciation of bourgeois morality:

"You have all been the devil inside me. Ever since I was a little boy... You make all the dirtiness and the meanness, you made ugliness out of the lovely things. You told me that the things I knew were inside me were wrong... You want the devil. The bad things."

Conversely though, this speech highlights Devil's puerility. The characters are too broadly drawn, even Huw; Prosser and Gruffuyd, in particular, say nothing that doesn't mark them as pious villains. However eloquent the language, the dramatic structure doesn't work. True, the murder scene is a shock, but the only payoff is raving about society's blame for Huw's psychoses. If Osborne's prose evinces youthful passion, the denial of personal responsibility smacks of callowness. Even as allegory, The Devil Inside Me is a shaky construction.

Personal Enemy (1953)

Karen Lewis and Peter Clapp in a 2009 off-Broadway revival. (source)

"I demand the right to be just as wrong as I want... The biggest minority of all is me!"

Osborne next teamed with Anthony Creighton on Personal Enemy (1953). It's an explicit "issue" play, examining America's Cold War fear of deviancy political or sexual, more directly than domestic works like The Crucible. The play barely saw release, with the Lord Chamberlain protesting its implications of homosexuality. Again Osborne's authorial voice is firmly established, though the drama frequently sags.

The Constants are a middle class American couple. Their son Don flirted with left-wing politics but became a war hero in Korea; he's been captured, and soon to be repatriated by the Chinese government. But Don refuses to return home, shocking everyone and drawing the attention of government agents. Mrs. Constant takes out her rage on Ward Perry, a "subversive" librarian who might be gay - especially after her second son Art follows Don's lead.

Stylistically at least, Personal Enemy is far inferior to The Devil Inside. There's plenty of articulate speechmaking, especially in the final act as characters confront issues directly. But the oft-ludicrous dialogue reads suspiciously like Osborne using bad Western movies as a template for American speech. When Mrs. Constant announces she'll "rustle up some cookies" it's hard not to cringe.

That said, Enemy fits snugly within Osborne's oeuvre. It reads as a dry run for Luther and A Patriot for Me, showing individuals rebelling against sociopolitical forces. Indeed, Don anticipates Patriot's Redl, subsuming "deviant" behavior to military service. Osborne explicitly conflates McCarthyist witch hunts with England's 1954 prosecution of Lord Montagu for sodomy. To Osborne they're one and the same, punishing an individual for being different. Reiterating Devil's main argument, Osborne suggests that society's bullying conformity pushes people like Don and Art to deviancy.

Enemy also follows Devil in its tepid plotting. John Heilpern suggests Creighton was primarily responsible for the story, with Osborne contributing dialogue and characterizations. Whatever the case, Enemy neuters its incipient. The most important events occur offstage; only the brief appearance of a HUAC investigator provides a tangible threat. Beleaguered Mrs. Constant provides the only well-rounded characterization; she's easily the strongest woman in Osborne's work. Others are flat, with Constant's children screeching ciphers and Weber little more than a plot catalyst. Osborne still hasn't found his muse.

Epitaph for George Dillon (1955)

Joseph Fiennes as George Dillon in Comedy Theatre's 2005 revival. (source)

"Youthful promise doesn't look too well with receding hair."

Osborne and Creighton collaborated again on Epitaph for George Dillon. Though written in 1955, the play wasn't produced until 1958, after Anger and The Entertainer proved huge successes. Notices were enthusiastic, with Richard Watts Jr. calling it "Osborne's best play." It's certainly his first fully realized show, injecting personal elements into this tale of a frustrated artist.

36 year old George Dillon is an aspiring actor and playwright whose ambition outraces his talent. His wife Ruth grows tired of George's promises, while George begins an affair with family friend Josie. George tries to sell his latest play while auditioning for roles, but remains unsuccessful. The family falls into debt, driving Ruth further away from George.


Epitaph for George Dillon features the first of Osborne's lacerating self-portraits. Few playwrights are as self-critical as Osborne, his alter egos decidedly unflattering. Besides evincing Osborne's enthusiasm for vegetarianism and atheism, he's also obsessed with an image of success. He boasts of landing acting roles and that he's "polishing off" his seventh play - none of the previous six, of course, being published. Yet George hasn't deluded himself; he offsets boasting with moments of palpable self-doubt, as when he denounces acting as "hideously trivial and self-important."

By making George a writer, Epitaph allows Osborne to directly project his anxieties on stage. Just by writing four plays at age 26 Osborne achieved a great deal, yet this play evinces a man still in a hurry, unsatisfied by his output. One scene features George pitching a manuscript to Barney, a gregarious impresario who prods George to make his work as commercial as possible:

"Dialogue's not bad, but these great long speeches - that's a mistake. People want action, excitement. I know - you think you're Bernard Shaw. But where's he today? Eh? People won't listen to him."

Here we get a humorous look at not only the verities of the entertainment market, but the letdowns faced by budding "geniuses." One of adulthood's cruel lessons: some dreams aren't attainable, no matter how talented you are or how hard you try. Even then, success doesn't guarantee contentment. This motif recurs throughout Osborne's work: Anger, Inadmissible Evidence, Hotel in Amsterdam, Watch It Come Down.

This much Epitaph achieves; its weaknesses lie elsewhere. Like Anger, the play's so dominated by its protagonist that other characters scarcely have room to breathe. Percy and Mrs. E and Josie are so superficial they make no impression. Ruth gets wonderfully barbed dialogue, but even she functions mainly as a sounding board for George's anxieties. Again, the plotting feels awkward: there's an overlong opening and a limp finale, with Act II providing the meatiest drama.

