In 1934, with the King’s Silver Jubilee approaching, filmmaker Alexander Korda announced The Reign of King George V. His film, he said, would explore the vast changes since the King’s coronation in 1911. Among these were advances in suffrage, aviation, transportation and the British Empire. But above all towered the First World War. It was reported that Winston Churchill, himself an ardent film fan, had agreed to write the script.¹

Reader note: Winston Churchill’s complete filmscript, The Reign of King George V, can be found on pages 989-1031 of The Churchill Documents, vol. 12.

Churchill and Hollywood

Churchill’s association with cinema blossomed on 21 September 1929, when he visited Hollywood during a tour of North America. At actress Marion Davies’ beach house, Winston, his son Randolph, brother Jack and nephew Johnny met the cream of Hollywood society. Among the guests was Charlie Chaplin, the English-born comic actor and filmmaker. Chaplin later hosted the Churchills at his Sunset Boulevard studio. There he showed them rushes of his next movie, City Lights, which he had produced, directed and starred in. Churchill overlooked Chaplin’s “Bolshy” politics and took an instant liking to the actor; they remained lifelong friends.

Later Chaplin visited Chartwell, noticing the large collection of books on Napoleon, whose biography Churchill intended writing. “I hear you are interested in filming Napoleon,” he told Chaplin. “You should do it—great comedy possibilities: Napoleon taking a bath, his brother bursting in upon him arrayed in gold-braided uniform, using the moment to embarrass Napoleon and make him acquiesce to his demands. Napoleon deliberately slips in the tub and splashes the water all over his brother’s uniform, telling him to get out. He exits ignominiously—a wonderful comedy scene.”² According to Randolph, his father proposed to write the filmscript. Alas Chaplin never portrayed the Emperor, in or out of the bathtub, in his 80 films from 1914 to 1957.

Meeting Korda

In 1934, Randolph introduced his father to the film producer Alexander Korda. A 45-year–old Hungarian immigrant, Korda’s first breakthrough had been The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), which he also directed. It showcased Charles Laughton, Robert Donat, Merle Oberon and Elsa Lanchester. The filmscript, focusing on Henry’s marriages, was written by Lajos Bíró and Arthur Wimperis. A major international success, it established Korda as a leading filmmaker and Laughton as a box-office star. It was the first British film to break into the American market and the first British and non–Hollywood film to win an Oscar.

In 1934 Korda asked Churchill to help write the scripts for ten short topical documentaries, and to name his price. Churchill told his attorney: “It must be borne in mind that the main thing I am giving the company is the right to use my name and that, once this has been announced, a very valuable asset has been contributed by me.”³ They asked for £400 a month for ten months, plus 25% of the films’ profits. Regarding Korda as key in an industry vital to his finances, Churchill proposed to begin work that summer.

“Quite the most difficult thing I have attempted…”

As Churchill began work, Korda offered a much larger assignment: the George V filmscript. Writing Korda on 24 September 1934, Churchill asked for a fee of £10,000 and 25% of the film’s net profits:

I am going to begin this scenario immediately and side track all my other work. I hope to send you in a week or ten days a preliminary outline of my scheme in such a form that you can immediately put on one of your best technicians on to it. Meanwhile it seems to me no time should be lost in looking out all the relevant news reels and in making a collection which we can all see performed together in the last week of October.⁴

Korda sent director Anthony Asquith and screenwriter Lajos Biró to “teach Churchill scriptwriting,” but they found he needed little advice and already had ideas. “We must have a map of Europe with a skeleton hand tearing through it to symbolize the beginning of the Great War,” he said. Smiling at Clementine he added, “We must have a Suffragette in the film, fair and frail—physically, not morally frail—with a delicate integument hiding an indomitable spirit.”⁵

The scholar Paul Alkon explained the challenges: “Churchill had first to single out the most important events from a very crowded field, and then decide what mixture of words and images would best convey the historical significance of these episodes as well as how they appeared at the time to those who experienced them.”⁶ It was, Churchill wrote, “quite the most difficult thing I have attempted on account of the enourmous [sic] mass of material.”⁷ To Korda he explained, “after all this is the first history of a reign told by the cinematograph.”⁸

How Churchill wrote the script

Lajos Biró was assigned to edit Churchill’s filmscript into final form. “It is an experience I shall never forget,” Biró said:

That is a man with a brilliant mind. In my presence he started dictating. For two hours without stopping he dictated. After one hour one secretary went and another came. Again for another hour he dictated, walking up and down, up and down. I remember there was a mirror at the end of the room, and every now and then he would stop. And look at the mirror, but blankly, as if he didn’t see himself. I believe he saw nothing but the story. It was the first time in his life a man with nothing to do with films saw a story entirely in pictures.

