The Creation of Anne Boleyn (32 page)

Lubitsch’s 1920
Anna Boleyn,
with Emil Jannings as a predatory Henry and Henny Porten as a sweet, suffering Anne.

© Paramount Pictures/Photofest

Although it wasn’t the first historical novel to feature Anne, Francis Hackett’s 1939 novel, the first to be issued in paperback, made her a best-selling fictional heroine for the first time.

Queen Anne Boleyn, Popular Library

This scene—a publicity still—never appears in Alexander Korda’s 1933
The Private Life of Henry VIII,
which dispenses with Anne (the gorgeous Merle Oberon) very early in the film to focus on the exploits of Charles Laughton’s gluttonous, lecherous Henry. The wives, from left to right: Elsa Lanchester (as Anne of Cleves), Binnie Barnes (as Katherine Howard), Everley Gregg (as Katherine Parr), and Oberon as Anne.

© United Artists/Photofest

To this day, Geneviève Bujold’s fiery, proud Anne remains the quintessential portrayal for many viewers.

© Universal Pictures/Photofest

Dorothy Tutin brought gravity and maturity to her portrayal of Anne in the Masterpiece Theatre television series The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

Photofest

Natalie Dormer, who fought to make Anne more than just a seductress in the second season of
The Tudors,
is shown here in one of Joan Bergin’s anachronistic (but award-winning) costumes, fixing her sights on Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s Henry.

© Showtime/Photofest

Anne as Mean Girl: Natalie Portman in
The Other Boleyn Girl.

© Columbia Pictures/Photofest

Howard Brenton’s 2010 play
Anne Boleyn
(with Anthony Howell as Henry and Miranda Raison as a blonde Anne) is the first popular depiction to emphasize Anne’s reformist activities as well as her flirtatious side.

Manuel Harlan/Shakespeare’s Globe Press Office

Sarah Mensinga is among the contemporary artists who have used irony and wit to present what is arguably a feminist perspective on Anne’s execution.

Sarah Mensinga

Anne continues to fascinate. Emily Pooley’s stunning waxwork creates a sense of intimacy with a young Anne, whom it is easy for girls and young women of today to identify with. If you look carefully, you can also see Anne’s controversial sixth finger, which Pooley included to point ominously ahead to the false rumors that were spread by her enemies after her death.

Emily Pooley

PART III: An Anne for All Seasons

10

It’s the Anne That Makes the Movie:
Anne of the Thousand Days

I
N THE EARLY
1960s, Hal Wallis, producer of such distinctively American hits as
True Grit, Casablanca, Barefoot in the Park,
and all of Elvis Presley’s movies, and known as one of the “Jews who invented Hollywood,” was about to realize a deeply held longing. The child of immigrants from Russia and Poland, Wallis had grown up in a Chicago tenement, in an Eastern European Jewish enclave of garment workers and small shopkeepers. And from an early age, he adored all things British. As soon as he had made enough money, from early hits such as
Little Caesar
and
Yankee Doodle Dandy,
he built himself a huge manor in the San Fernando Valley, with fireplaces, woodwork, and furniture imported from Britain. And he began to dream of making films that would introduce British history—which he had studied, on his own, since childhood—to movie-going audiences. He so succeeded in this goal that Queen Elizabeth II, at a 1972 Royal Command Performance of
Anne of the Thousand Days,
shook his hand and whispered, “Thank you, Mr. Wallis. We’re learning about English history from your films.”
¹
A year later, Wallis was honored with the title of Commander of the British Empire by order of Elizabeth.