Josephine Tey

by Jennifer Morag Henderson

  It was a tricky moment for Gordon’s new friendship with Gwen. Gwen was naturally disappointed with the failure of the play, but, as charming as ever, she did not hold it against Gordon, and moved on, as usual, to the next project. Her partner Marda Vanne, however, felt strongly that she should defend the gentle Gwen.

  Marda was a complex, somewhat hard character: a determined actress, a foreigner in London and a divorcée whose attitude to relationships could be promiscuous.17 Unlike Gwen, who had fallen into a same-sex relationship when she fell in love, and who remained loyal for the rest of her life, Marda was more open about her sexuality, and had a series of relationships with different women. Marda was born Margaretha van Hulsteyn in South Africa to titled Dutch parents, Sir Willem and Lady van Hulsteyn, and her national loyalty remained to South Africa, something which was to be important in the war years to come. She had wanted to be an actress since she was a child, and had established a solid career from an early age, but that career had been interrupted by an unsuccessful marriage, which lasted just under a year, to Johannes Gerhardus Strydom, a lawyer who later went into politics. Strydom became Prime Minister of South Africa in 1954 and was a prominent supporter of segregation, pursuing and implementing the policies that led to apartheid. Marda cut off all contact with him after their divorce, changing her name and moving to London in 1918, where she successfully restarted her life. Photographs of Marda from the 1920s show her posed in a variety of fashionable outfits, with a round, open face, and short dark hair.18 She was always a character actress, and never achieved the level of fame that Gwen did, but she did appear on the cover of magazines, a fashionable if not trendsetting beauty, and worked continuously throughout her life.

  Gordon wrote to Marda and Gwen equally as their friendship grew, and empathized with what she saw as Marda’s ‘difference’ – but to Gordon, that difference came, not from Marda’s sexuality, but from not being a Londoner, from not being from the same background as Gielgud, Olivier and her other acting colleagues. ‘Do those South African words give you the same kick as Highland words used to give me?’ Gordon wrote to Marda in December 1934, ‘It’s always an asset to be brought up in a “special” country – a country with marked peculiarities, I mean. One has the common inheritance plus something else.’19 Marda and Gordon misunderstood each other. Gordon’s letters to her are chatty and friendly. She was so pleased to be in with this group of creative women and finally able to write to equals about her writing, and, as she always did in her correspondence, she described her life, finding happiness in things like nature and the flowers in her garden. Marda and Gwen were keen gardeners, but they couldn’t really understand that, for Gordon, in Inverness and far from the theatre, these simple pleasures were hugely important. Marda did not deny herself anything: she cut herself off from her South African family when she wanted, she took lovers even while in a relationship with Gwen, and she had no understanding of the sort of duty that had led Gordon away from the independent life she may have preferred, to look after Colin. Marda’s attitude caused Gwen great pain, and began to be the source of trouble amongst Gordon’s new group of friends.

  Marda did not even understand the way that Gordon dressed. To Marda, tweeds were a secret sign of lesbianism, an embracing of a masculine way of dressing.20 To Gordon, they represented Highland craftsmanship, old money and an artistic, yet classic Chanel-like fashion. Marda felt the ‘failure’ of Queen of Scots deeply, and continued to write about it in her voluminous diaries, some of which she began to write as a love-letter directly to Gordon. These diaries, not all of which were ever sent to Gordon, began around March 1935, and in April 1935 Marda spoke her mind about the play:

  You should have known better than to write Mary of Scotland for her out of some emotion other than your own enthusiasm. If your hatred for Mary had been robust you might have done a better job, but you merely disliked the woman, but there again your affection for Gwen marred your integrity as a playwright. You are not among those who can write to order. I wish you had left her [Gwen] her dream that a play could be written about Mary, and that she could play that tiresome, glamorous woman. Now that’s gone, and her hope of playing Juliet ever again [John Gielgud had cast Peggy Ashcroft instead of Gwen in his new production], and the little creature feels like a shrivelled acorn.21

  It’s hard to imagine the talkative Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as being ‘like a shrivelled acorn’, so much of this analysis must be attributed to Marda’s own dramatic and extreme personality, but it gives a snapshot of the developing, intense emotions that Marda was feeling for Gwen and Gordon.

