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48-615: Music was an important element. The conductor Muir Mathieson was the director of music for many productions, and notable composers commissioned to write original scores included Walter Leigh , Benjamin Britten , Ernst Meyer , Richard Addinsell , Benjamin Frankel , Christian Darnton , Guy Warrack and Arthur Benjamin . The Crown Film Unit continued to produce films, as part of the Central Office of Information (COI), until it

96-423: A German princess, Anne of Cleves . This marriage ends in divorce after Anne deliberately makes herself unattractive so that she may be free to marry her sweetheart. Henry next marries the beautiful and ambitious Lady Katherine Howard . She has rejected love all of her life in favour of ambition, but after her marriage, she falls in love with Henry's handsome courtier Thomas Culpeper , who had attempted to woo her in

144-447: A college production of Benjamin's musical farce The Devil Take Her , Mathieson "made the points of a witty score pointedly". While still a student he undertook a range of jobs, from conducting a choir of Welsh miners, to touring Canada conducting a ballet company, and taking the baton for an amateur production of The Pirates of Penzance . Mathieson graduated from the college in 1933, and Sargent recommended him to Alexander Korda as

192-693: A conductor and assistant to Kurt Schröder , musical director of Korda's new company, London Films . When Mathieson joined Korda's team the film industry was refining synchronised sound on film, with recorded music accompanying the on-screen images. According to Mathieson's biographer Andrew Youdell, Schröder contributed "a reasonable though hardly memorable background score" to Korda's first major success, The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), after which political developments in Continental Europe led him to return to his native Germany in 1934, succeeded as Korda's head of music by Mathieson. Away from

240-706: A film made to mark the Festival of Britain , Mathieson appeared as a cast member, in a cameo role as Sir Arthur Sullivan conducting a choir. During the early 1950s, Youdell writes, Mathieson continued to be "a principal force in the musical design of British feature films", commissioning music from new film composers including Malcolm Arnold ( The Sound Barrier , 1952) and Larry Adler ( Genevieve , 1953). In 1955 Mathieson commissioned another score from Walton, this time for Olivier's Richard III . Among Mathieson's other 1950s commissions were Arnold's score for Hobson's Choice (1954), Addinsell's for The Prince and

288-495: A localized core of 'film composers'". He was dubbed the "Tsar of music for British films"; the composer James Bernard wrote, "If you wanted to write music for films at that time you had to be 'in' with Muir". Mathieson believed that music written for the screen could not only become an integral part of the film but could be an entity in itself, on a par with theatrical incidental music written by Grieg for Peer Gynt and Mendelssohn for A Midsummer Night's Dream . He admired

336-564: A result of overlapping changes in British copyright law , the film never fell into the public domain in the UK and its copyright is now due to expire at the end of 2026, 70 years after Alexander Korda's death. In countries that observe a 50-year term, such as Canada and Australia, the copyright expired at the end of 2006. In the United States, the film's original 1933 copyright registration

384-769: A scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. His teachers there included Malcolm Sargent , who recommended him to the film producer Alexander Korda , whose musical director he became in 1934. Mathieson made most of his career in the film industry. After the Second World War he was musical director to the Rank Organisation . Among the composers from whom Mathieson commissioned film scores were Arthur Bliss , Ralph Vaughan Williams , William Walton and Benjamin Britten . Mathieson rarely wrote

432-523: A widespread assumption that he composed the music, but in fact he preferred to commission scores from other musicians, believing himself to have little talent for original composition. Arthur Jacobs comments in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians , "more than anyone else, he was responsible for the British practice of engaging independent composers for films, instead of maintaining (as did Hollywood )

480-468: Is attributed to her love for Peynell in the film, but in reality, her motivation may have been to escape the tyrannical supervision of her stern brother, the Duke of Cleves. According to historical accounts, Catherine Howard was an immature teenager of limited intelligence who did not realize the grave risk involved with her adultery. However, the film portrays Howard as a mature, intelligent woman who knew

528-416: Is credited with creating the popular image of Henry VIII as a fat, lecherous glutton who eats turkey legs and tosses bones over his shoulder (although in the film, Henry eats an entire chicken). Historian Alison Weir has pointed out that this image is contradicted by primary sources, noting: "As a rule, Henry did not dine in the great halls of his palaces, and his table manners were highly refined, as

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576-499: Is not good film music if it can be used for any other purpose" – but he allowed Mathieson to arrange a concert suite from the Henry V music. Walton conducted a recording of it in 1963, though he later told André Previn that he found the suite "rather tame" compared with the original film score. During the war Mathieson conducted frequent public concerts, sometimes programming suites from other film scores that he had commissioned. By

