"Soon, Korda’s banner would flutter above the Thames. It was in England that Korda saw his greatest opportunity to create an empire to rival the one that had recently rejected him. Again, as in 1908 when he grasped that films were the medium of the future, Korda saw a void that he could fill. England had no film moguls, no big movie stars, no studios. Like Hungary, it boasted a rich history ready to be mined, and – unlike Hungary – a language that was spoken on both sides of the Atlantic. Above all, it was Europe! He would take the lessons learned in Hollywood and transplant them to Britain. He knew the secret to independence. He would create a full-blown corporation and a studio of his own. He would show those crude studio pashas. And he would make his brothers his partners – though never equals – and thus reconstitute the scattered family. Korda had circled from Budapest to Vienna to Berlin to Hollywood to Paris. Approaching his fortieth year, he would make London his final stop.
The fact that Britain’s first ever international film hit was an all-Hungarian production – produced and directed by Alexander Korda, sets by Vincent Korda, and screenplay by Lajos Biro – did not diminish Britain’s pride at beating Hollywood at its own game. The Private Life of Henry VIII was such a huge hit in 1933 that, for the rest of his life, Alexander Korda, too, compete with himself. With this film, everything came together for Korda. Filmed in five weeks for a paltry £50,000 (according to Alex, at least), it grossed half a million pounds in its first world run. Well over half a century later, The Private Life of Henry VIII turns up on cable channels at odd hours – and, with Charles Laughton’s unforgettable, scenery-chewing performance as Henry, it remains an irresistible romp.
Henry VIII was suffused with Korda’s love of history with a human, ironic face. “It’s a boy!” the monarch whoops at his hunting party, like any clerk receiving the good news. “There’s no delicacy, nowadays,” Henry grumbles, tearing into the capon and famously tossing the bones over his shoulder. Korda transformed the monarch into a henpecked husband. “Don’t you shout at me,” Anne of Cleves warns Henry, “just because I’m your wife!” When Henry approaches the marriage bed of his least attractive wife mumbling, “The things I do for England,” audiences the world over roared, and still do. Alexander Korda was established as Britain’s leading director/producer.
“Everyone wanted to know Korda,” British director Michael Powell observed, “and Korda knew everybody.” Korda built his dream studio, a private Xanadu tucked away in the Buckinghamshire village of Denham. Financed by the Prudential Insurance Company, the London Film Studio sprawled over 165 acres, boasting seven sound stages, two film theaters, and eighteen cutting rooms. From an antique and art-filled office suitable for receiving prime ministers and maharajas, Korda presided over a staff of more than two thousand. Everything about Korda – from the magic of his name, the suit that seemed molded to his tall frame, his handmade shoes – radiated nonchalant wealth and position, and was as meticulously staged as any other Korda production.
For three years Korda reigned from the proud tower of his dreams. London’s greatest actors – Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Leslie Howard, Valerie Hobson, and Vivien Leigh – formed his personal repertory theater, while so many Hungarians found jobs at Denham that the river Colne on which it was located was referred to as the Danube.
Korda’s genius was with people. “An enormous personality,” director David Lean recalled. “Fifteen minutes with him was worth two days with anyone else. . . . He could take any subject and talk on it for twenty minutes.” Actor Ralph Richardson called him the most magnetic person he had ever met. “I would go see Alex with a problem,” Sir Ralph recalled, “with a furious speech about what I wanted and what I’d do if I didn’t get it. And all the time he’d be staring at my feet. When I finished, he’d say, ‘Where did you get those marvelous shoes? I’d give anything to have shoes like those.’ And I would retire defeated.” Though he had a fine, light touch as a director, Korda said directing was like going down into the mines, something to be gotten over as fast as possible. Laurence Olivier recalled a scene where he had “done the worst acting of my life,” only to hear Korda call out: “Okay, cut. Next shot!” Olivier protested. “Can’t I have another take?” Whereupon Korda coolly replied, “Larry, my dear boy, you know nothing about making pictures. Sometimes there must be bad acting. Next shot.”
Great Britain’s first movie mogul never did fully master the English language. Left to themselves, the Korda brothers spoke Hungarian and reverted to their childhood names, Lacikam, Vincikem, and Zolikam. Salami appeared from under the silver chafing dish in the Georgian dining room, and soon the three brothers were back in the Turkeve of their childhood, arguing – and ultimately yielding to the eldest’s implacable will.
