I am all churned up on this first day after returning home last night. It is 11.30 am and instead of concentrating on catch up writing, the in tray, finish unpacking, the house needs a clean. I have abandoned everything for a film which affected me greatly as a child and which attracted full houses in theatres across the UK in 1949. The Glass Mountain.
A British airman during World War 2 crashes in the Dolomites and is rescued by a local girl near to a mountain whose peak is glass like thus the name of the Mountain and the title of the film. The two fall in love. At the end of the war the flyer returns to England to his wife. The flyer is played by Michael Denison and his real life wife Dulcie Gray who were married for sixty years until his death
However he is unsettled as many men were after their war time experiences, and many had relationships, as did many wives during what for many was five years or more of separation. He is also driven by the folk legend of the glass mountain which has commenced to make into an opera. Dulcie plays the loving and self sacrificing wife who in effect gives him permission to return to the Dolomites where she knows there is the risk of losing him altogether which is in effect what happens as the her husband and his rescuer are reunited.
When the first act of the Opera is completed a famous singer friend, in real life played by one of the top Opera Tenors of the day Tito Gobbi, persuades the Venice Opera House management to look at the first act and commission the rest. Tito Gobbi appeared in some 25 films as an actor as well as a singer.
At this point in the film Denison advises that he must visit Venice alone signalling the end of their relationship, because of the life he likely to lead and the reaction of society to the woman who would be regarded as living in sin with him. She, in her naivety believes that their love will be sufficient and that she will bear the reactions of others and persuaded against his better judgement he takes her with him to Venice and asks for a divorce from his wife where their best friend, a kindly uncle or grandfather type figure counsels her to fight for him, and then gives a warning to the mistress that the artist has less than most to give to a relationship and needs a very understanding and tolerant kind of partner prepared to be at home and alone for long periods while the artist is performing across the planet.
The Opera is completed and accepted by the Opera House for performance and after a period of uncertainty he sends his wife a ticket after his mistress giving her permission. On the night, the allocated is vacant and a troubled Denison conducts with heavy heart. The opera is a triumphant but at the end the mistress makes her way back stage to bring Michael terrible news.
In the opera a beautiful village girl falls in love with a worldly climber and they promise to climb the Glass Mountain together but before this happens, he falls in love with the daughter of a rich merchant. The village girl decides to climb the mountain on her own and at the wedding feast, the climber hear the call of his former love and he leaves his new bride and the wealthy life before him to go to her, and they both perish on the mountain.
In the film. Michael’s film and real life wife, persuades the pilot of the private plane to show her the Glass mountain on their way to Venice. Michael thinks she is coming by train, so was unaware of this or that the plane has crashed, Michael decides he must go to her as soon as taking a curtain call, and he and his mistress say goodbye knowing that whatever happens this is end of the affair and as she will return to her way of life in the mountain village. At the village the search party has not returned and Michael enlists the help of a former rival for the village girl to meet the search party on the journey down the mountain They have Dulcie with them and although badly injured she is expected to make a full recovery and the two express their undying love.
The film was bold because it made no moral or condemnatory judgement about the man who had a love affair while married and went off with his lover and only later returned to his wife. All three are portrayed as nice people caught up in a love triangle through the circumstances of war. The success of film was also due to the haunting music which was subsequently played on the radio for several decades, especially on such programmes as Family Favourites at Sunday lunchtimes and it is still played from time to time.
Given the life most actors have to lead, that many find a stable marital relationship and family life difficult to impossible is understandable by Michael and Dulcie were outstanding beacon examples of what is possible.
Michael was much more than a very handsome, Oxford University educated matinee idol actor. This was due his ability to communicate emotions perhaps arising from the loss of his mother when he was three week’s old and brought up by an aunt estranged from his father. When at Oxford he met John Gielgud who persuaded him to turn to acting so after graduation he joined the Webber Academy of Dramatic art where he fell in love with fellow student Dulcie Gray and they were married in 1939. Between them they appeared in 100 West End Productions, with 26 of these together and also toured together through the UK, also appearing together in many films. One of their highlights was to appear together on Broadway in An Ideal husband in 1996. They also appeared together in an evening of reminiscences shortly before his death in 1996. He enlisted with the outbreak of World War 2 and participated in the liberation of Greece, and he and his wife became Commanders of the Order of the British Empire in 1983.
Dulcie was born in Malaya and returned there as a teacher after going to school in Oxfordshire. She came to England after the death of her father to study acting. In addition to her stage and film work she published 24 detective and horror novels and both were active in different aspect of their profession. Dulcie is still alive at the age of 89 and she had her husband remained much loved by all those who knew them or experienced their work. They are quintessential English.
No sooner had I written this and commenced to work on what I written about the previous two days that there was opportunity to watch again The Undefeated, the magnificent post USA Civil war epic about two senior officers on both sides of the divide heading to Mexico with different agendas. One, John Wayne, had collected 3000 wild horses with the help his adopted Indian son and people and instead of selling only a sixth at a reduced price to crooked Indian agents was prepared to sell them to the Mexican Emperor. The purpose of this venture was to create a proper pension for the surviving g men who had fought with him, while the other, Rock Hudson, had been promised refuge in Mexico where he hoped to mount a Confederate return. They join forces in the face of murdering and raping bandits and then find that the Emperor is being replaced by revolutionaries who want rid the regime which uses murdering and rapping French soldiers in its defence and was now seeking support from across the border. There is some bonding between the two groups before the capture of the Confederate group by the Revolutionaries leads to horses being traded for their release. The film ends with the two groups returning to the USA having failed in their objectives but with an experiences which heralds reconciliation. There is a sub plot involving the daughter of Confederate officers and the adopted son of the other who happens to be an Indian American, kinda an appropriate offering as the era of reconciliation between black and white begins, hopefully.
I became tired after a meal of a few olives, two fish cakes and rest of the tined vegetables kept over from before the trip, followed by a banana and coffee. I felt very tired although watched a repeat of the last series episode of Lost as the new and finals series, I think, begins on Sunday. About 3pm I decided to go back to bed for a couple of hours. It was 8pm before I woke again. Extraordinary.
It was quickly time for the second episode of American Idol of the week. I watch this, sort of, and enjoyed a smoked mackerel salad with a quarter of watermelon and coffee. I would not be going back to bed until the early hours.
At ten I discovered the showing of an engaging and thought provoking film, The Reckoning. The film had three particular interests for me. Nicol Williamson played a chief salesman for a firm making office machines where ten years earlier the board had been persuaded to continue to concentrate on the development of the adding machine/cash register, electric and traditional typewriter than the computer. The firm could have been Olivetti where I worked unsuccessfully as a salesman after finishing top of the Sales School in 1959. This film was made in 1969. No one was interested in the adding machine then although there was talk of changes to come in the future.
The second aspect of interest is the photography of Liverpool as a city in decay where the Catholic Irish community remained hostile to the British middle class and settled their disputes without involving the police. This is home town of Williamson where he has not had direct contact with his mother, father and sister for five years and finds that his father is dead as he goes upstairs to see him. He notices that his father was badly beaten around the head and body. He had been singing Irish republican songs in a pub when one of a group of English lads had taken offence and then beaten him up.
The film in the black and white genre of Room at the Top and Saturday Night and Sunday morning, presented Nicol as the made it chancer and risk taker who had married the bosses daughter because she liked a bit of rough and his father in law and helped finance their middle class lifestyle in somewhere like Surrey, close to a golf course with posh children and not a working man in sight except as chauffer, gardener or handyman, domestic cleaner or au pair.
Williamson is brilliant as the former working class lad on the make but also an aggressive personality which explains his actual rise in the firm and which his daredevil bullying driving illustrates. I met the mirror likes of him on the sales course and at the International Management Training course two decades later and a few times in between and since in the form of local government ‘colleagues’ and politicians. Their self seeking ruthlessness and disregard for the feelings and interests of others is breathtaking as much as it is dangerous. They were all successful womanisers with no respect for anyone else wife. Fortunately they are in a significant minority in society.
In the film Williamson is pressed from within the Liverpool Irish culture to take revenge for the death of his father, especially as the authorities conclude that the death was from natural causes. He kills the young man responsible. He sleeps with a married pick up with two children during one of two visits to the city and briefly considered a longer relationship an returning to his roots. This is because in between the death and the funeral he becomes angry getting drunk and disgracing himself and his wife at a large party at their home, hitting his boss and others and being suspended until after funeral. On return he sleeps with the secretary of his boss, gaining from her the ammunition to save himself, and be appointed the Sales Director. His wife is persuaded by her father to return and he dumps the secretary. On their way home after reconciliation of a kind he jumps the red light at a single line road works narrowly missing a head on collision with a lorry and other obstacle. He comments to his wife that if he can get away with he can get away with anything. For those who do not understand how the present financial situation developed then this film provides the explanation. True it was caused by specialists creating a money making system which they did not understand but it was just one inevitable consequence of a system where people such as the character played by Williamson are furthered and protected to a degree because of their usefulness. Only when they cease to be effective are they removed. However in a democracy it is usually that the system itself has to respond before they gain absolute power. If they do then the people usually perish and suffer in great quantity.
