Pastime with Good Company: The Six Wives and Screen Lives of Henry VIII

"King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he wedded;
One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded."

America's enduring fascination with British royalty is a perplexing matter. The very existence of the United States as an independent nation stems from our booting the English crown out of the colonies over 225 years ago. (King George III did not officially recognize America’s independence until 1783.) Yet the monarchy continued to capture Yankee imagination, almost with the glittering allure of fairy tales, never so lustrously displayed as in the Cinderella wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981.

For years, People magazine regularly published a "Royal Watch" column to keep stateside readers up-to-date on the royal family, even after the fairy tale wedding ended not so happily ever after in 1996.

Five decades earlier, Americans became enthralled by the love story of King Edward VIII, who abruptly abdicated the throne to marry a commoner, Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American.

Succession passed to Edward’s brother, Prince Albert, who reigned as George VI.

In the nearly twelve centuries of the British crown, beginning with Ecgberht of Wessex (above), who became king of all England in 827, one monarch towers over the others, strutting and fretting his hour upon the royal stage with a singular swagger, whose political prowess and personal passions forever changed the island empire.

This began modestly as an overview of film and television portrayals of King Henry VIII, the second sovereign of England’s House of Tudor, prompted by recent revisionist depictions of the 16th century ruler in the Showtime series "The Tudors" and in the motion picture "The Other Boleyn Girl," but only a little research revealed a complex portrait as colorful and richly textured as the Tudor Rose itself.

Henry’s early years on the throne were overshadowed by his single-minded obsession to ensure a male heir, which, beyond making him the most-married monarch in British history, had immense historical consequences, among them the separation of the Church of England from the Pope’s authority (when Pope Clement VII refused to grant Henry an annulment in his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which would have allowed him to marry Anne Boleyn), the shutting down of Catholic monasteries in England, and Henry’s establishment of himself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The seismic break with papal Rome empowered England’s transformation into a unique and distinctive nation by wresting economic and political control from the Catholic Church. (Pope Clement VII, pictured below, died a year following Anne Boleyn’s coronation after consuming poisonous death cap mushrooms.)

Two years before his death in 1615, William Shakespeare collaborated with Jacobean playwright John Fletcher (below) on "The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth."

Written 67 years after Henry’s death, and a decade following the demise of his daughter, Elizabeth I, the play deals with but a small span of Henry’s reign, from the divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who gave birth to the future Queen Mary I but was unable to provide the King with a son, to the coronation of second wife Anne Boleyn and the birth of Elizabeth. The imminent execution of Boleyn (for her failure to produce a male heir) is not even hinted at, nor is mention made of Henry’s future wives.

Differing from the other British kings in Shakespeare’s history plays, Henry is not so much the protagonist as a symbol for the greatness of England. The real Henry’s temperament was far removed from the wisdom and virtue presented by Shakespeare, who desired to emphasize mercy and forgiveness. Although Henry, especially in his declining years, has been portrayed as a violently arbitrary ruler, Shakespeare and his contemporaries maintained a very positive image of him, as the father of Elizabeth I and as nothing less than a national hero who freed England from the corrupt influence of the Vatican. The play ultimately becomes a celebration of the Tudor dynasty, which established England as a Protestant country.

The role of Henry VIII may have been originated by the prolific actor John Lowin (1576-1653; pictured above). During the opening performance of "Henry VIII" in 1613, a prop cannon exploded inadvertently and the Globe Theatre burned to the ground.

Silent film portrayals of Henry included Arthur Bourchier (above) in 1911...

...Emil Jannings (above) in 1920...

...and Lyn Harding (above) in 1922.

Despite its historical potholes, the 1933 production of "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (above) ingrained in the public consciousness for several decades the popular image of the King as a jolly, explosive, larger-than-life monarch, tirelessly chasing skirts and devouring royal banquets. A memorable moment features Henry ravenously gnawing on a capon, carelessly tossing stripped bones over his shoulder as he expounds on the decline of etiquette. "Refinement’s a thing of the past," he declares with a mouthful of food. "Manners are dead!"

Produced and directed by Sir Alexander Korda, it was the first British-made film to be nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. Charles Laughton, 33-years-old at the time, deservedly garnered the Oscar for Best Actor, in a wondrous performance in a motion picture that flawlessly flows from shrewd satire to bedroom farce to heartbreaking pathos. (Laughton had earlier played the King in a London theater production of Shakespeare’s "Henry VIII," staged by Tyrone Guthrie, who founded the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the early 1960s.)

