Robert Bolt
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Robert Oxton Bolt (August 15, 1924 – February 12, 1995) was an English playwright and screenwriter.
He was born in Sale, Manchester, England. It was at Manchester Grammar School where his obsession for Sir Thomas More developed. He attended Manchester University. For many years he taught English and history at Millfield School only becoming a full time writer at the age of 33 when his play The Flowering Cherry was staged in London in 1958, with Celia Johnson and Ralph Richardson. Although he was best known for his original play A Man for All Seasons - a depiction of Sir Thomas More's clash with King Henry VIII over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon - which won awards on the stage and in its film version, most of his writing was screenplays for films or television. He was twice married to the actress Sarah Miles. He suffered a heart attack and a stroke which left him paralysed in 1979. He died aged 70, in Petersfield, Hampshire, England following a long illness.
Bolt was known for dramatic works that placed their protagonists in tension with the prevailing society. He won great renown for A Man for All Seasons, his first iteration of this theme, but he developed it in his existential script for Lawrence of Arabia. In Lawrence, he succeeded where several before him had failed, at turning T.E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" into a cogent screenplay by turning the entire book on its head and making it a search for the identity of its author. Lawrence, by Bolt, is presented as a misfit both in English and Arab society. It was at this time that Bolt himself fell afoul of the law and was arrested and imprisoned for protesting nuclear proliferation. He refused to be "bound over" (i.e, to sign a declaration that he would not engage in such activities again) and was sentenced to one month in prison because of this. The producer of the Lawrence film, Sam Spiegel, persuaded Bolt to sign after he had served only two weeks. Bolt later regretted his actions, and did not speak to Speigel again after the film was completed. Later, with Dr. Zhivago, he invested Pasternak's sprawling novel with some sense of narrative and the characteristic Bolt dialogue - human, short and telling. The Bounty was Bolt's first project after his stroke, which affected not only his movement, but his speech. In it, Fletcher Christian takes the "Lawrence" role of a man in tension with his society who in the process loses touch with his own identity. The Mission was Bolt's final film project, and once again represented his thematic preoccupations, this time with 18th century Jesuits in South America. Bolt's final produced script was Political Animal, later made into the TV movie Without Warning: The James Brady Story (1991), about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan and the struggles of his press secretary, James Brady, to recover from a near-fatal gunshot injury he received in the process. Bolt was initially reluctant to make the film, but after meeting with Brady he felt he could relate to Brady's struggles with a cerebral injury; thus, a lot of his own experiences recovering from his stroke found their way into the script. Bolt remains one of the world's most astute writers of cinematic dialogue, one of its best interpreters of history and one of its great dramatists.
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[edit] Partial List of Plays
Bolt wrote several plays for BBC Radio in the '50s, as well as several unproduced plays, so this list is incomplete. Many of his early radio plays were for children, and only a few (see below) were adapted for the stage.
- The Last of the Wine (1956) - one of Bolt's radio plays which Bolt tried to adapt to the stage, but apparently was unsuccessful due to negative reactions on it. The play has never been published or performed since.
- The Critic and the Heart (1957) - Bolt's first professionally produced work, it involves Winifred Blazer, a middle-aged spinster who struggles with events that transpire to ruin her reputation. It was a very modest success; Bolt was never satisfied with it, and greatly re-wrote it, retitled Brother and Sister, in a version produced in 1967.
- The Flowering Cherry (1958) - concerns an aging man who loses touch with reality and gradually isolates those around him. Ran on the West End starring Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson to success but mixed reviews - many critics felt it too closely resembled Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman - and had a brief but unsuccessful run on Broadway.
- The Tiger and the Horse (1960) - this play is the first of Bolt's to develop his themes of individualism, society, authority, and politics. It concerns an aging college professor, John Dean, who is running for Vice-Chancellor of a prestigious university, but finds his election undermined by his daughter's love affair, a political petition, and his wife's deteriorating mental state. The play starred Michael and Vanessa Redgrave, among others. It was also the first play directed by Bolt's frequent collaborator, celebrated actor-director Noel Willman.
- A Man for All Seasons (1960) - as mentioned above, involves Sir Thomas More's conflict with Henry VIII over his break with the Catholic Church. Adapted from a radio play Bolt had written in 1954, it is generally regarded as Bolt's finest work - and certainly his most successful. The play develops in full his themes of individuality versus society and authority as corrupt. The strain of Brechtianism which would pervade many of his later works is first present here, in the character of the Common Man, who both narrates and takes part in the action as various minor characters. The original run starred Paul Scofield as Thomas More, as well as Keith Baxter as Henry VIII, Leo McKern as the Common Man in the West End production and Thomas Cromwell in the Broadway show, and Albert Dekker as the Duke of Norfolk. It was a huge critical and commerical success on both sides of the Atlantic, has had several revivals, and was made into an equally acclaimed film in 1966.
- Gentle Jack (1963) - a somewhat unusual work by Bolt, a comedy involving Man's involvement with Nature. A banker, Jacko, is sent to the countryside on vacation, and becomes possessed by a Nature spirit who convinces him to abandon his mundane, materialistic life and live in a state of nature, indulging in base pleasures such as murder, sex, and general mischief. It was one of Bolt's few unsuccessful plays; Bolt regretted this, feeling that perhaps he had not articulated his points well enough. The play starred Kenneth Williams, Michael Bryant, Sian Phillips, and Edith Evans in its original run.
- The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew (1964) - a children's play, involving a heroic knight sent to slay a vicious dragon on a far-away island, leading him to face off with the crooked Baron Bolligrew, who controls the island, and an evil wizard he recruits to help him. Surprisingly, despite being written for children, the work contains many of Bolt's favorite themes in detail. Among the original cast were Bolt perennial Leo McKern as the title character and a very young Malcolm McDowell in a small part. Like A Man for All Seasons, the play had been written for the BBC, and in 1995 was re-written into a children's book.
- Vivat! Vivat Regina! (1971) - Bolt's most successful show after A Man for All Seasons, a historical account of the reigns of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I of England, comparing and contrasting the personalities and reigns of the two female rulers. Highly successful, it ran for several months on Broadway, winning several Tony nominations. The original cast included Eileen Atkins as Elizabeth and Bolt's wife Sarah Miles as Mary.
- State of Revolution (1977) - An in-depth political depiction of the Russian Revolution of 1917, focusing on Lenin as "a great man possessed by a terrible idea", and the struggles of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin to gain power under him. It is told from the point-of-view of Anatole Lunacharsky, Minister of Education under Lenin. The original cast included Michael Bryant as Lenin, Terence Rigby as Stalin, Brian Blessed as Maxim Gorky, and Michael Kitchen as Trotsky.
[edit] Screenplays
- Lawrence of Arabia (with Michael Wilson) (1962)
- Doctor Zhivago (1965)
- A Man for All Seasons (1966)
- The Red Tent (1969) (uncredited additional dialogue)
- Ryan's Daughter (1970)
- Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) (also directed)
- The Bounty (1984)
- The Mission (1986)
- A Man for All Seasons (1988)
- Without Warning: The James Brady Story (1991) (TV)
[edit] Bibliography
- Turner, Adrian. Robert Bolt: Scenes from Two Lives. London: Hutchinson, 1998. ISBN 0-09-180176-1.