It's true, as Ronald Hayman notes, that Osborne's preoccupations and awkward style "quite literally pull the play apart." But Epitaph's also a skillful character study presaging better work to come.

Look Back in Anger (1956)

Anger's original cast: Kenneth Haigh, Alan Bates and Mary Ure. (source)

"I hope you won't make the mistake of thinking for one moment that I am a gentleman.” 

When Tony Richardson staged Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court Theatre, reviews were mixed. Some saw a masterpiece: Kenneth Tyann thought Anger "the best young play of its decade." It also engendered fierce critics like Philip Hope-Wallace, who called it "frenzied preaching in an empty conventicle." Terence Rattigan remarked that if Anger was successful, it meant "I know nothing about plays"; producer George Devine retorted "you know everything about plays, but you don't know a fucking thing about Look Back in Anger." Posterity proved Devine right.

57 years removed, one handles Anger with kid gloves. It's claustrophobic, nasty and cluttered, and not always to its benefit. Its sloppiness keeps it far removed from Osborne's best work. But, influence aside, Anger gained its reputation for a reason. Unpolished and unpleasant though it may be, it is John Osborne.

Jimmy Porter is a frustrated 20-something, living in a cramped flat with wife Alison and friend Cliff. Jimmy and Alison constantly fight, sometimes playfully, sometimes more serious. Alison's friend Helena doesn't understand why Alison's such a doormat for her abusive husband. Nonetheless, Helena grows attracted to Jimmy, just as Alison discovers she's pregnant. Tragedy results and the distance between them grows insurmountable.

As Osborne's first solo work, Anger lacks the refinement expected from a fifth play. Its plot development seems forced, when it happens at all: after Epitaph mocking plays that get women "in a family way," what should we make of Alison's plight? Mainly the play's so suffocating in its one-room nastiness that watching or reading it feels like an exercise in self-flagellation. Again we're left with Osborne's pointed verbiage and characterization to salvage the drama.

Anger succeeds through Jimmy Porter, one of British theater's definitive characters. Jimmy functions as another author avatar, this time more personal than professional. Jimmy losing his father at an early age is one obvious echo: at age 10, Osborne lost his father to tuberculosis. In A Better Class of Person, Osborne juxtaposes dialogue from Anger with his first wife Pamela Lane, saying: "Perhaps I interpreted what might have been bland complacency for the complaisance of a generous and loving heart." Jimmy and Alison's affection manifests itself in silly pet names ("squirrel and bear"), and Jimmy usually recognizes when he goes too far. After burning Alison with an iron, Jimmy repents with this heartfelt speech:

"There's hardly a moment when I'm not watching and wanting you. I've got to hit out somehow. Nearly four years of being in the same room with you, night and day, and I still can't stop my sweat breaking out when I see you doing - something as ordinary as leaning over an ironing board... Trouble is you get used to people. Even their trivialities become indispensable to you.  Indispensable and a little mysterious."

Though soon after, Jimmy crosses the line with this prophetic peroration:

"Oh my dear wife, you've got so much to learn. I only hope you learn it one day. If only something - something would happen to you, and wake you out of your beauty sleep. If you could have a child, and it would die.... I wonder if you might even become a recognizable human being yourself. But I doubt it."

More often, Jimmy's simply an articulate hooligan - the archetypical "angry young man," standing in for a generation of disaffected young Britons. He works as a candy grocer, taking out frustrations on friends and family. Unlike similar heroes in Kingsley Amis and Harold Pinter, he's not driven by class or ideological resentment; his anti-establishment pose is general, nihilistic bitterness. Jimmy's unfocused passion doesn't amount to anything constructive, letting him flounder in economic destitute and broken dreams. As Alison tells her father, a retired Army Colonel:

"You're hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it."

Hayman writes that Osborne's plays are one-man shows, contrasting a formidable protagonist with weak support. Anger epitomizes this, with Jimmy's nastiness smothering everyone else. Cliff's too anemic drawn to be a true foil, trading silly comedy routines but no substantive talk. I won't harp unnecessarily on the misogynist element in these reviews, but it's hard to avoid with Anger. Alison's a pathetic loser without motivation; Helena's pretensions as a strong woman melt when she encounters feral, sexy Jimmy. Even when Jimmy's not onstage, other characters discuss him exclusively.

One regards Look Back in Anger with wary respect. It's undeniably powerful, but too flawed to be a masterpiece.

The Entertainer (1957)

Laurence Olivier as Archie Rice. He'd reprise the role in a 1960 film adaptation. (source)

"Let me know where you're working tomorrow night - and I'll come and see you!"

Osborne rejoined Tony Richardson for The Entertainer (1957), whose success nearly eclipsed Anger. This thanks largely to Laurence Olivier; the Shakespearean idol sent up a career of patriotic roles playing Archie Rice, a seedy comedian embodying England's postwar decline. The best of Osborne's early plays, Entertainer recasts his preoccupations within a broader context.

Musical hall entertainer Archie Rice ekes out a living on a rather pathetic. He lives with father Billy, a much-beloved vaudevillian, his wife Phoebe and daughter Jean. Archie claims to carry on Billy's tradition, when he's really a seedy hack. Jean detests Archie; Phoebe seems ready to leave him. Further tension arises with the arrival of Frankie, an aspiring musician, and the death of Archie's son Mick, serving in the British Army during the Suez Crisis.

