Josephine Tey
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21. Josephine Tey, The Man in the Queue (London: Arrow, 2011), p. 139.
22. The Inverness Courier, Friday 7th June 1930.
23. J. B. Pick (ed.) Neil M. Gunn: Selected Letters (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1987), p. 7; letter dated 18th May 1929, Neil Gunn to Hodder and Stoughton. Neil Gunn Society, inc. webpage http://www.harenet.co.uk/nmg/about/chronology.html
24. The novel was The Lost Glen. See Dep 209, National Library of Scotland – Neil Gunn Archive, Box 12, item 5 – rejection letter from Ernest Benn to Neil Gunn, dated 27th June 1929 (mentioning that it took a month to reply, so Gunn’s original letter to Benn would have been sent in May).
25. Pick, (1987), p. 9; Neil Gunn Society. The Lost Glen was eventually published in 1932.
26. Jean’s career is traceable through her reference papers, now in the private MacKintosh family archive. Moire’s career was described to me by her son.
Chapter Eight: The Expensive Halo, ‘Ellis’ and Invergordon
1. The English Review, 50, February 1930, p. 230
2. Dundee Evening Telegraph, daily from Tuesday 12th August to Wednesday 24th September 1930.
3. Josephine Tey, The Expensive Halo (London: Peter Davies, 1978), p. 19.
4. Article by Frank Swinnerton, 29th August 29th 1931 in Chicago Tribune. Swinnerton worked for the publisher Dent, as well as writing newspaper articles.
5. Josephine Tey, The Expensive Halo (London: Peter Davies, 1978), p. 154.
6. Mann, (1981).
7. Josephine Tey, The Expensive Halo (London: Peter Davies, 1978), p. 200.
8. Josephine Tey, The Expensive Halo (London: Peter Davies, 1978), p. 193.
9. Mann, (1981), p213; Inverness Courier Tuesday 24th August 1928, Friday 3rd August 1928, Tuesday 28th May 1929, 23rd and 30th July 1929, Tuesday 13th Aug 1929, Tuesday 25 Feb 1930, Friday 3rd Apr 1931, Tuesday 2 June 1931; MacDonald, (1982), pp. 12–13.
10. The Inverness Courier, Friday 3rd August 1928.
11. Beth’s nephew recalled his mother mentioning this, but had very few details. Searches through the history of the IRA have produced no results.
12. AM38, Letter from Gordon Daviot to Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies and Marda Vanne, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
13. AM38, Letter from Gordon Daviot to Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies and Marda Vanne, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
14. General information on John Gielgud from John Gielgud, Early Stages (San Franciso, U.S.A.: Mercury House, 1989); Sheridan Morley, John Gielgud: The Authorized Biography (New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2002); Richard Mangan (ed.) Gielgud’s Letters (London: Phoenix, 2004).
15. Will of Elizabeth MacKintosh. Information on storage of the script during her lifetime from will. Information on Josephine Tey collection from Inverness Museum.
16. Information from private email with one of Moire’s friends. Information on Mutiny from Am Baile website.
Chapter Nine: Richard of Bordeaux
1. AM38, Letter from Gordon Daviot to Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies and Marda Vanne, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
2. Typewritten summary script, Richard of Bordeaux, INVMG.1952.005, Josephine Tey collection, Inverness Museum.
3. Clippings from Daily Express, 11th March, 1931, article by H. V. Morton; typewritten summary script, Richard of Bordeaux, INVMG.1952.005, Josephine Tey collection, Inverness Museum.
4. See, for example, Gielgud, Early Stages, p. 118, p. 134; Morley, (2002), p. 115.
5. Morley, (2002), p. 107; Gielgud, Early Stages, pp. 118–125.
6. Gielgud, Early Stages, p. 135.
7. For example, conversations with Helen Grime, former custodian of the Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive and author of Gwen’s biography (Helen Grime, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies: Twentieth-Century Actress (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013)) and emails from Tinch Minter, who interviewed Gwen for the BBC in the 1980s: ‘I knew her to be a nonagenarian [but when] I rang her doorbell […] she bounded to the door in a sweet floral cotton frock and was simply delightful from beginning to end – full of lively chat.’
8. Dodie Smith, Look Back with Astonishment: Volume Three (London: W. H. Allen, 1979); Valerie Grove, Dear Dodie: The Life of Dodie Smith (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996), p. 76.
