December 13, 1955: Laurence Olivier's Film Version of "Richard III"

December 13, 1955: The film Richard III premieres. Having previously directed and starred in a film version of Henry V, who has been called "Shakespeare's only true hero," Laurence Olivier takes on the role of the most villainous character that William Shakespeare ever depicted.

When the play, which premiered in 1594, and film begin, it is 1483, and it appears that the Wars of the Roses are long over, and that the House of York have defeated the House of Lancaster for good. King Henry VI is dead. King Edward IV, of York (played in the film by Cedric Hardwicke), is on the throne. He is happily married to Elizabeth Woodville (Mary Kerridge), although he cheats on her endlessly.

The succession seems to be secured: Edward and Elizabeth have 2 sons, Edward (Paul Huson) the 12-year-old Prince of Wales, and Richard of Shrewsbury (Andy Shine), the 9-year-old Duke of York. After those boys in the line of succession is King Edward's brother, George (John Gielgud), Duke of Clarence, and then the youngest brother, Richard (Olivier), Duke of Gloucester. In other words, in spite of his heroism in the Wars of the Roses (which is backed up by actual history), the Duke of Gloucester is nowhere near ever receiving the crown.

And he begins the play and film with one of the most famous opening lines in literature:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;

And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

Sounds good, right? Ah, but in spite of his wealth and privilege, Richard is not happy. Shakespeare followed the legend that Richard was ugly, and a hunchback with a withered arm. So Richard continues, whining that even his wealth and privilege doesn't give him the kind of way with women that his brother Edward has, and vowing revenge upon the world that made him this way:

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate the one against the other:

And if King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,

About a prophecy, which says that 'G'

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

So Richard points out that "George" begins with a "G" -- even though it could also be "Gloucester," his title. George is executed for treason, even though he's innocent. (This actually happened in 1478.) So now, Edward the King, Edward the Prince of Wales and Richard the Duke of York are ahead of Richard the Duke of Gloucester.

In spite of his physical form, Richard manages to win the hand in marriage of Lady Anne Neville (Claire Bloom), despite his having been on the side that led to the deaths of her father, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (a.k.a. "Warwick the Kingmaker"); and her previous husband, Edward of Westminster, son and would-be heir of Henry VI. (No age issue if the play is to be believed: Richard was 28 at the time, and Anne was 27. In real life, though, the wedding was in 1472, when he was 19 and she was 18.)

And then, on April 9, 1483, Edward IV dies -- only 40 years old (Hardwicke was 62, a great actor but much too old for the role), from a cause still debated today. He lived through his illness long enough to legally make his brother Richard "Lord Protector" of England, and guardian of his sons Edward and Richard, until Edward reaches his majority and can rule on his own.

King Edward V and his brother Richard were at Ludlow Castle, over 150 miles northwest of London, and it took 5 days for them to receive word of their father's death. They are taken back to London, and Uncle Richard meets them along the way. He convinces them that, with plots all around, they will be safest in the Tower of London. So far, this matches what history tells us.

And Edward and Richard are never seen in public again. Richard gets Parliament to declare the wedding of Edward IV and Elizabeth null and void, because Edward had secretly married someone else before that. (Which is still in dispute, over 500 years later.) Therefore, Edward and Richard are stricken from the line of succession, and the Duke of Gloucester is crowned King Richard III.

History still hasn't answered what happened to "The Princes In the Tower," but Shakespeare's play forever embedded in the public imagination that Richard had them killed. In the play, it is done by Sir James Tyrell, a knight loyal to Richard (played in this film by Patrick Troughton, later to star in Doctor Who). Some sources have said that Richard literally took matters into his own hands, and smothered the boys with their pillows. Other sources suggest that they merely died of illnesses, which, given the damp air of castles and the state of medicine in the late 15th Century, would hardly have been shocking -- except that one was a king and the other was his heir.