The Entertainer shows a more comfortable Osborne, eager to experiment with dramatic form. Jimmy and Cliff's silly routines morph into Archie's music hall act, seamlessly contrasted with the Rices' fraught home life. Archie mixes bawdy songs and hackneyed puns, juxtaposing sex and patriotism (a topless Britannia forms the backdrop to one scene). Later plays stretched form further: the musical World of Paul Slickey, the Brecht-inflected Luther and Inadmissible Evidence, the absurdist A Sense of Detachment.

The Entertainer uses this dissonance to brilliant effect. "Thank God I'm normal!" goes one of Archie's songs, as he inveighs against the welfare state and National Service. Off-stage he's a philandering busybody, who takes great pride in 20 years avoiding income tax. Archie represents England's complacent postwar ruling class, outward patriotism and normalcy obscuring cynical decadence. His self-satisfaction earns him the contempt of both his old-fashioned father and youthful characters. One imagines Archie seconding Harold Macmillan's oblivious comment that "most of our people never had it so good."

The inter-generational tension provides Entertainer's meat. Billy Rice, Archie's not-so-beloved father, boasts a formidable reputation his son exploits. Yet he's a doddering old man raging against Polish laborers and singing Christian hymns, embarrassing everyone. The young generation, related to rebellious daughter Jean and Frankie, an aspiring vaudevillian himself, see Archie as a sham, an example to be avoided - even when Archie tries to take Frankie under his wing. Even Archie sees the hollowness of being caught between them:

"You see this face... this face can split open with warmth and humanity. It can sing, and tell the worst stories in the world to a great mob of dead, drab erks and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because - look at my eyes. I'm dead behind these eyes. I'm dead, just like the whole inert, shoddy lot out there. It doesn't matter because I don't feel a thing, and neither do they. We're just as dead as each other."

Osborne's play also incorporates 1956's Suez Crisis to brilliant effect. Anthony Eden's standoff with Egypt's Abdel Nasser over the Suez Canal culminated in an Anglo-French-Israeli conspiracy to "knock Nasser of his perch." Its failure thanks to international opprobrium proved deeply traumatizing for a nation weakened by World War II, decolonization and austerity economics, yet still imagining itself a superpower. Osborne makes Mick a victim of the conflict. Like Don in Personal Enemies, he becomes more important as a symbol than a person.

Entertainer's greatest achievement, though, is its structuring. Osborne's interplay between plot and musical hall ditties works wonderfully, and the supporting cast finally makes a strong impression. If it lacks the cutting dialogue of earlier works, it's far more dramatically felicitous. I second Kenneth Tynan in applauding "the big and brilliant notion of putting the whole of contemporary England onto one... stage."

* * *

Expect the next Osborne piece sometime this week. We'll move from The World of Paul Slickey through A Patriot for Me, covering the most experimental (and, in my view, successful) phase of Osborne's career. Movie reviews in the meantime!

A Note on Sources:

For background info on Osborne's life and plays, I draw primarily on John Heilpern's 2006 biography John Osborne: A Patriot for Us. For anyone seriously interested in Osborne, or modern theater generally, it's an essential work. I've also consulted Osborne's two autobiographical volumes, A Better Class of Person (1981) and Almost a Gentleman (1994); Tony Richardson's memoir The Long Distance Runner (1993); and Ronald Hayman's John Osborne (1972). Online sources will be linked where appropriate.

A Tragedy of Ridiculous Men: Historical Commentary on Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)

When I first saw Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) I found it curious and frustrating. Its mixture of social satire and antiwar polemic didn't sit well with me, though I admired things about it: the meticulous period detail, Trevor Howard's performance, John Addison's music, and of course Richard Williams' animation. It's steadily grown on me, however: I've revisited the film three times and enjoy it more with each viewing. While certainly flawed, its virtues grow more apparent over time.

As I'm highly suggestible, Charge provided a springboard into researching the Crimean War. I first read Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Reason Why (1953), the film's primary source, which led to other popular histories and then first-hand accounts. As a collage of gallantry, imperial rivalry and military incompetence the Crimea rivals the First World War, in drama if not scope. Certainly its effects were more far-reaching than generally recognized: not only in medical and military reforms but the unification of Italy, Prussia eclipsing Austria as Central Europe's power broker and increased Turkish nationalism. Even as my appreciation of Richardson's film grew, research presented another question: how accurate is The Charge of the Light Brigade?

This article examines The Charge of the Light Brigade through an historical and thematic lens. I will lean on The Reason Why except where the film deviates from it. As with my Lawrence of Arabia pieces, I'll balance historical critique with understanding the needs for dramatic compression. Accuracy isn't an end of itself, but it's worth examining why filmmakers alter history for dramatic purposes. Especially a movie like Charge that prides itself on supposed authenticity.

The Filmmaker, the Playwright and the Angry Young Man: Tony Richardson, Charles Wood and John Osborne

Tony Richardson (left) and John Osborne.

A lifelong outsider, Tony Richardson fought his way up the entertainment ladder through stage, TV and finally film. He won several Oscars for Tom Jones (1963), but made his mark with subversive "kitchen sink" dramas: Look Back in Anger (1958), A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1962). Along with Anger playwright John Osborne, Richardson founded Woodfall Studios in 1958. A signatory of Lindsay Anderson's Free Cinema manifesto, Richardson rejected formalization for a more true-life style: "As filmmakers we believe that no film can be too personal... Perfection is not an aim" (Richardson 95).

Richardson thought The Reason Why "a brilliant piece of historical writing" (231) and spent years developing the project. Along with Osborne, Richardson began researching Charge in the mid-'60s, scouting locations in Turkey and negotiating with Turkish officials and English diplomats. While in preproduction, Richardson discovered that actor Laurence Harvey owned the rights to Woodham-Smith's book, forcing Woodfall to tread carefully.

