Anne of the Thousand Days

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Anne of the Thousand Days had already waited on studio pledges before it ever handed out champagne. According to the Academy Awards expose Inside Oscar, Universal Studios ran an expensive advertising campaign to boost the film's Oscar chances. It included serving champagne and filet mignon to Academy members after each screening. That kind of courtship suggests a studio that badly wanted a specific verdict from Hollywood's voters.

  This documentary asks what made a costume drama about Anne Boleyn worth that kind of campaign. It also asks why one performance won praise even from a magazine that otherwise dismissed the film. And it asks how far the story on screen strays from the historical record.

• 2. Casting Henry And Anne

  ›

  Richard Burton takes on Henry VIII opposite Geneviève Bujold's Anne Boleyn. Irene Papas plays Catherine of Aragon, Anthony Quayle plays Cardinal Wolsey, and John Colicos plays Thomas Cromwell. The wider court is filled out by Michael Hordern, Katherine Blake, Peter Jeffrey, Joseph O'Conor, William Squire, Vernon Dobtcheff, Denis Quilley, and Esmond Knight. T. P. McKenna also appears, and he later played Henry VIII himself in Monarch.

  Elizabeth Taylor, married to Burton at the time, appears uncredited as a masked courtesan who interrupts Queen Catherine's prayers. Kate Burton makes her acting debut in the film, playing a maid.

  That casting quirk means McKenna crossed from a supporting part in this Tudor court to sitting on the throne himself, years later in Monarch.

• 3. Twenty Years To The Screen

  ›

  The play behind this film opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on the 8th of December 1948. Rex Harrison played Henry VIII and Joyce Redman played Anne Boleyn on stage, staged by H. C. Potter. The production ran for 288 performances, and Harrison won a Tony Award for his performance.

  Getting the story onto film took 20 years, because its themes of adultery, illegitimacy, and incest were unacceptable under the U.S. motion picture production code. Filming eventually took place at Penshurst Place and Hever Castle, along with Pinewood and Shepperton Studios. Hever Castle carried extra weight as a location, since it was also Anne Boleyn's childhood home.

  Hal B. Wallis first wanted Olivia Hussey to play Anne. Wallis met her in New York in November 1967, at a party for her upcoming film Romeo and Juliet. He offered her the title role, along with a part opposite John Wayne in True Grit. In her 2019 memoir, Hussey recalled that she had "mumbled something about being interested in Anne of the Thousand Days." She added that she "couldn't see herself with Wayne." She described that response as "adolescent and opinionated" and said it ended her professional relationship with Wallis, who withdrew the offer at once. "It had taken me less than a minute to talk my way out of it," Hussey said.

  Maxwell Anderson wrote much of his original play in blank verse, though most of it was cut for the screenplay. One passage that survived is Anne's soliloquy in the Tower of London. The stage version opened with Anne speaking, then flashed back through Henry's memories. The film instead opens with Thomas Cromwell telling Henry the result of Anne's trial, which triggers Henry's own recollection of their marriage.

  The choice to open with Cromwell's report rather than Anne's own voice would shape how the audience meets her story from the very first scene.

• 4. Court, Crown, Scaffold

  ›

  The film opens in London in 1536, as Henry VIII weighs whether to sign the order for his second wife's execution. Nine years earlier, in 1527, he is already tired of Catherine of Aragon and quietly involved with Mary Boleyn, a courtier's daughter. At a court ball, he notices Mary's eighteen-year-old sister Anne, newly returned from her education in France. Anne is engaged to the son of the Earl of Northumberland, with both families' blessing, but Henry orders Cardinal Wolsey to break the match. She reacts with fury, blaming both the cardinal and the king for ruining her happiness. When Henry makes a clumsy attempt to seduce her, Anne tells him bluntly what she thinks of him.

  Brought back to court, Anne keeps resisting Henry's advances, caught between dislike of him and anger over her broken engagement. She grows intoxicated with the power his affection gives her, and uses it to undermine Wolsey, who first sees her as a passing interest for the king. When Henry again pushes her to become his mistress, Anne repeats that she will never bear an illegitimate child. Desperate for a son, Henry decides instead to marry Anne in Catherine's place, and Anne, stunned, agrees. Wolsey warns him about the political fallout of divorcing Catherine, but Henry will not listen. When Wolsey cannot secure the pope's approval for the divorce, Anne turns Henry's anger against the cardinal, and Wolsey is dismissed. His grand London palace is handed to Anne, who by now realizes she has genuinely fallen for Henry. They sleep together, discover she is pregnant, and marry in secret; Anne's coronation is splendid, but the crowd jeers her.

  Months later, Anne gives birth to a daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and Henry, wanting a son, is openly displeased. Their marriage cools as Henry turns his attention to Lady Jane Seymour, one of Anne's own maids. Once Anne learns of the affair, she banishes Jane from court. A dispute over Sir Thomas More's opposition to Anne's queenship follows, and Anne refuses to sleep with Henry again unless More is executed. More is put to death, and Anne's next pregnancy ends with a stillborn boy.

