Let’s Be ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’

I might be the only person who knows where that quote came from. And it's not from the original Tennyson poem.

This is going to be a short thread.

I'm the main character who's the only D'Ascoyne who doesn't look like Alec Guinness.

I'm Berkeley Square, waiting for Lady Agatha.

I’m Joan Greenwood’s unbelievably smoky voice. That dame purred!

Bless you wonderful creatures for knowing this utterly tremendous film.

I’m the arrow shooting Lady Agatha’s balloon down. It fell in Berkeley Square.

Beat to it!

I’m the outhouse photography studio with an offer of sherry or whisky. It’s afternoon, so I’ll take a small developer,

I'm the musical.

My favourite number from the musical.

I'm the girl in the punt ('I was sorry about the girl...'.

I'm the stained-glass window with "all of the exuberance of Chaucer but none of the concomitant crudity."

I’m the whirl of preparation at Sibella’s.

I'm the shapeshifting audacity you see in British films but not in American.

One actor playing 8 characters ain 'Kind Hearts' and one actor playing 3 in 'Colonel Blimp'—

Fuck you, r13.

I'm the saucy and sexy actor who SHOULD have got the role as the murderer.

I would have provided the proper magnetism to excite the regal Edith and minx Sibella. I would have given this mild comedy a stronger focus instead of limp, effete, sexlessly homosexual Dennis Price.

I'm the curious anomaly that this black comedy should be filmed in black and white. While Cecil Beaton was using gorgeous Technicolor for his filmed comedy at the same time.

I'm the film director whose career was killed by alcohol.

Alec Guinness said I made one film of genius ('Kind Hearts') a film of great talent ('Father Brown') and an absolute fiasco ('The Scapegoat').

I am the inspiration for this immoral story.

I'm the scattered pamphlets

I'm the dawning realization that I've left my confession in my cell.

I'm the original book that NO ONE has read--

A gorgeous film. Dennis Price and Joan Greenwood both had beautiful, captivating voices.

I am Sibella.

My nose is just a little too short, my mouth just a little too wide. But mine is a face that a man could see in his dreams for the whole of his life.

I also may be little selfish and cruel.

^ Poor Sibella is a foolish, sensuous young woman ruled by passion and utterly unfamiliar with the notions of prudence, modesty or rectitude.

I'm the scene that was vetoed from the film.

My chum John Sutro asked me look over the script and polish it up with some of my drollery.

The money-men said we can't afford to have a scene where one of the D'Ascoynes gets gored by a bull in a bullring.

I’m the protocol-hungry executioner, full of dreadful poetry

I was aware of this film as a teen. Quite the little gayling I was!

I'm the producer Michael Balcon (seen in the middle, below, with Miriam Hopkins).

People claim I'm a genius for running the small production company named Ealing Studios. I then went on to stuff up my reputation doing co-productions with MGM.

I am 100% Jewish so I insisted that the hero of the book (mentioned in R21) be changed from 50% Jewish to 50% Italian.

My grandson is Daniel Day-Lewis.

I'm the authors of the stage musical who had to keep rewriting it because we were never able secure the rights to the film on which we originally based it. We finally had to base it strictly on the original novel, which is long out of copyright. Anything unique to the film version was off limits.

I'm Valerie Hobson, playing the non-sexy Wife to Greenwood's alluring Mistress - who knew I'd end up doing the Loyal Stand By My Man routine for real just 15 years later?!

Life imitating art yet again . . .

r29

I don’t think that’s true, since the musical uses the film device of one actor playing all the family roles.

No, it's true, r31. The show was was originally based on the film but when the authors couldn't get the rights it had to be rewritten. Then the film's owners sued anyway. The lengthy suit was part of why it took the show ten years to reach Broadway but in the end the film's owners lost, although more changes had to be made to the show along the way. Google " A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder lawsuit."

And having one actor play multiple roles goes back to theater of ancient Greece. It's not a concept protectable by copyright.

Apropos of nothing, has anyone else seen the complete disappearance of the FF/WW Ignore Block features?! I sent an email enquiring but got no response whatsoever.

That happened to me once, r33. It turned out I had been logged out of the site. Go to your Account page and make sure you are still logged in.

I'm the confused one as to how a sophisticated and gentle English comedy could be so traduced down into a vulgarian American burlesque.