To avoid legal complications, Richardson encouraged Osborne to avoid Woodham-Smith, drawing on Alexander Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea (1863-1887) instead. However, Harvey's company sued Woodfall on the grounds that Osborne disregarded these instructions; Richardson admits the writer "had helped himself liberally to stylistic phrases and descriptions in The Reason Why" (232). Osborne subsequently fell out with Richardson, attacking the director's "use and misuse [of] the talents of others... with mocking vampire contempt" (Heilpern 347). Connelly informs us that Richardson mostly discarded Osborne's script.

Richardson now turned to Charles Wood. Wood wrote several several plays, including Cockade, H. and Prisoner and Escort, which drew on his military background (serving, appropriately, in Lord Lucan's 17th/21st Lancers) to satirize British society. He collaborated with Richard Lester on Swinging Sixties touchstones Help! and The Knack and How to Get It (both 1965), along with the antiwar satire How I Won the War (1967). After Woodfall settled with Harvey, Wood openly utilized The Reason Why; Woodham-Smith receives a credit in the film. Wood says his script shows "everything I felt about the British Empire, the British army, England under Queen Victoria and the first of the modern wars" (Connelly 25).

One couldn't assemble a better team for a caustic satire. The son of a Jewish chemist, Richardson resented "that virus of the British - class" (37) for making his parents "tool, skimp, sacrifice so that their son would have the opportunities they never had" (45) and delaying his entry into theater and film. Working class Osborne was the original "Angry Young Man," his plays showcasing the disillusionment of postwar Britons, while Wood ridiculed English society through subversive comedy. It's hardly surprising that they produced a movie that "charges us to question authority" (Cahir & Cahir 165).

Sweating the Small Stuff

Bingham's Dandies cut tight to a shadow.

It's obvious that Richardson, Osborne and Wood took great pains researching their subject. Over the movie's four year gestation, Richardson enlisted experts Andrew and John Mollo to research the Crimean era. They compiled their research into a book, Uniforms and Equipment of the Light Brigade (1968). Cinematographer David Watkin based his aesthetics on Scottish painter David Octavius Hill (Richardson 238); Vanessa Redgrave noted that women only wore period-appropriate makeup (158). For a director who claimed that "perfection is not an aim," he thoroughly replicated 1850s style and appearance.

Most evident are the costumes. Richardson effusively praised both the Mollos and production designer Lila de Nobili, a veteran of Luchino Visconti's epics, for their meticulous attention to detail. Though they clashed with Richardson over aesthetic decisions, the result is quite impressive. Cardigan's 11th Hussars became notorious for what The Times called "the brevity of their [gold-laced] jackets... the incredible tightness of their cherry-colored pants" (Woodham-Smith 62). However, Richardson inaccurately attired the entire Light Brigade in these britches. Historically the 15th and 17th Lancers sported dark blue trousers; only the Heavy Brigade appears correctly attired in a brief appearance.

Then there's the dialogue. Wood stressed the importance of language: "Once you find a language for the characters to speak... the rest seems to follow"; he even remained on-set helping actors master the dialect (Connelly 39-40). At one point, Cardigan and Lucan exchange arcane insults: Cardigan calls Lucan a stew stick and a poltroon (coward); Lucan replies that Cardigan is a bum roll (ladies' underwear). Wood showcases the cavalry's laughably affected lisps, with Captains Duberly and Featherstonehaugh, along with Riding Master Mogg, pronouncing r's as w's ("Gwey, sneaky coluh!") like Elmer Fudd (Woodham-Smith 140). Astonishingly this was a point of pride, distinguishing cavalry from the phonetically proper infantry.

Wood also incorporates dialogue from Woodham-Smith's account. Hence Fanny Duberly's comments on the 11th's uniforms paraphrasing The Times extract above; Cardigan saying that Lucan wasn't "fit to command an escort," though Lucan said it about Cardigan (Woodham-Smith 57); Lord Raglan wanting to keep his cavalry "in a bandbox" (176); and Cardigan muttering "here goes the last of the Brudenells" right before the Charge (237). Notably, the fateful exchange between Nolan, Cardigan and Lucan draws from Woodham-Smith's account almost verbatim (233-237).

Richard Williams: Rendering an Era

Victorian self-image.

Richard Williams' animated sequences provide Charge its most unique aspect. Williams, creator of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Thief and the Cobbler and The Pink Panther's title sequence, spent nearly two years preparing his animation with a small crew and Richardson's close supervision. Williams' initial brief was to illustrate scenes too expensive for the filmmakers (namely the Army's sea voyage to Russia); however, they quickly grew integral to the film. They're a key facet of Charge, providing historical context while highlighting the story's satire.

Punch cartoon ca. 1854. Source

Williams' engravings pointedly undercut and satirize High Victorian jingoism. Images of England's industrial might contrast with children slaving in coal mines; a British lion dons a bobby's cap as war erupts between Russia and Turkey; Victoria lifts up her skirt to unleash the Royal Navy. Williams grows most extreme celebrating the fall of Sevastopol: a lion, French cockerel and Turkey dance on a tightrope; Victoria and Albert dance an angelic ballet while scarfing on St. Basil's Cathedral; a lion with bayonet teeth munches the Tsar's head. Then a cannon shot brings reality crashing back.

Williams draws heavily on contemporary Victorian art. The most obvious influence is Punch magazine, whose cartoons critiqued English politics and culture. Williams borrows specific images from Punch: the Russian bear menacing a fez-sporting Turkey; a sword-bearing Liberty, accompanied by an English lion, defending "Right Against Wrong." These segments illustrate Britain's sense of superiority as the 19th Century's economic and cultural center, and role as "the world's policeman."

