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Articles
Churchill Confronts “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp”
- By THE CHURCHILL PROJECT
- | September 28, 2023
- Category: Churchill in WWII Q & A
Q: Was Churchill incensed by Colonel Blimp?
“I’ve read a Churchill story I can’t quite bring myself to believe. Is it true that he was so infuriated by the the film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp that he knocked on the dressing room door of Anton Walbrook and demanded to know why he was acting in it? I know the release of Colonel Blimp in 1943 was surrounded by propaganda. That is, the people involved played up how much opposition there was to it. The story seems very hard to verify.
“The most authoritative report, by film critic Derek Malcolm, was in 2002:
Churchill’s reaction was furious. He is said to have stormed into Walbrook’s dressing room when he was appearing in a West End play demanding: “What’s this film supposed to mean? I suppose you regard it as good propaganda for Britain.” Anton’s reply was quite telling. He said, “No people in the world other than the English would have had the courage, in the midst of war, to tell the people such unvarnished truth.”
A: Uncertain but possible
There is no stated attribution for the story. Derek Malcolm qualifies it by writing, “it is said,” which is not dispositive. An oddity is that the film’s Colonel Blimp was played by Roger Livesey, not Anton Walbrook. The latter played Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, the anti-Nazi German officer. (That was appropriate, since the half-Jewish Walbrook had fled Germany for Britain in 1936.) Events in the war, however, eventually made the film less bothersome than it had initially seemed.
Origin of Colonel Blimp
David Low, Churchill’s favorite left-wing cartoonist was working for the Evening Standard, published by Churchill’s crony Lord Beaverbrook, in 1934. Colonel Blimp, in Low cartoons mocking right-wingers, was a pompous, irascible upper-class jingo. Beaverbrook didn’t always share Churchill’s politics, and probably expected that Low would irritate WSC with the occasional poke.
Typically, Colonel Blimp would pose in a Turkish bath, pronouncing ridiculous homilies, always beginning with the same two words. “Gad sir, the League of Nations should insist on peace, except of course in the case of war…. Gad sir, the government is marching over the edge of an abyss, and the nation must march solidly behind them.” But Colonel Blimp was never a caricature of Churchill. Low himself said the character was named after the barrage balloon, sometimes known as a blimp.
Here are several references from the Churchill Project’s digital scans which shine light on your question.
From Paul Addison:
In September 1942, when Churchill was tensely awaiting Montgomery’s offensive in the western desert, he was alarmed to discover that plans were afoot to make a film entitled The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. This was a production planned by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Colonel Blimp was an upper-class bonehead of invincible stupidity who was opposed to all progress and innovation, including the modernisation of the Army. [The film] was therefore bound to be regarded, whatever its content, as a satire on the traditional type of army officer. The Secretary for War, P.J. Grigg, sent Churchill a careful synopsis of the plot, prefaced by the judgment that he thought it of the utmost importance to get the production of the film stopped….
[Minister of Information Brendan] Bracken, however, replied that the Ministry had no power to prevent the production of the film and would need to assume powers amounting to a “compulsory censorship of opinion” in order to stop it. Bracken suggested, however, that Churchill or the War Office should take the matter up with J. Arthur Rank, who was financing the production.
* * *
Churchill insisted on taking the matter to the War Cabinet, where it was discussed on 21 September. Grigg, it appeared, had approached Rank and asked that when a rough cut was available, it should be viewed by officials of the War Office and the Ministry of Information. If they took the view that it was undesirable, the film would then be withdrawn….
[T]he military anxieties of the autumn of 1942 were swept away within a few months by Montgomery’s victory at Alamein, the allied landings in north Africa, and Soviet advances on the eastern front. The men from the ministries, viewing the film in May 1943, could see no reason to suppress it, and the War Cabinet endorsed their opinion. Churchill succeeded for a short time in obstructing the export of the film, but finally surrendered in August 1943. —Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front, 350-51.