624-685: The Royal Albert Hall in London, when Mathieson deputised at a few minutes' notice after the scheduled conductor, Sargent, was taken ill during a performance of the piece, in which Darnborough danced the role of the Spirit of Spring. They had one son and three daughters, among them the actress Fiona Mathieson (1951–1987) later known for her appearances in the BBC radio serial The Archers . Youdell comments that Mathieson's name appeared so frequently on film credits as musical director that there grew

672-632: The Tudor era and an image of the period as a prosperous, happy time untroubled by class divisions and economic depressions. The character of John Bull was portrayed as uncultured but kind, boisterous and exuberant, all qualities perceived as typically British. His lack of sophistication hid a mind that was shrewd and cunning, also a reflection of British self-image at the time. Korda, a Hungarian immigrant who craved acceptance in Britain, may have ascribed much of John Bull's imagery and traits to Henry VIII in

720-462: The 1945 film of Noël Coward 's Brief Encounter Mathieson relaxed his insistence on newly commissioned music, and at Coward's behest arranged and conducted Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto with Eileen Joyce as soloist. In 1946 Mathieson extended his activities to directing, with Instruments of the Orchestra , a twenty-minute film for use in schools, showing the various instruments of

768-592: The American box office and ultimately earned rentals of £500,000 on its first release. It premiered to record-breaking crowds at New York's Radio City Music Hall and London's Leicester Square Theatre (now the Odeon West End ), where it ran for nine weeks from 27 October 1933. At the Academy Awards , the film was the first foreign picture to win an Oscar ( Charles Laughton for Best Actor ), and

816-845: The French fighting Germans in the Habsburg-Valois wars rather than the Spanish. In the interwar period , the Treaty of Versailles was widely considered in Britain to be excessively harsh toward Germany, and successive British governments attempted to promote revision of the Versailles treaty in Germany's favour while also guarding against a resurgence of German militarism. The Locarno Treaties of 1925 were an attempt to improve Franco-German relations, and evidence suggests that this policy

864-484: The Scarlet Pimpernel (1937); Addinsell wrote for Dark Journey (1937), Farewell Again (1937), South Riding (1937), and Fire Over England (1936); Auric composed the score for The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936), Rozsa for The Four Feathers (1939) and The Thief of Baghdad (1940), and Bliss for Things to Come (1935). The last of these was regarded as a landmark in film music, and

912-475: The Showgirl (1957), and Alwyn's for Carve Her Name With Pride and A Night to Remember (both 1958). In his later years Mathieson worked as a freelance music director. He commissioned the score of Interpol (1956) from the nineteen-year-old Richard Rodney Bennett . In 1958 he was invited to conduct Bernard Herrmann 's score for Alfred Hitchcock 's film Vertigo ; it was to have been recorded in

960-528: The US, but because of a musicians' strike there Mathieson conducted the recording in Vienna. In 1966 he wrote and directed a series of twenty-four short films, collectively entitled We Make Music . His biographer S. J. Hetherington records that Mathieson arranged, directed, conducted, and occasionally composed, the music for almost one thousand films during his career. In addition to his work in films he conducted in

1008-417: The careers of Charles Laughton , Robert Donat and Merle Oberon (in her first major film role). Laughton would later reprise the same role in the 1953 film Young Bess opposite Jean Simmons as his daughter Elizabeth . The film earned receipts of £81,825 in the UK, which was not enough to recover its production costs. However it was hugely successful overseas, being the 12th-most-successful of 1933 at

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1056-728: The concert hall, particularly with youth orchestras. He was appointed OBE for his services to music, and was a governor of the British Film Institute . Mathieson died at the Radcliffe Infirmary , Oxford, on 2 August 1975, aged 64, survived by his widow, who died in October 2010. The Private Life of Henry VIII The Private Life of Henry VIII is a 1933 British film directed and co-produced by Alexander Korda and starring Charles Laughton , Robert Donat , Merle Oberon and Elsa Lanchester . It

1104-460: The current debate about rearmament when Henry is warned by Thomas Cromwell that spending on the navy will "cost us much money," to which he retorts that not to spend money on the navy will "cost us England." Korda disliked the Labour Party 's call for disarmament, and Henry's message in the film may have been a rebuke to those who called for Britain to continue with disarmament and to those in

