Save Our Forests!

Currently our forests are protected by law. But the government wants to change the law to allow them to start a massive sell-off. National treasures like the Forest of Dean, Sherwood Forest, Grizedale, Alice Holt, Bedgebury and Thetford are under threat.

David Cameron can only change the law – and sell all our forests – if MPs vote the changes through Parliament. That makes MPs a key target for our campaign. Can you send your MP a quick e-mail today?

If enough of us e-mail our MPs, we will be able to persuade them to vote against the sell-off plans.

Please click here to email your MP and ask them to vote to Save Our Forests: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/tell-your-mp-to-save-our-forests

Thank you

Re-Release of 'The Crowded Day' (1954)

Maria Steyn has recently very kindly informed me of the re- release of ‘The Crowded Day’ (1954) starring Joan Rice, John Gregson, Dora Bryan, Thora Hird, Prunella Scales and Sid James. It is included on Part 3 of the ‘Adelphi Collection,’ along with ‘Song of Paris,’ showcasing the early films of John Guillermin.

The set can be purchased here:

The Crowded Day

Review:

“The third release of the BFI's pioneering Adelphi Collection is a double bill showcasing two early films by John Guillermin (The Towering Inferno, Death on the Nile). The Crowded Day (1954) is an engaging, bittersweet comedy-drama focusing on the intertwined lives of a group of shop girls working in a London department store in the 1950s, with a wonderful cast including John Gregson, Joan Rice, Dora Bryan, Thora Hird, Prunella Scales, Sid James and Dandy Nicholls; Song of Paris (1952) is a charming romantic comedy which sees an archetypal Englishman - suavely played by Dennis Price - return from a jaunt abroad to face a dastardly foreign Count in a duel for the hand of a beautiful mademoiselle.”

I would like to send a special thank you to Maria for making me aware of this.

Robin Hood's Dungeon

The dungeon believed to have housed Robin Hood when he was caught by the Sheriff of Nottingham is to be surveyed using a laser. It is part of a major project to explore every cave in Nottingham. Robin Hood is believed to have been held captive in an oubliette (underground dungeon) located at what is now the Galleries of Justice.

The Nottingham Caves Survey is being conducted by archaeologists based at the University of Nottingham.

The two year project, costing £250,000, has been funded by the Greater Nottingham Partnership, East Midlands Development Agency, English Heritage, the University of Nottingham and Nottingham City Council.

Experts from Trent and Peak Archaeology will use a 3D laser scanner to produce a three dimensional record of more than 450 sandstone caves around Nottingham from which a virtual representation can be made.

David Knight, Head of Research at the Trent and Peak unit, said there will be no actual excavations just the use of the laser.

"The aim is to increase the tourist potential of these sites. The scanning will also make them visible 'virtually' which is good in terms of public access because a lot of them are health hazards.


"That's one of the problems with these caves - they're very impressive but access is fairly difficult. You can imagine the health and safety issues are quite significant."

The last major survey of Nottingham's caves was in the 1980s. The British Geological Survey (BGS) documented all known caves under the city.The Nottingham Caves Survey will update the information that made up the BGS's Register of Caves.

David Knight said: "Once we've done the whole lot we'll be in a position to rank them in order of significance and make a decision on which caves may or may not be opened."

The area which now makes up Nottingham city centre was once known as Tiggua Cobaucc, which means 'place of caves'.

The caves date back to the medieval period and possibly earlier. Over the years they have been used as dungeons, beer cellars, cess-pits, tanneries and air-raid shelters.

Today the most famous include the City of Caves in the Broadmarsh Centre, Mortimer's Hole beneath the Castle, the oubliette at the Galleries of Justice, and the cave-restaurant at the Hand and Heart pub on Derby Road and the cellar-caves at the Trip to Jerusalem pub.

Picture Strip 19 : Walt Disney's Story of Robin Hood

Part 19 of Laurence's fabulous picture strip of Walt Disney's original movie the Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952). To see previous pages of the picture strip, please click on the label below.

If you want to learn more about the making of this wonderful film or the legend that inspired it, please click on the relevant subjects in the sidebar.

