2014 Henley Royal Regatta Starts Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, it is time for Henley Royal Regatta again. Above, you will find Tim Koch's brilliant little film about the 2011 Henley Royal - it will for sure get you in the right mood for the Regatta. Below, is a press release from the HRR Stewards. As usual HTBS's Tim Koch will give you reports from the riverbanks at Henley.

HRR press release:

The scene is set for a high-calibre Henley Royal Regatta, celebrating the 175th Anniversary of the first Regatta in 1839, with many Olympic and World Champions from around the world taking part.

The Great Britain Rowing Team was the top nation at the recent European Championships in Belgrade and eight of its crews will be competing in the top events at this year’s Henley Royal Regatta.

The British Eight, racing as Leander Club and University of London, are European Bronze Medallists and will meet the French National Eight, racing as Club France in a straight final. The winning crew will be the first to have their names engraved on the brand new base of The Grand Challenge Cup.

At the European Championships the new British Four were outstanding, demolishing a strong field and winning comfortably. Alex Gregory, Mo Sbihi, George Nash and Andy Triggs Hodge, racing as Molesey Boat Club and Leander Club in The Stewards’ Challenge Cup, face national crews from Germany, France and China.

In The Queen Mother Challenge Cup for men’s quads the British World and European Silver Medallists, racing as Leander Club and Agecroft Rowing Club, will face tough opposition from the national crews from Australia, France and the Netherlands.

The Remenham Challenge Cup for women’s eights has attracted national crews from Great Britain, Australia and the Netherlands, as well as the top Varsity crew from Yale University. The British Eight will be racing as Leander Club and Imperial College London.

Olympic Champions in Single Sculls – Mahe Drysdale from New Zealand and Mirka Knapkova from the Czech Republic – will attempt to regain the Henley Trophies that they have held before. Drysdale has won The Diamond Challenge Sculls three times already but could go head-to-head with Olympic Bronze Medallist, Great Britain’s Alan Campbell. This event has attracted a truly international field with scullers from Australia, Lithuania, South Africa, Israel and the U.S.A.

The Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup for School Eights will see Abingdon School seeking to defend the trophy that it won for the third consecutive time last year.

A total of 494 crews have entered this year’s Regatta, including 107 crews from 20 overseas countries.

The Chairman of the Committee of Management, Mike Sweeney, said ‘This year is the 175th Anniversary of the Regatta and I am delighted to welcome so many top crews from all around the world to help us to celebrate this special occasion.’

You will find the entries for this year’s Regatta, here.

Movie on Love and Rowing

It is very likely that the movie Freshman Love from 1936 has passed you by without you never ever noticing it. The movie was not on my radar screen – despite that the World of Rabbit has it on its list of rowing film – till I stumbled over it the other day.

MRQE.com (the Movie Review Query Engine) writes in its review of the film:

In this lively campus comedy, a stern rowing coach sets up a rigorous practice schedule for his team and insists they lead strictly disciplined lives (meaning no girls and no fun) so that they will become winners and thereby save his endangered job. Unfortunately, a seductive coed keeps leading his lambs astray. Things look bleak until the coach devises an ingenious method to recruit new oarsmen. Things really get in synch when jazz bandleader George E. Stone becomes the swingin’ new coxswain.

About the ‘rowing location’, the ‘Rabbit’ writes,

‘The movie was filmed in Long Beach after the first LA Olympics. The race footage shows the Long Beach Marine Stadium in the background (look out for the oil derricks). In one part, two coeds are sitting in the crowd fawn over rowers as being the most attractive of any athletes... And the cox gets the ladies as the credits roll.’

On 25 January 1936, The New York Times film critic wrote, that ‘Freshman Love may be recommended, with some reservations, as a minor but mirthful excursion into the realm of undergraduate romantic and athletic activities.’

The film trailer promised ‘The most exciting crew races you’re ever seen’ performed by ‘America’s greatest rowing stars’.

Take a look at the trailer here.