Richard reigns for 2 years, during which Queen Anne dies, and history doesn't make it clear how, though Richard's enemies thought he poisoned her so that he could marry Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV -- and thus his own niece, and she was just 19 at the time -- to strengthen his claim on the crown. Which he does.

Richard and Anne had a son, Edward of Middleham, but he died on April 9, 1484, at the age of 10, possibly of tuberculosis. The King's enemies called it divine retribution. After this, Richard named a new heir, his nephew, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, son of Elizabeth of York, sister to Richard III and Edward IV. He died in 1492, though apparently not of suspicious causes.

Richard III also had an illegitimate son, John of Gloucester; and an illegitimate daughter, Katherine, who later married the Earl of Pembroke. She died of an illness in 1487, and John died in 1499, possibly executed on the order of Richard's successor. There is no record of him cheating on Anne, or his 2nd wife, Elizabeth, and, since this makes him an outlier among Kings of England (especially in comparison to his brother Edward), historians have doubted the claims of illegitimate children, and Shakespeare's portrayal of him as a lascivious man, suggesting that he had little interest in sex.

Richard's opponents find someone with a claim to the crown: Henry Tudor (Stanley Baker), Earl of Richmond. Well, his claim wasn't all that strong: Through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, he was a great-great-great-grandson of King Edward III; through Margaret's husband, Edmund Tudor, he was a martilineal nephew of Henry VI, and a step-grandson of Henry V; which made him, by marriage, his own 4th cousin, and a 3rd cousin once removed of Richard III. In other words, he was, like Richard III, a member of the House of Plantagenet, but of the Lancaster branch, and now of the House of Tudor as well.

Stronger than Henry's claim was his army. And the night before the Battle of Bosworth Field, 13 miles west of downtown Leicester, and over 100 miles northwest of London, Richard is visited in his dreams by the ghosts of men he has killed, or has had killed: Henry VI (or "Harry the Sixth," as he calls himself), and his son, Edward of Westminster; his wife, Lady Anne; his brother, George; his nephews, Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury; his brother-in-law, Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers; Richard Grey and Sir Thomas Vaughan; his nephew, Richard Grey, half-brother of Edward V; Sir Thomas Vaughan, a knight who was loyal to Edward IV but opposed to Richard III; Sir William Hastings, a friend whom Edward IV had appointed Ambassador to France, but stood in Richard's way; and Henry Stafford (Ralph Richardson), Duke of Buckingham, who had been first an ally of Richard's, then an enemy. Every one of these men (and boys), one after the other, places his hand on the head of the sleeping Richard, and says, "Despair and die!"

Richard is shaken by this dream, but composes himself, and, trying to copy Henry V at Agincourt, 68 years earlier, gives his troops an inspirational speech. It doesn't work: In the battle, on August 22, 1485, Richard is knocked off his horse, and loses his cherished crown. He claims that there must be "six Richmonds in the field," because he's already killed five of them. He yells, "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" He doesn't get the horse, and he is hacked to death with swords. History does not record him yelling the famous line, but it does say his last word was the word "Treason!" over and over again.

The film's premiere was attended by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Producer Alexander Korda sold the American film rights to NBC, which broadcast it on March 11, 1956. It got great reviews from TV critics. But its subsequent theater release was a box-office failure, killing Olivier's chances of getting funding for a version of Macbeth, although he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. And yet, upon re-release in 1966, it was a hit.

Richard III remains the last King of England to be killed in battle His defeat, and Henry VII taking the throne, beginning the reign of the House of Tudor, is considered the end of both the Wars of the Roses and the Middle Ages in Britain. He was buried without ceremony in Leicester, and his remains were long believed uncovered and dumped into a river.

However, construction of a parking lot in 2012 found a skeleton, and DNA testing showed it was him. It also showed that he wasn't a hunchback, but he did have severe scoliosis. As doctors and military historians, familiar with the armor of the time, were able to prove, it would not have stopped him from being able to ride a horse in battle. The bones were properly reburied in Leicester Cathedral. 