In the 1930s, Korda decided it was time to end his nomadic, hotel-centered existence, and settled into a mansion on Avenue Road where he received the great figures of the day; the writers H. G. Wells and Graham Greene, Lawrence of Arabia, and Winston Churchill. One of Korda’s most appealing qualities was that his largesse matched his ambition. “Korda [was] one of the most generous men I ever met,” the legendary Josef von Sternberg recalled. Once when von Sternberg – director of The Blue Angel and Morocco – was hospitalized in London, instead of flowers Alex brought “an important large bronze [of a woman] by Aristide Maillol to my rooms with a charming note which said that he thought I could deal with women better than he could.”
It was more than Korda’s fabled powers of persuasion that kept the money flowing. British financiers got a kick out of premiers under the bright lights of Korda’s Hollywood-on-the-Thames. They were proud to be associated with The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Rise of Catherine the Great, and Rembrandt: finely crafted costume dramas, with Korda’s sardonic touch. Competing with Hollywood on the international market was, however, beyond even Korda’s reach. Fast-paced action films like Michael Curtiz’s The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Adventures of Robin Hood were world hits, from Burbank to Budapest, in a way that Korda’s British costume dramas were not.
But Korda’s personality was big. Five years after being fired by Fox, he returned to Hollywood in September 1935, and, flanked by the film world’s most iconic figures, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford, he became a full partner in United Artists. Still, his feelings for Hollywood never warmed.
Michael Curtiz’s stepson, John Meredyth Lucas, remembered a three-day train journey on the Super Chief from Los Angeles to Chicago with the two Hungarian directors. “Korda had been urging Mike to come to England with him, making him fabulous offers and expounding on the wonders of English life. Each evening we three would have dinner served in Mike’s drawing room. Korda would go on about the great opportunities and freedom for a director working in England … [and] denigrate the harsh commercialism of Hollywood, and the uncouth American audience.” But Curtiz was not buying. “ ‘I stay on my home’ [Curtiz] declared. ‘I am American. . . . The English is terrible phony.’ ” The two old Budapest rivals were puzzled by Lucas’s amusement. “It took me a while to explain the humor of two Hungarians patriotically refighting the American Revolution.”
Korda had good reason to prefer his Hollywood-on-the-Thames; after all, it preferred him, and treated him the way he most wanted. Returning to London from Hollywood in October 1935, Korda’s Rolls-Royce glided into the Savoy’s driveway. Alighting in his signature homburg, brandishing a tycoon-size cigar, the mogul beamed toward the blinding flash and pop of dozens of photographers. Variety carried this breathless account: “Largest gathering of newspapermen ever assembled for anything but a national event, crowded into a large ballroom to get the low-down from Alex Korda on his return from America.”
Since his earliest days as a Budapest film director, Korda had understood the unique power of a radiant, beautiful face on a large silver screen. In 1938, he proved his genius as a talent-spotter and star-maker when he presented a little-known British stage actress to David Selznick, who was conducting a widely publicized search for the actress who would play the central role in what promised to be the biggest film ever, Gone With the Wind. “The lucky Hungarian has fallen onto something,” Selznick wrote his business partner, Jock Whitney, after meeting Vivien Leigh, “and we’re going to make a fortune for him.” And so Scarlett O’Hara was chosen, and Korda was handsomely rewarded. But Korda’s London Film Company’s debt already exceeded $4 million. “The fact that we have lost a great deal of money through our association with K[orda] must be faced,” began and internal memo of the Prudential Insurance Company. “K’s engaging personality and charm of manner must be resisted,” the memo continued. “His financial sense is non-existent and his promises (even when sincere) worthless.” And so, in early 1939, Alexander Korda lost his dream palace, which became a part of Pinewood Studios. “All I have left,” Korda bitterly told a visitor, “are a few shares and some old films which are equally worthless.” But for the relentless and resilient Alexander Korda, “a few shares and some old films” were enough to start anew. In Hollywood, he had learned that defeat could be transformed into triumph. It was all a matter of marketing.
On March 20, 1939, Korda announced the creation of Alexander Korda Film Productions. One would never have known from his press release that Korda’s dream of running his own world-class studio had crumbled. “The films of the new company will be presented by London Film Productions [Korda’s former studio] and distributed throughout the world by United Artists, of which Mr. Korda is one of the owner members.” One more time, he had returned from the dead. Later that year, Alex fulfilled another fantasy. In a simple ceremony in Antibes, he married the actress Merle Oberon, one of the world’s most glamorous women. Groomed for stardom by her new husband, in some ways she was as much a Korda creation as London Films. His wedding present to Merle was a necklace once worn by Marie Antoinette.