Henry’s 24-year marriage to Catherine of Aragon is summarily dismissed in a wryly worded opening title card, stating that "her story is of no particular interest - she was a respectable woman," and the movie instead opens with the approaching beheading of Anne Boleyn, touchingly if all too briefly portrayed by Merle Oberon in her first major screen role. She would go on to star opposite Laurence Olivier in the 1939 film "Wuthering Heights."

Elsa Lanchester, the real-life wife of Charles Laughton, is positively adorable as wife number four, Anne of Cleves (above), the daughter of a German nobleman. Historically, Henry agreed to marry her based on an overly flattering portrait by the King’s court painter, Hans Holbein the Younger. When he ultimately came face to face with her, Henry was so underwhelmed by her plainness that he referred to as the "Flanders Mare." As Laughton reluctantly retires to the bridal bed in the movie, he sadly sighs, "The things I’ve done for England."

Lanchester deftly steals the picture from her husband with a delightfully captivating, albeit indeterminable accent. The wedding night turns into a match of wits in a game of cards, with Anne of Cleves emerging as the card-sharper victor. In history, the marriage was quickly annulled, and the fortunate Anne received a generous settlement, including two palaces, and, referred to as the "King’s Beloved Sister," was treated as an honorary member of his family. (Lanchester was equally memorable as a scene-stealer in her dual role in 1935’s "The Bride of Frankenstein," as writer Mary Shelley and as the titular betrothed.)

Actress Binnie Barnes, as fifth wife-to-be Katherine Howard (below), captivates the King’s heart by singing one of his own compositions, "Alas, What Shall I Do for Love," only to break his heart by committing adultery and thus losing her head. As a 20-30-something, Henry penned a number of secular compositions, a variety of part songs and consorts, 34 of which were compiled in a manuscript.

According to A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill, who once referred to Henry VIII as "a spot of blood and grease on the pages of English history." Henry was, from birth, intended for the Church. "He had been raised by his father in an atmosphere of learning," Churchill wrote. "Much time was devoted to serious studies - Latin, French, Italian, theology, music…" As an accomplished poet and musician, Henry’s most widely recognized composition was "Pastime with Good Company" (also known as "The Kynge’s Ballade"), which opens with the lyrics:

"Pastime with good company,
I love, and shall until I die.
Grudge who will, but none deny,
So God be pleased, thus live will I."

Henry was often erroneously purported to have composed "Greensleeves."

By the end of "The Private Life of Henry VIII," the King is depicted , at the ripe old age of 55, as the docile, henpecked husband of his sixth wife, Catherine Parr. Surreptitiously munching on yet another capon, defying the scolding of his Queen, the sad-eyed King (below) pauses and breaks the fourth wall to directly address the audience: "Six wives, and the best of them’s the worst!"

Historically, the aging King was grossly overweight, was mottled with festering boils and suffered from gout, which dated from a leg wound he sustained in a jousting accident 11 years before his death in 1547. He passed away soon after inexplicably uttering, "Monks! Monks! Monks!"

Laughton's iconic portrayal of Henry was caricatured in the 1936 Walt Disney cartoon "Mickey's Polo Team," appearing alongside such long-ago Hollywood notables as Eddie Cantor, Greta Garbo, W.C. Fields and Harold Lloyd.

Charles Laughton reprised his role as the King 20 years after "The Private Life of Henry VIII" in "Young Bess" (1953), starring Jean Simmons as Elizabeth I.

In 1966, Robert Shaw, best remembered as Quint, the mad shark hunter in "Jaws," portrayed Henry VIII in the screen version of Robert Bolt’s play "A Man for All Seasons." The drama, first performed in London in 1960, was based on the true story of Thomas More, formerly the King’s Lord Chancellor, who found himself imprisoned in the infamous Tower of London for treason in 1534.

In the book Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, contributing writer Richard Marius, himself the author of a 1984 biography of Thomas More, noted, "The charge derived from More’s refusal to swear an oath supporting the King in his so-called Great Matter - the divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn…More’s silence on the subject, coming as it did from a man who had once been the King’s closest adviser, implied his condemnation of Henry’s actions. More (below) was repeatedly interrogated…then tried and beheaded in 1535."