  Henry orders his new minister, Thomas Cromwell, to find a way to remove Anne. Cromwell tortures a servant in her household into confessing adultery with the queen, then arrests four other courtiers accused of being her lovers. Anne is arrested and taken to the Tower, where she laughs off the adultery charge until she sees her own brother brought in under the same accusation. At her trial, Anne cross-questions the tortured servant, Mark Smeaton, who finally admits the charges were lies. Henry visits her chambers that night and offers her freedom if she will annul their marriage and declare their daughter illegitimate. Anne refuses, saying she would rather die than betray Elizabeth, whom she insists will one day rule; Henry slaps her and warns that her defiance means death. Days later, she is taken to the scaffold and beheaded by a French swordsman, while Henry rides off to marry Jane Seymour. In the garden, Elizabeth toddles alone as cannon fire announces her mother's death.

  That final image, a toddler unaware that the cannons marked her mother's execution, is also the point where the film's history and the historical record start to pull apart.

• 5. Departures From History

  ›

  Historian Antonia Fraser has called the film's central premise entirely unhistorical. She meant what she called "the beating heart at the center of the film": Henry's unrequited passion for Anne, which reverses by the story's end. Fraser writes, "Monster that Henry might have been, all six of his wives married him willingly." She calls the film's version "very far away from history, and the mentality of the sixteenth century." In short, she says, "the real Anne Boleyn was delighted to receive the king's attentions."

  Whether Henry VIII fathered one or both of Mary Boleyn's children remains disputed among historians. Alison Weir's book Henry VIII: The King and His Court questions the paternity of Henry Carey. G. W. Bernard, in The King's Reformation, and Joanna Denny, in Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen, argue that Henry VIII was in fact the father.

  Anne Boleyn's birth date was never recorded, so the film's claim that she was 18 in 1527 is likely wrong. Most historians today place her in her early to mid 20s at that point instead.

  There is no proof that Henry ordered the end of Anne's engagement to Henry Percy purely because he wanted her for himself. The Percy family, the Northumberlands, were among the leading families in the north of England and had long wanted Percy to marry Mary Talbot, a wealthy heiress from the same region. They may have asked the king and Cardinal Wolsey to intervene once the match became public. All parties later denied any engagement had existed, clearing the way for Henry's marriage to Anne.

  Most histories of the period say nothing about Anne pressuring Henry to execute Sir Thomas More. Catherine of Aragon's daughter Mary was not present at her mother's final illness and death; the two were kept apart by force. Irene Papas's Catherine is also wrong in appearance: the real queen had auburn hair and a pale complexion, and had grown heavy by her middle thirties. Papas was cast for her stereotypically Mediterranean looks, matching a popular but false idea of how a Spanish noblewoman should look. The same error appears with Jane Seymour, played as a brunette on screen despite being blonde in life.

  The meeting between Anne and Henry shortly before her execution never took place. Even if it had, some details would not hold up. Anne's marriage was annulled regardless, and she was never offered a deal for her freedom. Elizabeth and Mary were both declared illegitimate, yet both stayed in the line of succession after Anne's death. At the time, Elizabeth's chances of ever inheriting the crown looked slim. Henry did not intervene at Anne's trial, where she was in fact barred from questioning the witnesses against her. She and the king had last met at a joust, the day before her arrest.

  Modern biographers, including Eric W. Ives, Retha Warnicke, Joanna Denny, and David Starkey, do agree with the film on one point. They conclude that Anne was innocent of adultery, incest, and witchcraft.

• 6. Critics And Crowds

  ›

  The New York Times and Pauline Kael were among the critics who gave the film negative or mixed reviews, most often calling its plot dull and plodding. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 43% approval rating from 14 critic reviews.

  Despite the criticism aimed at the plot, the performances of Geneviève Bujold, Richard Burton, and Irene Papas drew universal acclaim, especially Bujold's. Playing Anne marked Bujold's first role in an English-language film, and even Time magazine, which otherwise dismissed the movie, praised her highly.

  At the British box office, Anne of the Thousand Days ranked among the more popular films of 1970.

  That popularity with audiences and the acclaim for its cast set up a very different kind of scorecard, the one kept by the major film awards.

• 7. Nominations And Wins

  ›

  The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won a single Oscar, awarded to Margaret Furse for Best Costume Design. Geneviève Bujold remains the only actress ever nominated for an Oscar for playing Anne Boleyn.

  At the 42nd Academy Awards, the other nine nominations went to Best Picture, credited to Hal B. Wallis, Best Actor for Richard Burton, and Best Actress for Bujold. Anthony Quayle was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and Bridget Boland, John Hale, and Richard Sokolove were nominated for their adapted screenplay. Maurice Carter, Lionel Couch, and Patrick McLoughlin were nominated for art direction and set decoration, Arthur Ibbetson for cinematography, Georges Delerue for his original score, and John Aldred for sound.

  At the 27th Golden Globe Awards, the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Director for Charles Jarrott, Best Actor and Best Actress in a Drama for Burton and Bujold, Best Supporting Actor for Quayle, Best Screenplay for Boland, Hale, and Sokolove, and Best Original Score for Delerue.

  At the 24th British Academy Film Awards, Carter and Furse were nominated again, for art direction and costume design. The 1970 American Cinema Editors Awards nominated Richard Marden for Best Edited Feature Film, Dramatic, and the 1970 Writers Guild of America Awards nominated Boland and Hale for Best Adapted Screenplay.

  Richard Marden's nomination from the American Cinema Editors closed out the film's awards season, recognition for shaping a story built around a queen the picture insists never committed the crimes that killed her.