Anthony Eustrel




Anthony Eustrel played the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood (1952).

Alongside Martitia Hunt as Queen Eleanor, Anthony Eustrel’s character is involved in a pivotal part of the story. Together the Queen and Archbishop are faced with the task of raising the huge ransom to release the imprisoned King Richard and defeating his brother, Prince John’s evil plans. Eustrel carried off the role as the Archbishop, with extreme elegance and aplomb, like the rest of the cast of Walt Disney’s second live action production in England.

I have managed to find out very little about Eustrel’s life other than the fact he was born in London on October 12th 1902.  During his early stage career in the 1940’s he appeared at the Stratford Memorial Theatre in productions of Richard II, Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice.


His film career included:

§  Under the Red Robe (1937)
§  Second Bureau (1937)
§  The Wife of General Ling (1937)
§  Gasbags (1940)
§  The Silver Fleet (1943)
§  The Adventures of Tartu (1943)
§  Counterblast (1951)
§  Captain John Smith and Pocahontas  (Burning Arrows) (1953)
§  King Richard and the Crusaders (1954)
§  Lady Godiva of Coventry (1955) - Prior
§  The Ten Commandments (1956) - First High Priest
§  The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)
§  Bednobs and Broomsticks (1971)


Anthony Eustrel also appeared in many TV series:

Climax (1951), BBC Sunday Night Theatre (1951), Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (1954-1955), Burkes Law (1964-1965), Man From Uncle (1965-1966) Batman (1966),  Get Smart (1966-1968), Hogan’s Heroes (1966-1968),  My Favourite Martian (1963-1966) (in which he played King John in one episode) and many others.

He died aged 76 on July 2nd 1979 and his ashes were interned at Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.
If you have any more information on the life of this wonderful actor, please get in touch.

The Tomb of Maid Marian

Matilda Fitzwalter's tomb c.1782


Occasionally I like to delve into various subjects linked to the Robin Hood legend and recently I decided to look at one particular place associated with Robin’s girlfriend - Little Dunmow, near Colchester in Essex. I was glad I did and unearthed far more than I expected!

Today all that survives of the Augustinian priory of St Mary the Virgin, (founded in Dunmow in 1106) is the present church in St. Mary’s Place, which was the Lady Chapel. It is here that local tradition states, is the tomb of Maid Marian.

Little Dunmow church

Dunmow formed the caput of a feudal barony along with Baynard’s Castle in south-west London, which was granted to Robert Fitzwalter of Woodham (c.1198- 1235) on the death of his father in 1198. Robert was the baronial leader, styled ‘Master of the Army of God and the Holy Church’ who later went on to oppose King John and lead the revolt that culminated in the Magna Carta in 1215. Today he has become romanticized and styled the champion of English liberty, but history reveals that he was far from the saintly character created by modern myth.

King John had refused to allow the pope any right to appoint an archbishop of Canterbury without royal assent. He banished from England five monks from Canterbury and seized all the English offices held by Italian bishops. He then went on to refuse to allow any papal legates to enter the country. By the spring of 1208 the Pope had placed the country under an Interdict forbidding any church services to be held.

In 1212, Robert Fitzwalter had been heavily implicated in an assassination plot against King John during his expedition against the Welsh. The king was to be killed, or to be abandoned to the Welsh while a new king was chosen. But John had received intelligence of the scheme and Fitzwalter was outlawed and fled to the court of King Philip of France. John seized Fitzwalter’s lands and destroyed both Baynard and Benington castles. But in the ‘Historire des ducs de Normandie (p.118)’, compiled between 1215-16, it states that when Robert Fitzwalter fled to France, he told King Philip that his break with John was caused by the latter’s attempt to rape his daughter Matilda. How this allegation arose is unclear and not taken seriously by modern scholars. Some historians suggest that Fitzwalter may have left his wife Gunnor de Valognes and the children, at Arras in Northern France while he had gone to repeat his tale to Philip Augustus!

Seal Dye of Robert Fitzwalter

Meanwhile another enemy of John, Eustace de Vesci, had also been allegedly enraged by what he described as the king’s attempt to seduce his wife Margaret, the daughter of King William of Scotland. Later a chronicler wrote of these allegations, at the Cistercian Abbey of Waverly, accusing King John of violating the wives and daughters of many of his barons. These attempted rapes were also confirmed by Matthew Paris; who although not a contemporary of John continued to re-write and add to the work of Roger of Wendover, with extreme hostility, describing the monarch as irreligious, lazy and wishing to convert the country to Islam.