"A Man for All Seasons" won six Oscars, including awards for Best Picture and Best Actor, for Paul Scofield’s performance as More. (Scofield had originated the role in the London stage premiere and reprised it on Broadway in 1961.) Robert Shaw earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman series of novels and the screenplays for the popular, all-star "The Three Musketeers" and "The Four Musketeers" films of the early 1970s, pointed out in his book The Hollywood History of the World that Robert Shaw "did not look like Henry, but there the lack of resemblance ended." According to Fraser, "Shaw, when he exerted himself, was a fine actor and a compelling screen presence; he was a great ‘looker’…He had a fine, smoldering fire in his eye, and it burned balefully in his Henry; this was a mad tyrant, whether fixing More with his empty stare or clapping his hands with brutal glee as his courtiers floundered in the mud."

On the other hand, the previously mentioned Richard Marius commented that Henry VIII "was certainly a man of primordial egotism, but he was hardly the raging maniac portrayed in ‘A Man for All Seasons.’"

"Anne of the Thousand Days" (1969), derived from the 1948 play by Maxwell Anderson, focuses solely on Henry’s courtship of Anne Boleyn (while he was still married to Catherine of Aragon) and the unfortunate aftermath.

French-Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold (above), in her first major role in a Hollywood production, graces the film with a star-making performance as Anne Boleyn (below), in what critic Vincent Canby of The New York Times called "a sort of epic battle of the sexes." Canby commented that Bujold "is a constantly delightful surprise as the young girl who first comes to respect Henry for the power she can yield, and then, just about the time he is growing tired of her, to love him."

"As the autumnal Henry," a reviewer for Time magazine noted, "Richard Burton is every other inch a king." Burton, according to The Motion Picture Guide, "roars in this role, snarling, sneering and often giving out with that famous Welsh whine, attempting to pluck sympathy out of a wholly unsympathetic character…"

Interestingly, Burton was profoundly bored with the role. "Why do I allow myself to be talked into doing the mediocre…?" he wrote in his personal notebook, as quoted in Melvyn Bragg’s 1988 book Richard Burton: A Life. Burton also noted, "It is all so perfectly boring. Anybody can play Henry VIII…even Robert Shaw, who should be consigned for the rest of his life to playing ping-pong against former champions, has played it." Burton was, no doubt, surprised when the "positively boring" experience earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

By the way, Richard Burton gave some of his regal wardrobe as Henry VIII to British comic actor Sid James (above) for the 1971 farce "Carry on Henry VIII," part of the long-running, low-budget but financially successful "Carry On" movies, a franchise marked by vaudevillian slapstick and bawdy sexual innuendoes.


The year 1970 saw the premiere of the six-part BBC TV series "The Six Wives of Henry VIII." Each episode, devoted to one of the wives, was written by a different dramatist, the common thread being the Emmy Award-winning performance by Keith Michell (above) as the King. The Australian-born actor later became a familiar face to American television viewers from several appearances as the former jewel thief turned insurance investigator Dennis Stanton on "Murder, She Wrote." His portrayal of Henry was so esteemed that producers decided to have him repeat it on the big screen.

"Henry VIII and His Six Wives" (1972) was not a re-edited version of the series but a new production, although, besides Michell (above), some of the same actors from the series did return. New to the cast were Charlotte Rampling as Anne Boleyn, Jane Asher as Jane Seymour and Donald Pleasence as Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister (who like Thomas More before him, fell from the King’s grace and was beheaded). Instead of emphasizing the wives, "the purpose of the film" according to critic Roger Ebert, "was to tell the story more from Henry’s point of view." That story, told in flashback from the King’s deathbed, suffered from what Ebert deemed "too much exposition" in which "the marriages get in the way."

Keith Michell reprised the role of Henry VIII in a 1996 six-part BBC TV adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. Which brings us to Charlton Heston’s imposing presence as the King in a 1977 screen version of the classic story, released in the U.S. as "Crossed Swords." The lavish presentation, from the same producers as the previously mentioned "Musketeers" pictures, was intended to duplicate the success of those romps. The film boasted robust performances from Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Ernest Borgnine, George C. Scott, Rex Harrison, and Heston, but director Richard Fleischer was a Hollywood journeyman who painfully lacked the panache of the brilliant Richard Lester, who had directed the two "Musketeers" films.

