Final Cut

I belatedly thought of checking Matthew Sweet’s Shepperton Babylon for any interesting insights into Hitchcock’s silent period, and was very glad I did. When I first read the book, I didn’t know who Lillian Hall-Davis was, but I was moved by her story. Now I’ve seen her in THE RING and THE FARMER’S WIFE, and her story breaks my heart.

LHD was born, without her hyphen, in Mile End, a working class area of London. As a silent movie star, she was able to affect a more high-class persona, but when sound came in, her accent gave her away. Work dried up. In 1933, she turned on the gas taps and cut her throat.

Quite apart from the tragedy and horror of this tale, there’s a point to made about Britain and its cinema. In both Hitchcock films, Lillian played working-class characters. But it was not acceptable for her to SOUND like one. This may be a small part of why Britain struggled while Hollywood thrived. Authentic working-class accents were scarcely heard in British films, except in regional comedies, and even then, they were often music-hall concoctions. Leading men and leading ladies always sounded like upper-middle-class tennis-playing toffs. The stage informed British acting, whereas in America, a purely cinematic approach seemed to evolve naturally. As we approach the period of Hitchcock’s early talkies, this subject may come up again…

Famous Film Star

I knew it wasn’t my father

Who was bankrupt and poor.

He had a war.

He had a scar.

He was on Famous Film Star

Cigarette Cards

with Janet Gaynor.

It couldn’t be my father

who hit the registrar

and had to be bound over for a year

to keep the peace,

so who were they talking about

in the newspaper?

~ a poem by Hugo Williams, son of British movie star Hugh Williams, quoted in Shepperton Babylon by Matthew Sweet.

I’m apt to be a bit critical of Sweet sometimes: I thought his TV series British Film Forever was disgracefully poor (it’s now verboten to mention it within the BBC, so ashamed were they), and in his seminal work above he does have a bit of a tendency to recycle other writers’ research… But he also personally dug up a lot of fascinating stuff and presents it in an accessible, often amusing form.

Hugo Williams’ poem is a touching insight into the stars and scandals of another day, a day of hair-oil and cigarettes, big bands and slow dances.