Korda was a man who was radioactive with ideas – some brilliant. One of his most inspired resulted in the most powerful (and enduring) anti-Hitler film of the period, Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. “Alexander Korda,” Chaplin recalled in his memoirs, “in 1937 had suggested I should do a Hitler story based on mistaken identity, Hitler having the same moustache as the tramp: I could play both characters, he said. I did not think too much about the idea then.” But Chaplin eventually changed his mind. The Great Dictator, with its unforgettable satire of Hitler, was released in 1940 to packed movie houses. By that time, however, it was seen less a satire than a chilling, if belated, wake-up call, especially to Americans who were still out of the war. Like all the Hungarians who had found refuge in the West, Korda himself needed no wake-up call. He knew if the Nazis crossed the English Channel, he would be on the Gestapo’s list. “I think another war will kill me,” the forty-six-year-old producer-director lamented. “The Holocaust,” Michael Korda noted, “was no more than he expected to happen.”
On Sunday morning, September 3, 1939, the shrill wail of the war’s first air raid warning pierced through London’s early morning sky, bringing the nightmare home to Alexander Korda. “We had all gathered in one of the big concrete coal bunkers [at Denham Studios],” director Michael Powell remembered, “to listen to [Neville Chamberlain’s] broadcast [admitting the failure of his policy of appeasement and announcing a state of war between Great Britain and Germany]. . . . Alex and his brothers were there, and Merle, who was holding Alex’s hand and crying. Alex was smoking one of his Coronas, as usual, and he took a deep breath and sent a perfect smoke ring into the air.” For Korda, like Curtiz, the war against the Nazis was personal – and it presented an opportunity.
Winston Churchill returned to office, as first lord of the admiralty in 1939, before becoming prime minister in May 1940. He was the man of the hour, and Korda called on him. The two shared a deep love of history, especially British history, a flair of showmanship, and a taste for cigars and brandy. Now they had a common enemy. The Hungarian offered Churchill all the resources at his command in waging a propaganda war against Hitler. Afterward, “Alex summoned a meeting of all his principal contract people,” Michael Powell recalled. “He explained his personal agreement with Churchill and how it affected us all. Britain was preparing for war. Denham was already a classified area. Now came our orders. When war was declared, filming on The Thief of Baghdad would stop. The next day everybody at Denham would start working on a feature propaganda film which Alex had promised Churchill would be ready in one month. . . . All he asked of us was that we would go with heart, mind and soul into making his new picture, and work with whomever we were assigned to.”
The Lion Has Wings was Korda’s first engagement in his personal war against the Nazis. His wartime sacrifice entailed returning to “bloody California.” Ten years after his spectacular Hollywood flameout, Korda was back as Winston Churchill’s personal emissary in the campaign to bring America into the war. It was Churchill who suggested the story of Lord Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar as a subject for a Korda film. But it was Korda who persuaded Laurence Olivier, the world’s most admired actor, and Vivien Leigh, fresh from her blazing success as Scarlett O’Hara, to play Nelson and his mistress, Emma Hamilton.
“Propaganda,” Korda told Olivier, “can be a bitter medicine. It needs sugar coating – and That Hamilton Woman is a very thick sugar coating indeed.” There was nothing sugary, however, in the message beneath the frosting. In the opening scene, Captain Hardy, Nelson’s deputy, attacks those countries that are “neutral against England and so scared of Bonaparte they daren’t lift a finger for the people brave enough to fight him.” When Laurence Olivier, as Nelson, addresses the admiralty, he is speaking Churchill’s words, via Alexander Korda. Nelson is not referring, of course, to Bonaparte when he says: “Napoleon can never be master of the world until he has smashed us up – and believe me gentlemen, he means to be master of the world. You cannot make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them. Wipe them out! Gentlemen, I implore you – speak to the Prime Minister before it is too late. Do not ratify this peace!” When That Hamilton Woman came out, America was still neutral; its message was clear. A Senate committee sent a subpoena to Korda instructing him to testify on December 12, 1941, on whether he was “inciting the American public to war.” Five days before he was scheduled to appear, Pearl Harbor was attacked. The testimony was canceled.
That Hamilton Woman was brilliant propaganda. It was also vintage Korda, a lavish peek behind a historic event, suitably improved from the literal truth. The film was a labor of love for Korda, who produced, directed, and financed it – in five weeks. Vincent Korda’s astonishing eighteenth-century armada for the re-creation of the Battle of Trafalgar was so lifelike that Vivien Leigh became seasick during the filming. “The Nelson film is nearly over,” Leigh wrote on November 40, 1941. “We had rushed through it because apparently after Thursday there is no more money! – Alex’s usual predicament.” Perhaps because Europe’s fate was a personal matter for him, That Hamilton Woman has more genuine emotional content – and less ironic detachment – than other Korda films. Alex said making it made him feel twenty years younger. Churchill wept when he saw it.