Interview with Ron Irwin, Author of Flat Water Tuesday

Ron Irwin

After yesterday's review, HTBS caught up with Ron Irwin, author of the well-received novel Flat Water Tuesday, which was published in June last year. Today, on 6 May, the book will come out in paperback in the U.S., so HTBS decided to ask Ron some questions:

HTBS: First, congratulations, Ron, on a marvellous first novel.

Thank you very much! It is a real pleasure to do this interview for your excellent website.

HTBS: You went to Kent School in Connecticut, known for its rowing programme, and you rowed there, after having started your rowing career in high school in Buffalo, New York. After Kent, you went on to Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut), where you also rowed. Is your novel’s fictional Fenton School, also in Connecticut, based on Kent School? Would some of your old school mates/rowers or teachers/coaches recognise themselves and some events that took place during your time at Kent and/or Trinity?

The novel is very much based upon my experience at Kent. In fact, my literary agent was also my roommate and a fellow rower! The film rights to the novel are held by another rower from Kent named Lars Winther. When the novel was first released in hardcover format in June of 2013, I did a book signing at the school. I happened to be back because it marked my twenty-fifth reunion. It was a wonderful time for me and a means of reconnecting with people I had not seen in a very long time. Much of the dramatic material in the novel, however, came from my experience as a rower at Trinity College. All in all, I rowed for about eight years of my life and it was an extremely rewarding experience.

HTBS: Any particular parts of the novel that you have experienced yourself in real life? Friends committing suicide? Struggling love affairs? Fighting at hotels? etc.

I always answer that question by saying that 90% of what happened in Flat Water Tuesday actually did happen, and the other 10% could have happened! As a writer, I found myself rearranging and dramatizing many of the real-life episodes that I describe in the novel. There are, of course, a few stand out elements that hang over the dramatic structure of Flat Water Tuesday. Firstly, a rowing friend of mine did indeed commit suicide, but he did not go to boarding school with me; he was a rower on the Trinity team. I actually did not know him very well, but he seemed to be one of those kids who had it all: he was good-looking, he was popular, and he was an excellent athlete. His death hit us all. I got the call about a year or two after I graduated that he had quite unexpectedly killed himself and he had not left a note or spoken to anyone about any issues that were plaguing him. A lot of the guys I used to row with got in touch with each other just to say we were there for one another and to remind ourselves that we were part of a larger, supportive community.

The love affair between Carolyn and Rob is also very real to me, as is the loft where it all happens. Their loft in New York is a very real place, I remember visiting it years ago when two of my friends stayed there and thinking it would make a wonderful setting for a novel. The guy who stayed there, Enrico Brosio, was another rower from Trinity who was a very good friend of mine and who now lives in London. He and I not only rowed together, we skied all around the world together.

Carolyn is also a very real person. There are women in this world who make a profound impression on the people they meet and she is one of them. Rob and Carolyn’s story is sadly very universal: how do two people love each other hold on after one of them makes a tragic mistake? How do you put down the defenses and say to somebody that they are the one? Rowing is all about toughness and discipline and pushing through pain. This is sometimes not the best approach to a romantic relationship where at times one must be vulnerable and, more importantly, protect another person’s vulnerability. Carolyn is certainly a person who exists in real life. She is a difficult person, but a passionate person and a beautiful person and someone whom the main character is deeply in love with. Flat Water Tuesday is partly about just how far you go to hold onto that love, even when you know it might end tragically.

HTBS: When you had made up your mind to write your début novel were you clear from the start that rowing would be an important element in the book?

Oh yes, certainly. In fact, the first draft of the novel was just about rowing. It did not have the adult love story at all. Even when I was rowing in high school I knew I would write about it one day. Rowing is just an incredibly dramatic sport, and it is an incredibly beautiful sport. The tensions and the excitement around putting together a top boat seem, at least to me, perfect for novel. I’ve always been passionate about rowing, ever since I first stepped into a shell. Twenty years ago, I was amazed that there were so few books about the sport. It is just so exciting, and so very poetic. Unfortunately, the first draft of my novel was turned down because the dramatic structure really wasn't going to work over three hundred pages. I also had to live a little bit more outside of the boat before I could write the novel that is now in the bookstores.