This is perhaps unsurprising when you consider that King John had been excommunicated by the Pope and this severely biased all views of him emanating from monastic sources -‘veiled behind fable, invention and hostile criticism.’ So true or not, as hostile propaganda, these allegations helped to establish the image of an immoral and untrustworthy king that has lasted to the present day. 

The story of the seduction of Robert Fitzwalter’s daughter by King John first appeared in the manuscript chronicle of Dunmow (Ms.Cotton, Cleop, C, 3. f29). Sadly only one copy survives from the 16th Century, but it was probably begun by Nicholas de Brumfield a canon of Dunmow in the latter part of the 13th Century.

In 1597 appeared Michael Drayton’s (1563-1631) England's Heroical Epistles, a series of poetical accounts, in imitation of those of Ovid. In this we first get our first glimpse of Dunmow’s heavily romanticized myth:

“King John enamour’d, by all means assay’d,
To win chaste Matilda, a chaste noble maid,
The Lord Fitzwater’s daughter; and to gain her,
When by his courtship he could not obtain her,
Nor by his gifts, strives (to far being in)
To get by force, what fear means could not win.
And banisheth the nearest of her blood,
Which he could think had his desires withstood:
When she to Dunmow to a nun’ry flies,
Whither be writeth, and whence she replies.”

It is interesting to note that between 1597 and 1602 Michael Drayton had strong connections in London with the theatrical syndicate of Philip Henslowe, and collaborated with many of the playwrights of that time. Drayton’s influence possibly inspired two Elizabethan dramas that left a lasting legacy on the legend of Robin Hood.

Henslowe’s famous theatrical diary states that the prolific Anthony Munday (1563-1633) registered two plays on the 1st December 1600:

1. “The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington, afterwards called Robin Hood of Merrie Sherwood; with the lamentable tragedy of chaste Matilda, the Lord Fitzwater’s daughter afterwards his faire maid Marian.”

2. The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington, otherwise called Robin Hood of merrie Sherwood; with the lamentable tragedy of chaste Matilda, his faire maid Marian, poysoned at Dunmowe by King John. (On this second play, Munday was helped by another playwright, Henry Chettle).

In Munday’s fist play we see Matilda being persecuted by Prince John and following her lover to Sherwood where she assumes the name Maid Marian. In the ‘Downfall’ Maid Marian is once again pursued by the lecherous John (who has now become king) to Dunmowe Abbey, where he eventually poisons her.

During the ‘Downfall’ play, Matilda confusingly changes back to Marian then Matilda again, which possibly indicates how Munday was struggling to combine the two separate traditions. But both plays became hugely popular at the time and the ‘Downfall’ was later selected for performance at Court.

This popularity led to another play, ‘King John and Matilda,’ written about 1628 by Richard Davenport.  But critics tend to describe this historical tragedy as lacking originality and bearing a strong resemblance to Munday’s second Robin Hood production.

In 1631 John Weever published his ‘Ancient Funeral Monuments of Great Britain’ and under Little Dunmow writes:

“The church of this monastery is yet standing, in the choir whereof, between two pillars, lieth the body of Matilda the fair entombed, who was the daughter of Robert Fitz-Water, the most valiant knight of England. About the year 1213 saith the book of Dunmow, there arose a great discord betwixt  K. John and  his barons, because of Matilda surnamed the faire, daughter of Robert Fitz-Water, whom the king unlawfully loved, but could not obtain her, nor her father’s consent thereunto. Whereupon, and for other like causes, ensued war through the whole realm. The king banished the said Fitz-Water among others, and caused his castle, called Baynard, and other his houses to be spoiled. Which being done, he sent a messenger unto Matilda the fair, about his old suit in love, et quia noluit consentire toxicavit eam. And because she would not agree to his wicked motion, the messenger poisoned a boiled, or potched egg, against she was hungry, and gave it unto her, whereof she died in the year 1213.” 

The story was repeated, with more substance in William Dugdale’s (1605-1686) Monasticon Anglicanum (1693):

“...in the year 1216 Robert Fitz Walter refusing to consent to King John’s unlawful love to his daughter Matilda the Fair, that king seized upon his Estate and Barony , and his castle of Baynard at London; and Matilda, who was then there at Dunmow not admitting the King’s Suit, was poisoned in a mess of broth. These things occasioned the Barons Wars, which after a while were again composed, and Robert Fitz Walter restored to his Barony and the King’s favour as formerly.”