Richard Williams' interpretation.

Mark Connelly notes that several sequences resemble John Tenniel's illustrations for the novels of Charles Dickens (41). This is most evident in the "war fever" segment; grotesque caricatures of politicians and officials as snaggle-toothed demons, gnawing chicken and screaming for "WAR!" This sequence demolishes England's moral pretensions. The defense of "Poor little turkey" is imperial gamesmanship; Britain and France prop up the Ottoman Empire to secure their respective empires from Russian encroachment. (The initiating "churchwarden's quarrel" [Royle 15] in the Holy Land, where Catholic and Orthodox monks clashed over the key to the Church of the Nativity, seems irrelevant.)

Here it's worth mentioning John Addison's score. For live action the music is either romantic (Nolan's soulful clarinet theme), funereal (Nolan and Co. surveying the Alma battlefield) or angry (discordant trumpets over the pre-Balaclava arguments). Over the animations, however, Addison becomes positively bombastic: blaring trumpets, lively woodwinds, snatches of Rule Britannia and La Marseillaise, a chorus proclaiming "The rule of British pride and strength." For the Crimean voyage, Addison even borrows a cue from his score for The Cockleshell Heroes (1955), a much more conventional war movie. His scoring provides another layer of satire.

As we've seen, Richardson, Wood and Williams get most of the details correct. In its look, feel and syntax, Charge rings true. Whether it's more broadly truthful, of course, is another matter.

Class Warfare: Indian Officers Versus the Purchase System

Upper class twits.

Not surprisingly, Charge's major themes concern class differences within Victorian England in general, and the military in particular. Early scenes contrast the ornate lifestyle of British officers with their poor, illiterate recruits, though Richardson abandons this angle later on. Everpresent is the clash between high-bred Lords Cardigan and Lucan and their ostensibly low-born subordinates. The filmmakers direct their opprobrium to the prejudice against officers with Indian service, and the purchase system.

Richardson captures the prejudiced, anti-intellectual attitudes of the British Army. Cardigan sniffs at Nolan as "some damned novelist!" and refers to him and Morris as "Indian devils." Observing a flogging, Mogg tells Nolan that an army founded on ideals and professionalism instead of discipline would be "Hun-Christian!" Lord Raglan sums things up later in a blackly comic speech: "It will be a sad day when England's armies are officered by men who know too well what they're doing. Smacks of murder!"

These sentiments are broadly true. Prejudice against "Indian" officers was pervasive in the British Army, a curious phenomenon given Wellington's service in India. It's undeniably true that aristocrats abused the purchase system: with no prior experience, Cardigan bought his lieutenant colonelcy of the 15th Hussars for £35,000 (Woodham-Smith 35)! These facts certainly suit Richardson's satirical intentions. Even so, it's undeniable Charge greatly simplifies these issues.

Generals in waiting.

Our modern, democratic society loathes the purchase system on principle, the embodiment of privilege overriding merit. Yet according to Woodham-Smith, "the purchase system expressed a principle which is one of the foundations of the British Constitution... No sentiment is more firmly rooted in the English national character than a hatred of militarism" (28). After Napoleon's coup d'etat and Prussia's powerful Junker class, fear of a standing army was hardly ridiculous. It's noteworthy that the system produced fine generals like Clive and Wellington, and in the Crimea James Scarlett and Sir Colin Campbell. Not to mention Nolan, who bought his lieutenant's commission in 1841.

All the same, the system's shortcomings were self-evident. Merit and money didn't often coincide, with many aristocrats seeing peacetime service as a platform for easy prestige. After the Crimean debacle, public outcry spelled purchase's demise. During the late 1860s Lord Cardwell enforced a sweeping series of military reforms, including abolition of the purchase system. Their leading proponent was Sir Garnet Wolseley, a Crimean veteran who opined "almost all our officers...were absolutely unfit for the positions they had secured through family and political interest" (Woodham-Smith 141).

We also can't assume the experience of Indian officers made them fitter for command. Britain's imperial armies occasionally encountered organized, well-armed foes, as in the Anglo-Sikh Wars of the 1840s. More often they were brushfire wars against Pathan brigands and African tribes, a far cry from fighting Russia. Alan Clark's influential World War I history The Donkeys (1962) ridiculed Haig, French and others for thinking experience fighting Boers and Pathans translated to competence fighting against Germany. If we accept Connelly's argument that Charge's filmmakers drew from Clark (18), this seems like Richardson and Wood having their cake and eating it.

Captain Nolan: Ambivalent Hero

Nolan embarks on his toughest mission: converting Vanessa Redgrave to Toryism.

Embodying these themes is Captain Louis Nolan, Charge's protagonist. Biographer David Buttery characterized Nolan as the "Messenger of Death," delivering Lord Raglan's fateful order that initiated the Charge. His exact role in the Charge, especially the circumstances of his death, remains controversial: Mark Adkin even accuses Nolan of deliberately sending Cardigan down the wrong valley! Richardson engages in considerable dramatic license to make him heroic.

Nolan was undoubtedly an extraordinary man. Son of a Scottish diplomat, he was educated abroad, serving in the Austrian cavalry before transferring to India. His books The Training of Cavalry Remount Horses (1852) and Cavalry: Its History and Tactics (1853) became standard works; he also designed a new cavalry saddle. Adkin claims Nolan "invited criticism by many who felt him to be conceited, rash and intolerant," (33), while M.M. Gilchrist argues this accusation came from jealous peers. He nonetheless impressed Quartermaster General Richard Airey; at the outbreak of war he sent Nolan to procure cavalry horses in Syria. He became Airey's aide-de-camp, playing a key role on Raglan's staff, until selected to deliver Raglan's "fourth order" on October 25th.