I realized one day that what I really wanted to look at was how all this rowing affected the characters later in life. Did they grow up to be better people? Did it really help them succeed? I found that rowing certainly helped me handle difficult times in my life and to focus on long-term projects that were sometimes fraught with failure, but on the other hand rowing teaches you to be incredibly distant in regard to the suffering of other people. Rob Carey is a character who finds empathizing with others to be extremely difficult, partly because he pushes himself so hard. This has tragic consequences for him.

HTBS: You are also a documentary filmmaker just like the grown-up Rob Carrey, the main character in your book. As a fiction debutante, did you feel more safe to write about two subjects that you knew well, rowing and filmmaking?

I am not sure if it was a matter of “feeling safe” so much as feeling as if these experiences had wonderful potential for a novel. I enjoyed my experience making documentary films and it was certainly an exciting life. It seemed as if those experiences would work well in the context of a longer narrative. The interesting thing about making documentary films is that you suddenly are exposed to all of these other stories. You get intimately involved in other people’s lives.

But on the other hand it is a business after all and there are certain technical things you have to learn. I found that the people I met in the documentary film world were incredibly hard-nosed and yet at the same time incredibly optimistic about life and the human condition. Making documentary films is also an immensely physical job. You are traveling around the world and carrying lots of equipment to pretty inaccessible places. So I always thought while I was doing it that I would only be able to handle it for so long and then I would put it into the pages of the novel. Mission accomplished!

HTBS: Did you do a lot of research for the rowing parts of the novel? Did you ever run into problems writing about the technical parts in rowing? The coaching? The land and the winter training? Or did you write these parts from memory from rowing at Kent and Trinity?

I would say that about 80% of the novel was written directly from memory. But the real problem was educating a reader who knows nothing about rowing about the intricacies of the sport. I had to slowly define the basic parts of the boat, where people sat, what the stroke was, the various complexities of competition, and the importance of training while at the same time moving the narrative forward. I showed the book to many people who had no experience of rowing at all to make sure they understood what was going on. This is not an uncommon problem for novelists. Anyone who has written a techno-thriller – where the lay reader has to understand how a submarine works for example – understands this problem. I kept thinking back to the seafaring novels of Patrick O’Brian. He introduces lots of seafaring terminology into his work that the reader has to quickly absorb. So, I kind of thought of the members of The God Four as people out at sea. I made sure to simply drop in the various terminology that every single rower knows about, and make it part of the action so people would organically understand what was going on. Rowing is complex, but it is not as complex as writing about what it must be like to be an astronaut or a brain surgeon or a spy.

HTBS: As other coming-of-age novels, your book has been compared to John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, and personally, I found some resemblance between the novels. If you agree, was it a deliberate choice you made or did it just happen?

Many people have compared the novel to A Separate Peace, but the reality is that I never have read that novel! I remember reading Catcher in the Rye and enjoying the first-person narration immensely. The challenge that lies in writing about a teenage hero is that teenagers are so incredibly self-absorbed. They really do not have the best sense of irony. There's not a lot of self-deprecation going on at that age. And, moreover, I was reaching back into that time what I wrote Flat Water  Tuesday. I decided to have two different voices. The adult voice, which is essentially my voice, and the teenage voice. The teenage voice is a voice I have lost touch with. It was good to get to know that person again, but I doubt I will have anything to do with him for the rest of my life.

HTBS: If I understand it right, it took you a long time to write Flat Water Tuesday. Was it because you got rejected by different publishers, or was it because you were not pleased with the result/s? Did you have to do a lot of re-writing before you felt the manuscript was ready to be sent off to your literary agent?