On September 23, 1942, in top hat and cutaways, the man born Sandor Kellner in Turkeve, Hungary, with a radiant Merle Oberon on his arm, strode up the driveway of Buckingham Palace. A short while later he emerged Sir Alexander Korda, Knight of the Realm. For a Hungarian, a Jew, a refugee, and a member of the movie industry, this was an astonishing honor, beyond even the wildest dreams of Sandor Kellner during the long nights on the Great Plain. David Selznick, Korda’s Hollywood rival, grasped the knighthood’s significance: “The stature it has given the whole business,” Selznick wrote, “and the dignity it has given to the profession of producing, is doubly significant first because it comes in the midst of war, second because it comes from Winston Churchill. . . . Everyone in the business should fell deeply indebted to Korda because his efforts, which have been conducted quietly and without fanfare or publicity have won this honor which should be accepted as an honor to us all."
But Korda’s moment of grace did not satisfy him for long. From Hollywood, he had written Lajos Biro that, like Gulliver, he was condemned to eternal restlessness. Early in 1945, Korda, age fifty-two, suffered his first heart attack – in a very public place, collapsing during dinner at Romanoff’s restaurant, in full view of many Hollywood luminaries. In June of the same year, his marriage to Merle Oberon ended in divorce. He recovered, but there was a new sadness in the man. The actress Joan Fontaine (sister of Olivia de Havilland) remembered dining with Korda sometime after his collapse. “Over and excellent glass of Château Lafite [Alex] warned me. ‘No matter what, Joan, aim for the impossible. If you accomplish all your ambitions, there is nothing left.’ Puzzled, I asked the silver-haired producer what he meant. Holding his glass up to the light, he sighed. ‘I was a poor boy in Hungary when I conceived my dream. . . . I wanted to belong to the most important nation, to become rich, respected, marry the most beautiful woman, be world famous. . . . I’ve done all those things. I became a British subject, I founded my own film company, I owned a yacht, Winston Churchill is my close friend, I married Merle, I was knighted. . . . Now. . . . now I’ve no more dreams left.’ ”
Korda had used himself up. By the 1940s, he was a prematurely old man who could not change his habits. Pale and haggard, Korda no longer quite filled his beautiful suits. An intellectual who dreamed of reading the Greek classics in the original, who quoted Boswell and Baudelaire, Korda’s addiction to power run just as deep. Control was security for a man who had experienced a lifetime of insecurity. When he acquired the ultimate rich man’s toy, his yacht, Elsewhere, he used it not so much for escape, but as a tool of power. Winston Churchill and Graham Greene were his preferred sailing companions, but there was almost always the less congenial presence of a David Selznick or a Sam Goldwyn on board. On one thing they all agreed: there was no one else quite like Korda. Graham Greene described Korda in Loser Takes All: “There was something grand about him, with his mane of white hair, his musician’s head. Where other men collected pictures to escape death duties, he collected for pleasure. For a month at a time he would disappear in his yacht with a cargo of writers and actresses and oddments – a hypnotist, a man who had invented a new rose, or discovered something about the endocrine glands.”
Korda was determined to revive his prewar stature as Britain’s preeminent film mogul. An incorrigible gambler, he bought back London Films from the Prudential Insurance Company. From King George VI’s former residence overlooking Hyde Park, at No. 145 Piccadilly, Korda breathed new life into the company he had founded – and driven into the ground. Michael Korda remembered his uncle playing host to No. 145’s former residents, Their Majesties King and Queen Elizabeth. “Alex was so polished, so gracious,” Korda recalled, “as if he had been raised in a palace himself. He made their majesties feel perfectly at ease.”
What a role: a country boy – a Hungarian Jew – convincingly playing the British lord. He was most in his element, however, with other Hungarians. Not only his brothers, but dozens of other Hungarians were on his payroll, performing mysterious services. “The hangers-on would be asked to handle transfers of money all over the world,” Michael Korda remembered. “Everywhere I went people would say, ‘Ah yes, I knew your uncle,’ in mysterious ways which left much unexplained.” With the breakup of his marriage to Merle Oberon, Korda gave up on domesticity, and resumed his old custom of hotel-living, this time in a suite at Claridge’s in London. From there he attempted to revive his empire. Powell remembered how Korda gathered the best of London around him. “We were asked to dinner not once but often to the fabulous penthouse apartment at the top op Claridge’s where Alex lived and entertained. There were always interesting people at those parties,” Powell wrote. “As for myself, I loved Alex the way I loved the film business. I loved him for his glamour, his good taste, his shrewdness, for the audacity and sheer fun that he got out of manipulating men and millions.”