He came from episode to episode always in action [with] the vision of a splendid motion picture. Churchill described scenes that were perfect scenes, pictorially as well as dramatically perfect. He would shape a line, first whispering it as a phrase, trying it out as an orator might, looking at it impersonally in that mirror. Then he would dictate it.

I was so impressed that I sat and told him, “All right.” It was unique in my experience. He wrote a story that was the perfect basis for a film. I went to work later with enthusiasm using always his idiom as a basis. I had to add nothing…. A tremendous film writer is lost in Churchill. He has absolutely no vanity. He wants to learn and to tell. I came away dazed.”⁹

The filmscript explored

Churchill’s completed filmscript is dated January 1935. Its conceptual structure is the sequence of episodes, dramatization and presentation of the most notable events. Churchill divides the film into three parts: Part I- Faction, Part II– War and Part III- Survival. “It may be found best to mark the break between these parts by brief interludes,” he suggests. “The audience must have a chance to recover from the cataract of impressions and emotions to which they will be subjected, and the music must break off to open upon a different strain. There must be three different motifs.”¹⁰

Churchill anticipates a running time of 90 minutes: 30 minutes for Part I, 40 for Part II, 20 for Part III. “The three main captions must be shown before each part, in the largest lettering,” he continues. “The other incidental captions should be shown in a nice, round lettering.”¹¹

Part I: Faction

As a first-time screenwriter Churchill produced 28 powerful scenes from the Coronation to the Great War. His talent and imagination can be appreciated. He opens with a fanfare of trumpets, a drum roll echoes and falls as heralds proclaim “His Majesty King George the Fifth.”

Churchill provides careful instruction to film technicians: “The details of this ceremony must be obtained from the College of Heralds; also the uniforms of the heralds and the actual trumpet calls. It is most important that all this should be accurate.”¹²

From the heralds Churchill dissolves to a rapid series of shots from around the Empire: “The trumpet blast is being used instead of words to announce the Accession.”¹³ The third scene is at a lonely prospector’s cabin where a family receives a newspaper. “Look, mother, pictures of the Coronation.” Her father begins reading the story aloud.

Next, a close-up of the newspaper photograph fills the screen. It becomes animated, and while the father gives his own remembrances of London. Churchill adds: “When King enters the Abbey it would be good to show various shots of the Abbey with faint music within while the old man’s voice reads to us about the change in the Coronation Oath.”¹⁴

The drift toward war

Churchill’s 24 other scenes include a range of political, social and legal events during the King’s reign. Churchill himself speaks for three or four minutes on challenges facing the new King: Irish Home Rule, reforming the House of Lords, the Lloyd George budget. The filmscript includes scenes of the House of Commons in 1886 and Gladstone making a speech on Home Rule; Lord Randolph Churchill on the Irish question; the Dissolution of Parliament; a women’s suffrage demonstration; the launching of great ships.

Then gradually we drift toward war. Scenes describe the German Kaiser; Franco-German tensions; the German warship at Agadir, the 1911 railway strike, early aviation, the great regatta at Kiel Harbour. In Churchill’s final scene Jan Smuts, the South African statesman, receives a private telegram in Pretoria from an agent in England that war is expected.

Part II: War

Churchill’s filmscript ends with this part, which was apparently intentional. “So far I have only partially indicated my treatment of the final phase for which 20 minutes should be reserved,” he noted. “I can do this much better when I have seen how the earlier matter is capable of being presented.”¹⁵

The War segment has 49 scenes, what Churchill expected would be the most thrilling in the production. Scene 1 opens in a chart house of a Dreadnought. It is nighttime on 27 July 1914. ship is part of the Grand Fleet, headed up the Channel to its war station:

Put the war-heads on the torpedoes.

All lights out passing the Straits.

Speed 15 knots.

