Each week, I'm trawling through the internet to bring you a Vincent Price classic film or TV show, accompanied by
some trivia and ephemera. This week it’s The Private Lives of Elizabeth and
Essex, in which Vincent cameos as Sir Walter Raleigh.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A rich tapestry, fusing romance, adventure,
and political intrigue. Director Michael Curtiz’s 1939 historical period drama,
which was nominated for five Academy Awards, was based on a play by Michael
Anderson and sets the tumultuous affair between Queen Elizabeth I (Bette Davis)
and the second earl of Essex, Edward Devereux (Errol Flynn) against Essex’s
powerful ambition to assume the throne of England. Having won several battles,
Essex’s popularity among the people is at its zenith. Fearing his power,
Elizabeth sends him on an ill-fated campaign to Ireland. When he and his troops
return in defeat, Essex demands to share the throne with the heirless queen,
and Elizabeth, at first, intends to marry. Ultimately sensing the marriage
would prove disastrous for England, Elizabeth sets in motion a merciless plan
to protect her people and preserve her throne.
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| Vincent Price as Sir Walter Raleigh in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex |
WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT?
Vincent Price, who left the play Outward
Bound in New York to make his second Hollywood film, plays a youthful Sir
Walter Raleigh. Though little more than a cameo, his brief scenes lend the epic
costume drama a distinguished air. Having played the role of Essex on stage,
Price found himself in a big drama of its own on set when director Curtiz
threatened to replace bad boy Errol Flynn with Price if he continued to turn up
late. It worked. Price also appeared in Flynn’s 1951 drama Adventures of
Captain Fabian (at the end of the mercurial actor’s career), and with Bette
Davis (48 years later) in Lindsay Anderson’s elegiac swansong The Whales of
August. After filming was completed on the Warner Bros romp, Price returned to
Universal for Tower of London, a fictional version of Shakespeare’s Richard
III.
WATCH THE FULL FILM HERE
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex 1939 by Alice-Bauer
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