I wrote the first draft of Flat Water Tuesday back in 1995. The book was picked up by a literary agent and shown to about two dozen New York publishers. The problem with the novel was that it was simply about a young man trying to make a very competitive rowing team. There was no suicide, there was no romance, there was no adult story. So editors back then wondered how they could sell a story there was essentially about teenagers to adults. I had a wonderful agent who was very supportive and thought that the novel was indeed universal. Many novels had come out about teenagers at prep school that garnered an adult audience but mine was not so much about “coming-of-age” so much as about survival. So the kind of feel-good aspect was not there: it really was a technical story about making a rowing team as an eighteen-year-old. I rewrote the novel and resubmitted it in 1997, but still the adult section was not there. It was again rejected by about two dozen publishers, including, amusingly, St. Martin’s Press, who ultimately took on the manuscript. I gave the story a rest and took the time to get married and build a house and have children and do a great deal of nonfiction writing.

But Flat Water Tuesday was always with me, and I decided after the death of a very respected colleague here at the University of Cape Town, where I work, that I would get it published. I opened up the now very old manuscript in 2010 and began the process of rewriting it because what I had was incredibly dated and, truth be told, a bit immature. I wound up rewriting about 90% of the original manuscript. I also added in the love story. Basically, I had experienced a great deal in my life since I put Flat Water Tuesday aside. I poured those experiences into the novel.

And then, fate seemed to lend a hand. My former rowing coach, Hart Perry – a legend in the world of rowing – died in 2011. My former teammates called me from Connecticut, where a memorial had been held for him. They had heard that I was writing a novel about our experiences on the water and urged me to finish the manuscript I had already begun working on. This seemed like some kind of cosmic command. I redoubled my efforts and got back into contact with Tris Coburn, a fine rower and my former roommate. He was now working as a literary agent and he assured me that if I were to finish the manuscript he would show it around New York. My original agent had retired by this time. So I redoubled my efforts. Then, out of the blue, I was contacted by one of the fiction editors from St. Martin’s Press. She was visiting Cape Town, where I live, and wanted to have lunch with me. By the time that lunch was over, I had told her about the novel and she asked me to send it to her via e-mail. The rest is, as they say, history. 

HTBS: Is there a specific ‘scene’ that you are especially fond of in your novel? Any person you feel close to? If so, why? Is there a ‘scene’ that you feel sorry that you cut out that is not in the novel?

To me, the heart of the novel is what I call the “crooked room” scene. This is the scene where Carolyn brings Rob up to her loft in New York and tells him that she calls it the “crooked room”. That is a scene I wrote many times and to me it encapsulates the passion of the novel. I've said it many times: Flat Water Tuesday is not really a rowing novel. It is a love story. The novel was written for Carolyn.

HTBS: Yes, your novel is a love story, but maybe not only between the grown-up Rob and Carolyn, but is there not also a latent love, or at least a fling, between the young Rob and The God Four coxswain, Ruth. Would you also say that the young rowers in your novel have “a love affair” with rowing?

I think that is very accurate. At that age, you are so desperate to be part of a group. Rowing offers a kind of instant elitism. There is no question that the closeness that I felt on the water with many of my teammates was impossible to replicate later in life. I am now taking up the sport again and while I enjoy it, I could not imagine spending so much time with the men I row with. But, as we all know, rowing is a sport that is easy to fall in love with. I am glad I went through that very intense experience when I was a kid and when I was in college. Rowing has made me many friends whom I am still in touch with.

The biggest discovery I have made about rowing is how serious people are about it as adults! I row with guys in their sixties who are very committed to the sport and can really make a boat go. I just had lunch with a yoga instructor who told me that many men in their fifties are only fractionally weaker than what they were as teenagers. I would agree. I am amazed how hard I am rowing now, and how much more I enjoy just being out on the water than I did back then, when I was always obsessed with winning. That said, I would hate for anyone to read the novel and think I was saying anything negative about the sport or indeed about Kent. Yes, tragic things happen to the main characters, but the main characters are very intense people and I put them in an incredibly intense situation. I remember well just how much I wanted to win certain races, and the novel takes this to a logical but catastrophic conclusion. Nonetheless, I am a major supporter of the sport of rowing and indeed The Kent School. I would definitely do it all over again, and start even earlier as an oarsman.

