The movie spy who loved us
QUESTION After directing That Hamilton Woman in 1941, Alexander Korda was subpoenaed to appear before a Senate committee on suspicion of being a British agent. What was the outcome? ThaT hamilton Woman is a melodrama about admiral Nelson (Laurence Olivier) and his mistress Emma hamilton (Vivien Leigh) and a powerful message to encourage isolationist americans to join the war.
Korda was heavily involved in the war effort: MI6 officer h. Montgomery hyde, sent to hollywood to ‘assist’ him, described the film director as ‘a clearing house for British intelligence’. U.S. isolationists were well aware of what Britain was doing.
Senator Gerald Nye, a staunch isolationist, declared that hollywood’s ‘interventionist propaganda films have served to change, if not warp, a lot of clear thinking in american minds’. Churchill agreed — he awarded Korda a knighthood shortly after the film’s release.
The propaganda value of the film is encapsulated in a speech by Nelson to the admiralty: ‘Gentlemen . . . you are celebrating a peace with Bonaparte. “Peace” is a very beautiful word, as long as the impulse of peace is behind it, but you will never make peace with Napoleon.
‘he doesn’t mean peace, today. he just wants to gain a little time . . . to rearm himself at sea and make new alliances with Italy and Spain, all to one purpose. To destroy our empire!
‘Years ago, I said the same thing at Naples. I begged them, entreated them, not to give way, but they wouldn’t listen and paid the price. That was a little kingdom, miles away in the Mediterranean. But now it is England, our own land.
‘Napoleon can never be master of the world until he has smashed us up, and, believe me gentlemen, he means to be master of the world! You cannot make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them, wipe them out! Gentlemen, I implore you, speak to the Prime Minister before it is too late! Do not ratify this peace!’
The speech was an allusion to Neville Chamberlain’s words in the house of Commons in 1938, referring to the Czech Sudetenland crisis as ‘a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing’. It clearly advanced the message hitler should not be appeased. That hamilton Woman became Churchill’s favourite film — he would shed tears whenever he watched it. Nye identified it, along with Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and alfred hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, as one of several designed to change americans’ hearts and minds.
Korda was subpoenaed to appear before the Senate committee investigating not only That hamilton Woman but also for his involvement with MI6. The hearing was set for Friday, December 12, 1941, but events on the previous Sunday morning at Pearl harbour made it irrelevant, and the hearing never took place.
according to Olivier, Korda liked to claim that ‘because of himself and Churchill, Roosevelt was persuaded to bring the U.S. in [to the war] though he gave a little credit to the Japanese’. simon Yorke, Berwick-upon-tweed, Northumberland. QUESTION What caused the Canning Town explosion of 1917? ThIS is more popularly known as the Silvertown explosion, although Canning Town and many other East London dockside areas were affected.
Silvertown is the industrial area on the north bank of the Thames in the Borough of Newham, named after Samuel Winkworth Silver’s rubber factory which opened in 1852.
a Brunner Mond chemical factory that had stood on the site since 1894 was converted to a TNT factory during World War I. In the early evening of January 19, 1917, a fire broke out in the plant, and workers and local residents were ordered to evacuate.
at 6.52pm a massive explosion destroyed the factory, sending molten metal flying over the capital, causing many fires, and a gas holder in Greenwich to explode. The blast badly damaged the Venestas plant, a large plywood factory, and a flour mill and other buildings at the Royal Victoria Dock in Canning Town.
More than 900 houses, shops, factories and the local fire station were destroyed. The Port of London authority (PLa) estimated that nearly seven hectares (17 acres) of warehouses were destroyed or damaged.
In all, 73 people died, and more than 400 were injured in the blast, which was so huge, it was heard as far away as Norwich and Southampton.
a reporter for the local Stratford Express wrote: ‘The whole heavens were lit in awful splendour. a fiery glow seemed to have come over the dark and miserable January evening, and objects which a few minutes before had been blotted out in the intense darkness were silhouetted against the sky.’
Paul Jackson, twickenham, s.W. London. QUESTION On U.S. TV, characters often say ‘here, take my car’. Do Americans have a different type of insurance to us? FURThER to the earlier answer, in Portugal, where I own a car, the standard insurance covers the car, not the individual driver, and anyone with a current licence is eligible to drive it if he or she has the registered owner’s consent.
Car insurance automatically covers road recovery, and my insurer even provides free dental care for a nominated person who might not necessarily be the insured and can be a friend or family — a good deal all round with comprehensive cover on my four-year-old Peugeot 206+ costing €132 (£111) per annum.
D. Bell, Ponta Delgada, Madeira. QUESTION Why is the instrument panel on a car called the ‘dashboard’? FURThER to earlier answers, here’s an early american car, a 1903 Oldsmobile, known as the Oldsmobile Curved Dash. It shows how the original car dashboards were intended to prevent mud from being thrown over the driver and passengers.
Dave Williams, Hyde, Cheshire.
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