  Gordon was oblivious at first to these developments, and her own letters to Marda and Gwen are full of a new project, one that these women were not involved in. She was moving from scriptwriting for theatre to scriptwriting for cinema. This important detour into the film world has not previously been written about in any analyses of Gordon’s life.

  The technology to produce talking films had been around for a few decades, but it was not until the late 1920s and early 30s that cinemas around the UK, outside the main towns as well as in London, were really equipped to handle sound. Once sound had arrived, it became a phenomenon. One of the reviews of Richard of Bordeaux had stated that this was the film to bring audiences back to the theatre, but the reality was that audiences were leaving theatres in droves.22 Gordon Daviot loved theatre, but she also loved film. There were several cinemas in Inverness, and she developed a habit of going to the pictures at least a couple of times a week.23

  The films that she saw were very diverse. One of the major discussions over the advent of sound film in the UK was how that would affect film that had previously been brought in from Europe.24 Silent film had meant that films could be spread widely across Europe, with language no barrier, but now things were in a state of flux. Dubbed scripts were not as appealing to the general audience as the American films that were flooding in, and the British film industry – and the British government – felt that cinema was becoming too Americanized. This would, it was felt, not do. There was no certificate system, as there is now, and films were essentially either ‘U’ (Universal) or ‘A’ (Adult), and children were taken to see everything. The audience for film was overwhelmingly working class and there was a developing moral panic over what they should be allowed to see. It was felt that Britishness and a sense of Empire must be promoted – and the many British cinema jobs must be protected – and so a quota system was introduced: cinemas had to show a certain number of British films. This system had mixed success, providing opportunity for several real talents like Alfred Hitchcock, but it also led to the rise of the ‘quota quickie’ – fast-produced, low-budget British films. Gordon Daviot’s first film wasn’t exactly a quota quickie – it was higher quality than that – but it probably wouldn’t have been made if it wasn’t for the quota. Film-makers were actively looking for British scripts, and the theatre was the natural place to search for wordsmiths. Dodie Smith’s breakthrough play, Autumn Crocus, was filmed and released in 1934 (with Dodie, as ever, involved in every stage, including a trip to film abroad on location), and Gordon Daviot, still a similar hot property in the West End, was an obvious follow-up.

  Gordon’s third novel, The Expensive Halo, had started life as a play script.25 Unlike Dodie, Gordon did not get so involved in business decisions, and permission to sell film rights would probably have been dealt with by her agent, but, somehow, the script for The Expensive Halo ended up at Sound City. The sheer number of British films needed for the quota had meant new film studios had been built, and Sound City was one of these.26 Set up by another Scot, Norman Louden, who had made his original fortune selling the hugely popular ‘flicker books’ of the early 1930s, Sound City was based at an old estate and mansion at Shepperton in Middlesex. He raised capital from people who wanted to become film-makers, and on the staff there were a few Cambridge graduates and some former naval officers. It was a bit like film-making for gentlemen amateurs, and the people working on the fil
ms stayed in the mansion house, giving it all a country house holiday atmosphere. Louden was a sharp businessman though, and moved Sound City from its early experiments with short films onto medium-length features. He never thought of himself as making ‘quota quickies’, but talked instead of ‘modest second features’, to be shown alongside other films, and which he sold to Americans so they could promote them with their own blockbusters in a complex way to circumvent the quota. Sound City also invested in good quality studios and equipment which they rented out to other companies, along with their location (the house exterior and surrounding land featured in all sorts of films).