HTBS: The large chain store Target in the USA has picked Flat Water Tuesday paperback as a Book Club Pick for the month of May. Target has ordered 30,000 copies. Of those books you have signed 5,000 – how long did it take you to sign them all, and how did your hand feel afterwards? How many copies of the paperback are being printed in the first run?

It took me a week to sign all of the Target copies! My former mentor at UCT, Prof. J.M. Coetzee, who is no stranger to book signings as he has won the Nobel Prize, wrote from Australia to tell me I was lucky I had such a short name. It would have been even rougher if I was named Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, for example! Copies of the paperback are now in bookstores as well as in Target. I am not sure what the total print run is, I assume it is pretty substantial.

Ron Irwin busy signing 5,000 copies of the paperback edition of Flat Water Tuesday for Target.

HTBS: When you were writing the novel, did you ever imagine that it would be this successful?

I always tell my students that being a “successful” writer means, really, getting good reviews and the respect of your peers while at the same time not actually losing money for your publisher. It is very difficult to predict what will be a bestselling novel. Flat Water Tuesday has had its share of success, but I am just pleased that the novel has been received so well and that so many people have taken the time to write me emails saying that I have captured what it is like to row in a very fast boat. Even more important, I enjoy getting notes from people who have been through the kind of loss that Carolyn and Rob face.

HTBS: Rather early on, when your hardcover edition had come out, a film company bought the rights to make a movie based on your book. Please tell us more about it. Have you seen a script? Any idea which actors are going to play the members of The God Four or Coach Channing, for example?

I have indeed seen the script. It was written by Todd Komarnicki, the person who, among other things, produced the movie Elf starring Will Farrell. He has of course done a great deal of other adaptation work. He and I spent the weekend together at Kent shortly after the publication of Flat Water Tuesday. He met many of the people who I used to row with, and took the time to actually learn how to row before he began work. The film rights are held by Lars and Peter Winther, and Lars knows the sport extremely well, having rowed on the team that is the inspiration for The God Four. We have some ideas about who should act in the film but it is still early days yet. I can say that the script is excellent.

HTBS: do you see a trend in that three of the most written and talked about rowing books during the last years - I am here thinking about Dan Boyne’s Kelly: A Father, a Son, an American Quest (2008; pb 2011), Daniel James Brown’ s The Boys in the Boat (2013; pb 2014) and your Flat Water Tuesday (2013; pb 2014) – all have had film companies buying the rights to make movies based of these books? Is rowing on its way to become a new favorite Hollywood sport?

I think that rowing is certainly going to find its place in Hollywood. There have been some pretty good movies in the past. Think about the popularity of Oxford Blues, for instance, which stars Rob Lowe. There is also an old Nick Cage movie called The Boy in Blue and a recent BBC film called Bert and Dickie about two men in the 1948 Olympics, which is based on a true story. Two years ago the movie Backwards came out, about a girls’ rowing team.  

But you may find it amusing to learn that my editor at St. Martin’s told me that their interest in the novel came partly from the movie The Social Network! This film features two very famous Harvard rowers – Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss – who become the enemies of Mark Zuckerberg. Apparently the rowing sequences in The Social Network led to a great deal of interest in the sport on the part of the folks at St. Martin’s and in turn in my novel. Maybe in a weird way I owe Mark Zuckerberg something for getting on the bad side of such fearsome rowers!

Until recent years, rowing has always been very difficult to film. It is hard to film a boat from another boat and still keep a level camera. Recent Steadicam technology as well as other digital advances have meant that you can get right into the boat with the rowers without sacrificing film quality. Right now, for instance, you can go to YouTube and see some really cool GoPro footage of rowing put together by total amateurs. It used to be really hard to get that kind of footage. The trick is, in my opinion, to show how difficult the sport is while at the same time showing how beautiful it is. I remember when I was in high school in Buffalo how the kids who played hockey felt rowing was a “sissy sport” because, to them, it looked so easy. I would imagine that it's sort of like filming ballet. Ballet looks beautiful and graceful, but the body of every single ballet dancer I know has taken a severe physical beating because dance is just so rigorous. When you film ballet or rowing, you want to show the blood and sweat as well as the beauty. The technology is now there to make this happen.

