When talking of nice stars from the golden age of Hollywood, one identify is commonly conspicuous by its absence: Robert Donat. Yes, he was British, however he additionally labored in Hollywood and the yr that Gone With The Wind swept the Academy Awards he walked off with the Oscar for his efficiency in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, an MGM film made in England.
I not too long ago rekindled my nice fondness for Donat once I chanced to see the final half-hour of The Citadel on Turner Classic Movies. It’s a beautiful movie, directed by King Vidor and tailored from a novel by A.J. Cronin. The main function, a crusading physician who quickly loses his approach, is completely suited to its star—supported right here by Rosalind Russell and a scene-stealing Ralph Richardson.
But if I have been attempting to promote Donat to an viewers fully unfamiliar with him I might present The 39 Steps (1935), certainly one of Alfred Hitchcock’s biggest movies. Donat had a ravishing talking voice, rivaled solely by fellow Brit Ronald Colman and Welsh-born Roger Livesey, and he’s completely matched by main woman Madeleine Carroll on this witty, still-gripping thriller. In some methods it’s the archetypal Hitchcock film, specializing in an harmless man who’s regarded as a assassin and a spy. He spends an excellent portion of the movie handcuffed to Carroll, who desires no a part of him and asks him how and why he pursued a lifetime of crime. Their witty badinage has seldom if ever been equaled.
Donat took up performing in his youth to beat a stutter and by no means seemed again. He had small elements in a variety of early talkies however had his first main function in an American manufacturing of The Count of Monte Cristo (1934). Dashing and fully credible as Alexandre Dumas’ swashbuckling hero Edmond Dantes, he was introduced because the star of Warner Bros.’ upcoming journey yarn Captain Blood, however returned to Great Britain as a substitute, by no means to set foot in California once more. (Warners was obliged to search out an unknown to take his place and selected a latest arrival from Tasmania by the use of the U.Okay. named Errol Flynn.) Other studios repeatedly supplied him plum elements however he turned all of them down; apparently he hadn’t loved his transient keep in California.
A lifelong asthmatic, Donat’s output was comparatively small, however he made every movie depend. When filming of Knight Without Armor (1937) was interrupted by a two-month hospital keep, his costar Marlene Dietrich welcomed him again to the set and dubbed him “our knight without asthma.” She had refused to proceed working till he was effectively sufficient to renew filming.
He is greatest remembered—when he’s remembered in any respect—because the self-sacrificing trainer in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), like The Citadel an MGM manufacturing made in England. (These and such different movies as A Yank at Oxford and Haunted Honeymoon have been a part of a settlement between U.S. studios and the British authorities whereby the Hollywood corporations agreed to spend a portion of the large earnings they made in England in England.)
Based on a novel by James Hilton, whose different movie-friendly books embrace Lost Horizon and Random Harvest, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) is an unabashedly sentimental story of a person who seems again on his fifty-eight yr profession as a Latin trainer which started when he was 25 years previous. Charles Edward Chipping earns his nickname solely after years of unyielding strictness in his lessons. His seemingly chilly demeanor is thawed by the charming girl he meets and marries, performed by Greer Garson. Near the top of his life he seems again with nice affection in any respect the surrogate sons he taught and despatched on their approach. Donat doesn’t mug or condescend to the viewers in his portrayal of the aged Mr. Chips. He is completely honest, which is one purpose the movie remains to be so well-loved.
Even minor movies like The Adventures of Tartu (1943) and Vacation from Marriage/Perfect Strangers (1945) are made worthwhile by his presence. And whereas an all-star forged dots the story of The Magic Box (1951) it’s Donat, because the unheralded English inventor of movement photos, who instructions the display screen from begin to end.
I want I had been round to see him on the London stage in such performs as The Devil’s Disciple, Heartbreak House, Much Ado About Nothing, and Murder within the Cathedral. But I need to reconcile myself to revisiting his work on display screen and marveling at his seemingly easy charisma. He deserves to be higher recognized by a brand new era of movie buffs and students.