  The Expensive Halo was filmed in black and white by Sound City under the new title Youthful Folly. The 70-minute film was distributed by Columbia, first shown in October 1934, and on general release in December 1934. Copies no longer exist, but the cast list and brief synopsis show that many of the character names remain the same, and the bones of Gordon Daviot’s novel is still there, though her original script was adapted by Heinrich Fraenkel, one of the many Germans who worked in the film industry and who had migrated to Britain in the wake of sound film, and European political changes. Norman Louden was the producer, and the director was Miles Mander, whose brother, a Liberal MP, was involved in many of the parliamentary discussions about quota rules. The cast included Irene Vanburgh, Mary Lawson and Jane Carr.

  The film based on Dodie Smith’s Autumn Crocus had been made in Britain, at Ealing Studios, with the British theatre director Basil Dean and British stars Ivor Novello and Fay Compton, but her other plays were optioned by American film studios, and the American cinema world was to be an important part of Dodie’s later career.27 The film rights for Autumn Crocus gave Dodie £1,500, but Looking Forward, based on her play Service and released in 1933, gave her £7,500 as it was made by American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer. The part of Dodie’s autobiography where she begins to discuss her success on stage and film is called Look Back With Astonishment – following on from Look Back With Mixed Feelings. In the 1930s, playwrights working for theatre had unparalleled opportunities to make money from their original theatre audiences, and to break into the new world of film, where the money was often astronomical – especially in Hollywood.

  Most Hollywood studios in the 1930s, at the height of the studio system, had an in-house group of writers who would adapt or create material, but they were also keen to scout talent.28 Many well-known writers, contemporary with Gordon Daviot, were equally keen to be involved, and some of the big names who worked for Hollywood included F. Scott Fitzgerald (who, of course, had been based in Paris in the 1920s, when Beth was visiting her sister there), and Aldous Huxley, who moved to Hollywood in the late 30s. London’s West End was another obvious place to look for writing talent that would translate well to film. Hollywood wanted Gordon Daviot, and, in 1935, they got her. This aspect of her career has never been discussed in print, and she has never received the recognition for it she deserves. In 1935, Gordon Daviot was such a well-respected writer that Hollywood literally came north to Inverness to find her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Hollywood and Josephine Tey

  John Gielgud remembered Gordon Daviot as a keen cinemagoer who went to the pictures regularly, and often wrote to him discussing the acting and directing in the films she saw.1 He thought one reason for this was that she had more opportunity, in Inverness, to see quality films than quality theatre. He didn’t seem to realize, or remember, that her interest in film was the professional interest of a film scriptwriter. Gielgud himself was wary of the cinema, worried that his acting style might not transfer well onto screen.

  Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies never made the transition from stage to screen. Her acting style, preserved, alongside Gielgud, in one small Pathé short advertising their version of Romeo and Juliet, harked back to a time when stage actors needed very dramatic gestures: the ‘big’ stage actions looked overdone and overwrought in a medium that could focus close-up.2 Cinema also did not suit Gwen’s short-sightedness, which over time gave her a slight cast in one eye, and she, along with many other serious Shakespearian stage actors, felt some snobbery about the popular and populist new medium.3 Gordon Daviot wrote to Gwen and Marda about her work in film, but Gwen, like Gielgud, didn’t ever mention in later interviews that Gordon had worked as a scriptwriter as well as a playwright, though she did remember the types of film Gordon used to watch and discuss: slick Hollywood movies, with Ginger Rogers a particular favourite.4

  In January 1935 Gordon wrote to Marda: ‘They have sent me a book from America to make a scenario of’.5 This was the beginning of her brief flirtation with Hollywood, an undeveloped aspect of her work; and one of the experiences that led to the creation of ‘Josephine Tey’.