"You are drinking beer, sir! Porter beer!"

Film Nolan possesses many of the historical figure's traits. He's an expert horseman, even quoting a passage from Cavalry: "Horses are taught not by harshness but gentleness" (Nolan 167). Richardson accurately shows his friendships with journalist William Howard Russell and Captain William Morris of the 17th Lancers; however, his affair with Morris's wife is invention. He's shown being recommended to Raglan by Airey. Certainly his hauteur and contempt for hidebound, conservative army officers rings true, specific circumstances aside.

But Nolan also embodies the various officers who crossed Cardigan over the years. Among them: Augustus Wathen, whose feud with Cardigan led to the latter's dismissal from the 15th Lancers (Woodham-Smith 41-49); John Reynolds, protagonist of the "black bottle" affair depicted in the film (63-66); and Harvey Tuckett, with whom Cardigan fought a duel over a critical public letter (82-85). Nolan never served in the 11th Hussars and barely knew Cardigan; it was Lucan who earned most of his contempt. Additionally, while Richardson/Wood imply Nolan saw action in India this isn't the case; it was true of Captain Morris, who fought in the Anglo-Sikh War (Adkin 31).

It's acceptable for Wood to create a composite character, summing up decades of Cardigan rivalries and the
Army's broader systemic failures. Dramatically, strict accuracy would diffuse the conflict amongst a half-dozen officers with marginal screen time; concentrating on Nolan makes sense. All the same, such license distorts Nolan's character significantly. His brusque, insubordinate attitude at Balaclava is more understandable, even sympathetic, after being subjected to years of abuse by Cardigan.

Richardson and Wood don't elide Nolan's less flattering aspects. He's shown to be more eager for war than the senior officers, calling it "the stuff we've all been waiting for." His affair with Clarissa, wife of Captain Morris, undermines any claims to moral superiority. Nolan is very much an anti-hero, but still Charge's most sympathetic character. He's a smart, skilled, but arrogant man pushed over the edge by his superiors and ultimately sacrificed to their folly.

Rogue's Gallery: Lords Cardigan, Lucan and Raglan

The story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now.

Few would criticize Richardson's treatment of Lord Cardigan. Cardigan's egomania, exacting personality and martinet treatment are well-documented. As outlined above, the black bottle affair, arresting Reynolds for serving moselle in the officer's mess, was only one abuse amongst many. "Difference of opinion, even of the mildest kind, had a frightening effect on him" (Woodham-Smith 22), Cardigan subjecting his officers to strict discipline and humiliation. Even so, Cardigan's troopers reputedly admired him as the "Murat of the British Army" (David 364), a facet ignored by the film.

Richardson makes Cardigan his primary antagonist, the embodiment of aristocratic privilege against the young, reasonable Nolan. He routinely embarrasses his officers, forcing the green Codrington to eat lettuce and calling Mogg a "monkey" - and these are his toadies. Cardigan insults Nolan in the mess and enlists an unwilling Sergeant Major to spy on him. Every Sunday he pays soldiers to salute him on the street, stroking his ego and inflating his public image. While campaigning he plays the role of "gentleman adventurer"; forcing his men to pitch and repitch tents symmetrically, he spends evenings drinking on his private yacht with the porcine Squire De Burgh. Nothing shakes his sense of entitlement: not reprimands by Lord Raglan, not being booed at a theater, not the destruction of his Brigade.

Lord Lucan's portrayal is comparably one-dimensional. He's merely a foil for Cardigan, accentuating Cardigan's nastiness and providing another portrait of aristocratic idiocy. The movie omits Lucan's complicated back story: his forcible evictions of Irish tenants (Woodham-Smith 118-120), which earned him hatred in Ireland and criticism at home (123), and his service with the Russian army during the Russo-Turkish War of 1828 (34-35). But Richardson correctly shows his fractious relationship with Cardigan, stemming from Lucan's unhappy marriage to Cardigan's sister. Lord Raglan was so eager to keep them apart that he detached Cardigan to quasi-independent command. Not only did this exacerbate the feuding brother-in-laws, it opened a rift between Lucan and Raglan (194).

Lord Raglan, fighting the last war.

The filmmakers tread problematic waters with Raglan, the British commander-in-chief. Richardson depicts him as a senile old man still fighting the Napoleonic Wars: he'd lost an arm at Waterloo and spent years as the Duke of Wellington's secretary. He refers to the Russians as "the French" and literally dwells in Wellington's shadow after a statue's parked outside his office. Raglan is a comic figure, babbling to Fanny Duberly about "pretty things" like babies and table linen or awaking, terrified, at French cavalry appearing outside his office. Yet the humor takes on a dark tinge as this absentmindedness contributes to the Charge.

Raglan's performance in the Crimea remains controversial. Woodham-Smith's portrait anticipates the film: Raglan is well-meaning and amiable, but completely out of his depth leading an army: "Without the military trappings... one would never have guessed him to be a soldier" (156). Raglan mistaking the Russians for the French is well-documented, though perhaps not so malign as the film suggests (Woodham-Smith 162; Hibbert 277). Raglan's undeniable mistakes were trying to avoid Cardigan and Lucan's feud rather than resolve it, and his unclear orders to Lucan at Balaclava.

