The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan

An enjoyable handsomely well-mounted production in Technicolor, there's actually far more music than story (under the baton of Malcolm Sargent). Not being an expert I can't comment on the quality of the arrangements but they're probably sufficiently clearly enunciated and long enough to please most serious Gilbert & Sullivan aficionados.

As Sullivan Maurice Evans is almost unrecognisable, as Gilbert Robert Morley only too recognisable; while the depictions of the tensions between them anticipates 'The Commitments'.

As usual the best performance is by Peter Finch as D'Oyly Carte, although like many of the men in the cast his singing voice is obviously dubbed.

I have a poor copy that was probably made off the air. Despite the technical shortcomings, the film is a delight to watch. The staging of the various operetta's was done with taste and love. I watch it at least once a year and enjoy it each time. I only wish I could find a reasonable copy. It seems to have vanished.

There is a tragic gap in British drama beginning in the year 1800 when they stopped producing good dramatists. Some big names tried to do the stage well. Percy Shelley came closest with his unstaged poetic tragedy THE CENCI. Tennyson tried several verse plays. Robert Browning did a verse play or two. One of them, a Renaissance play called PIPPA PASSES was dreadful, but gave us the phrase "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world".

From 1800 to 1870 the average new play had some story about a scoundrel trying to steal a fortune or "betray" a woman. There were some interesting moments. Bulwer - Lytton did an acceptable historical drama RICHELIEU, with it's "curse of Rome" scene. Dion Boucicault kept up the tradition of Irish born playwrights stepping in to save or ornament British theater - with comedies mostly (LONDON ASSURANCE). Then came Tom Robinson, who decided that realism was the key. His plays are slight ones like CASTE, but "teacup" drama (as it was sneeringly called) opened a revival of the real world.

Robinson died in 1871, but he left a friend: William Schwenck Gilbert, a barrister who was gifted at writing comic verse (THE BAB BALLADS). Gilbert started writing comic works for the stage. They were successful. Gilbert knew (he was a lawyer) what a writer could get away with under Victorian censorship. He eschewed realism in his best work, writing of a mirror world like ours called "topsy-turvey". His characters were perfectly normal but got crazy notions. The First Lord of the Admiralty gets indignant when the Captain of his leading ship curses out a sailor (although that Captain has just stopped his daughter eloping with the sailor). A Lord Chancellor suffers crazy nightmares (in which he can plant grocers into the ground to get trees that sprout foodstuffs). A popular poet agrees to become a commonplace at the demand of a rival, but unexpectedly wins the love of a simple dairymaid who sees it is not selfish to love someone so commonplace. Gilbertian logic works on paper and stage. It filled up theaters for the 19th Century, and still does.

Gilbert was found his mate in Arthur Sullivan, an above average (but not great) musician and composer. He had gifts for imitation and musical satire that mirrored Gilbert's mad logic. They would compose 15 operettas together from 1871 (THESPIS) to 1896 (THE GRAND DUKE). Of these at least ten or eleven are revived frequently. It is the only Victorian dramatic material (outside of the late Victorian flurry of Shaw, Wilde, Pinero, and Jones) that still is revived. Gilbert and Sullivan is high Victorian theater.

Creatively they meshed but both men were ill-suited to each other. Sullivan was a good natured snob, who could coax people to do what he wanted, and who made friends mostly with the upper classes. Gilbert was a bad-tempered cynic with few friends, but he was understanding about the needs of the theater. In fact, had he not done his work with Sullivan he would be recalled for his developing that tradition of rehearsal and stage management that makes modern theater possible.

Sullivan did not think of the Savoy operettas as his major work. He thought his oratorios, symphony, his overtures, and his one opera IVANHOE were his monument. Gilbert knew what worked or flopped. People still recognize "Tit-Willow", or "A Model Major General" as classic songs of the 19th Century. No tune from IVANHOE is recognized today. To be fair, a theme in the third movement of "The Irish Symphony" is recognizable, but that does not say much. While a disgruntled Gilbert sat through IVANHOE and said he was not bored, he also said that a cobbler should stick to his last. Gilbert was a very wise man.

Their personality clashes grew due to Sullivan insisting on more realistic drama and his snubbing Gilbert's creative genius. Their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte supported Sullivan (who was easier to work with), and it was Carte who built the Savoy Hotel with Sullivan as one of his board of directors (Gilbert was not even asked), and who built the Royal English Opera House for Sullivan's opera. It all came to a head in 1889, as G.& S.'s THE GONDOLIERS was having it's hit run -Carte charged for a new carpet at the Savoy theater, and each partner had to pay one third the cost. Gilbert insisted that it was Carte's expense because it fell within the upkeep of the theater. Actually Gilbert was correct (the inevitable lawsuit was won by Gilbert), but Sullivan sided with Carte.

It strained the partnership and briefly ended it. There were two late operettas (UTOPIA LIMITED - with a brilliant spoof of British society, but mediocre music; and THE GRAND DUKE, with a lousy libretto - Gilbert could write badly - and some decent music). After 1896 there was only silence, except for revivals.

Robert Morley plays the irascible Gilbert perfectly, and Maurice Evans gives a smooth performance as Sullivan. Peter Finch has very little to do in the film as Carte (his highpoint is when he demonstrates an electric light-bulb at the opening of the Savoy Theatre in 1881). Martyn Gilbert is good as George Grossmith, though he does not get to show Grossmith's drug addiction. The production numbers are good - though those in TOPSY-TURVEY are far better. But TOPSY-TURVEY looks at the events of only two years of the partnership: 1883 - 1885 when Gilbert slowly created their masterpiece THE MIKADO. So it could concentrate on the creation of the product and it's final appearance. TOPSY-TURVEY is good to get an in-depth look at a stage of the partnership. THE STORY OF GILBERT AND SULLIVAN gives a fine overview of it's rise and fall.

Much was made of "Topsy Turvy" when it came out, but if it's G&S music you're interested in, there's no comparison. The Great G&S wins hands down. Wonderful Maurice Evans, even better Robert Morley, and plenty of operetta excerpts. Wish the film's color quality had held up better with time, and of course today's sound would be better, but this is still a joy to watch and listen to. Wish they had included Princess Ida and Utopia, Ltd., but you can't have everything.

Every scene propels the film through the collaboration of Gilbert and Sullivan, hitting most of the high points and portraying the lows with the sympathy and understanding that creative geniuses deserve. I was predisposed to liking it, because I was a fanatical G&S enthusiast first, but it was a relief to discover that this film was a worthy tribute to their legacy. Providence deserves the credit for forcing friends to acquaint me with the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, when I was dead set against them (for no apparent reason). Later, Providence rewarded my open mind by delivering into my hands (from out of the blue) a 35mm Technicolor print of the film. My reason for mentioning it is that the print had an intermission at about the one hour point. It seemed silly at first, but I later discovered that the print had been shown "double system," with separate hour-long reels of 35mm magnetic sound tracks. This was confirmed by an article in the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, which stated that The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan had been one of the earliest films presented with magnetic stereo sound (before the composite magnetic prints of Cinemascope). I never found the magnetic stereo tracks, but the print also had the usual monaural optical track, of very good quality. My print eventually decomposed from vinegar syndrome, but I was able to buy a VHS tape from a G&S society in England, which apparently owns the rights. I wonder whether they own the stereo tracks, or will ever release a DVD. Are there not enough G&S fans in the world to make it hugely profitable?