| Mark Lipton |
Ian Hoare wrote:
> Couldn't agree more. I still await an actor who can play Lord Peter with as
> much assurance and accuracy as we have been privileged to see in recent
> years with other fictional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple,
> Hercule Poirot, and Inspector Morse.
Funny that you should say this, as Jean and I were recently debating the
portrayals of Ian Carmichael and Edward Petherbridge. Of the two, I
prefer Carmichael's on several counts.
>
> A common need with all convincing interpretations of such detectives is that
> one HAS to be able to believe that these characters had a rat-trap mind, an
> utterly ruthless determination to discover and punish wrongdoers, and that
> they hungered and thirsted after the truth. That was the problem with
> previous actors, who for all their eminence, completely missed that and
> created buffoonish caricatures. I'm thinking of Margaret Rutherford, (the
> dreadful bumbling mumbling Dr Watson of ?? whom a real Holmes would have
> himself murdered)
Nigel Bruce, perhaps? Of course, Basil Rathbone's Sherlock was also a
horrid caricature of Conan Doyle's Holmes.
and Ustinov as Poirot. Ian Carmichael was in that mould,
> playing the accent and the toffery (vital elements admittedly) but missing
> out completely the man shaking with fear after his WW1 nightmares, the
> sensitivity of his courtship of Harriet, and the intellect of a man sent off
> as a highly trusted diplomat and capable of inspiring jealousy amongst dons
> in an Oxford college.
Carmichael never played AFAIK the Harriet Vane trilogy. Have you seen
any evidence to the contrary? I agree with you that he missed the
shell-shocked aspect of the character, although in "Bellona Club" we did
get a sense of his feeling about the experience.
>
> My quotation would be from Busman's honeymoon.
ROFL!! Jean and I both adore that scene in particular. Another topic of
our recent conversation was that no production has been made of Busman's
Honeymoon. Jean had some recollection of a copyright problem. Any insight?
Mark Lipton
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| Ian Hoare |
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Salut/Hi Mark,
le/on Fri, 09 Apr 2004 13:58:39 -0500, tu disais/you said:-
>> Couldn't agree more. I still await an actor who can play Lord Peter
>Funny that you should say this, as Jean and I were recently debating the
>portrayals of Ian Carmichael and Edward Petherbridge. Of the two, I
>prefer Carmichael's on several counts.
I agree, he's better. But FAR behind Edward Suchet, for example.
>> created buffoonish caricatures. I'm thinking of Margaret Rutherford, (the
>> dreadful bumbling mumbling Dr Watson of ?? whom a real Holmes would have
>> himself murdered)
>
>Nigel Bruce, perhaps?
Yeah, that's the guy. It's true that in Conan Doyle's books he doesn't shine
as a great mind, but he "IS" a doctor (medical) and as I said, he can't be
THAT dumb, or Holmes would have gone mad.
> Of course, Basil Rathbone's Sherlock was also a horrid caricature of Conan Doyle's Holmes.
Quite.
>> out completely the man shaking with fear after his WW1 nightmares, the
>> sensitivity of his courtship of Harriet, and the intellect of a man sent off
>> as a highly trusted diplomat and capable of inspiring jealousy amongst dons
>> in an Oxford college.
>
>Carmichael never played AFAIK the Harriet Vane trilogy. Have you seen
>any evidence to the contrary?
Nono, you're right, but in all the books, the _person_ is there,
multifacted, and complete, and so far we've not found an actor capable of
playing such a person, IMO.
>> My quotation would be from Busman's honeymoon.
>
>ROFL!! Jean and I both adore that scene in particular.
You can see it, can't you! Poor Bunter.
>our recent conversation was that no production has been made of Busman's
>Honeymoon. Jean had some recollection of a copyright problem. Any insight?
None whatsoever. (as usual when it comes to matters literary).
--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website
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| James Dempster |
On Fri, 09 Apr 2004 22:56:45 +0200, Ian Hoare <ianhoare@angelfire.com>
wrote:
>>our recent conversation was that no production has been made of Busman's
>>Honeymoon. Jean had some recollection of a copyright problem. Any insight?
