Sumptuous spectacle was the order of the day in Universal's 1939 retelling of the Richard III legend.
N
o age is without its ruthless men who, in their search for power, leave dark stains upon the pages of history," we are told in the prologue to Universal's memorable 1939 movie Tower of London. "During the Middle Ages, to seize the Tower of London was to seize the throne of England Within the deep shadows of the Tower walls lives the population of a small city some in prison cells and torture chambers, some in palaces and spacious lodgings, but none in peace. A web of intrigue veils the lives of all who know only too well that today's friends might be tomorrow's enemies"The most ruthless man of all, according to the film and many historians, was Richard, Duke of Gloucester, destined to become King Richard III. In Tower, the infamous plotter is superbly portrayed by Basil Rathbone, then at the peak of his career. He is abetted by Boris Karloff, the reigning king of horror films, as the equally twisted Mord. A more fiendish teaming can hardly be imagined.
Much of Richard's infamy is founded upon William Shakespeare's plays King Henry VI and The Life and Death of King Richard III, in which the scheming, hunchbacked politician murders his way to the throne. His victims include the elderly King Henry VI, the Duke of Clarence (his own brother), and a pair of boy princes. Shakespeare depicted Richard as a cruelly deformed monomaniac, self-described as having an arm "like a wither'd shrub an envious mountain on my back legs of an unequal size disproportion in every part, like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp"
Many revisionist historians insist, however, that Richard was a just ruler who became a victim of slander after he was slain by the army of his successor, Henry Tudor. Even after workmen repairing a stairway found the skeletons of the missing princes, it was suggested that they were killed by the Tudors. As for alleged deformities, Richard's official portrait reveals a pleasant-looking man, although his right shoulder does appear to be higher than his left. But then, was there ever a royal artist with the chutzpah to paint an unflattering portrait of his king?
Tower of London was shepherded by producer-director Rowland V. Lee and his screenwriter brother, Robert N. After penning 1922's Shirley of the Circus for Fox Film, the pair had worked together on several other productions. Their collaborations were contentious. "We write it out and fight it out," Robert Lee explained. "That's the advantage of being brothers. We can say things to each other that nobody else would take." They liked on-set improvisation, and Robert stood by during production to make changes.
In 1936, following Rowland's successful historical dramas, The Count of Monte Cristo and Cardinal Richelieu, the brothers decided to write an English history yarn. Robert immersed himself in reference books, while Rowland went to England to do some research at the British Museum. "We agreed that we wanted to use the roughest, [most] hard-boiled period of all time," Robert said in a press release. "Row was for the Stuart era. It was tough, all right, but I held out for the time of Richard. Those guys made our moderns look like sissies We found by examining the old armor that they were little guys, but they were game They didn't squeal the way our big-time gangsters do when they had to pay up. The only record of a gallows welcher in history is that of Margaret of Salisbury. She tried to run and they cut her down. But Marge was 71 years old When I proved all of this, Row agreed with me."
Rowland Lee directed what has been called the most beautiful of all talking pictures, Zoo in Budapest (1933), photographed by Lee Garmes, ASC. He also had a penchant for the macabre, as demonstrated in his two popular Fu Manchu chillers of 1929-30. While in England, he directed Ann Harding and Basil Rathbone in the hair-raising Love From a Stranger (1937), and was impressed with Rathbone's projection of suave villainy. At Universal the following year, he directed Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill in the expensive but worthy Son of Frankenstein, sparking the rebirth of the neglected horror genre. He and Rathbone then collaborated on The Sun Never Sets (1939), a stiff-upper-lip tribute to the British Empire which Lee jazzed up by casting Lionel Atwill as a mad scientist to the outrage of critics and the delight of shirtsleeve audiences.
In the wake of these projects, Universal gave the Lees the go-ahead for Tower of London, granting the duo one of the largest budgets they had offered in years: $500,000, with a 36-day shooting schedule. A great amount was allotted for the construction of a replica of the real tower, and another large chunk went for costumes for 75 feature players and some 300 extras. The cast was an expensive one; Rathbone and Karloff, for example, were in the $5,000-per-week class. Obviously, such a picture could not be finished in six weeks.
The real tower stands on the north bank of the Thames in London's East End, and is maintained as a tourist attraction. It is a collection of thick-walled stone buildings covering 13 acres and centering around the huge White Tower, built by William the Conqueror as a palace and prison. A high stone wall and moat surround the spread. Many famed historical personages were imprisoned and beheaded within the walls or on an adjacent hill. The crown jewels are housed on the premises, and the Beefeaters (or Yeomen Warders) still stand guard in their traditional garb.
Until quite recently, Universal's tower also stood intact; the structure appeared in dozens of movies for more than five decades, and was a vital feature of the studio's tour. During preparation for Tower of London, supervising art director Jack Otterson, an architect who had designed part of the Empire State Building, was assigned to create a reasonable facsimile of the historic edifice, which would then be constructed on the backlot. He and unit art director Richard Riedel made 75 charcoal drawings and watercolor paintings mainly accurate reproductions of the exteriors, including the portcullis and the 90-foot keep tower, and interiors such as the royal chambers, torture chamber, prison cells, chapel, council rooms and bedrooms. Riedel saw the project through to completion. Exteriors were scaled down somewhat (the keep, for example, was reduced to 75'), and certain elevations were left uncompleted (to be finished with matte paintings by Jack Cosgrove, ASC and Russell Lawson, ASC). The sets were massive, imaginative and planned for staging in depth.
It became evident that there was little opportunity to economize on the project. Some necessary props were already in inventory, such as torture instruments, hand-carved cabinets, and oversize furnishings from the 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame. Mord's iron maiden had previously been used to dispatch Conrad Veidt in 1927's The Man Who Laughs.
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