Other historians take a more sympathetic view. Christopher Hibbert admits Raglan's tactical mistakes but emphasizes his courage and generous nature which ensured a smooth relationship with his French and Turkish allies (who, notably, are all but ignored in Charge). Hibbert argues the press and government leaders scapegoated Raglan for higher-level administrative failings: "Members of the Government were determined that they... should not play the part" (228). Modern writers also differ in their assessments (cf. Adkin 240-241; Royle 398-400). Viewers must decide whether the film's Raglan is a fair representation.

The Curious Case of Mrs. Duberly

The Duberlys observe the Charge.

Most egregious, however, is the depiction of Frances "Fanny" Duberly, wife of Paymaster Henry Duberly of the 8th Hussars. Mrs. Duberly accompanied her husband on campaign, charming and browbeating Raglan and Cardigan for a front row seat. Her Journal Kept During the Russian War provides a valuable first-hand account of the conflict, describing how "the supporters of [England's] arms... be Liberty and Death" (Duberly 164). She was both admired and scorned; her books (later including an account of the Indian Mutiny) sold well, yet Queen Victoria forbade Duberly from dedicating her book to the Queen. Duberly was a woman who ventured into danger and spoke her mind, two things antithetical to Victorian values.

No one reading Duberly's journal, or E.E.P. Tisdall's Mrs. Duberly's Campaigns (1963), can avoid being impressed by this intelligent, fiercely determined woman. It's puzzling that Charge portrays her as a fatuous ninny, obsessed with war and sex. From her introduction Fanny ponders bedding Cardigan, drooling over his "beautiful head" and "looking like I want to be ridden by him." Richardson suggests that Duberly's promiscuity stems partially from social advancement, with his husband pushing Fanny on Cardigan. This culminates in Cardigan crudely seducing Fanny, a bawdy bedroom farce recalling Richardson's Tom Jones. This scene highlights Victorian hypocrisy, contrasting public virtue and private randiness (Cahir & Cahir 167).

Rumpy pumpy.

Rumormongers did romantically connect Fanny with Lord Cardigan. The Duberlys were frequent dinner guests of Lord Cardigan during the campaign, with Fanny's familiar conduct towards the general subject of much comment (David 422). Yet in private correspondence, she told sister Selina that "I detest him" (Tisdall 56), viewing the cavalier with mixed pity and contempt. Flattering Cardigan's ego was necessary to gain access to the front: for his part, Cardigan enjoyed flirting with a pretty woman in a war zone. Their relationship went no further.

If Richardson and Wood merely hoped to highlight Cardigan's debauchery, there were historical alternatives. For one, in 1843 Cardigan had an extramarital affair with Fanny Paget, sister-in-law of Lord George Paget of the 15th Hussars (Woodham-Smith 95-96; David 257-262). This liaison, which inevitably boiled over into public scandal, would have served Richardson's attack on aristocratic licentiousness without distorting the historical record. Even conflating George with his brother would be no more egregious than Nolan standing in for Reynolds et al.

Professor Connelly suggests that screenwriter Wood may have wanted to deflate Fanny Duberly's unblemished reputation. For him and Richardson, a war so ludicrous as the Crimea could produce no genuine heroes. This puckish conceit, in keeping with Wood's antiwar, antimilitary preoccupations, explains as well as anything the decision to misrepresent such a remarkable personage.

Balaclava: The Main Event 

Into the Valley of Death.

With the stage set, on to the film's main event: the Battle of Balaclava (October 25th, 1854). Fittingly, Charge's climax epitomizes the mix of authenicity with dramatic license. We'll not impute motive to any deviations when practical reasons can account; we can, however, consider their effect.

The scene opens with Lucan and his staff spotting "two flags" on the road to Balaclava. Lucan asks a subordinate if he's sure the flags mean a Russian advance - and is answered immediately by cannon fire! This remarkable moment is documented in Lord George Paget's memoirs, and recounted by Woodham-Smith (213). The shelling rouses Cardigan from slumber on his yacht, helped hurriedly into uniform by Squire De Burgh and Fanny Duberly, who first gives Cardigan a lusty kiss. The former is accurate; the latter, again, is not.

Any more questions, My Lord?

Richardson next shows Russian troops quickly overrunning the British redoubts defending Balaclava. This distorts what really happened: the redoubts were defended by Turkish troops rather than British, who offered stiff resistance but fell to overwhelming numbers (Woodham-Smith 214-215). This alteration may have been a sop to the Turkish military, who contributed 3,500 extras to the production. The comic scene of Sir George Brown refusing to deploy his Infantry Division until he's finished breakfast really happened, though with George Cathcart instead of Brown (Hibbert 133).

More notable is the absence of Balacava's second- and third-most famous events: the "Thin Red Line," where Colin Campbell's 93rd Highlanders repulsed the Russian cavalry, and the Charge of James Scarlett's Heavy Brigade, routing a far superior enemy force. In the latter, Cardigan ignored a discretionary order by Lucan to counterattack the fleeing Russians. Many historians think that if Cardigan had advanced, the Russians would have been routed and the battle won (Woodham-Smith 227-228; Hibbert 140).

A cynic might suggest Richardson and Wood elided these incidents because British victories would distract from their antiwar theme. In fact, Richardson filmed at least the Heavy Brigade's charge (Richardson 239; Welsh & Tibbets 35-36). Since Campbell and Scarlett received prominent introductions earlier in the film (Campbell leading his brigade at the Alma; Scarlett, hosting a ball early in the movie), we can assume Richardson intended them to have larger roles. He admits having to "junk whole scenes, subplots and sequences" (239) from his four hour rough cut; he may not have missed excising his tormentor Laurence Harvey, cast as a Heavy Brigade officer.