9. Paul Ibell, Theatreland (London: Continuum, 2009). The original Wyndham was Charles, a stage-struck doctor, who did some acting with Ellen Terry before going to America to work as a medic on the Union side of the Civil War, where he looked after the injured at Gettysburg and was mentioned by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg address. Returning to London, he gave up medicine to go back to the stage, then moved to become a producer and finally theatre owner. Aged eighty, after the death of his first wife, he married his theatre’s leading lady, his astute business partner the actress Mary Moore, who was the widow of playwright James Albery. Bronson Albery was Mary’s son, and Bronson inherited his mother and stepfather’s two theatres, the Wyndham and the New. Bronson’s son Donald became a producer, as did his son Ian – who has managed Sadler’s Wells theatre in London.
10. Recordings of Margaret Harris of the Motleys, 1992, interviewed by Alison Chitty, British Library NSA General Shelfmark C465/06/01-22; F3033-F3050 + F4730-F4733 C1 PLAYBACK – tape 4.
11. Martial Rose, Forever Juliet: The Life and Letters of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (Dereham: Larks Press, 2003), p. 76.
12. Gordon Daviot’s nephew confirmed that his mother had always said that Gordon had found Gielgud frustrating to work with. This was one of his main memories of family talk around the play. Gielgud’s biographer states that Donald Wolfit found Gielgud particularly difficult during the rehearsals for Richard: Morley, (2002), pp. 116–117.
13. Morley, (2002), p. 116.
14. Gielgud, Early Stages, p. 135, p. 138.
15. Recordings of Margaret Harris of the Motleys, 1992, interviewed by Alison Chitty, British Library NSA General Shelfmark C465/06/01-22; F3033-F3050 + F4730-F4733 C1 PLAYBACK – tape 4.
16. Morley, (2002),pp. 116–117.
17. It would have been hard to find a school of the time that did not do some sort of show or theatrical production, and local newspapers such as the Inverness Courier are full of descriptions of amateur shows. Anstey theatre productions are mentioned in Crunden (1974), and were part of the reminiscences I heard at an Anstey College Old Girls reunion in Glasgow in 2012.
18. Fred Astaire, Steps in Time: an Autobiography (New York: itbooks, 2008), pp. 107–108.
19. Letter from Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies to her mother, F2, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive. Details on the Websters from Margaret Webster, Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972) and Margaret Webster, The Same Only Different: Five Generations of a Great Theatre Family (London: Victor Gollancz, 1969).
20. Letter from Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies to her mother, F2, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
21. Morley, (2002), p. 119.
22. Josephine Tey, The Man in the Queue (London: Arrow Books, 2011), p. 1.
23. Letter from Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies to her mother, F2, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
24. Smith, Look Back with Astonishment ; Grove, (1996), p. 77.
25. John Gielgud, ‘Foreword’ to Gordon Daviot, Plays (London: Peter Davies, 1953), p. x.
26. MS 26190, fol. 124, letter from Elizabeth MacKintosh to Marion Lochhead, 6th July 1933, National Library of Scotland. Marion compiled a series of short profiles of women writers for the Scottish PEN newsletter. See Chapter 13 for further discussion of Beth MacKintosh’s relationship with Scottish PEN.
27. Inverness Courier, Tuesday 5th July 1933, p. 5.
28. John Gielgud, ‘Foreword’ to Gordon Daviot, Plays (London: Peter Davies, 1953), p. ix; Niloufer Harben, Twentieth-Century English History Plays: From Shaw to Bond (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 93-94.
Chapter Ten: The Laughing Woman
1. Inverness Courier, Tuesday 5th July, 1933, p. 5: ‘An Inverness Playwright: Eulogies by London Critics’.
2. Rose, (2003), p. 78 (Queen Mary saw the
play twice); Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive, letter F3.
3. Gordon Daviot, ‘Alexander’, unpublished; from family papers.
4. Inverness Courier, Tuesday 5th July, 1933, p. 5: ‘An Inverness Playwright: Eulogies by London Critics’.
5. Acc 7708, no. 33, National Library of Scotland – Mairi MacDonald’s papers.
6. Information from Neil Gunn Society; Pick (1987); F. R. Hart & J. B. Pick, Neil M. Gunn: A Highland Life (London: John Murray, 1981); Dep 209, National Library of Scotland – Neil Gunn Archive.