HTBS: Which is your favorite rowing movie/film?

I would have to say that my favorite film is the 1970s documentary Symphony of Motion, probably because I know some of the people who were filmed in it and there are simply so many classic faces it. I also really enjoyed the film True Blue about the Oxford Boat Race “mutiny”, based on the book by Dan Topolski. I think this is an excellent introduction to the sport and looks at some of the nuances that would be very difficult to explain to outsiders.

HTBS: Which is your favorite rowing book?

The best book ever written about the sport of rowing is easily David Halberstam’s The Amateurs. This is a nonfiction book about four young men trying to make the 1984 Olympics. I am sure that most of your readers know about it.

HTBS: Which novels have had the most impact on you as a writer? Is there a particular book that made you want to write?

I think that the work of Cormac McCarthy, as well as the work of Richard Ford and Michael Cunningham has had a major effect on me. I also greatly enjoyed the novels by my mentor at UCT J.M. Coetzee. Studying under Prof. Coetzee was on incredible experience not least because here was a person who not only was a kind of living legend, but also who literally risked his life as a novelist. He wrote novels like The Life and Times of Michael K and Waiting for the Barbarians during a time when he could have been thrown in jail for the things he implied about the apartheid government. I like to think I am a committed writer. But I am not sure I would risk jail time under the old South African regime for my art. I would certainly not be willing to risk the lives of my family members to publish a novel. Prof. Coetzee did that. He taught me that writing was a serious business. Literally a matter of life and death.

HTBS: You must be thrilled to learn that Flat Water Tuesday has been put on the long list for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize in South Africa just the other day. What does this mean for the novel?

It is indeed great news. The Sunday Times Fiction Prize is the most important literary prize in South Africa. Flat Water Tuesday is published here by Pan Macmillan SA and they have been tireless in their support of it. I have met many people who have happened to read the book, and it seems to be doing the rounds at the local private schools where rowing is popular. The short list gets announced at a party during the Franschhoek Literary Festival on 17 May, and a few weeks after that they will announce the winner. Some major names in South African fiction have won the prize: Andre Brink, Zakes Mda, Justin Cartwright among them. Some of the other winners are personal friends and colleagues. I have no idea if I will make the short list, but I am certainly looking forward to going to the Franschhoek Literary Festival, FLF, and having a drink with the other ‘longlisters’ and cheering on whoever gets tapped. The FLF is hugely popular down here and is really the landmark literary event on the South African calendar. Franschhoek is a beautiful town: imagine Edgartown in Martha's Vineyard transplanted into a beautiful wine region and you get the idea. Wine and books are a fine and time honored pairing, in my opinion.

HTBS: We will certainly keep our fingers crossed that Flat Water Tuesday is picked for the short list.

Thanks, Göran.

HTBS: With the great success of Flat Water Tuesday, are you now working on your second novel? And if so, what will it be about?

I think the next novel will take place in Cape Town. I have come across a female character who doesn’t seem to want to go away, so I think I will follow her and see where she takes me.

HTBS: Thank you, Ron, and good luck with Flat Water Tuesday and with your second novel.

Thank you.

You can find out more about the novel Flat Water Tuesday by visiting www.flatwatertuesday.com. Please feel free to “like” its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/fwtnovel
Flat Water Tuesday can be bought at your local book shop, Target and the online bookstores. 

Repechage for Bert and Dickie

1948: The real Richard Burnell (stroke) and Bert Bushnell (bow).