This still appears to show the Charge of the Heavy Brigade. Note the blue pants and metal helmets on the British cavalry, distinct from the Light Brigade's red trousers and bearskin caps.

When the Light Brigade takes center stage, Richardson stands on firmer ground. He has Raglan patronizingly explain to Fanny Duberly his intentions with the Light Brigade, an invented but credible conversation as the Duberlys did observe the Charge (Tisdall 97-100). Using Watkin's panoramic photography, Richardson takes care to show the crucial difference in vantage points; the south valley with the captured British guns is visible from Raglan's perspective but not Lucan's, who can only see the well-defended north valley. It helps that Richardson found a Turkish location topographically similar to the real Balaclava battlefield.

The arguments between Nolan, Cardigan and Lucan over Raglan's orders, as noted, follows Woodham-Smith, as does Cardigan insisting Colonel John Douglas of the 11th Hussars give "your best support" (237). Nolan did ride ahead of the Light Brigade and was hit by a shellburst, delivering an ear-splitting shriek before dying (240). Richardson again follows Woodham-Smith, showing Nolan trying to divert Cardigan into the right valley. In contrast, Adkin thinks Nolan meant to spur the Brigade onward (156-158); David Kelsey argues his intentions can't be inferred either way. By accepting Woodham-Smith's account, Richardson puts an exclamation point on his critique: the only sane man dies immediately, allowing his superiors to destroy the Light Brigade.

Competent officers to the rear!

Finally, the actual Charge. Richardson stages it mainly in close-ups of bloody hand-to-hand action, the cavalry decimated by artillery but overrunning the enemy guns until a Russian counterattack overwhelms them. It's an ugly, violent sequence that aims for harrowing chaos rather than grandiose effects. Richardson elides the Heavy Brigade supporting the Charge until artillery fire forced it back, or the simultaneous, successful French attack on the Fedioukine Hills. Again, these omissions probably come down to budget, logistics and dramatic economy.

The coda again draws on Woodham-Smith: Captain Duberly musing that the Brigade's remnants are mere "skirmishers" (252); Cardigan fuming over Nolan's impudence, then being told "You've just ridden over his body" (252); Cardigan telling his men "It was a mad harebrained trick, but no fault of mine" and declining their offer to "Go again" (253); Raglan telling Lucan "You have lost the Light Brigade" (256). Raglan, Lucan, Cardigan and Airey commence squabbling over responsibility; juxtaposed against dead soldiers and destroyed horses, their petty bickering no longer seems amusing. A grievously wounded Captain Morris watches incredulously.

This provides Charge a grim, powerful climax, destroying any vestige of military glory or conventional excitement. In real life, it's claimed that army exercises forced the recall of the Turkish troops participating in filming, accounting for Richardson's close-ups and scaled back action. Intentional or not, the cluttered, dusty and inglorious depiction of the Charge perfectly fits his view of the Crimean War as a stupid blunder from beginning to end.

Conclusion

Too late the hero.

So ends The Charge of the Light Brigade. In some regards it's remarkably well-done, admirably capturing the look and feel of Victorian England, the British military and the Crimean War. In others, it shapes characters and incidents to fit its antiwar, anti-class themes. Despite their polemical preoccupations, we can respect Tony Richardson, Charles Wood and John Osborne for trying so hard to get things right.

Works Cited

Cinematic

Cahir, Linda Costanzo and Stephen Cahir. "History Revisited: The Charge of the Light Brigade." James M. Welsh and John C. Tibbets (eds.), The Cinema of Tony Richardson: Essays and Interviews. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. 161-175

Connelly, Mark. British Film Guides: The Charge of the Light Brigade. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003.

Heilpern, John. John Osborne: A Patriot for Us. London: Chatto & Windus, 2006.

Redgrave, Vanessa. Vanessa Redgrave: An Autobiography. London: Random House, 2004.

Richardson, Tony. The Long-Distance Runner: An Autobiography. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1993.

Welsh, James M., and John C. Tibbets. "Let's Talk Tony: Interviews With Colleagues." Welsh and Tibbets (eds.), The Cinema of Tony Richardson: Essays and Interviews. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. 23-47

Historical

Adkin, Mark. The Charge: The Real Reason Why the Light Brigade Was Lost. London: Leo Cooper, 1997.

David, Saul. The Homicidal Earl: The Life of Lord Cardigan. London: Abacus, 1997.

Duberly, Frances. Journal Kept During the Russian War: From The Departure Of The Army From England In April 1854, To The Fall Of Sebastopol. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1856 (Second Edition).

Gilchrist, M.M. "Louis Edward Nolan." Dispatch: the Journal of the Scottish Military Historical Society. 12-15

Hibbert, Christopher. The Destruction of Lord Raglan: A Tragedy of the Crimean War, 1854-1856. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Military Library, 1999. Originally published 1961.

Kelsey, David. "Evidence and Belief: Captain Nolan's Final Moments." The War Correspondent, Spring 2003. 70

Nolan, Louis. Cavalry: Its History and Tactics. London: Bosworth & Harrison, 1860. Originally published 1853.

Royle, Trevor. Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Tisdall, E.E.P. Mrs. Duberly's Campaigns. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963.

Woodham-Smith, Cecil. The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade. London: Penguin, 1958. Originally published 1953.

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Additionally, I wish to thank Professor Mark Connelly for his assistance in preparing this article. He answered my questions about the film and his book quickly, succinctly and helpfully.