The best-known portrait of the real Richard III

In 1924, the Richard III Society was founded, to try to rehabilitate his image, claiming that he was an excellent administrator, carried out many reforms in his 2 years on the throne, and did nothing to harm his nephews. They claim that the boys were still alive and living in the Tower after Bosworth Field, and that they were killed as a threat to the throne not on his order, but on that of Henry VII. And yet, the Society's members don't seem to defend his actions in taking the throne as a usurper.

An addition to Olivier, actors who have played Richard III include William V. Ranous in a silent film in 1908, John Barrymore in The Show of Shows in 1929, Basil Rathbone in Tower of London in 1939, Vincent Price in a remake of the preceding in 1962 (having played the Duke of Clarence in the earlier version), William Windom on NBC's Masterpiece Playhouse in 1950, Paul Daneman in BBC's An Age of Kings in 1960, Ian Holm in War of the Roses in 1965, Ron Cook on the BBC in 1983, Peter Cook in the pilot episode of the 1983 BBC sitcom Blackadder, Andrew Jarvis on the BBC's The Wars of the Roses in 1989, Ian McKellen in 1995, Al Pacino in Looking for Richard in 1996 (a documentary that served as an examination of the character and the play), Paul Mohan on the comedy-educational BBC series Historyonics in 2004, Aneurin Barnard in The White Queen in 2013, and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Hollow Crown in 2016.

In Blackadder, Cook's Richard is treated as a kind, benevolent monarch, who defeats Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field, but is then accidentally killed by the bumbling Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh, known as The Black Adder (Rowan Atkinson). Richard is replaced by his nephew, who becomes King Richard IV, and is, surprisingly in each case, still alive, an adult, and the father of Edmund. (His mother, Gertrude of Flanders, and her other son, John, Prince of Wales, were completely fictional characters.)

McKellen's Richard III is moved forward to the 1930s, and depicts Richard as a Fascist dictator, in the mold of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. His "winter of our discontent" speech is at a victory banquet, but its followup, about his deformities and plots, is a fourth-wall-break in a restroom. The final battle is at Battersea Power Station, which was under construction at the time the film takes place, and Richard crashes his car, leading him to offer his kingdom for a horse.

In 1984, the BBC aired "The Trial of King Richard III," at Britain's most famous courthouse, the Old Bailey in London. Presided over by former Lord Chancellor Lord Elwyn-Jones, the prosecutors and defense attorneys were played by real-life Queen's Counsels, and historians and forensic experts served as witnesses. Richard was found not guilty -- not that he was innocent, but that the prosecution's case could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, nothing was settled.

That said, in 2022, the BBC series Lucy Worsley Investigates showed Worsley, a prominent British historian, looking into the case. While a letter was found suggesting that Richard, Duke of York, survived, his accused uncle by many years, she also saw evidence linking Richard III directly to the men previously suspected of carrying out the murders. She rejected arguments by modern apologists claiming Richard's innocence, stating that assertions of his non-involvement fail to stand up to logical scrutiny.

She said, "Another thing that often surprises me is that historians say, 'Well, there's no evidence that Richard III murdered his nephews', and I think that there wouldn't be, would there? When Lenin killed the Romanovs, he made sure that there was no paper trail. I think it's very good practice if you're going to carry out political murder to make sure people can't pin the crime to you. So had evidence been discovered, Richard the Third would have just been making a rookie error!"

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December 13, 1955 was a Tuesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. no games were scheduled in the NHL.

There were 2 games in the NBA, a doubleheader at what would eventually be called "the old Madison Square Garden." The Philadelphia Warriors beat the Boston Celtics, 109-108. Then the New York Knicks beat the Minneapolis Lakers, 98-91.

November 22, 1944: Laurence Olivier's Version of William Shakespeare's "Henry V"

November 22, 1944: The film Henry V premieres. One of the earliest films depicting a play of William Shakespeare in color, Laurence Olivier directs, and stars as the King of England who has been called "Shakespeare's only true hero." It was produced during World War II, and meant as a morale booster to British troops.