In The Hollywood History of the World, George MacDonald Fraser admitted that Charlton Heston’s "ideal casting" as Henry VIII was his favorite, "for personal reasons." Fraser, who wrote the screenplay for "Crossed Swords," noted that "for all his imposing height (Heston) had to overcome the disadvantage of looking not in the least like Henry Tudor. Makeup and his own immersion in the character turned him into a very proper tyrant - a hulking, gross giant, mottle-faced and lurching along on his ‘sorre legge,’ darting piggy-eyed glances at his court, growling his lines, pawing at ladies-in-waiting…"

Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, first published in 1881, posited the fanciful premise of a pauper, born in the London slums, trading places with the lookalike Prince Edward, heir to his father’s, Henry’s, throne. The future Edward VI was born in 1537 to Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, who died from infection shortly afterward.

In 1901, Mark Twain commented, "I have admired Henry VIII. He was a great King. I would like to do myself as he did. He married pretty nearly everyone who came along. A King has a pretty difficult time of it. He is subject to temptations. So am I. But I get no credit for resisting."

As a side note, Charlton Heston directed and starred in a 1988 television production of "A Man for All Seasons," but he did not play the King. In his 1995 autobiography In the Arena, Heston wrote, "Sir Thomas More was one of the outstanding men of the 16th century, a time filled with men of both capacity and achievement." Beginning in the mid-1960s, Heston had the opportunity to portray his personal hero in a number of stagings.

The 1988 presentation, which also featured John Gielgud and Vanessa Redgrave (along with a British TV actor named Martin Chamberlain as Henry VIII), followed author Robert Bolt’s original stage play more faithfully that the 1966 motion picture.

Moving ahead to 21st-century sensibilities, the 2008 film "The Other Boleyn Girl" was unceremoniously described as "more slog than romp" by The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, who brusquely stated, "‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ tells the salacious story of two hot bluebloods who ran amok and partly unclothed in the court of Henry VIII. Best known for losing her head to the King, first metaphorically, then literally, Anne Boleyn (Natalie Portman, saucy), along with her sister Mary (Scarlett Johansson, sedate), entered the court of the King (Eric Bana, brooding and glowering) when he was still wed to Catherine of Aragon…A man of considerable and changeable appetites, the King yearned for a male heir and anything in a frock who wasn’t the queen."

Mary Boleyn (above) was historically, if briefly, the mistress of Henry VIII before he lost interest in her and began pursuing her younger sister, Anne. Mary survived Anne by seven years, succumbing to natural causes in her early forties in 1543.

Based on the 2001 book of the same name by historical novelist Philippa Gregory, "The Other Boleyn Girl" was previously produced in 2003 for BBC TV. That low-budget version, featuring Jared Harris (son of the late Richard Harris; pictured above), became available on DVD following the release of the 2008 motion picture.

"According to this oddly plotted and frantically paced pastiche," Manohla Dargis noted of the 2008 movie, "the girls were more or less the Paris and Nicky Hilton of the Tudor court. In the film’s version of the saga…they were pimped out by their scheming, ambitious father, Sir Thomas…who sought to advance the family on the backs of his daughters. Forced to compete for kingly favors, the women were soon rivals, a contest that, in its few meagerly entertaining moments, recalls the sisterly love in ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’"

Writing in Rolling Stone magazine, Peter Travers remarked, "What works is the combustible teaming of Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, who give the Boleyn hotties a tough core of intelligence and wit, swinging the film’s 16th-century proto-feminist issues into this one."

The script for "The Other Boleyn Girl" was written by Peter Morgan, who also penned the Oscar-nominated screenplay for "The Queen," the 2006 film for which Helen Mirren, as Elizabeth II, won the Best Actress Academy Award.

Morgan, as well, wrote the teleplay for the 2003 two-part British television serial "Henry VIII" (above), starring Ray Winstone ("Beowulf") as the King and Helena Bonham Carter ("Sweeney Todd") as Anne Boleyn. The production, which won an International Emmy, is remarkable for its relentlessly explicit depiction of beheadings, burnings at the stake, torture and sundry acts of hacking and slashing. Director Pete Travis admitted he was guilty of a misguided attempt to portray Henry as a "gangster king," complete with Winstone adopting a cockney East End accent.