7. As quoted in the Inverness Courier, Tuesday 10th April, 1934.
8. Gordon Daviot, The Laughing Woman in Famous Plays of 1933–34 (London: Gollancz), p. 383.
9. Acc 7708, no. 33, National Library of Scotland – Mairi MacDonald’s papers, Letter 7 (Mac to Dave).
10. Morley, (2002), p. 121.
11. Letter IC7, 26th Dec 1933, Gordon Daviot to ‘Anne’ (Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies), Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
12. MacDonald, (1982), p. 120. Richard ran for so long that the costumes needed replaced: the cushion was made from scraps of the original costumes.
13. Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive, e.g. letter K5.
14. ‘A Life in the Theatre’, BBC television interview with Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, 1983.
15. Gielgud, Early Stages, p. 141.
16. Inverness Courier, 17.10.1933, reprinted in ‘From Our Files’ article, Inverness Courier 17th October 2008.
17. Richard of Bordeaux original playbill, February 1934, see http://www.playbillvault.com/Show/Detail/3980/Richard-of-Bordeaux
18. The word ‘producer’ when applied to theatre in the 1930s can mean something more like what we would understand as a ‘director’ today. See Mangan (2004), p. 2.
19. Theatre World, Vol. XXI, No. 112, May 1934, 222. Dates for The Laughing Woman are often given incorrectly, perhaps because John Gielgud often misquoted them: he was maybe thinking of the later radio broadcast, which he was involved in.
20. Acc 7708, no. 33, National Library of Scotland. Mairi MacDonald’s papers – Letter 7 (Mac to Dave). Stephen Haggard had acted with Gielgud in The Maitlands, the follow-up play to Ronald Mackenzie’s Musical Chairs, produced just after Mackenzie’s death. This had actually been the first play Gielgud performed in the West End after Richard of Bordeaux, but it was not a success, partly because the audience were surprised by the great difference between Gielgud’s character in The Maitlands and his performance as ‘Richard’. Critics had written of Haggard as a successor to Gielgud.
21. In private letters to Gielgud, Gordon had considered him for the role, with names mentioned for his leading lady including Flora Robson, Lehmen or Bergner. At this time, Gordon had the pick of the best actresses in London.
22. Veronica Turleigh was to continue her association with crime writer playwrights when she starred as ‘Harriet Vane’ in Dorothy L. Sayers’s stage version of the Lord Peter Wimsey story ‘Busman’s Honeymoon’ in 1936. She also played Mrs Sharpe in a 1962 BBC television adaptation of The Franchise Affair.
23. As quoted in the Inverness Courier, Tuesday 10th April, 1934.
24. Snapshot from family archive; also published in Caroline Ramsden, A View from Primrose Hill (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1984).
25. There are two biographies of Gwen: Rose (2003) and Grime (2013). See also BBC Desert Island Discs interviews 1962 & 1988 (available online via http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/find-a-castaway#/a-z/all)
26. As described in Rose, (2003), p. 14. The Delsarte method was founded on a Greek idea of balance – the body must be in motion or ready to move, yet balanced, at all times. A series of exercises trained the actress to be graceful, rhythmic, and aware of the positioning of her body.
27. See for example, p. 61 in Chapter 3, ‘Sexuality and Discretion’ of Grime, (2013); Morley, (2002), p. 115. Richard of Bordeaux is sometimes found in online discussions of sexuality and the theatre.
28. It might seem overly-naive nowadays that Gordon had no inkling of John’s sexuality, but they were very different times. The outspoken Dodie Smith describes very clearly in her autobiographies, both of the 1930s, and later when she was friends with Christopher Isherwood, just how hidden the gay scene was. Keen to understand the taboos of her day and to live in an open-minded way, Dodie ran into trouble with censors in both her plays (in the 1930s) and her novels (much later, in the 1950s). Curiously, her work, so open-minded for its time, now seems more dated than other contemporary writing, perhaps because attitudes have changed so much that what was shocking for her audience is commonplace now.
29. Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive, letter AM10. This letter, which has some ambiguous phrasing, is discussed again in Chapter 12.
Chapter Eleven: Queen of Scots
1. Gordon listed her club membership in ‘Daviot, Gordon’, ‘Who Was Who’: Who’s Who (A & C Black, 1920–2008: http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U236424, accessed 17 Nov 2011). The Cowdray was a club for professional women, especially nurses, and Gordon was a member by virtue of her VAD work during the First World War, and through her Anstey connections. The club’s headed notepaper is used for letters to Gwen and Marda from the 1930s.
