Brigadoon, Braveheart and the Scots Cinema and Society Series General Editor: Jeffrey Richards ‘Banned in the USA’: British Films in the United States and Their Censorship, 1933–1960 Anthony Slide Best of British: Cinema and Society from 1930 to the Present Anthony Aldgate & Jeffrey Richards Brigadoon, Braveheart and the Scots: Scotland in Hollywood Cinema Colin McArthur British Cinema and the Cold War Tony Shaw Christmas at the Movies: Images of Christmas in American, British and European Cinema Edited by Mark Connelly An Everyday Magic: Cinema Culture and Cultural Memory Annette Kuhn The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western Michael Coyne Distorted Images: British National Identity and Film in the 1920s Kenton Bamford Epic Encounters: The Films of David Lean Michael Coyne Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany Richard Taylor Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films James Chapman From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema Ewa Mazierska & Laura Rascaroli Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945 David Welch Somewhere in England: British Cinema and Exile Kevin Gough-Yates Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone Christopher Frayling Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster Geoff King Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema Andrew Spicer The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History of the British Cinema, 1929–1939 Edited by Jeffrey Richards BRIGADOON, BRAVEHEART AND THE SCOTS Scotland in Hollywood Cinema Colin McArthur Published in 2003 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Colin McArthur, 2003 The right of Colin McArthur to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 1 86064 927 0 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in 11/13.5 Adobe Garamond by Steve Tribe, Andover Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin Contents List of Illustrations vi General Editor’s Introduction viii Acknowledgements x Introduction 1 1 Where Did Brigadoon Come From? 7 2 Brigadoon and the Broadway Musical 32 3 Brigadoon and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 65 4 Marketing, Using and Abusing Brigadoon 94 5 Scotland and the Braveheart Effect 123 6 Braveheart: A (Quasi-)Barthesian Reading in Slow Motion 137 7 ‘No’ a Fuckin’ Dry Eye in the Hoose’: Braveheart’s ‘Gift of a Thistle’ Sequence 160 8 ‘That’s Show Business!’: The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Braveheart’s Historical Distortions 178 9 It Takes One to Know One: Braveheart’s Appeal to the Proto-Fascist Psyche 192 Epilogue 209 Bibliography 213 Index of Films 219 General Index 223 Illustrations 1. The cover of Theatre Arts, 1947 [Theatre Arts]8 2. Programme booklet for Brigadoon, 1947 11 3. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in The Barkleys of Broadway 17 4. A characteristic advert for Scotch whisky, 1930s 23 5. A key Oliver Smith set for Brigadoon [Westminster Film Fair] 41 6. Sir Walter Scott and servant invent tartan in Scotch Myths [Murray Grigor and Viz Productions] 48 7. Contemporary advertisement for the film of Brigadoon [Westminster Film Fair] 80 8. Tommy (Gene Kelly) and Jeff (Van Johnson) quote from The Spirit of ’76 [Westminster Film Fair] 84 9. Tommy (Gene Kelly) and Fiona (Cyd Charisse) dance ‘The Heather on the Hill’ [Westminster Film Fair] 86 10. The garden of Mr Lundie (Barry Jones) [Westminster Film Fair] 88 11. Tommy (Gene Kelly), back in New York with his fiancée (Elaine Stewart) [Westminster Film Fair] 92 12. Saratoga Village, Maryland is renamed ‘Brigadoon’ during the marketing of the film [Motion Picture World] 99 13. Leo, the MGM symbol, dons kilts to trumpet the virtues of Brigadoon [Variety] 100 Illustrations vii 14. The ‘Braveheart’ card issued by the Scottish National Party [Scottish National Party] 127 15. The ‘Braveheart’ cover of a Scottish Tourist Board brochure [Scottish Tourist Board] 132 16. The vista revealed at the opening of Braveheart [Icon Productions] 140 17. Murron (Catherine McCormack) and Wallace (Mel Gibson) in the slow-motion ride signifying romantic exultation [Icon Productions] 147 18. The canyon ambush of the English [Icon Productions] 150 19. Wallace (Mel Gibson) atop the mountain [Icon Productions] 156 20. The Bruce (Angus MacFadyen) contemplates the talismanic cloth at Bannockburn [Icon Productions] 158 21. The child William (James Robinson) is handed the emblem of Scotland [Icon Productions] 161 22. William (James Robinson) after he has been handed the thistle [Icon Productions] 169 23. The liaison between Wallace (Mel Gibson) and Princess Isabelle (Sophie Marceau) [Icon Productions] 186 24. The dwarves mime Wallace’s execution [Icon Productions] 190 25. Stephen (David O’Hara), Wallace (Mel Gibson) and Hamish (Brendan Gleeson) [Icon Productions] 197 26. Braveheart’s long spears [Icon Productions] 198 General Editor’s Introduction It is a commonplace that Hollywood has conquered and colonised the imagination of the rest of the world. In doing so, it has created celluloid images of other countries and other cultures filtered through its own ideological preoccupations and priorities. England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland all have Hollywoodised images that exist alongside and interrelate with their own self-generated images. In this deeply researched and passionately argued book, Colin McArthur analyses the two Hollywood films that have done most to define Scotland’s image worldwide – Brigadoon and Braveheart. He traces the genesis, production histories, promotion and reception of the two films, carefully relating them to their respective cultural contexts of the 1950s and 1990s. He explores the creation of the 1947 Broadway musical Brigadoon by a Central European émigré (Frederick Loewe) and a New York Jew (Alan Jay Lerner), drawing on tropes and themes in the tartanry and kailyard traditions of Scottish depiction that McArthur sees as part of the ‘Scottish Discursive Unconscious’, which constructs Scotland as a timeless melange of bagpipes, kilts, castles, clansmen, heather, whisky and mist. He follows it through its transposition to the screen in 1954 by the Arthur Freed unit at MGM. In a classic dream factory pronouncement, Freed declared that Scotland didn’t ‘look Scotch enough’ for the film and had it shot at Metro’s Culver City studio. After a thorough visual analysis of the film, General Editor’s Introduction ix McArthur traces its afterlife and charts its continuing influence on perceptions of Scotland. Braveheart was the product of a very different cultural climate, both in Scotland and in Hollywood. McArthur subjects the film to penetrating critical scrutiny, in particular showing how it is constructed from the conventions and tropes of classic Hollywood cinema, how it selects from history for its own ideological purposes and how it has been interpreted and appropriated by audiences in Scotland and elsewhere. This stimulating, insightful, multi-layered study makes a major contribution to our understanding of the mythmaking power of Hollywood, the creation and propagation of cultural identities and the diverse relationship of audiences, critics and intellectuals to key films. Jeffrey Richards Acknowledgements Claire Mistry of Cameron Mackintosh Ltd; Jane Mann and Janice West of the RADA Library; Sir Ludovic and Lady Kennedy; Ned Comstock and the staff of the University of Southern California Library; Murray Grigor; Sandra Archer and the staff of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Professor David McCrone; Professor Stephen Banfield; Ian Wallace OBE; Elena McArthur; Dr Jennifer Lynn Oates; Alistair Lawson; the staff of the British Film Institute Library; Professor Lisa Tickner and colleagues in the Visual Culture and Media department of Middlesex University; Professor Charles Withers; Jeremy Peyton- Jones; Euan Hague. Particular thanks to all my fellow Scots who – for an intended earlier version of a book solely on Brigadoon – submitted their views on that film and apologies that the changed conception of the book precluded the inclusion of all but a handful of these views. Substantial parts of Chapter 5 appeared in the Journal for the Study of British Cultures. My research on Brigadoon in the Freed and Minnelli papers in Los Angeles was facilitated by a travel grant from Glasgow Caledonian University during my period there as Visiting Professor. I am most grateful to that institution and, in particular, to Professor Bill Scott for facilitating this. Finally, Jeffrey Richards has, as ever, been a most supportive and perceptive editor, and, woven into this, and every other project I work on, is the life- stabilising presence of my wife, Tara. To Tom Nairn, Malcolm Chapman and Murray and Barbara Grigor, who lit the way. Introduction anet McBain, in her invaluable filmography of feature films of Jthe period 1898 to 1990 in which Scotland and the Scots are represented, includes close to 350 titles. Many more have since been added. Of all these films, however, only two – Brigadoon and Braveheart – could be said to have continuing major resonance in Scottish culture and its diaspora. This book is about that resonance and what, within the films themselves and their audiences, might account for it. Brigadoon and Braveheart have provoked sharp debate about how Scotland and the Scots (and in Braveheart’s case, Scottish history) should be represented on screen, some Scots being outraged by the way they, their country and their national history have been portrayed.