2007 saw the premiere of the Showtime series "The Tudors" (above), which Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times, in a review headlined "Renaissance Romping with Henry and His Rat Pack," hoped would deconstruct "how Anne Boleyn enticed Henry to divorce Catherine of Aragon and break with Rome to marry her." According to Stanley, "the Tudor reign is one of the best known periods in British history: the golden age of Shakespeare, the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance; an epoch of war, diplomacy, discovery…and pheromones that rocked the ship of state." The first season "weaves its way through all kinds of court intrigue and bawdy sexual escapades, but for some reason it leaves the greatest romance of the Renaissance hazy."

"The Tudors" was created and written by executive producer Michael Hirst, who wrote the screenplays for the acclaimed motion pictures "Elizabeth" (1998) and "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" (2007), both starring Cate Blanchett. Explaining, "Showtime commissioned me to write an entertainment, a soap opera, and not history…and we wanted people to watch it," Hirst boldly took liberties with historical events, character’s names, relationships and physical appearances.

Which would explain the physical appearance of a young Henry VIII as a sensual metrosexual in a muscle shirt…

…Compared to this portrait of the 19-year-old Henry when he ascended the throne…

One court visitor commented, "His majesty is the handsomest potentate I have ever set eyes on; above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg; his complexion fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion, and a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman." He "plays well on the lute and harpsichord, sings from a book on sight, draws the bow with greater strength than any man in England (pictured below), and jousts magnificently."

According to another ambassador, "He is also fond of tennis, at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play; his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture."

"The Tudors" stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers, an Irish-born actor who rose to stardom in the 2005 CBS miniseries "Elvis" (with Randy Quaid as "Colonel" Tom Parker and Rose McGowan as Ann-Margret). The role earned him an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe win.

In April 2009, Showtime announced that it renewed "The Tudors" for a fourth and final season in 2010.

As much as he fostered humanist learning, Henry VIII was equally responsible for the executions of a number of eminent humanists. Winston Churchill wrote, "His rages were terrible to behold. There was no noble head in the country, he once said, ‘but he would make it fly,’ if his will were crossed. Many heads were indeed to fly in his 38 years on the throne."

"Henry’s rule saw many advances in the growth and the character of the English state," Churchill noted, "but it is a hideous blot upon his record that the reign should be remembered for its executions. Two Queens, two of the King’s chief ministers, a saintly bishop, numerous abbots, monks and many ordinary folk who dared to resist the royal will were put to death. Almost every member of the nobility in whom royal blood ran perished on the scaffold at Henry’s command. Roman Catholics and Calvinists alike were burned for heresy and religious treason. These persecutions…form a brutal sequel to the bright promise of the Renaissance. Yet his subjects did not turn from Henry in loathing. He succeeded in maintaining order amid the turmoil of Europe without army or police…"

"Henry VIII has always seemed the very embodiment of true monarchy," British historian Sir Geoffrey R. Elton stated. "Even his evil deeds, never forgotten, have been somehow amalgamated into a memory of greatness. He gave his nation what it wanted: a visible symbol of nationhood."

As obsessed as he was with ensuring succession to his throne, he left his only heirs a son and two daughters, each adhering to different religions. Edward VI (below), who reigned for but six years and was inclined toward a combination of Lutheranism and Calvinism, was described by Churchill as "the nominal King of England…a cold, priggish invalid," who died at the age of 15 in 1553.

"The woman who now became Queen," Churchill wrote, "was probably the most unhappy and unsuccessful of England’s sovereigns." Mary I (below) was a belligerent Catholic whose ruthless, vengeful persecution of Protestants earned her the nickname "Bloody Mary." Her mercifully brief reign of five years ended with her death in 1558.

Mary’s younger sister, Elizabeth I (below), followed in her father’s footsteps, treading the middle of the road between Protestantism and Catholicism during her 44-year reign.

Epilogue

The "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 marked the overthrow of King James II of England by William of Orange, who then assumed the throne as William II. The 1689 Bill of Rights essentially transferred power from the British throne to Parliament, beginning modern English Parliamentary democracy by rendering the monarchy constitutional and largely ending the political struggle between the two factions. For all intents and purposes, the sovereign would subsequently be chosen by Parliament rather than being divinely ordained.

Catholics were denied the right to vote and sit in Parliament for over 100 years afterwards. Catholics were also denied commissions in the army. The monarchy was forbidden to be Catholic or marry a Catholic, thus ensuring Protestant succession. Henry VIII, in all his towering, strutting, roaring, volcanic and peerless majesty, would have felt gratified and fulfilled.