Synopsis

A record, filmed at Ealing, of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s production of Henry VIII staged at the Her Majesty’s Theatre.

Country

Great Britain

Medium

Film

Technical information

Black-and-white / Silent

Year of release

1911

Recording date

27 Feb 1911

Availability

No copies extant

Credits

Cast

Arthur Bourchier	King Henry VIII
Violet Vanbrugh	Queen Katherine
Charles Fuller	Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury
Herbert Beerbohm Tree	Cardinal Wolsey
Laura Cowie	Anne Boleyn
A.E. George	Duke of Norfolk
Acton Bond	Surveyor
Arthur Gaskill	Sergeant-at-Arms
Basil Gill	Duke of Buckingham
Charles Howard	Gentleman (2)
Charles James	Sir Nicholas Vaux
Clarence Derwent	Lord Abergavenny
Clifford Heatherly	Garter, King-of-Arms
Cyril Sworder	Gentleman (1)
Edmund Goulding	Crier
Edward O’Neill	Duke of Suffolk
Francis Chamier	Lord Caputius
Gerald Lawrence	Earl of Surrey
James Smythson	Scribe
Lila Barclay	Patience
Mrs Charles Calvert	Old Lady
Reginald Owen	Thomas Cromwell
Ross Shore	Jester
S.A. Cookson	Cardinal Campeius
Sass. Edward	Lord Chamberlain
W.B. Abingdon	Servant
Walter R. Creighton	Lord Sandys

Additional Details

Production type

Fiction Films

Plays

Henry VIII

Subjects

Drama

Keywords

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Notes

Notes

Information on the length of the film is inconclusive but Ball surmises that it is likely to have been two reels.

General

Beerbohn Tree had opened his stage production at His Majesty’s, London on September 1 1910 playing Wolsey with Arthur Bourchier as the King and Violet Vanbrugh as Queen Katharine.

History

Tree was paid an unprecedented fee of £1000. Only 20 prints were made; these were not sold to a dealer but leased for special exhibition as an ‘exclusive’. After six weeks the prints were to be called in and destroyed. On April 13, at the end of the six-week period, the prints were burned at Ealing, producer Will Barker himself applying the match while a cameraman filmed the destruction of the prints. Barker’s aggressive pre-publicity and marketing of the film is fully described in Ball.

Reviews

Ball, Robert Hamilton. Shakespeare on Silent Film: A Strange Eventful History. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968 (pp78-82, 320-22).

Production Company

Name

Barker Motion Photography