The film begins with a panorama of London in 1600. The viewpoint travels to the Globe Theatre, home of Shakespeare and his theater company, where the audience is being seated. The Chorus enters and implores the audience to use their imagination to visualize the setting of the play.

The play is set around the Battle of Agincourt, which was fought on October 25, 1415, in what is now Azincourt, Pas-de-Calais, France, about 140 miles north of Paris. The night before the impending battle, Henry wanders around the camp in disguise, to find out what the men think of him. The next day, before the battle, Henry delivers his famous Saint Crispin's Day speech -- in the play, in Act IV, Scene III:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian:"
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin’s day."
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne''er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

In reality, Henry is said to have spoken much more briefly, and without an appeal to glory. Nevertheless: Outnumbered 2-1, Henry, personally leading his troops, led English and Welsh longbowmen to a stunning victory over the French army on French soil.

The most familiar portrait of King Henry V

The English lost 112 men, including the sitting Duke of York and Earl of Suffolk; the French, possibly 10,000, including the Dukes of Alençon, Brabant and Lorraine, and the Counts of Dreux and Nevers. Say what you want about those noblemen, but they were noble enough to fight and risk death alongside the men they commanded.

This battle turned the tide for England, as King Charles VI of France, in order to mollify the Lancastrian invader, allowed him to marry his daughter, Catherine of Valois. Together, they had a son. But when Henry V died of illness in 1422, his son was just 9 months old, and King Henry VI -- first under his greedy, incompetent regents, then by his mentally ill self -- ended up losing all the gains of his father and ancestors during the Hundred Years War.

The battle made an archer the greatest thing to which most Englishmen and Welshmen could aspire in that era. Legend has it that King Henry VIII, 100 or so years later, banned tennis from English and Welsh soil because it was distracting men from practicing archery.

It also led to a ridiculous urban legend. Supposedly, the French would cut the index fingers off English prisoners before releasing them, but when they got back to their own side, they could still use their middle fingers to pull back their bowstrings. And the bows were made from yew trees, so, when they captured French prisoners, they would show them their middle fingers, and say, "See? We can still pluck yew! Pluck yew!" Thus was born both the middle-finger gesture and the profane expression, "Fuck you."

Well, none of it is true: The middle-finger gesture has been traced as far back as ancient Greece, about 2,000 years before Agincourt, and it was rather popular in Roman times, where it was known as "El Dedo Medio": The Middle Digit. As for the other expression, that's probably as old as language itself.

In America, the film was not released until after World War II, on June 17, 1946. It was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Best Actor for Olivier. But it won none, losing Best Picture to The Best Years of Our Lives, and Olivier lost Best Actor to Frederic March, in the preceding film. Olivier was, however, given an Honorary Oscar for the film. Having previously been nominated for Wuthering Heights and Rebecca, he finally won in 1949, for his version of Shakespeare's Hamlet. He would also be nominated for his versions of Richard III and Othello, but did not win.

Other film versions of Henry V have starred Kenneth Branagh in 1989, Tom Hiddleston as part of the BBC series The Hollow Crown in 2012, and Timothée Chalamet (who, conveniently, has the middle name "Hal") in 2019.

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November 22, 1944 was a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. If this had been an American film, that would have been a consideration in its release date. But since it was a British film, the American market had nothing to do with the timing. It was, however, chosen as the release date of Meet Me In St. Louis, directed by Vincente Minnelli, and starring his soon-to-be-wife Judy Garland. I have a separate entry for this event.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And no games were played in the NHL. So there were no scores on this day.

April 13, 1939: The Film "Wuthering Heights" Premieres

Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon

April 13, 1939: A film version of Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights premieres, directed by William Wyler.