2. As both Colin’s and Gordon’s wills show, they both invested in stocks and shares.
3. Ramsden, (1984), p. 54.
4. Morley, (2002), p. 125.
5. Ramsden, (1984), p. 55.
6. Letter AM 38, letter from Gordon Daviot to Marda Vanne and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
7. Ramsden, (1984), p. 67.
8. Lena includes a photo from the holiday in her autobiography: Ramsden (1984). Gordon’s family had several more photos of the same holiday. The run of Queen of Scots, the date of the official Sasha photo, and a perusal of the photos (especially the clothes they’re wearing) date the holiday to spring/ early summer 1934.
9. Webster, The Same Only Different, pp. 366–367.
10. Philip Ziegler, Olivier (London: MacLehose Press, 2013), p. 54.
11. Quaritch catalogue item 50 (bookseller’s catalogue), http://mail.quaritch.com/pdf/qpdf_29_3074865036.pdf
12. Webster, The Same Only Different, p. 367.
13. Theatre World, August 1934, Vol XXII, No 115; Theatre World Souvenir supplement.
14. MacDonald, (1982), p. 118. If handwriting doesn’t lie then, applying the same logic to Gordon’s own writing, I would say she was definitely a woman who liked to be a little difficult to understand.
15. MacDonald, (1982), p. 117. Mairi doesn’t give a source for her assertion that Gielgud thought the play disappointed because it avoided the Casket Letters. Mairi herself thought the contrast between the opulent scenery and costumes of Richard of Bordeaux and the more muted Queen of Scots was a deciding factor, but a marked contrast isn’t immediately obvious from still photographs of the two productions.
16. ‘Horace Richards asks... “Shall Theatres Bow to the Heat Wave?”’, in Theatre World, August 1934, Vol XXII, No 115, p. 62.
17. Information about Marda’s background comes from Grime, (2013), and Rose, (2003); Marda’s archive is also part of the Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
18. See, for example, Theatre World, Vol. VII, No. 44, Sept 1928, accessed via https://www.flickr.com/photos/42399206@N03/5381291350/; National Portrait Gallery http://www.npgprints.com/image.php?imgref=67031.
19. AM4, 22nd Dec 1934, letter from Gordon Daviot to Marda Vanne, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
20. Grime, (2013), p. 55.
21. Rose, (2003), p. 80.
22. Ivor Brown, Sunday Observer, quoted in the Inverness Courier and Advertiser, Tuesday 7th February 1933, p. 5.
23. Contemporary copies of the Inverness Courier have listings.
24. Background to film history in the UK in the 1930s from Rachael Low, Film Making in 1930s Britain (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985).
25. Mann, (1981).
26. Information on Sound City and The Expensive Halo production
from Low, p. 179–180 and p. 413; the British Film Archive http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b6bb7781d; the Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com.
27. Smith, Look Back With Astonishment; Low, (1985), p. 292.
28. Thanks to Lawrence Sutcliffe of the Highlands of Scotland Film Commission for discussion about the studio system in the 1930s.
Chapter Twelve: Hollywood and Josephine Tey
1. John Gielgud, ‘Foreword’ in Gordon Daviot, Plays (London: Peter Davies, 1953), p. x.
2. Pathe website or Pathe Youtube: http://www.britishpathe.com/, https://www.youtube.com/user/britishpathe
3. Rose, (2003), p. 159. Gwen had always been short-sighted, but problems with her eyesight got worse as she got older.
4. BBC radio programme Gordon the Escapist (1986), transcript available in the Scottish Theatre Archive, University of Glasgow; further information from private correspondence with Bruce Young (producer) and Tinch Minter (writer). Ginger Rogers started her series of collaborations with Fred Astaire in 1933. I always imagine that Gordon Daviot would have been a big fan of Ginger’s more dramatic work as well as her dancing, for example Stage Door (1937), the story of aspiring actresses.
5. AM5, letter from Gordon Daviot to Marda Vanne, 17th January 1935, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
6. Article by Anne Pettigrew in the Evening Times, 27th December 1954; AM8, letter from Gordon Daviot to Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies and Marda Vanne, 22nd January 1935, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
7. Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com.
8. AM5, letter from Gordon Daviot to Marda Vanne, 17th January 1935, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive.
9. Internet Movie Database.