1152-616: The end of the war Mathieson had become musical director for the Rank Organisation , which included several film-making units, such as Two Cities , The Archers , and Cineguild . He supervised the music of most of the major films produced under the Rank banner, continuing to engage leading composers including Richard Addinsell ( Blithe Spirit 1945), William Alwyn ( Odd Man Out , 1946), Arnold Bax ( Oliver Twist , 1948), Bliss ( Men of Two Worlds , 1946), Walter Goehr ( Great Expectations , 1946) and Walton ( Hamlet , 1948). For

1200-721: The film studio, Mathieson conducted Kurt Weill 's A Kingdom for a Cow at the Savoy Theatre in June 1935. This was a revised version of the thus-far unstaged Der Kuhhandel . Despite good notices it was not a success. On 21 December 1935, at the Brompton Oratory , London, Mathieson married Hermione Louise Alys Darnborough , principal ballerina of Sadler's Wells Ballet . Two years earlier, when already engaged to be married, they had both taken part in Hiawatha at

1248-452: The film. Catherine of Aragon is excluded from the script because she was a "respectable woman," in the words of the introductory titles, but the exclusion may have occurred because the real-life Catherine stubbornly refused to allow Henry to marry Anne Boleyn, a fact that might have weakened the audience's identification with the king. The film also does not mention that Boleyn was convicted of false charges of incest with her brother, who

1296-656: The first foreign Best Picture nominee. Laughton was voted best actor in a British film by readers of Film Weekly . Historian Greg Walker has noted that Korda integrated references to contemporary political issues, as the film anachronistically refers to the Holy Roman Empire as Germany and portrays the empire as more united than it really was at the time. The frequent wars between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V against King Francis I of France are depicted as examples of French–German enmity , with Henry attempting to act as peacemaker. The film inaccurately portrays

1344-540: The government who were cutting military spending in light of the Great Depression . In the 1920s and 1930s, many in Britain bristled at Hollywood's domination of the film industry; by 1925, only 5% of the films shown in Britain were British. In 1932, Sir Stephen Tallents called for "The Projection of England", warning that if the British film industry failed to tell its own stories that would define Britain, then Hollywood would do so. This sparked interest in

1392-403: The most important living British composer. Vaughan Williams gladly agreed to help the war effort by writing film music – a genre wholly new to him – for Powell and Pressburger 's propaganda film 49th Parallel (1941). Working with Mathieson, Vaughan Williams quickly grasped the split-hair timings of film music: "a second of music meant exactly a second of music", and he enjoyed working with

1440-413: The music for the films on which he worked, considering himself to lack the talent for original composition, but he helped the composers who wrote for him to make their material precisely fit the action of the film, and he arranged concert suites from some of the scores he commissioned. He was responsible as musical director, arranger, conductor or occasionally composer for nearly a thousand films. Mathieson

1488-458: The past. Their liaison is discovered by Henry's court and the two are executed. The weak and aging Henry consoles himself with a final marriage to Catherine Parr , who proves domineering. In the final scene, while Parr is no longer in the room, the king breaks the fourth wall , saying "Six wives, and the best of them's the worst." Alexander Korda was seeking a film project suitable for Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester . Originally,

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1536-574: The piano accompaniment for silent films at the local cinema. As a teenager Mathieson formed and conducted a youth orchestra in Stirling. After attending Stirling High School Mathieson went to the Royal College of Music in London from February 1929, winning a succession of scholarships. At the college he studied piano with Arthur Benjamin and conducting with Malcolm Sargent . As a student his talent for conducting attracted attention. The Times singled him out, commenting that in his handling of

1584-456: The religious and political aspects of Henry's reign, as the film makes no mention of the break with Rome and instead focuses on Henry's relations with his wives. The film cost £93,710 which was five times the average cost of a British feature in the early 1930s. The Private Life of Henry VIII was a commercial success. It made Alexander Korda a premier figure in the film industry, and United Artists signed him for 16 films. It also advanced

1632-438: The risks of adultery, an inaccuracy that may have been intended to elicit audience sympathy for Henry's decision to have her executed. Catherine Parr may also have been inaccurately portrayed; rather than a nagging tyrant, the real Parr was an intellectual with a strong interest in theology and a gentle demeanour who engaged Henry in intellectual discussions about religion in his final years. The Private Life of Henry VIII

1680-614: The score was quickly arranged into a concert suite, becoming a best-seller for Decca when released on record. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 Mathieson became musical director to the Ministry of Information , the Royal Air Force , and army film units. By now he had considerable experience of commissioning film scores, and he approached the veteran Ralph Vaughan Williams , generally regarded as

1728-422: The spectacular Technicolor adaptation of Shakespeare's play. Youdell describes the film of Henry V as "one of the greatest and most imaginative productions of the war period" and Walton's score as of "almost unparalleled beauty in its melody, orchestration, and construction". Walton did not share Mathieson's view that film music could or should be adapted for the concert hall or recording – he said, "Film music