Tim Koch writes:

British readers with access to the Drama Channel (Freeview 20, Sky 166, Virgin Media 190) will be able to see a repeat broadcast of Bert and Dickie at 9pm on Saturday, 3 May. Called Going for Gold in the U.S., this is a dramatised account of the unlikely pairing of Bertram ‘Bert’ Bushnell and Richard ‘Dickie’ Burnell who won the double sculls at the 1948 London Olympics. The HTBS review is here and newsreel film of the real thing is on the British Pathe site.

Matt Smith plays Bert Bushnell and Sam Hoare plays Dickie Burnell.

Lies, Damned Lies and the 1877 Boat Race

An artist’s view of the finish of the 1877 Oxford - Cambridge Boat Race.

Tim Koch writes:

Those of us who grandly award ourselves the title of ‘historian’ like to think that we are in constant pursuit of  ‘the truth’ as if were some piece of buried treasure waiting to be dug up. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Perhaps the best known idea on the unreliability of ‘historical truth’ is that ‘history is written by the victors’. In a similar vein, Sir Winston Churchill held that ‘history will be kind to me – for I intend to write it’. Historical truth changes over time as, at best, it can only reflect the present or the dominant consensus. However, while truth may be difficult to establish, lies are (arguably) slightly easier to expose. I have spent the last few months working on a rebuttal of a very big and very entrenched lie in rowing history, that concerning the 1877 ‘Dead Heat’ Oxford - Cambridge Boat Race. Instead of producing a written piece, my intention was to make a video documentary for the internet. This I have done and the result may be viewed below. As I was nearing the end of the video production, I was very flattered to be asked to write a piece on the 1877 Race for the Official Boat Race Programme, the text of which is also below. I was restricted to a short piece of 700 words and I wrote it for a more general audience than HTBS readers, but I hope that it serves as an introduction to the 30-minute film.

From the 2014 Boat Race Programme:

1877: Oxford Won, Cambridge Too.

Tim Koch of the rowing history blog, ‘Hear The Boat Sing’, argues that the popular view of the ‘dead heat’  race of 1877 is a continuing injustice to the finish judge, Honest John Phelps.

In 2003, a thrilling Boat Race resulted in a win for Oxford by just one foot. During the post-race television analysis it was confidently stated that this was the closest of all the 149 races as the ‘dead heat’ of 1877 was, in reality, a six-foot victory for the Dark Blues. The viewing millions were told that this 126 year old travesty occurred because ‘the finish judge had been in the pub’.

That apparently inebriated official was a waterman, ‘Honest’ John Phelps, a descendant of whom is this year's Race Umpire, Richard Phelps.* Through the years, many other seemingly reliable sources have repeated and embellished different versions of this tale, usually adding that John was ‘asleep under a bush’ at the finish, only awakening to drunkenly slur ‘Dead heat…’ while adding under his breath, ‘…to Oxford by six feet’. Tellingly, different sources have Phelps giving almost any distance between four feet and ten yards.

‘Honest John’ became a music hall joke (‘Oxford won, Cambridge too!’) and ‘1877’ cast a long shadow over a proud Putney family that had served rowing well for generations. The tragedy is that the popular stories concerning John’s conduct were simply not true and, in the words of the Boat Race Official Centenary History, ‘....no good grounds have been shown for doubting the rightness of John Phelps’s decision’. Maurice Phelps, the family historian, adds that ‘...the (dead heat) decision was not only brave but almost stoic’.

An unflattering studio portrait of Honest John Phelps.

None of the lurid tales about Phelps seem to appear in contemporary accounts, they ‘emerge’ at some later point. According to rowing historian Chris Dodd, it was only after the Blues had returned to Oxford, that they and the town ‘.... daily became more imbued with the idea that (they) had won’.

While no one suggests that there was a formal conspiracy, the idea that a working class professional could not be relied upon came at a very convenient time for those who were busy formalising rules to make amateur rowing the sole preserve of gentlemen and to rid it of ‘mechanics, artisans and labourers’.