From The Churchill Documents:
Winston S. Churchill to Brendan Bracken (Churchill papers, 20/67)
10 September 1942
THE ‘BLIMP’ FILM
Pray propose to me the measures necessary to stop this foolish production* before it gets any further. I am not prepared to allow propaganda detrimental to the morale of the Army, and I am sure the Cabinet will take all necessary action. Who are the people behind it?
*In the War Cabinet on 21 September 1942, the Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg, said “that a film about ‘Colonel Blimp’ was being made.” Facilities had been asked for from the War Office. These had been refused, on the ground that the film was likely to bring ridicule upon the Army. The producers had nevertheless proceeded with the making of the film which was now at an advanced stage. “There was no existing Defence Regulation under which the film could be suppressed. He understood that the Minister of Information was averse from taking the very wide powers which would be necessary to stop this film.” —The Churchill Documents, vol. 17, Testing Times, 1942, 1192
* * *
The film debuted and The Times reported that Churchill attended the first showing on 9 June 1943. Evidently it didn’t change his opinion:
Winston S. Churchill to Brendan Bracken (Churchill papers, 20/104)
11 July 1943. Prime Minister’s Personal Minute M.459/3
I think you should certainly stop it going abroad as long as you possibly can.
Winston S. Churchill to Brendan Bracken (Churchill papers, 20/104).
25 July 1943. Prime Minister’s Personal Minute M.523/3
I do not agree with this surrender [Bracken had advised against banning export]. Will you please discuss the matter with me. If necessary, we must take more powers. —The Churchill Documents, vol. 18, One Continent Redeemed, January-August 1943. 1875
Our opinion
Churchill was ruefully fond of David Low, but we can find no reaction to Low’s 1930s cartoon character. What disturbed him was the film’s possible lampooning of the British Army. This is well documented by the late Paul Addison and The Churchill Documents.
Churchill fought the Second World War with single-minded intensity, ergo his reaction to the Colonel Blimp film. Any distraction from the war effort was inadmissible, even treasonous. His notorious outburst, “I hate Indians…beastly people with a beastly religion,” was in reaction to Delhi separatists when India was under invasion. Alas today it is treated as an offense of genocidal magnitude.
We can find no reference to Churchill storming into Anton Walbrook’s dressing room. One of his most critical biographers says only that he was “seriously upset.” There is no reference to Walbrook in our digital scans of eighty million words by and about Churchill. The story may be true—or it may have been embroidered by latter-day writers.
Although Colonel Blimp bore no likeness to Churchill, his friends and family occasionally prodded him with references. Sir Colin Coote, addressing the Edmonton Churchill Society in 1974 recalled: “It was at a lunch at Chartwell where he had been laying down the law, perhaps a trifle dogmatically. Anyway, Lady Churchill rose at the appropriate moment and said to the ladies, ‘Let us leave Colonel Blimp to talk to the men.'”
Upcoming film
Cinema Unbound, a documentary narrated by Martin Scorsese about filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is scheduled in late 2023 as part of a season about them at the British Film Institute.
Further reading
Geoffrey McNab, “Colonel Blimp: The Masterpiece Churchill Hated,” The Independent, 2011.
Roger Ebert, “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” 2002.
Derek Malcolm, “Powell and Pressburger: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” The Guardian, 2001.
I always take the film Colonel Blimp to be a statement about the efficiency of the new reformed British Army that was supposed to go forward to victory. I once read a suggestion, I do not know where, that Churchill’s reaction was manufactured to draw US attention to this new model army, beating Blimp as it does in the exercise which frames the film. Might there be something in this?
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It doesn’t sound likely. Churchill’s initial memos on the film were internal not public, and pointedly objected to the film’s affect on army morale. In June 1942, before he heard of the film, he watched U.S. Army recruits drill in South Carolina. When Ismay suggested that they would be no match for the Germans, Churchill told him they would learn to be formidable soon enough—as indeed they did. Click here for details.