TOWER OF LONDON (1939)

In November 1939, weeks after World War Two broke out across Europe, Universal released Tower of London, their re-telling of the machinations that led Richard, Duke of Gloucester to become the short-lived King Richard III. For this version, director Rowland V.Lee continued his sterling work with Basil Rathbone from that year’s Son of Frankenstein. He inhabits the main role in a plot that departs substantially from Shakespeare’s famous play, and also grants us two worthy supporting performances – from Vincent Price as his petulant bother, the Duke of Clarence and an entirely fictional henchman of horror from Boris Karloff as Richard’s deformed executioner Mord.

The basic story of Tower of London is largely the one we are familiar with in that it follows Gloucester as he ruthlessly kills his way to the crown - from his incumbent brother Edward through his elder brother in line Clarence and then the young Princes in the Tower before taking the throne. Along the way though, Lee’s brother Robert Lee fashions a screenplay that changes enough details for an engaging companion piece to Richard III. His prologue crawl sets us up for Machiavellian musical chairs: “A web of intrigue veils the lives of all who know only too well that today’s friends might be tomorrow’s enemies”.

Rathbone’s portrayal of Richard differs somewhat in appearance from the one we have loved to hate over the centuries. Whilst he is every inch the infamous schemer, the actor’s suavity is allowed to dominate. He is not the physically hunched-over Olivier incarnation of stage and screen, or the even more radical conception of Sir Anthony Sher in the 1980s, embodying an almost literal ‘bottled spider’ of externals whirling around the RSC’s stage on crutches as an arachnid-like creature. Rathbone’s evil is in his inner nature not an outer self tempted into histrionics. Here, his spinal curvature is incidental, a subtle ruck-sack rather than a hunch-back for a leading man’s performance rather than a character player. Whilst this may be an actor’s vanity, it also focuses our attention more believably on his political motives than vengeance for being cheated ‘of fair nature’.  Vincent Price, whom we shall come to shortly, praised Rathbone’s work as more historically accurate than Olivier’s celebrated version.

Our first sight of Richard shows him sparring lustily with his monarch brother Edward (Ian Hunter), while by contrast Miles Mander is suitably weak and vague as the reluctant King Henry VI.

Karloff’s Mord is emphasised more as the traditional horror-movie villain. Bald-headed, his dark eyes glowering under bushy eyebrows and sporting a bowed and dragging right leg, he is the relishable monster of the piece. He commits fully to the nastiness of the man and is introduced throwing water at a pleading thirsty prisoner as if he were a stray dog. (This is nothing compared to his later stabbing of King Henry whilst he prays on his knees with his back turned). Gloucester and he make an enjoyably unholy alliance of master and willing servant, summed up by Rathbone as: “Crook-back and drag-foot. What we lack in physical perfection we make up for – here” indicating the brain.

Tower of London is a real treat for genre fans as in total there are three Gentlemen of Horror in attendance. Rathbone and Karloff are joined by a splendidly bratty interpretation of the Duke of Clarence, only the third film role for a young Vincent Price. He is vividly the petulant eldest man-boy, woefully out of his depths when he tries to match cunning with his younger brother in a drinking contest. Shakespeare buffs will delight in Richard’s hint of what is to come: “Malmsey will be the only weapon…” The over-confident Clarence giggles with fulsome maliciousness as he surveys Richard seemingly passing out at the table (no wonder as they sup from huge tankards). His crowing is about to reach epic proportions – ‘Little crook-back, you’ve met your master!” - when he sees Richard revive, fixing him with an awful unblinking resolve. Mord then drowns him in the traditional Malmsey butt of mythology.

The received wisdom is that Clarence was really executed in the Tower but Robert Lee does find some other differences from the fictionalised Plantaganet history we are accustomed to. This plot has no devious Buckingham to assist Richard to the throne. Our villain does have unusual help though in taking Lady Anne for his wife. The play famously shows Richard’s breath-taking gall in single-handedly seducing her verbally while she is only just mourning her newly-dead husband. The change here is that Lee forges the union as a persuasive idea of Edward’s to which Anne willingly agrees. This then allows Richard to dissemble the same posture of oh-well-if-you-insist that he does with the missing Buckingham offer of kingship in Shakespeare. Machiavelli and Mario Puzo would be proud of the political stratagems at work in this family. King Edward’s philosophy sounds like a worthy inspiration for The Godfather’s Don Corleone: “It’s an old axiom of mine. Marry your enemies and behead your friends”

We do get a little comic-relief amid the tastefully-executed murderings, courtesy of Ernest Cossart’s cockney chimney sweep and his suffering boy. Cossart had carved out a highly-regarded Hollywood niche for himself playing unflappable butlers, and during WWII would help to start a fund along with Rathbone and Sir Cedric Hardwick to aid distressed artists back home in England.

Although this conniving Richard does not take the audience into his confidence like the Bard’s, there is a ghoulish touch that lets us into his private satisfaction with each development. He keeps a child’s doll-house of figures representing the regal line at court, (in which he starts unpromisingly as sixth) and as he eliminates each obstacle to his crown he discards them one by one into the fire.

Rowland Lee’s direction of actors is as confident and sensitive as in Son of Frankenstein earlier that year. A particular scene highlighting this is in his handling of the Princes’ murder in the Tower. As the boys, Ronald Sinclair and John Herbert-Bond are given enough time to establish a touching innocence before bed without being cloying. Similarly, when Karloff’s dragging frame sneaks in to do the ugly deed, he pauses while bent over their sleeping idyll, a moment of possible humane doubt before measuring out his arm-span to judge their coffin-size. They children are mercifully murdered off-camera but we hear an unsettling scream reminiscent somehow of an abattoir pig’s slaughter. Incidentally, Sinclair exchanged careers to become a noted sound editor, eventually working on the first two Die Hard films and Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs (1987)

One other intriguing alteration to the accepted story is in the final Battle of Bosworth Field between the forces of Richard and Henry Tudor, convincingly staged with chaotic enthusiasm. Every school child is familiar with King’s Richard’s immortal plea exchanging his kingdom for a horse; on this battle-field however he is dispatched wordlessly in matter-of-fact haste. It is Karloff gets more savourable screen time, cutting and thrusting with vigour till he falls mortally down a hill-side.

The excellent cast of Tower of London is supported by the impressive period detail of the exterior castle sets built on the Universal backlot. These were so elaborate and effective that they were frequently reused, for example in that year’s definitive The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Charles Laughton.