Open secret package No. 5 ¹⁶

The package contains a large square, book, which is read by the Captain with foreboding. Soon a momentous message is sent by the Admiralty. Churchill’s dramatic Scene 3 reads:

Admiralty War Room. Fifty or 60 officers at wooden desks, waiting to despatch the war message to all ships and stations. “Commence hostilities against Germany.” A brightly lighted room, a few officers and spectators in the doorways waiting. Suddenly the distant chime—11 o’clock. A quick rustle of papers over all the tables, as the message is despatched.”¹⁷

Interludes

Amid deadly serious scenes, Churchill’s humor bubbles. Scene 6 takes place in Canada. A young Canadian in British Columbia starts 100-mile ride to the nearest railway station. His purpose is to enlist. On the way, he stops at a farm to try to persuade a friend to ride with him. A woman tells him his friend had already left, four hours earlier.

A person with an American accent says he will accompany the Canadian in the long lonely ride, and maybe enlist himself. As the American comes forward the Canadian says, “But you’re not a British subject.” The American replies “Waal, mebbe they won’t be too particular…before they’ve finished. Say, what is the number of your King?” The Canadian answers: “George the Fifth.” “Fifth, you’re sure of that?….I’ve heard a lot against George III” The Canadian replies: “Well it’s not that one.”¹⁸

Other scenes include discussions at Suffragette headquarters; a cartoon of first great collision of the war; the deadlock in the trenches; the government in Whitehall; troops marching up the gangway of a ship; a camp in France; the first gas attack; men drilling with broomsticks and wooden rifles; a small factory making shells; and the secret trials of the prototype Hatfield tank.

Scenes of battle

Churchill then introduces a fascinating segment based upon a real incident in France. A Colonel and Adjutant in a trench discuss the dramatic events of a raiding party returning with a German prisoner. During the raid, a British soldier has been killed, and the German who killed him is also dead. He was a member of the 30th Württembergers. The waste of lives was enormous on both sides.

Other scenes highlight the submarine war, a man in a wireless listening station tracking German radio signals, decoders at the Admiralty, and America’s entry into the war. With that, Churchill reintroduces the young American from the earlier scene in Canada, now on the front line. Then comes the Russian revolution and Russia leaving the war. Part II ends at the House of Commons, where the Armistice terms are read.

Churchill winds up his filmscript with patriotic flourish. The final scene reads:

Roll and uplift of drums into Rule Britannia, during which scene changes to an enormous stadium with tremendous concourse of people, into the centre of which massed bands playing Rule Britannia slowly advance, breaking into God Save the King. At the same time in the four corners of the picture other multitudes as great become visible all rising successively with a sense of crescendo, our audience rising too. Curtain.¹⁹

Frustration and reset

It was an enormous effort, one which Churchill the writer had never performed before. He submitted the finished filmscript to Korda, who thought it was “really splendid,” but “a bit heavy on politics.” Churchill turned in a revised script, but Korda ultimately abandoned the project. “The film is busted and all my hard work wasted,” Churchill told his wife.²⁰ But Churchill was never a quitter, and would find other ways to express his admiration for the King’s 25 years.

Continued in Part 2.

Endnotes

¹ “New Film to Depict King George’s Reign: Winston Churchill Writes Script of Motion-Picture Record of British History,” The New York Times, 29 October 1934, 14.

² Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964), 341.

³ David Lough, No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money (New York: Picador, 2015), 227.

⁴ Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, vol. 12, The Wilderness Years 1929-1935, (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 1981), 877. Winston Churchill’s complete film script, The Reign of King George V, can be found on pages 989-1031.

⁵ Jack Fishman, My Darling Clementine (New York: McKay, 1963), 82.

⁶ Paul A. Alkon, Winston Churchill’s Imagination (Lewisburg, Penna.: Bucknell University Press, 2006), 66.

⁷ WSC to Arthur Wimperis, London Films, 14 December 1935, in Alkon, ibid.

⁸ WSC to Alexander Korda, 3 October 1934, in Alkon, ibid.

⁹ C.A. Lejeune, “So Near and Yet so Far: Or, the Story of How Winston Churchill Almost Became a Screen Writer,” in The New York Times, 25 January 1942, X5.

¹⁰ Gilbert, Wilderness Years, 989.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Ibid., 991.

¹⁵ Ibid., 990.

¹⁶ Ibid., 1008.

¹⁷ Ibid., 1010.

¹⁸ Ibid., 1011.

¹⁹ Ibid., 1031.

²⁰ John Fleet, “Churchill and Alexander Korda,” lecture at Hillsdale College, 2019.