Colman cuts the mustard
QUESTION
Actor Ronald Colman, cricketer Albert Trott and suffragette Eva GoreBooth have all been denied commemorative blue plaques by English Heritage. What were their achievements?
IN THE Thirties and Forties, Ronald Colman was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Born in Richmond, Surrey, on February 9, 1891, he started his working life as an accountant. When World War I broke out, he joined the London Scottish Regiment and was decorated in 1915.
After the war, he became an actor. While appearing in a play in Blackpool, a fortune teller on the pier told him that he would become more famous than he could ever imagine, but not in this country.
In 1920, he went to the U.S. The future matinee idol had to wash dishes in a New York restaurant to earn a living.
He became a star of silent films and was one of the few actors who successfully moved to talkies, where one of his assets could be used to its full advantage — his smooth, melodic and modulated voice. Colman’s style of moustache was also imitated around the world.
His films included the classics A Tale Of Two Cities (1935), Lost Horizon (1937), The Prisoner Of Zenda (1937), Random Harvest (1942) and A Double Life (1947).
Colman was nominated three times for an Oscar, for Bulldog Drummond, Condemned and Random Harvest, before winning the award for Best Actor in 1948 for A Double Life.
He died on May 19, 1958, and is buried in the Santa Barbara Cemetery, California. On his gravestone is this William Shakespeare quote from The Tempest: ‘Our revels now are ended. These our actors As I foretold you were all spirits And are melted into air. Into thin air. We are such stuff As dreams are made on And our little life Is rounded with a sleep.’ Colin Bower, Sherwood, Notts.
ON JULY 31, 1899, Albert Trott, playing for England against Australia, carved his name into the annals of Test cricket when he hit a ball over the pavilion and clean out of Lord’s. It ended up in the back garden of No6 Grove End Road, in Marylebone. Trott is the only player to have achieved this feat. He was born in Melbourne, Australia, and, unusually, played for both Australia and his adopted England.
His brother, Harry, was captain of the Australian team that toured England in 1896. Despite Albert having averaged 102.5 with the bat in the Test series against England, he was not selected.
Nonetheless, he sailed to England independently in 1896 and eventually became naturalised.
He was regarded as one of the best cricketers of his generation, with more than 1,500 first-class wickets and some 10,000 runs to his name.
He was named Wisden’s cricketer of the year in 1899 and, in 1907, became one of only two players ever to take two hattricks in the same first-class innings.
With his great handlebar moustache, Trott had the appearance of a tough Aussie. However, he suffered from severe bouts of depression.
After his retirement from cricket, he couldn’t hold down a job, lost his home, and his wife and children returned to Australia without him. He took his own life on July 30, 1914, aged 41. He had been near-penniless and so the MCC paid for his funeral. A headstone was erected in 1994. The MCC still has his famous bat.
George Moore, Borehamwood, Herts.
EVA GORE-BOOTH was a poet, mystic and campaigner for women’s rights in the workplace. She was born in 1870 into aristocracy as the daughter of explorer Sir Henry Gore-Booth in County Sligo, but she shunned her wealth and took up the cause of suffrage after meeting the activist Esther Roper.
Gore-Booth was a trade unionist, Irish nationalist and friend of the poet W. B. Yeats. She died in 1926 and is buried in Hampstead, North West London.
Her life was overshadowed by that of her older sister, Constance Gore-Booth, later Countess Markievicz. She was sentenced to death for her part in the Easter Rising — an armed insurrection in 1916 against British rule in Ireland — but her sentence was commuted on the grounds that she was a woman.
She was the first woman elected to the House of Commons. However, in line with Sinn Fein abstentionist policy, she did not take her seat. She was also the first woman in the world to hold a Cabinet position as Minister for Labour in the Irish Dail (parliament) from 1919 to 1922.
Elizabeth Cohen, Aylesbury, Bucks.
QUESTION
Is it true that Adolf Hitler made all Austrian schoolchildren study a second language other than German?
THERE is no evidence for this claim. After the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938, there was not much time to implement social policy.
Furthermore, language learning was downgraded under National Socialism.
In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler elucidated his theory that foreign languages were a waste of time for 98 per cent of learners. He stated that they should only become acquainted with the basics of grammar, pronunciation and syntax.
His poor record as a foreign language learner may explain this attitude. He had failed at French at school, as he did many subjects.
The extra time gained through a reduction in foreign language learning was to be used for physical education and ideological indoctrination.
Hitler’s racist view of foreign languages meant schools gave preference to Germanic over Romance and Slavic languages. French lost its status as a second language in favour of English.
Harry McEwan, Edinburgh.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB; fax them to 0141 331 4739 or email them to charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.