  Gordon Daviot was signed by Universal Studios. Richard of Bordeaux and The Laughing Woman had attracted the studio’s attention, and they were keen to secure this West End talent.6 Universal is the second oldest US studio, and by the 1930s had firmly established itself with a wide range of films, including Oscar-winners like All Quiet on the Western Front, early animation from Walt Disney before he set up his own studio (Oswald the Lucky Rabbit) and horror movies like Frankenstein (with Boris Karloff) and Dracula (with Bela Lugosi).7 In addition to their large studio complex in Los Angeles they had a European base in Germany – though Gordon Daviot’s dealings were with Hollywood. Hollywood wanted her to write for them, and were not in the least bothered that she was based in the Scottish Highlands. As far as they were concerned, the UK was all a distance away, and, as long as she could occasionally come down to London for meetings, they were happy to receive and send work by post.

  Universal’s reputation did not overwhelm Gordon. She told Marda that she was not impressed with the book they wanted her to adapt: ‘It is quite illiterate [...] I have a faint idea I’m not going to like making this scenario. In fact, I’m swithering. On the other hand if I say no to this one they may hand me over a Galsworthy, and Galsworthy would be God-awful!’8 John Galsworthy, the author of The Forsyte Saga, had seen his book Over the River filmed by Universal in 1934. That film was notable for a rare sound appearance by the renowned stage actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, but Gordon Daviot was obviously not a fan. She was, however, very clear about the task she was undertaking, and the sort of film script Universal were expecting.

  The book Gordon had been sent was Next Time We Live, by Ursula Parrott, a successful romantic novel which had first been serialized in the magazine McCall’s from 1934–1935 under the title Say Goodbye Again.9 The title was changed again for the film, to Next Time We Love, which was thought to be more romantic. The plot concerned an actress who married a journalist: the couple love each other, but their careers keep getting in the way of their marriage and there are several enforced long absences, during which the husband’s best friend falls in love with his friend’s wife. Melodramatically, the story ends with the husband diagnosed with a terminal illness, but all is well because the couple reaffirm their love for each other. Gordon didn’t think much of the plot.

  I wondered for a little why this particular style – so devoid of excitement or purple patches – should prove so successful with the mob, until I realised that it was the equivalent of the Over-the-back-fence tale between woman and woman. What ‘They’ did, and how many children They had, and who She was before She married, and how She managed on her income.

  However, Gordon was keen to work in film, both because she was a film fan, and because she was well aware of the money and opportunities that could come from this line of work. A few years later, Dodie Smith was able to pay rent on her (very expensive) American house for months from the proceeds of two weeks’ film writing.10 In Gordon’s usual observant way she took what she could from the book – and from the experience of a different type of writing – and worked up a script.

  The lead female role in Next Time We Love was given to the well-known American actress Margaret Sullavan, and Sullavan convinced the studio that the person for he
r to play opposite was an untested leading man: a young actor called Jimmy Stewart. The chemistry between Sullavan and Stewart struck a chord with the audience, and they went on to star in several more films, including The Shop Around the Corner, while Stewart, of course, is probably best known to modern audiences for It’s a Wonderful Life. Next Time We Love was a major motion picture with big names, a Universal Studios production, top Hollywood, at the height of the 1930s studio system, the Hollywood that has been mythologized in hundreds of films and books. When, a few years later, acclaimed Scottish playwright James Bridie made a trip to Hollywood just to have some meetings about the possibility of working on scripts this was considered newsworthy; it was reported in several different Scottish newspapers including the national paper the Glasgow Herald.11 More recently, there has been a push to reclaim and proclaim the reputation of Aberdeenshire’s Lorna Moon, who in a short but colourful career left her native Scotland, had three children, associated with Cecil B. DeMille – and worked as a screenwriter in 1920s Hollywood. Elizabeth MacKintosh managed to get Hollywood to come to her: she worked in film in its golden era, from her home in Inverness. Whether or not she enjoyed the experience, Beth recognized that what her Hollywood employers really wanted was good writing. She worked hard and got on with it, and she deserves credit for her achievements as a scriptwriter.