Wuthering Heights was met with rather mixed reviews when it was first published in London on November 24, 1847, with the author's name given as "Ellis Bell." Some were scathing, horrified by its "brutal cruelty" and its portrayal of a "semi-savage love." Others acknowledged the book's "power and cleverness," its "delineation forcible and truthful." Many said it was simply "strange."

Despite the popularity of gothic fiction at the time, it is perhaps unsurprising that the book shocked readers in the 19th Century, a time of strict moral scrutiny. "People did not know what to do with this book, because it has no clear moral angle," said Clare O'Callaghan, senior professor of Victorian literature at Loughborough University in England, and the author of Emily Brontë Reappraised.

Thomas Newby was the book's publisher. On the same day, he also published Agnes Grey, by "Acton Bell." The previous month, on October 19, 1847, he published Jane Eyre, by "Currer Bell."

In 1850, Charlotte Brontë revealed that the Bell brothers were, in fact, sisters: She had written Jane Eyre, Anne Brontë had written Agnes Grey, and Emily Brontë had written Wuthering Heights. Charlotte argued that critics had failed to do Emily's work justice: "The immature but very real powers revealed in Wuthering Heights were scarcely recognised; its import and nature were misunderstood."

Charlotte was born on April 21, 1816; Emily on July 30, 1818; and Anne on January 17, 1820; all in Thornton, now a part of the city of Bradford, in Yorkshire, about 15 miles west of Leeds and 220 miles northwest of London.

Tuberculosis struck the family. Brother Branwell, whose career as a poet stalled due to his drinking, died on September 24, 1848, at the age of 31. Emily died on December 19, at 30. Anne died on May 28, 1849, at 29. Charlotte was the only one to marry, to the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, and even she only made it to 38, dying along with her unborn child on March 31, 1855.

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The 1939 film version is the best-known adaptation of Wuthering Heights. The titular estate is owned by Heathcliff, played by Laurence Olivier, considered the finest British stage actor of the 20th Century. As a boy in Liverpool, Heathcliff had been taken in by the Earnshaw family, whose daughter, Cathy, grows up to become his great love, played by Merle Oberon. Eventually, she rejects him, and marries another man, Edgar Linton, played by David Niven.

Heathcliff leaves, and returns years later a rich man. He buys Wuthering Heights, and takes his revenge on Cathy by dating and then marrying Edgar's sister, Isabella, played by Geraldine Fitzgerald. Shortly after the wedding, Cathy falls ill, and calls for Heathcliff. She tells him he's the only man she's ever truly loved. They forgive each other, and as she dies, she accepts his request to haunt him until he dies. One night, he hears her on the moors outside the estate, goes out into the snow to see her, and freezes to death.

Contrary to legend, Olivier, then married to actress Vivien Leigh, and Oberon, then married to film director Alexander Korda, did not have an affair. In fact, they didn't even get along. Oberon died in 1979, Wyler in 1981, Niven in 1983, Olivier in 1989, and Fitzgerald in 2005.

Robert Fuest's 1970 film version, starring Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall, and Andrea Arnold's 2011 film, starring James Howson and Kaya Scodelario, both end with Cathy's death. But that only happens halfway through the novel, which contains about 18 more years' worth of story.

So those film versions overlook how dark the novel gets, as Heathcliff makes Isabella miserable. A 1967 miniseries version for the BBC starred Ian McShane and Angela Scoular, and inspired British singer Kate Bush to write "Wuthering Heights," her 1st hit song, in 1978. That same year, another BBC miniseries starred Ken Hutchinson and Kay Adshead, and is regarded as the version most faithful to the text.

A 1992 feature film starred Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, and notably included the story of the children that the main characters had (not with each other). The 2009 ITV version starred Tom Hardy and his girlfriend, now wife, Charlotte Riley. It, too, told the whole story.

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April 13, 1939 was a Wednesday. Irish poet and academic Seamus Heaney was born.

Baseball season started 4 days later. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals was played at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Boston Bruins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-0. The Bruins won the Cup in Game 5 on April 16.