Was William Wallace the real Robin Hood ?

This recent article was in many papers around the world.

Here we go again:


"A Canadian novelist is causing a stir in Britain after claiming that the mythic figure of Robin Hood - outlaw champion of medieval England's poor - was actually inspired by the 13th-century Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace, hero of the 1995 Mel Gibson film 'Braveheart'.

B.C.-based, Scots-Canadian writer Jack Whyte, a leading author in the genre of historical fiction, is touting the Robin Hood-Wallace link as part of the rollout of his latest novel, The Forest Laird, based on the life of the Scottish knight who led successful battles against English overlords before his execution in 1305.

Wallace was already a powerful symbol of Scottish nationalism when Braveheart's idealized portrayal of the man heightened popular and scholarly interest in his life, Whyte told Postmedia News on Monday from his home in Kelowna, B.C.

Recent academic research into the real Wallace, he said, was key to his background work for The Forest Laird and led him to a belief that the Scottish hero may well have given life to the Robin Hood myth.

While the novel doesn't explicitly make the connection, Whyte said, "to me it's obvious that there is evidence to indicate (Wallace) was the prototype of what would develop over the next 100 to 200 years" into the Robin Hood legend.

Wallace, Whyte notes, is known to have worked as a forest gamekeeper as a young man, then to have been outlawed for alleged poaching and forced to hide in the woods for a period of time.

He is also known have suffered the death or abduction of his wife Mirren (the Scottish name for Marian) at the hands of a district sheriff.

Whyte also points to the only historical document definitively linked to Wallace as an important clue - a letter sent to the German city of Lubeck in 1297 urging its businesses to continue trading with Scottish merchants despite the battles then raging with English forces.

The letter's wax seal includes the image of a longbow, suggesting Wallace was - like the Robin Hood of legend - a skilled archer.

"The emblem on the seal is a drawn longbow. That's what started me thinking," said Whyte.

Even the scant findings of historians probing Wallace's life "heaved up a huge mountain of possibilities and probabilities" for a rich retelling of the story, he added.

Whyte first drew comparisons between Wallace and Robin Hood in an interview with the Calgary Herald in November.

"You don't have to be a genius to add up two and two and get Robin Hood," Whyte said at the time. "I firmly believe that this man, as a young man, was the archetype from which the legend of Robin Hood grew."

The idea has now reached Scotland itself, where scholars are reacting to the Canadian writer's suggestion that two epic figures from British history - each the subject of ancient tales and Hollywood films alike - are deeply intertwined.

"Robin Hood is a towering figure in English folklore," Scotland on Sunday reported this week in a story about Whyte's new book. "But it seems the origins of the mythical hero may lie in the form of Scottish arch-anglophobe William Wallace, who carved his place in history by fighting English oppression."

University of Nottingham researcher David Crook was quoted questioning the theory, and added his view that the Robin Hood character probably evolved from a medieval-era thief whose story was embellished in subsequent generations.

But Stirling University lecturer Fiona Watson, a Wallace expert, acknowledged the possibility of a link. "There are a lot of parallels between Wallace and the Merry Men."

As for direct historical connections between the life of Wallace and the legend of Robin Hood, she added: "Nobody can definitely say 'it isn't', just as they can't say definitely 'it is', because you're dealing with an old culture you can't trace."

Noted Robin Hood scholar Stephen Knight, a professor of English at Cardiff University in Wales, told Postmedia News on Monday that while "there is no sign that Wallace was the original of Robin Hood," there is evidence that Wallace's life story had "some influence on the development of the Robin Hood myth.."

Whyte said that while he is "not stipulating that William Wallace was Robin Hood," the "basics of his story are such that they could be easily adapted to English folklore."

Whyte, 70, came to Canada from Scotland in 1967, and still speaks with a strong accent from his native country."

Well it sells books and gets publicity.............what do you think??

Picture Strip 18 : Walt Disney's Story of Robin Hood

Part 18 of Laurence's fabulous picture strip of Walt Disney's original movie the Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952). To see previous pages of the picture strip, please click on the label below.

If you want to learn more about the making of this wonderful film or the legend that inspired it, please click on the relevant subjects in the sidebar.

A Letter From Joan Rice

Joan Rice sadly passed away on January 1st 1997. This blog is dedicated to her memory. In Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood, Joan graced the silver screen as the best Maid Marian the movie world has ever seen.

So in tribute to ‘our Maid Marian’ I thought I would post this truly revealing article about Joan Rice’s trip to Hollywood, just before she began filming ‘His Majesty O’Keefe.’ It was sent in by Neil who says,” I came across this in Picturegoer Magazine of Sept 13th 1952, when I was looking to see if I could find the film that would have been shown along with the Story of Robin Hood on its original release in 1952.”

We have often discussed on here Joan’s ‘Cinderella like’ transformation from waitress to film star, and in this remarkably candid letter we read of her experiences of home-sickness, stage nerves, height problems, swimming, engagement, plans for marriage and preparations for film production.

Fiji-bound, Joan Rice stopped off at Hollywood..... and found time to write 'Picturegoer' a letter....

“It was 8 a.m. when the big B.O.A.C plane circled over Idlewild Airport. I was awake and well. I am usually very airsick, but I took plenty of ‘anti’ tablets.

It was my first sight of New York. I had no idea there was so much water round it. One doesn’t think of New York that way.

The Press photographer who came to meet the plane was a very tall man. In the corner of his mouth he had the longest cigar I had ever seen. He kept smoking it, even while taking pictures.

But he didn’t ask me to “hoist the hemline a few inches, kid.” As I am told they usually do. I don’t consider myself the pin-up type-even though I have to wear sarongs for my half-caste role with Burt Lancaster in ‘His Majesty O’Keefe,’ the film for which I am making this trip.

America amazes me. On the drive to Manhattan from the airport I was impressed by all the labour saving devices in this country-even to the machines that wash your car in sixty seconds. And the roads! The city is so well planned that I found my way around quite easily.

Armchair Travel

But I wouldn’t swap an English car for an American. The U.S. jobs are too big and over sprung. You have no sensation of travelling, and might as well stay in your armchair and have removal people move you.

I had nothing but £. s. d. In my bag, because this is a Fiji and Elstree film and I am being paid in pounds. But Warners gave me fifty pounds and I made straight for a drugstore. Haven’t you always wanted to go into a drugstore? They’re just as we see them in American films.

I asked for a cup of white coffee. Without uttering a word the man gave me a cup of black coffee. I said: “No, I want white coffee.” He went away and put it in a waxed container so I could carry it away. I said : “No, white coffee. I want to drink it here.” He just looked at me. We just couldn’t seem to understand each other.

I said: “This is the first time I have done this. In England we ask for black or white.”

He put some cream in my coffee and when I paid, the man at the cash desk sold me nearly everything in the store. I bought colour films and a travelling iron and asked for a British brand of milk chocolate. But they had only American chocs., and I bought a pound; but they were not so good as ours. They just didn’t taste the same. At home I eat my month’s ration the first week, but here I had some of that pound left a week later.

I hadn’t anything to do that evening in New York, so I went to bed and watched television. The hotel people apologized for my room as “only temporary, Miss Rice,” But really it was palatial – lamps and television and everything. More like a big living – room.

There was wrestling on television and it kept me awake. Finally I had to turn off the set, or I’d never got off to sleep.

Landing at Los Angeles at eight o’clock the next night was unforgettable. There was still daylight, but the lights were coming on all over the city. With its coloured houses and the miles of neon lighting in such delicate shades, the town looked like a gleaming model.

There was some difficulty at the Roosevelt as they had no room ready for me; so the photographer who met the plane took me dancing in the hotel’s Hawaiian night club.

At first they wouldn’t let me in. They said I was under age. I’m only five feet four in my stockinged feet- I know because Carl Schafer, head of Warner’s international office in Hollywood, measured me against a studio door. I initialled the mark.

Next day I spent by the hotel swimming pool. I had only six days’ notice to leave London, but my bathing suit was one thing I wouldn’t forget!

I can’t swim, so I didn’t go in the water until the evening, when I could be alone. Then I dunked myself in the shallow end and tried floating. For a few seconds I actually stayed up.

I reported to the studio on Monday, and the week became a whirl, with fittings, hairdressing, still pictures, make-up, interviews and more fittings.

Model Of My Figure

Fabulous is the word for the way Hollywood production is organized. They had a model of my figure already made, and much of the clothes-making was already done. (Their sending to London for my measurements was the first tip I had that they might take me.)

‘His Majesty O’Keefe’ is a period picture, and as well as sarongs I am going to wear two lovely gowns. One is lavender lace and velvet wedding dress with a bustle.

I hadn’t seen the script then, but I knew there’s an amusing scene where I try on the dress and then refuse to wear it, because I have got it on the wrong way round and I don’t like that “hump” (that is the bustle) in front.

The studio hairdressing department is like a Bond Street salon. Even in the waiting rooms the appointments are magnificent. Hollywood really tries to make its stars feel good.

And the clips they used for waving hair are better than ours. They give a softer wave without risk of breaking or making a “line” in the hair.

I Sat On Stars

They had to build me up on the chair because I am rather short in the body. I didn’t quite reach the dryer. They piled cinema magazines under me, so I really sat on the stars. I noticed the picture on top was of Ava Gardner.

Some of the Warners stars very kindly came to say “hallo” to me as I spent those long hours in the make-up and hairdressing chairs. I couldn’t talk to them (ever tried to talk with your head in a dryer, or while a man’s painting your lips?), but it was all very friendly. Steve Cochran was particularly charming.

Friendliness is one of the things about Hollywood. Leroy Prinz, the director, said I was to come back to Hollywood and he’d put me in musicals. I don’t know about that. I only know I’m booked for four months on this film, in Fijii with Burt Lancaster, whom I’ve met only once – at a Royal Film Performance. (I was very nervous-it was my first stage appearance. Afterwards he grinned and said: “Well, it wasn’t so bad, was it?”) I think the really surprising thing about Hollywood is that it’s just what you would expect. If you’ve seen it in the pictures-you’ve seen it. People do just the same things, in the same way, as on the screen. Of course, the sunshine is indescribable-there just aren’t the words. It’s sun, sun, sun. You almost expect it to blaze all night.

And remember I was there for only eight crowded, busy days. I went to a few night clubs-they’re rather like ours, but with more stars about. I tried Mexican food, made especially not-to-hot for me. Those beans of theirs-grand! Little brown beans in brown gravy. I couldn’t eat enough of them.

I tried driving a left-hand drive car- an English model, I’m glad to report!-and nearly rammed a big American thing on a turn. But in a couple of hours I got used to it, even on their eight-lane speed- highways.

I think it takes time to understand Hollywood. I want to go back-even though one can be hopelessly homesick there.

I was like that one evening that first week. It was so bad I just had to talk to somebody at home. I phoned Joan Rees, my friend and first agent who got me into films. It took until 3 am. to get through. The transatlantic circuits were always “out” or something. I told the hotel operator it didn’t matter how late it was, she was to connect me.

Just talking to somebody in England was a relief. I asked about my cat (A tabby) and things like that.

When I hung up, the operator rang back. She said: “Are you feeling better now, dear?” I know how it feels. I came out alone twenty-three years ago, I’m from Guildford.”

She sent me up a pot of tea. The waiter wouldn’t take my money. He said: “It’s on the house.”

Yes, I’d like to see Hollywood again-maybe on my honeymoon. Martin Boyce-he proposed to me over the phone just before I left Britain-and I plan to marry as soon as I get back, perhaps in the little old church at Denham.”



To read more about the life of Joan Rice, please click on the label below.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I would like to wish all my blog readers a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.  Thank you so much for your input and much valued support over the last four years!

Souvenir Programme

This is a very special Christmas treat for all my blogger buddies via Laurence. This is the original British souvenir programme from Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood (1952). Enjoy!

I would like to say a very big thank you to Laurence for sending in yet another gem, for us all to appreciate.