There was a US film of Busman's Honeymoon in 1940 with Robert
Montgomery as Lord Peter. It's sometimes known as Haunted Honeymoon. I
saw some of it once and either the play is not on a par with the novel
or it got an extensive rewrite. I suspect the latter.
There was also (apparently) a 1947 UK TV version with Harold
Warrender.
James
James Dempster (remove nospam to reply by email)
You know you've had a good night
when you wake up
and someone's outlining you in chalk.
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| Max Hauser |
Sorry I sometimes am a little slow to revisit this forum, I hope the
exchange on this interesting topic is not yet exhausted. Specifically:
"Ian Hoare" in news:08kd705pjnp677ang347hkvl0rota19arg@4ax.com...
>
> Couldn't agree more. I still await an actor who can play Lord Peter . . .
> . . .
> Ian Carmichael was in that mould, playing the accent and the
> toffery (vital elements admittedly) but missing out completely the
> man shaking with fear after his WW1 nightmares, . . .
I'll grant you the later points on Carmichael (edited out here) but did you
view that particular series recently? Let me explain.
The Carmichael group of "Lord Peter Wimsey" British TV mini-series of the
1970s played on US TV soon after release and made an impression. (They are
discussed today even, by people I know who have not seen them since first
release.) They reappeared a number of times on various US networks and
stations through the early 1990s (and then that 1990s series of Wimsey
appeared, perhaps the one that the two of you named further in the thread,
but it was strange to see a new production from the same group of stories,
slightly overlapping the syndication airings of the earlier, and in a very
different style, Wimsey almost catatonic compared to Carmichael's, the
production much slicker of course as was usual by then; I didn't care at all
for that later series).
A few years ago, the Carmichael versions began appearing on (US-Canada
formatted) DVD via AcornMedia. As of last year, a five-episode boxed set,
about 1000 minutes, was available (I gave a few of them as gifts, and posted
comments on amazon.com including other details you may enjoy unless you
already saw it). This is a richly realized set of Wimsey, notable for many
things including the great pool of British acting talent. But the WW1
nightmares figure conspicuously in a couple of them, and the war hangs
nervously over the story of the _Bellona_ episode, a central sympathetic
character being a badly unnerved ex-soldier. (With attention it is easy to
date the settings of the episodes in this set -- _Bellona_ if I remember is
set soon after the war, whereas the epic and beautifully set _Nine Tailors,_
Sayers's connection with the C of E showing prominently there, begins with
flashbacks during the war, depicts Wimsey's near-death and how Sgt.
Bunter -- Glyn Houston in all but the _Bellona_ episode -- comes to work
later for Wimsey. (As the old butler announces the visitor, he says "A
soldier, M'Lord. " And adds with disdain, "NOT an officer." "Really?"
Wimsey mocks him. "ARE there such people?")
The following slightly garbled (edited) dialog is from the _Bellona_ episode
in that series, and concerns food. (Not from online.)
--------
Wimsey: "You'll need to look like a journalist, Bunter. Ash on the
lapel --"
Bunter: "Ash, sir?"
Wimsey: "Yes, Bunter, RIGHT down the lapel. Egg on the waistcoat, and
dandruff. Use desiccated coconut."
Bunter: "Poached egg on the waistcoat, sir?"
Wimsey: "No, fried egg.
--
Bonus bit of broadcast history trivia, for those who haven't heard it. (I
work as an engineer in a related specialty and was licensed in the US to be
a chief engineer at a radio or TV station 30 years ago, a detail highly
unconnected to wine, and no, I do not take requests to fix failing TVs.)
But my European engineer colleagues mostly knew as a broadcast-TV encoding
standard the modern, high-performing European PAL (phase-alternating-line)
format, by which, for example, Germany eagerly views all those dubbed US
Western films -- "Regierung Soldaten!" cries Burt Lancaster to Gary Cooper
in _Vera Cruz._ The PAL format was adopted in most of the world, except for
a few "difficult" regions with their own standards. There was no truth
however (or very little truth) in the quip I first heard over 20 years ago
that the US's peculiar TV encoding standard, NTSC, stood for Never The Same
Color, while the French system, SECAM, was designed for maximum
incompatibility with NTSC, and stood for Système Envelopper Contre les
Américains ("Anti-American Encoding System"). No truth at all!
Max Hauser
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