Good news!
by chuckofish
July is Leslie Howard month on TCM.com! Here is the line-up for the Star of the Month.
So set your DVR for Tuesdays in July when they’ll be showing some well-known Leslie Howard movies like Pygmalion, Of Human Bondage and The Scarlet Pimpernel and some not-so-often seen ones like Berkeley Square and The Animal Kingdom. What a treasure trove!
You can see my favorite Leslie Howard movie The Petrified Forest (1936) next Tuesday–so mark your calendar! This movie was based on the play by Robert Emmet Sherwood, which Leslie Howard had starred in on Broadway. He insisted that Humphrey Bogart reprise his role as Duke Mantee, “the world-famous killer” in the movie. He did and the rest, as you know, is history. Bogart was duly grateful and even named his daughter after Leslie years later.
Bogart has lots of good lines which he makes the most of:
“Since I’ve been a grown up, I’ve spent most of my life in prison… I’ll probably spend the rest of it dead.”
and
“You can talk sitting down; I seen ya’ doing it.”
But Howard, as the dreamy Alan Squier, gets plenty of his own:
“So that was once a tree? Hmmm. Petrified forest, eh? Suitable haven for me. Well, perhaps that’s what I’m destined to become, an interesting fossil for future study.”
and
Gramp Maple: “But let me tell you one thing, Mr. Squier. The woman don’t live or ever did live that’s worth five thousand dollars!”
Alan Squier: “Well, let me tell you something. You’re a forgetful old fool. Any woman’s worth everything that any man has to give: anguish, ecstasy, faith, jealousy, love, hatred, life or death. Don’t you see that’s the whole excuse for our existence? It’s what makes the whole thing possible and tolerable.”
I even included an Alan Squeir quote on my senior page: “I had a vague idea I’d like to see the Pacific Ocean and perhaps drown in it. But that depends.” My mother raised an eyebrow at my teenage angst, but no one else ever commented!
Above all else, Leslie Howard was a great British patriot, who used his Hollywood fame to further the cause of England in WWII, by making several propaganda films like Pimpernel Smith and The First of the Few.
He died at the age of 50 in 1943 when the plane he was in was shot down by the Nazis. They thought he was a spy and they were correct. According to Sir William Samuel Stephenson, the senior representative of British Intelligence for the western hemisphere during the Second World War, the Germans knew about Howard’s mission and ordered the aircraft shot down. Stephenson further claimed that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the aircraft, but decided to allow it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code.
I’m surprised no one has ever thought to make a movie about Leslie Howard. Wouldn’t he be an interesting subject?
dual personalities 
Lots of Leslie’s movies are not well known which is sad. I remember our VHS copies of “The Scarlet Pimpernel” and “The First of the Few” (Spitfire) were very grainy bootlegs. Very hard to find these days. He loved England so much! You can see it on his face when he delivers the last line of “Pimpernel” “Look Marguerite… ENGLAND!”
Most of his movies were geared towards Pro-England propaganda. Didn’t he host/narrate a series of films about this history of England or London during the War too? I always loved this quote from Shakespeare in “Pimpernel”
“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”
Ah, yes, Richard II. He recites that to Raymond Massey in that great penultimate scene. You see that he means every word deeply.
a Leslie Howard movie — now that would be interesting. But who could play LH?
That’s a tough one. I’ll have to put on my thinking cap…
I never knew that was how he died. Fascinating. He seemed like a pretty noble. I know Bogart’s daughter Leslie was named in honor of him due to his role in launching Bogart’s career.
A good youtube find.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQXtf8r549c
[…] You felt that he meant every word and he did. No one loved England more than he. He proved it a few years later by dying for his country during WWII. (I blogged about that previously here.) […]