Although I try not to take awards season too seriously, I was pleased to see that The King’s Speech had earned seven Golden Globe nominations earlier today.
I had hesitated about seeing the movie, wondering whether it might be a bit on the precious side—too much poor little rich boy. But in addition to serving as a master class in acting by Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, the story of the friendship between King George VI and his Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue proved to be far more compelling than I expected.
The film humanized a historical figure whom I knew little about. Watching Bertie (Logue’s nickname for George VI who was Prince Albert before becoming king) deal with his stutter as he grew increasingly aware of the demands that the new medium of radio would place on him—especially with the start of World War II—was at times excruciating. And I defy anyone who has ever felt a twinge of anxiety about public speaking to avoid squirming when you see Firth recreate the agony of George VI’s speech at the 1936 Glasgow Exposition.
I caught the film at The Landmark theater, and in one of those serendipitous L.A. experiences, it turned out that director Tom Hooper was on hand for a quick Q&A after the movie. The showing was hardly at prime time (4:15 on a Friday) and the promotional potential of Hooper’s appearance seemed rather limited, so his appearance was a definite surprise.
But there he was for a 20-minute session that revealed the unlikely history of this unlikely movie. Most people know the story of George VI’s older brother, King Edward VII, who famously gave up his throne for the woman he loved, the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. His abdication led to the reluctant ascendancy of George VI.
As Hooper described the film’s genesis, “The story of the younger brother with the stammer who’s saved by the Aussie-failed-Shakespearean-actor-maverick-speech therapist is not well known…The only reason I came to this material is because I happen to be half English, half Australian, and living in London.”
Back in 2007, Hooper’s Australian-born mother was invited by some Aussie friends to attend the reading of an unproduced, unrehearsed play at a London fringe theater.
“And this play was called The King’s Speech,” said Hooper. “She almost didn’t go because to be honest it didn’t sound terribly promising. And she had never been invited to a play reading in her life. But thank god she did go. Because she heard the play read, she came home, she rang me up, and said, ‘I think I found your next film.’”
“The moral of the story is listen to your mother.”
Hooper said Geoffrey Rush came to the material in an equally unlikely way. The script was delivered to his Melbourne home by a messenger who worked for the same theater company and who had previously brought a package to Rush’s address.
The script arrived in a brown paper envelope with a simple note, and, as Hooper said, “Amazingly, he did not throw it in the bin.” Rush read it, contacted his agent, and said he wanted to do the work as a movie not as a stage play.
There would be other surprises too. Hooper said that nine weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin, he met Lionel Logue’s grandson—who lived just ten minutes away. The grandson gave Hooper a copy of a diary that Logue kept during his years working with the king. The diary had never been seen by royal biographers, historians, or members of the royal family.
“We set about furiously rewriting based on this treasure trove of information,” said Hooper. “We discovered more about Lionel Logue nine weeks before filming than we ever knew before from all of the history books.”
Among the things that Hooper discovered was that the famous shot of the king seated in full uniform as he delivered his speech announcing Britain’s entry into World War II had been a complete fabrication. Instead, to keep George VI calm, Logue set up what Hooper called “this odd little back room” where the king delivered the radio address—with his tie and jacket off. (Click here to listen to the original speech.)
For all of the history that the movie captures, Hooper resists the idea of it as a period piece because “to me it’s still very present. Because I don’t have a grandfather as a result of the war.”
Hooper’s grandfather was a 30-year-old bomber navigator. He was on the 42nd of a group of 42 missions when his plane was hit and crippled by enemy fire over Germany. While flying over the English Channel, said Hooper, “they asked permission to land at the first available airstrip. And in that rather terrible bureaucratic English way they were told, ‘No you have to go back to your home base.’ They crashed between the coast and their home base. So it was a slightly unnecessary death.”
Hooper dedicated The King’s Speech to his grandfather.