A British airman during World War 2 crashes in the Dolomites and is rescued by a local girl near to a mountain whose peak is glass like thus the name of the Mountain and the title of the film. The two fall in love. At the end of the war the flyer returns to England to his wife. The flyer is played by Michael Denison and his real life wife Dulcie Gray who were married for sixty years until his death
However he is unsettled as many men were after their war time experiences, and many had relationships, as did many wives during what for many was five years or more of separation. He is also driven by the folk legend of the glass mountain which has commenced to make into an opera. Dulcie plays the loving and self sacrificing wife who in effect gives him permission to return to the Dolomites where she knows there is the risk of losing him altogether which is in effect what happens as the her husband and his rescuer are reunited.
When the first act of the Opera is completed a famous singer friend, in real life played by one of the top Opera Tenors of the day Tito Gobbi, persuades the Venice Opera House management to look at the first act and commission the rest. Tito Gobbi appeared in some 25 films as an actor as well as a singer.
At this point in the film Denison advises that he must visit Venice alone signalling the end of their relationship, because of the life he likely to lead and the reaction of society to the woman who would be regarded as living in sin with him. She, in her naivety believes that their love will be sufficient and that she will bear the reactions of others and persuaded against his better judgement he takes her with him to Venice and asks for a divorce from his wife where their best friend, a kindly uncle or grandfather type figure counsels her to fight for him, and then gives a warning to the mistress that the artist has less than most to give to a relationship and needs a very understanding and tolerant kind of partner prepared to be at home and alone for long periods while the artist is performing across the planet.
The Opera is completed and accepted by the Opera House for performance and after a period of uncertainty he sends his wife a ticket after his mistress giving her permission. On the night, the allocated is vacant and a troubled Denison conducts with heavy heart. The opera is a triumphant but at the end the mistress makes her way back stage to bring Michael terrible news.
In the opera a beautiful village girl falls in love with a worldly climber and they promise to climb the Glass Mountain together but before this happens, he falls in love with the daughter of a rich merchant. The village girl decides to climb the mountain on her own and at the wedding feast, the climber hear the call of his former love and he leaves his new bride and the wealthy life before him to go to her, and they both perish on the mountain.
In the film. Michael’s film and real life wife, persuades the pilot of the private plane to show her the Glass mountain on their way to Venice. Michael thinks she is coming by train, so was unaware of this or that the plane has crashed, Michael decides he must go to her as soon as taking a curtain call, and he and his mistress say goodbye knowing that whatever happens this is end of the affair and as she will return to her way of life in the mountain village. At the village the search party has not returned and Michael enlists the help of a former rival for the village girl to meet the search party on the journey down the mountain They have Dulcie with them and although badly injured she is expected to make a full recovery and the two express their undying love.
The film was bold because it made no moral or condemnatory judgement about the man who had a love affair while married and went off with his lover and only later returned to his wife. All three are portrayed as nice people caught up in a love triangle through the circumstances of war. The success of film was also due to the haunting music which was subsequently played on the radio for several decades, especially on such programmes as Family Favourites at Sunday lunchtimes and it is still played from time to time.
Given the life most actors have to lead, that many find a stable marital relationship and family life difficult to impossible is understandable by Michael and Dulcie were outstanding beacon examples of what is possible.
Michael was much more than a very handsome, Oxford University educated matinee idol actor. This was due his ability to communicate emotions perhaps arising from the loss of his mother when he was three week’s old and brought up by an aunt estranged from his father. When at Oxford he met John Gielgud who persuaded him to turn to acting so after graduation he joined the Webber Academy of Dramatic art where he fell in love with fellow student Dulcie Gray and they were married in 1939. Between them they appeared in 100 West End Productions, with 26 of these together and also toured together through the UK, also appearing together in many films. One of their highlights was to appear together on Broadway in An Ideal husband in 1996. They also appeared together in an evening of reminiscences shortly before his death in 1996. He enlisted with the outbreak of World War 2 and participated in the liberation of Greece, and he and his wife became Commanders of the Order of the British Empire in 1983.
Dulcie was born in Malaya and returned there as a teacher after going to school in Oxfordshire. She came to England after the death of her father to study acting. In addition to her stage and film work she published 24 detective and horror novels and both were active in different aspect of their profession. Dulcie is still alive at the age of 89 and she had her husband remained much loved by all those who knew them or experienced their work. They are quintessential English.