Few of Korda’s guests could see past the glamour of his life into a certain sadness and emptiness. Paul Tabori, a Hungarian-born author working on a Korda biography, received a call from Alex’s secretary. “I’d take my pajamas [to the interview] if I were you.” Indeed, at around 3:00 A.M., Alex suggested Tabori spend the night, “so we can talk some more in the morning.” Tabori sensed that Korda was lonely. Speaking the language of his youth was consolation."
Guardian/ICM poll graphic, 22 February 2010, showing the Tory lead falling to just seven points. Photograph: Paddy Allen/guardian.co.uk
Support for David Cameron's Conservative party has crumbled to its lowest point for nearly two years, according to the latest monthly Guardian/ICM poll, leaving Britain on course for a hung parliament at the coming general election.
The survey, showing the Conservatives holding only a seven-point lead, will come as a relief to Gordon Brown as he continued to fend off potentially lethal claims over his complex character, including suggestions that he bullies staff.
The accusations – which surfaced in a book by the Observer's political commentator Andrew Rawnsley – sparked another day of frantic political manoeuvring yesterday.
One of the Tory party's best known MPs, Ann Widdecombe, quit as a patron of the National Bullying Helpline, the charity which on Sunday sparked a storm at Westminster when its founder, Christine Pratt, entered the political fray, saying she had received four complaints of bullying from No 10 staff.
Last night the charity was close to implosion as other patrons also resigned, saying Pratt had acted unethically. Among those who quit were the television presenter Sarah Cawood and the workplace stress expert Cary Cooper. There were also reports that Tory councillor for Hillingdon Mary O'Connor resigned.
The helpline withdrew any suggestion that the complaints involved Brown, and had to fend off criticism that it had close ties to the Conservative party.
The cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, also rejected calls for a public inquiry and denied he had ever raised concerns with Brown about intimidatory or bullying behaviour to No 10 staff.
In an interview in the Economist, Brown gave his first direct response since Rawnsley's allegations were published. "The cabinet secretary has made it clear that he's had no inquiries, there's been no reprimand, there's been no private message to me ... (The) story is completely wrong," Brown said.
The Tory hierarchy, though, will be alarmed at the party's vulnerability toLabour attacks since the new year. With no more than three months to go until polling day, the Conservatives have fallen to 37%, down three points on last month's Guardian/ICM poll and down two on another ICM poll earlier this month.
The party has not fallen so low in an ICM poll since the tail-end of the banking crisis, last falling to 37% in February 2008.
As recently as last October, the Tories hit 45% in an ICM poll and the party will be alarmed by this latest evidence that the race is tightening, which confirms the findings of some other recent polls. Meanwhile, Labour support, at 30%, is eight points up on its absolute ICM low last May, and slightly above its average for the second part of last year.
The opposition has also lost ground on key policy issues, including the economy, and may be losing their campaign against Labour's so-called death tax.
Labour leads the Tories by eight points as the party with the best policy on care for the elderly. The two parties are neck-and-neck on their ability to sort out the economic crisis, against a nine-point Tory lead when the question was last asked in August 2009.
The economic finding tallies with Labour polling suggesting the Tories are not making inroads with their policy of highlighting the scale of the public deficit and the need to take immediate action to cut it. One Labour source said: "The real valuable political real estate in Britain now is the optimism."
Labour also claims that its personal polling of Cameron shows he is seen as "too shrill, divisive and not speaking for Britain any longer". Labour claims it is succeeding in portraying Cameron as a man running a concealment strategy, caught between his branding and his beliefs.
Labour's static poll position is not all good news for No 10 – the ICM poll shows no boost for the party after Brown's emotional and revealing television interview with Piers Morgan.
Research began last Friday and most was done before the serialisation of Rawnsley's book in the Observer, which may also have affected Labour support. A fifth of responses were collected on Sunday.
Nick Clegg's hopes of a powerful place in a hung parliament are also boosted by the poll, which puts the Liberal Democrats on 20%, unchanged on the most recent ICM and down one point on last month's Guardian poll.
All this suggests Labour and the Lib Dems are holding steady, while the Tories are losing ground to smaller parties. Nationalists are on 5%, Ukip and the Greens on 3% each and the BNP on 2%.
Estimates of what these shares would mean for the parties on polling day vary, but a 7% lead is at the margins of what the Tories think they need to win an overall majority.
Brown will be hoping that the controversy over his character will blow out long before the actual election campaign begins in earnest.
ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,004 adults by telephone on 19-21 February 2010. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules
