Check your listings to watch these two George Arliss Classics during the first week of April.
On April 1st is GA’s Best Actor Academy Award winning film, DISRAELI . An early talkie filmed during the stifling summer of 1929, and based on GA’s amazing 5-year theater run of the play, DISRAELI is told through a delightful series of intimate conversations that lead to a spellbinding climax.
The plot involves the British prime minister’s efforts to purchase the Suez Canal from Egypt before Russia can get its hands on it. This sounds, well, esoteric, doesn’t it? But therein lies the power of this film (and why the play ran for five years, plus two revivals, a 1921 silent film version, and also a 1938 radio adaptation that was heard live around the world).
Tune in on April 1st to discover what all the excitement was about.
Next on Friday, April 7 at 4:15 PM EDT is the “first version” of the recent hit Broadway musical, HAMILTON. GA co-wrote the play – no musical numbers in this version – that tells the story of the first Secretary of the Treasury’s extramarital affair. When this film was made in the Spring of 1931 it was decided to rename it ALEXANDER HAMILTION, perhaps to avoid confusion with the British Lord Hamilton and his extramarital affair. Is this movie dry stuff? We think not. Check it out yourself.
TCM aka Turner Classic Movies – is showing Mr. A’s first two talkies this Tuesday, February 18th, starting at 6 AM eastern time (THE GREEN GODDESS) and then at 7:15 AM his Academy Award winning performance in DISRAELI (1929).
Not to be missed!
Souvenir programs from vintage films are highly collectible and one in mint condition can be quite expensive to acquire. Let’s take a video tour of this 1929 DISRAELI program from my collection. I’ve interspersed the set of color lobby cards released by the studio to enhance the tour.
Here we have a complete copy of another Arliss-DISRAELI souvenir program. But this one is from the stage version and dates from 1912!
The British Film Institute has posted this one-reel sound film of George Arliss delivering speeches by Benjamin Disraeli. This film, his first made in Britain, has likely not been seen since 1931 and is comprised of original material that Mr. A never performed before or since. He is introduced by Tory leader Stanley Baldwin, who himself served as Britain’s prime minister on three occasions between 1923 and 1937.
It’s the start of Academy Award Season so naturally Mr. A’s 1929 Oscar winner is one of the first films honored by Turner Classic Movies (TCM). DISRAELI is not yet available on DVD so be sure to set your tivo, vcr, or whatever you use for time-shifting so you don’t miss it. See George Arliss and the famous Arliss Stock Company including 19th century players such as Florence Arliss, Ivan Simpson, David Torrence, and Charles Evans. Youngsters include a 19 year old Joan Bennett.
Actor-sculptor Ivan Simpson puts the finishing touches on his bust of Mr. A as Disraeli. Mr. Simpson plays the financier Hugh Myers in the movie:
I doubt that there is another dramatic work, excepting Shakespeare’s plays, that has been translated into so many different mediums in the performing arts as DISRAELI. First debuting as a play in 1911, it was turned into that most peculiar relative of the spoken stage – a silent film, in 1921. At the end of that decade this vehicle was reinvented as an Academy Award-winning “talking picture.” Nearly a decade later, the play-cum-silent film-cum-talkie was turned into an hour-long radio broadcast heard around the world via the CBS network and shortwave in 1938. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of DISRAELI is that ALL of its various incarnations starred the same actor – George Arliss.
A Souvenir Program from the 1911-12 season
The play was written specifically for Mr. A by the then-famous playwright Louis N. (for Napoleon) Parker. There was one problem – Parker had never seen Arliss perform on the stage. Then Parker quit saying that a play about Benjamin Disraeli, the British prime minister of the 1870s, couldn’t be written. Mr. A convinced Parker it could be written and explained how. Parker completed his play due largely to its star’s role as midwife.
The final scene where Disraeli receives a telegram he fears will tell him of his wife’s death: Mr. A with Marguerite St. John, the first actress to play Lady Beaconsfield (Mrs. Disraeli) on the stage.
Mr. A starred in DISRAELI for five consecutive years, from 1911 to 1915, then revived it thereafter. Here is the cast for a 1917 revival – note that Florence Arliss plays Lady Beaconsfield. Also, note that the ingenue role of Lady Clarissa is played by the talented, ill-fated Jeanne Eagels:
The 1921 silent film is now lost but a number of stills have survived….
No longer stagebound, the garden party scene was filmed outdoors:
A rare glass slide advertising the silent film in theaters:
Margaret Dale plays the spy, Mrs. Travers. Dale had played the role continuously since 1911 and never missed a performance, not even in this film version.
Florence Arliss as Lady Beaconsfield tries to console her husband: he has just written a bad check – to buy the Suez Canal!
Warner Bros. persuaded Mr. A to make the play into one of the first full-length talking pictures. He did and won the Best Actor Academy Award:
A souvenir program for the 1929 film
Here’s a detail from the Warner pressbook telling theater owners how to sell the movie to their patrons:
Exteriors were filmed at the old Busch Gardens during the summer of 1929 by ace cinematographer Lee Garmes. This scene looks pretty but Mr. A recalled that it was hot as ….blazes.
The romantic young couple, Lady Clarissa and Lord Deeford, were played by Joan Bennett and Anthony Bushell:
The 1929 film cast and crew, from the original program:
The ever-reliable Ivan Simpson plays financier Hugh Myers, a fictional character based on the real-life Lionel Rothschild who financed Disraeli’s purchase of the Suez Canal:
A flyer highlighting scenes from DISRAELI:
Outtakes – not every scene made it into the final production:
Disraeli and Gladstone exchange sharply divided political views in the House of Commons – but not onscreen.
Mrs. Travers meets Disraeli – but not onscreen. Doris Lloyd plays the spy, the one time that Margaret Dale missed a performance!
We only glimpse the Prime Minister working in his garden and never to this extent!
Back to the movie:
Joan Bennett at the beginning of her very successful career. When I showed DISRAELI in college in 1970, I had the idea to write a thesis and wrote to Ms. Bennett to ask what Mr. A was like to work with. Here is her reply:
Now about that bad check for the Suez Canal: Congress didn’t invent “stop gap spending.” Here the Prime Minister threatens to ruin the Bank of England if its president, stuffy Lord Probert (David Torrence), doesn’t cover the check:
Probert signs to save the Bank but is dismayed that Disraeli has such power.
In the dramatic payoff, Disraeli confides that as Prime Minister he has no such power, “but he doesn’t know that.”
Here is Mr. and Mrs. A in the final scene involving the telegram again:
On January 17, 1938, George Arliss made his dramatic radio debut on the CBS network with DISRAELI. This live broadcast on the Lux Radio Theater was heard all over the world and brought to the microphone much of the cast of the 1929 film version including Florence Arliss, Ivan Simpson, Doris Lloyd, and David Torrence. Mr. A was nearly 70 years old and noted that more people heard this one broadcast than all the audiences combined from his years performing in the play, the silent film, and the talkie:
Here’s the photo’s original press caption:
Want to hear this broadcast from long ago? It is right at your fingertips so just click below:
ARLISS ARCHIVES 
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