No sooner had I written this and commenced to work on what I written about the previous two days that there was opportunity to watch again The Undefeated, the magnificent post USA Civil war epic about two senior officers on both sides of the divide heading to Mexico with different agendas. One, John Wayne, had collected 3000 wild horses with the help his adopted Indian son and people and instead of selling only a sixth at a reduced price to crooked Indian agents was prepared to sell them to the Mexican Emperor. The purpose of this venture was to create a proper pension for the surviving g men who had fought with him, while the other, Rock Hudson, had been promised refuge in Mexico where he hoped to mount a Confederate return. They join forces in the face of murdering and raping bandits and then find that the Emperor is being replaced by revolutionaries who want rid the regime which uses murdering and rapping French soldiers in its defence and was now seeking support from across the border. There is some bonding between the two groups before the capture of the Confederate group by the Revolutionaries leads to horses being traded for their release. The film ends with the two groups returning to the USA having failed in their objectives but with an experiences which heralds reconciliation. There is a sub plot involving the daughter of Confederate officers and the adopted son of the other who happens to be an Indian American, kinda an appropriate offering as the era of reconciliation between black and white begins, hopefully.
I became tired after a meal of a few olives, two fish cakes and rest of the tined vegetables kept over from before the trip, followed by a banana and coffee. I felt very tired although watched a repeat of the last series episode of Lost as the new and finals series, I think, begins on Sunday. About 3pm I decided to go back to bed for a couple of hours. It was 8pm before I woke again. Extraordinary.
It was quickly time for the second episode of American Idol of the week. I watch this, sort of, and enjoyed a smoked mackerel salad with a quarter of watermelon and coffee. I would not be going back to bed until the early hours.
At ten I discovered the showing of an engaging and thought provoking film, The Reckoning. The film had three particular interests for me. Nicol Williamson played a chief salesman for a firm making office machines where ten years earlier the board had been persuaded to continue to concentrate on the development of the adding machine/cash register, electric and traditional typewriter than the computer. The firm could have been Olivetti where I worked unsuccessfully as a salesman after finishing top of the Sales School in 1959. This film was made in 1969. No one was interested in the adding machine then although there was talk of changes to come in the future.
The second aspect of interest is the photography of Liverpool as a city in decay where the Catholic Irish community remained hostile to the British middle class and settled their disputes without involving the police. This is home town of Williamson where he has not had direct contact with his mother, father and sister for five years and finds that his father is dead as he goes upstairs to see him. He notices that his father was badly beaten around the head and body. He had been singing Irish republican songs in a pub when one of a group of English lads had taken offence and then beaten him up.
The film in the black and white genre of Room at the Top and Saturday Night and Sunday morning, presented Nicol as the made it chancer and risk taker who had married the bosses daughter because she liked a bit of rough and his father in law and helped finance their middle class lifestyle in somewhere like Surrey, close to a golf course with posh children and not a working man in sight except as chauffer, gardener or handyman, domestic cleaner or au pair.
Williamson is brilliant as the former working class lad on the make but also an aggressive personality which explains his actual rise in the firm and which his daredevil bullying driving illustrates. I met the mirror likes of him on the sales course and at the International Management Training course two decades later and a few times in between and since in the form of local government ‘colleagues’ and politicians. Their self seeking ruthlessness and disregard for the feelings and interests of others is breathtaking as much as it is dangerous. They were all successful womanisers with no respect for anyone else wife. Fortunately they are in a significant minority in society.
In the film Williamson is pressed from within the Liverpool Irish culture to take revenge for the death of his father, especially as the authorities conclude that the death was from natural causes. He kills the young man responsible. He sleeps with a married pick up with two children during one of two visits to the city and briefly considered a longer relationship an returning to his roots. This is because in between the death and the funeral he becomes angry getting drunk and disgracing himself and his wife at a large party at their home, hitting his boss and others and being suspended until after funeral. On return he sleeps with the secretary of his boss, gaining from her the ammunition to save himself, and be appointed the Sales Director. His wife is persuaded by her father to return and he dumps the secretary. On their way home after reconciliation of a kind he jumps the red light at a single line road works narrowly missing a head on collision with a lorry and other obstacle. He comments to his wife that if he can get away with he can get away with anything. For those who do not understand how the present financial situation developed then this film provides the explanation. True it was caused by specialists creating a money making system which they did not understand but it was just one inevitable consequence of a system where people such as the character played by Williamson are furthered and protected to a degree because of their usefulness. Only when they cease to be effective are they removed. However in a democracy it is usually that the system itself has to respond before they gain absolute power. If they do then the people usually perish and suffer in great quantity.
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