I looked at the Wiki, the musical's webpage and IBDB and got no satisfactory answers as to how it can be so messed up after so many versions.

At least we can be sure, R29, that it isn't based "strictly on the original novel" because the original novel (at R21) is all about a jew named 'Israel Rank'.

I'm John Landis and I'm here to tell you that Valerie Hobson IS sexy.

I rebuke the gossip monger at R30.

When I wrote "strictly from the original novel" I wasn't implying they had to use only elements from it. Since the novel was out of copyright they were free to make any changes or add any additional material they wanted as long as they didn't use any material created for the film. And having one actor play multiple parts is not copyrightable.

The Lauren Bacall musical Applause was originally supposed to be based on All About Eve. But the creators couldn't get the stage rights to the film from Fox so they got the rights to the original magazine story Eve was based on and worked from there instead. That's one reason Applause and Eve are so different. For example, Thelma Ritter's character Birdie was created for the film so she couldn't be used, as Birdie doesn't exist in the original story.

Now, as it happens they did secure the film rights just a few weeks before the show opened in New York. But it was too late in show's development to make major changes; the show was past rehearsals and was already playing previews out of town. But it did allow them to add in a lot of the famous one liners (Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy night) that weren't originally in the show.

"I should reprove you for saying unkind things of Lionel....."

I'm the inappropriate, Dolby-enhanced thumping drums on the soundtrack on the 70th anniversary trailer.

R34 - Thanks, I tried that, twice. The ratings markings never returned, nor did I get a response to my inquiry to whoever is at the other end of that HELP email.

R36 - I didn't suggest Hobson wasn't sexy. But the loyal wife she was playing was a counterbalance to the allure of the throaty voided seductress that Greenwood (not for the first time) was playing.

And Hobson standing by Profumo when the Keeler scandal broke isn't gossip: it's fact.

I'm Price's deliciously curly hair.

I'm the D'Ascoyne title and escutcheon.

With the last remaining heir about to be hanged, who gets to claim me now?!

I’m the coronet. Sibella’s face would have looked rather out of place under me.

I'm the look on Louis' face when he realises he's left the memoir and with it his confession to all those murders on the table in his cell.

I'm the synchronous nexus that makes black comedy a ‘film noir’.

As we know, film cameras were so primitive in the 1920s that interior scenes had to be shot on an exterior set. And film companies moved from dank New York state to sunny California.

Camera technology improved during the 1930s but there were strict rules about photography and lighting. Citizen Kane broke a lot of those rules. Camera technology improved so much over the 1940s decade that some films had some scenes where the majority of the screen was black. Hence Film Noir.

There’s one scene in ‘Kind Hearts’ where the glow of a fireplace provides the only source of light. And there are other scenes composed with modest yet complex sources of light.

Of course ‘film noir’ receded from fashion in the 1950s when films were increasingly shot in colour and increasingly shot outside the studio in exotic locations.

Neverthless, I wish the fabulous ornate costumes in ‘Kind Hearts’ could be seen in colour.

R46 - I share your moan about the sumptuous Edwardian look in KHAC, but, you know, it might have looked quite garish at the time.

Film noir as it looked in the 1940s and 1950s may have gone out in the 1960s but I think it's due for a return, as the taste for film noir has never dissipated, and it seems to fail most curiously in colour. Films like "Tequila Sunrise" that try to ape the formula in glorious colour (and uneven scripts, it must be said) seem to fall short of the quality that noir classics have. "Chinatown" got much closer. But, still, the power of black and white does seem to have been underrated.

All that said, I'm the crumbling D'Ascoyne estate whose death duties would have been so impoverishing that the canny survivor would have had to marry an American soap heiress to keep it going.

Im the kid in the class on that day who was daydreaming and looking out the window....

I'm Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne loosening my hair as I ascend over London in the hot air balloon.

Of course you Freudians will suggest that I'm loosening my hair as a prelude to sex.

I'm the weird space-age hat Valerie Hobson wore to meet the Russian sputnik astronaut

I'm the kind hearts.

No one on Datalounge could possibly understand me.

I'm the 59 catty, cold hearts of Datalounge who tore up this sweet-faced nubile young man

I’m the family tree hidden somewhere in St James’s, replete with crossed-off names.