Henry VIII

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 BourchierKing Henry VIII
Violet VanbrughQueen Katherine
Charles FullerThomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury
Herbert Beerbohm TreeCardinal Wolsey
Laura CowieAnne Boleyn
A.E. GeorgeDuke of Norfolk
Acton BondSurveyor
Arthur GaskillSergeant-at-Arms
Basil GillDuke of Buckingham
Charles HowardGentleman (2)
Charles JamesSir Nicholas Vaux
Clarence DerwentLord Abergavenny
Clifford HeatherlyGarter, King-of-Arms
Cyril SworderGentleman (1)
Edmund GouldingCrier
Edward O’NeillDuke of Suffolk
Francis ChamierLord Caputius
Gerald LawrenceEarl of Surrey
James SmythsonScribe
Lila BarclayPatience
Mrs Charles CalvertOld Lady
Reginald OwenThomas Cromwell
Ross ShoreJester
S.A. CooksonCardinal Campeius
Sass. EdwardLord Chamberlain
W.B. AbingdonServant
Walter R. CreightonLord 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

How to cite this record

Shakespeare, "Henry VIII". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/shakespeare/search/index.php/title/av68722 (Accessed 25 Nov 2024)