1776-400: The story was to focus solely on the marriage of King Henry VIII and his fourth wife Anne of Cleves , but as the project grew, the story was modified to focus on five of Henry's six wives. Only the first wife, Catherine of Aragon , was omitted because those involved had no particular interest in her, describing her as a "respectable woman" in the film's first intertitles . Korda chose to ignore

1824-597: The studio team. Mathieson conducted the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in the finished score, with the composer at the sessions, ready to "cut, enlarge, alter, adapt" as necessary. Vaughan Williams wrote a second score for Mathieson: Coastal Command (1942), made under the auspices of the Crown Film Unit . Mathieson worked with many other composers during the war; apart from those with Vaughan Williams, his most conspicuous collaboration

1872-518: The symphony orchestra playing separately and together. He commissioned a new work from Benjamin Britten : The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra , with a narration written by Britten's current librettist, Eric Crozier . Sargent conducted the LSO as well as delivering the narration to camera. The music won a permanent place in the worldwide concert repertoire, and has become Britten's most widely played and popular piece. In The Magic Box (1951),

1920-603: The technical skill with which Hollywood composers fitted their music to the action, but judged British scores to have "more intrinsic musical value". He quoted with approval Vaughan Williams 's comment that film "contains potentialities for the combination of all the arts such as Wagner never dreamt of." While Mathieson was in charge of music for Korda, a range of composers provided scores, including his old teacher, Arthur Benjamin, and Richard Addinsell , Georges Auric , Miklos Rozsa , and Arthur Bliss . Benjamin wrote scores for The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) and The Return of

1968-401: Was also executed, a fact that might have pitted the audience against Henry. The film inaccurately depicts Henry marrying Jane Seymour on the same day as Boleyn was beheaded (19 May 1536); in fact, Henry only obtained permission to remarry that day, marrying Seymour on 30 May 1536. The film's portrayal of Seymour as a vain, stupid, childlike woman contradicts some accounts that the real Seymour

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2016-459: Was an intelligent woman. Anne of Cleves is inaccurately shown in love with another man before she marries Henry, and this is presented as her reason for wanting to end the marriage. The relationship is played for comic effect, but the real process of ending the marriage lasted several weeks rather than over the course of a single night as portrayed in the film. Anne's desire to remain in England

2064-526: Was born in Stirling , Scotland, on 24 January 1911, the elder of the two sons of John George Mathieson (1880–1955), an artist and engraver, and his wife Jessie née Davie (1884–1954), a violinist, pianist and teacher. The younger son, Dock , followed Muir into the musical profession and became a conductor and musical director in British films. Jessie ("Jen") Mathieson was a talented musician, who among other engagements foreshadowed her sons' careers by playing

2112-478: Was disbanded in 1952. This article about a British film distributor or production company is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Muir Mathieson James Muir Mathieson , OBE (24 January 1911 – 2 August 1975) was a British musician whose career was spent mainly as the musical director for British film studios. Born in Scotland, to a musical family, Mathieson won

2160-417: Was the code of etiquette followed at his court. He was in fact a most fastidious man, and—for his time—unusually obsessed with hygiene. As for his pursuit of the ladies, there is plenty of evidence, but most of it fragmentary, for Henry was also far more discreet and prudish than we have been led to believe. These are just superficial examples of how the truth about historical figures can become distorted." As

2208-400: Was very popular with the British people. Henry's monologue warning that the French and Germans will destroy Europe because of their mutual hatred and declaring that it is his duty to save the peace may have been understood by a 1933 British audience as an allegory for the current British policy of leniency toward Germany. The film possibly refers to the 1932 World Disarmament Conference and

2256-516: Was with William Walton on Laurence Olivier 's film of Shakespeare's Henry V (1944). Mathieson and Walton had worked together on five films before then: Escape Me Never (1935), As You Like It (1936), and three war films: The Next of Kin (1941), Went the Day Well? and The First of the Few (both 1942). In 1944, with Olivier's backing, Mathieson asked Walton to provide the music for

2304-529: Was written by Lajos Bíró and Arthur Wimperis for London Film Productions , Korda's production company. The film, which focuses on the marriages of King Henry VIII of England, was a major international success, establishing Korda as a leading filmmaker and Laughton as a box-office star. The film begins 20 years into King Henry VIII 's reign. In May 1536, in the immediate aftermath of the execution of his second wife Anne Boleyn , Henry married Jane Seymour , who died in childbirth 18 months later. He then weds

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