Three Queens and a Pair: Into the Archive

 

Yesterday I got the two-movie collection of Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)/Mary Queen of Scots (1971) in a nicely boxed set. I spent a large chunk of today watching them and marveling at the strange interweaving familiarity of their actors. Not only that, they were both produced by Hal Wallis, who in his time had produced The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Becket, True Grit, and Rooster Cogburn, among many others.

Anne of the Thousand Days, besides having Richard Burton as King Henry the Eighth and Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn, also included John Colicos as Thomas Cromwell (the same historic figure Leo McKern played in A Man for all Seasons). Colicos was famous to us pop culturalists as Kor, the first Klingon shown on Star Trek (in An Errand of Mercy) and as Lord Baltar in Battlestar Galactic.

The cast also includes (by a strange coincidence) Michael Hordern as Thomas Boleyn, Anne’s father, and William Squire as Thomas More. Squire had been the voice of Gandalf in Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings and Hordern was the voice of Gandalf in the 1981 BBC radio adaptation.

John Anthony Quayle played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (a part played by Orson Welles in A Man for all Seasons). He also played important roles in such major studio productions as The Guns of Navarone (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Operation Crossbow (1965), QB VII (1974) and The Eagle Has Landed (1976).

Peter Jeffrey played Thomas Howard, 3^rd Duke of Norfolk. He also played King Philip II of Spain in the BBC serial Elizabeth R (1971). Also in 1971, he played Inspector Trout in The Abominable Dr. Phibes, a role he reprised in 1972 in Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Also in 1971, he was Count Balogh in Countess Dracula, and in 1988 the Sultan in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Mary Queen of Scots boasted an equally impressive cast:

• Vanessa Redgrave as Mary, Queen of Scots
• Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth I of England, reprising her role from the BBC show in the same year
• Patrick McGoohan as Mary's half-brother James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray (famous to us as Edward the III in Braveheart)
• Timothy Dalton as Mary's second husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (just saw him in The Three Musketeers)
• Nigel Davenport as Mary's third husband, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell
• Trevor Howard as Elizabeth's advisor Sir William Cecil
• Ian Holm as Mary's advisor, David Riccio (Bilbo!)