'Matilda's' tomb at Dunmow

So the legend was taken into the nineteenth century, but Geoffery Fitzpeter in his ‘Historical Essay on Magna Carta’ was more critical:

‘... between two pillars, on the north side of the choir, is the tomb of the fair Matilda, daughter of the second Walter Fitz-Walter, who, according to the monkish story, unsupported by history, is pretended to have been poisoned by the contrivance of King John, for refusing to gratify his illicit passion. Her figure is in alabaster, and by no means a despicable piece of workmanship. Her fingers are stained with a red colour, which according to the Ciceroni of the place, was done to represent the effect of the poison; but in all likelihood is the remains of a former painting.”

This for me has been a very interesting journey. On the way we have seen how the seeds were sown to portray King John as the bad king of popular literature and film and also witnessed the gentrification of Maid Marian, the village May Queen into Matilda Fitzwalter daughter of Lord Robert Fitzwalter.

After the death of his wife Gunnora de Valognes, Robert Fitzwalter married Rohese Bayard who survived him. He is recorded in most sources as having four children, Robert (pre-deceased him), Walter his heir from his second marriage (d.1258), and Christina who married William de Mandeville.

But did Robert Fitzwalter have a daughter called Matilda? I have searched for historical evidence, but frustratingly, apart from a mention in Sidney Painter’s ‘King John’ (1966), that ‘Matilda did die about that time [1212] but it is unlikely John poisoned her,’ there is no reference.

The tomb of King John


In W.L.Warren’s excellent book on the life of King John, he writes:

 “[Robert Fitzwalter and Eustace de Vesci] put out stories of John’s lecherous designs upon their woman folk - an easy enough charge to make, but the stories they told were so confused and unsubstantiated as to be beyond unravelling, let alone belief. They seem indeed to be unintelligent fabrications to cover lack of rational excuse; and it is hard to believe that Fitzwalter and Vesci were anything more than baronial roughnecks. They had been out simply for John’s blood in the conspiracy of 1212...”

Warren goes on: “Fitzwalter was altogether disreputable and mischievous, rescued from ignominy only by his great fiefs, and owing his leadership largely to his dominating aggressiveness. He was quick to take offence and draw his sword.”

Maurice Ashley writes, “The story that John importuned and molested the wives and daughters of his barons, including specifically the wives of Eustace de Vesci and Robert fitz Walter, sounds improbable and was no doubt cooked up by the monks.”

The damaged face on the alabaster tomb

The figure, said to be of Matilda, the daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, on the tomb in Priory Church Little Dunmow, is made of alabaster and dated from the early fifteenth century. It is likely to belong to a later member of the Fitzwalter family, but this endearing legend will of course live on.

Lucy Griffiths as Marian Fitzwalter in Robin Hood (1992)
  

1215 The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham
The Reign of King John by Sidney Painter
King John by Maurice Ashley
King John by W.L.Warren
Magna Carta by Geoffrey Hindley






Italian Poster


We now have a wide variety of  different posters and lobby cards from around the world, promoting Walt Disney's Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952) on this site. Above is an Italian poster from the 1950's. To see the others please click here.

Lobby Card


Above is another colourful lobby card, promoting Walt Disney's Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952). On the dais is Joan Rice (sitting far left) as Maid Marian, the fabulous Martitia Hunt (centre, standing)  as Queen Eleanor, Hubert Gregg (getting up) as Prince John  and the moody but magnificent Peter Finch (standing, far right) as the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Richard Todd at the Dundee Rep



Shortly before receiving his call-up papers in July 1940, Richard Todd had become a co-founder of the Dundee Repertory Theatre. In his autobiography, ‘Caught in the Act’, Todd describes how the small-time impresario Robert Thornley had  asked him to join his recently formed small  company and had chosen Her Majesty’s Theatre Dundee by closing his eyes and jabbing a list of theatres with a pin!

Richard Todd was delighted to accept Thornley’s invitation and appeared in the opening play, ‘On the Spot.’ The huge theatre was very run down and in need of a great deal of repair, so Thornley eventually managed to acquire Dundee’s Forester’s Hall. After gathering together a consortium of businessmen in three days, he was able to finance a reconstruction of the Hall and by the end of the year it became the new permanent theatre. So on Wednesday 20th December 1939 the Dundee Repertory Theatre was finally launched with a gala performance of ‘Hassan.’

With the clouds of war looming in the background, the aspiring young actor Richard Todd, (who was eagerly awaiting his call-up papers) was beginning his now legendary stage and film career.



Above is a programme, provided by Neil, from March 1940 showing the Dundee Rep with Richard Todd in ‘The Case of The Frightened Lady.’ Four months later, he received his call-up papers and was sent to Strensall Camp, the site of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and the start of his heroic war years. Later, as a member of the 6th Airborne Division he became the first man of the main force to parachute out over Normandy on D-Day.

To read a lot more about the life of Richard Todd (1919-2009) please click here.

Walt Disney's Memo

Joan Rice in an earlier page-boys outfit.

Last week we looked at how Walt Disney set up Perce Pearce and Fred Leahy to supervise the production of his early live-action movies in England. Below is an example of Disney’s concentration on the detail in a memo he sent to them during the pre-production of the Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952):

“The final tests arrived the first part of the week and we looked at them. I think [Richard] Todd is wonderful, and I feel he will project a great deal of personality and do a lot for the role.
Joan Rice is beautiful and charming. I think, however, she will need some help on her dialogue. I thought at times, she lacked sincerity, although one of her close-ups was very cute. I do not care much about her costume in the first scenes. It seems that women of that period always have scarves up around their chins, but I think it does something to a woman’s face. I’d like to see us avoid it, if possible, or get around it in some way or other-maybe use it in fewer scenes.
When we see Miss Rice disguised as a page, this costume seemed bulky and heavy. The blouse or tunic was too long and hung too far down over her hips-it didn't show enough of her and I thought distracted from her femininity. I do believe the costume did much to set off her femininity. I think a slight showing of the hips would help a lot.

Joan Rice wearing the updated page-boys costume.


I liked Elton Hayes as Allan-a-Dale. He has a good voice with quite an appeal. The last word I had from Larry [Watkin] was to the effect that he would be sending in a new and complete script very soon. I have been following his changes and the little thoughts I have are close to “lint-picking”, which I feel he is smoothing out in his final script, so I won’t bother about passing on my thoughts until I get his so-called final script...”

This is a fascinating insight into the pre-production of the Story of Robin Hood and although we do know a little about the original ideas for the movie, I can’t help wondering what the original script was like! 

At the start of this post we see a still from the movie, showing Joan Rice as Maid Marian, in what might be the page’s costume that Disney mentions - as it was never worn in the film.

Joan Rice with Ken Annakin going over the script.


In his memo, Walt Disney describes Joan Rice’s difficulties with the dialogue. The director, Ken Annakin went into great detail in his autobiography about the problems he had with her; how he had to slavishly go over the script with her word for word. But it is worth mentioning, I believe, that this was only her second role in a movie and apart from being rushed through the ‘Rank Charm School’ a year earlier; my research has shown that she had no experience in acting beforehand.


From Animation to Live-Action



The British government, in an attempt to revive its own film industry after the war, had imposed a 75% import tax on American films shown in Britain and ordered that 45 % of the films shown in British theaters be made in England. (A similar restriction had been agreed in France). This was a terrible blow to the Disney studio and to make matters worse, the French and British governments had both impounded receipts earned by American studios in those countries, insisting that the currency be spent there. For the Disney studio, this amounted to more than $1 million. Obviously Walt couldn't set up an animation studio in England or France, but he had another option. He could make a live-action film in England and finance it with the blocked funds. In effect, then, when Walt Disney finally crossed over into live-action, it was because the British government had forced him to do so.

Producer Perce Pearce with art director Carman Dillon 
and director Alex Bryce on the 'Robin Hood' set.


The project Walt selected for his live- action feature was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and he dispatched Perce Pearce and Fred Leahy to England to supervise the production. But he remained unusually involved in the post production  at least compared to the offhanded way he had been treating recent films. He had asked Pearce and Leahy to air-mail him specific takes for editing, and after a test screening in early January, he ordered them to cut ten to twelve minutes and provide a more forceful musical score; he also advised them that a more detailed criticism would follow. Two day later he ordered the editor to fly from England to Los Angeles, apparently so that Walt could oversee the editing himself.

The finished film, Walt Disney’s first all live-action feature, was both a critical and financial success- unbelievably the first in a long, long time. Treasure Island (1950) grossed $4 million, returning to the studio a profit of between $2.2 and $2.4 million. With the euphoria of this success was the worry that the animation side of the studio was dying. But Walt reassured those that had raised concerns, (including Douglas Fairbanks Jnr.) “We are not forsaking the cartoon field-it is purely a move of economy-again converting pounds into dollars to enable us to make cartoons here.” So in a strange turn, Disney had to make live-action films now to save his animation.

Richard Todd as Robin Hood

In July 1951, just as his cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland was released in America, Walt Disney visited Europe with his wife Lillian and his daughters to supervise his second live-action movie. The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952) was financed again by the blocked monies of RKO and Disney. Before leaving, Walt had screened films at the studio, looking at prospective actors and directors and making what he himself called ‘merely suggestions’, while he left the final decisions to Perce Pearce, who was producing. For his part, Pearce had laid out every shot in the movie in thumbnail sketches, or storyboards, just as the studio had done with the animators, and sent them on along with photostats and the final script to Walt for his approval, which Walt freely gave, though not without a veiled threat that Pearce had better make the film as quickly as possible. “This is important not only to the organization but to you as the producer,” he wrote.

Walt Disney using the Storyboard


The use of storyboards was new to ‘Robin Hood’ director Ken Annakin, “but it appealed to my logical brain very, very much,” he said later, and prompted ingenious scenes such as the first meeting between Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham after King Richard has left, played on the balcony of the castle against a brilliant but ominous orange sky at sundown. “I had never experienced sketch artists, and sketching a whole picture out,” Annakin said. “That picture was sketched out, and approved by him—but it was designed in England, and sketches were sent back to America.” For all his influence and control, Walt was not an overbearing studio head in Annakin’s view. “Basically, he visited the set maybe half a dozen times, stayed probably two or three hours while we were shooting.”

Though Walt delegated a good deal of authority on these films, he nevertheless took his approval of the storyboards seriously. When he noticed that one sequence wasn't shot exactly as agreed, he questioned Ken Annakin as to why. Annakin replied that he was going over budget and wanted to economize. “Have I ever queried the budget?” Walt asked. “Have I ever asked you to cut? Let’s keep to what we agreed.” In the end, Annakin never wavered from his understanding that the film he was making was, even with his own directorial expertise and perspective, and an insistence on a more authentic telling of the Robin Hood story, a Walt Disney production.

Director Ken Annakin

Meanwhile as Robin Hood was being filmed, Walt, Lillian and his daughters wandered through Europe, visiting the Tivoli Gardens in Denmark, and did not return to the studio until August.

While making those live action movies in England (which also included Sword and the Rose (1953) and Rob Roy the Highland Rogue (1954)), “Walt achieved something that I’m not sure he actually knew he was going to achieve”, suggests Disney authority Brian Sibley,  “which was that he placed himself as being not just an American filmmaker, but also a European filmmaker—or specifically a British filmmaker. We thought of him as making films not just about us, but making them here as well. I think that that gave Britain a kind of ‘ownership’ to Walt Disney, and that only came about in the ‘50s.”







Inside the Dream: The Personal Story of Walt Disney by Katherine & Richard Greene (2001)

Walt Disney: The Biography by Neal Gabler (2007)
So You Wanna Be A Director by Ken Annakin (2001) 


Robin Receives the Silver Arrow


This still from Disney's Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952) is a fine example of why the film was voted 'the best Technicolor movie ever made in England'. The design and colour are the work of art director Carman Dillon , who provided Disney with twenty five sumptuous sets.

In this scene we see Robin Fitzooth (Robin Hood) played by Richard Todd collect the Silver Arrow from Queen Eleanor. It was Martitia Hunt who was given the role of elegant Eleanor of Aquitaine, the mother of Richard the Lionheart and John, his evil brother. This was the first time the fascinating historical queen had been portrayed in a  movie about the outlaw of Sherwood Forest. The character would later appear nearly sixty years later in the Ridley Scott production of Robin Hood (2010).

Joan Rice in 'Blackmailed' (1951)

Joan Rice and Dirk Bogarde in 'Blackmailed'

Within two years of winning the title of Miss Lyons in a beauty contest, Joan Rice found herself starring alongside Dirk Bogarde, James Robertson Justice, Robert Flemyng, Fay Compton and Mai Zetterling in director Harold Huth's black and white movie Blackmailed (1951).

She had been considered for the part of Mary, a girl injured in a tragic accident, but Huth decided to give Joan her first big chance and cast her in the role of Alamaan artists model.


Joan Rice and Dirk Bogarde in 'Blackmailed'


For the young girl who had been working as a housemaid for a doctor in Middlesex and then as a waitress, this was the first step on her sudden meteoric rise to stardom. The movie was released in London in January 1951- two months later Joan was screen tested with six others for the role of Maid Marian in Disney's live-action Technicolor film the Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952). She was hand picked by Walt Disney who said, "she get's my vote, she has quality."

Sadly Joan's time on the silver screen was short-lived, but she will never be forgotten. This blog is dedicated to her memory and to read more about her interesting life and film career please click here.