Some sections of the press had made fools of themselves by prematurely declaring that Oxford had won. Reporters were not on the finish line but on a steamer behind the crews, an impossible position from which to judge a close race. Perhaps to save face, they produced stories that proved that they were not wrong, it was the finish judge that was incompetent or drunk or blind or not at his post. An ordinary working man had little chance to refute these accusations.

Investigation into John’s character shows that he was not a stereotypical coarse and roguish waterman and that the epithet ‘Honest’ was not an ironic one. According to Maurice Phelps, even in old age his articulate and physically fit ancestor ‘had a sound reputation in Thames rowing circles’. Further, he ‘collected works of art, commented on social conditions and ...... condemned animal cruelty’. Moreover, he did not smoke and drank only beer – but never at 8.50 in the morning, the time that the race finished!

Amazingly, finish posts were not thought of as necessary because, in the 33 races that had taken place since 1829, the closest verdict had been half a length. Phelps later told the umpire that the boats were essentially level with each one going slightly ahead – or falling slightly back – depending on their place in the stroke cycle. Without exactly aligned markers, it could not be judged whose boat surged ahead at the critical second to win. Thus, ‘a dead heat’ was the only legitimate verdict that could have been given.

Phelps did not take the easy and popular option of declaring for Oxford, the favourites, and for this he paid a high price. While it is more amusing to tell the ‘drunk under a bush’ story than to tell the truth, after 137 years it is time that Honest John Phelps received due recognition for his fair and courageous verdict.



*An update was made in this article on 18 April 2014 to reflect Comments No. 1 and No. 3 ~ GRB, ed.

Rudern Film: Buster Keaton – Der Student

Greg Denieffe writes:

In 2010, the film College (1927) was featured in a HTBS post called ‘Ready all!’ It was released in Germany as Der Musterschüler / Buster Keaton – Der Student and was promoted with a poster depicting an animated Buster Keaton playing Ronald, a hapless athlete, in his coxing singlet and holding an oar. Behind him is the silhouette of a racing eight.

On The Rabbit’s guide to Rowing Films you will find a plot summary and information on the film’s location. The final minutes show Keaton’s true athletic prowess as he goes to the rescue of his girlfriend, performing all the athletic feats he has tried and failed at throughout the film. However, he did have a limit to his physical ability. For a scene where Ronald pole-vaults through a window, Keaton had to use a stunt double for the first time in his career.

You can watch the whole film on YouTube or skip to 43.40 and follow the action from his ‘selection’ as coxswain by the Dean of Clayton College.

Keaton died on 1 February 1966, aged 70. Today, HTBS would just like to say, thanks for being such a good ‘coaxer’!

Spoils of victory! – A poster for College showing the victorious Clayton crew on the pontoon.

The Cods: Paris or the bush?

Greg Denieffe writes:

News has reached HTBS that the story of ‘The Murray Bridge Cods’ is to be made into 60-minute documentary by Australian International Pictures. It will tell the story of Murray Bridge Rowing Club and how they beat the odds to represent Australia at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

When I contacted Wayne Groom, the director of the documentary, he informed me that the target date for completion is 31 December 2014 but that there was still a lot of research to do and interviews to conduct. The project has a Facebook page that has started posting regular updates and a website with further details and an appeal for financial support to fund the project.

Here is a link to a short promotional film to whet the appetite of HTBS readers.

Last May, HTBS posted two articles about the Australian 1924 Olympic eight’s trip to Ireland to compete at the Tailteann Games. Australia was represented by Murray Bridge Rowing Club. Founded in 1909, the club won their first interstate championships in 1913 representing South Australia. Unfortunately, the First World War ended the hopes of this crew ever representing Australia at an Olympic Games.

The Cup presented to the winners of ‘The Allied Forces Eights’ at the 1919 Royal Henley Peace Regatta.

Following the end of the War, the Stewards of Henley Royal Regatta decided in January 1919 that it would not be desirable to hold Henley Royal Regatta that year but that an interim regatta, later called Royal Henley Peace Regatta, should be held. King George V presented a cup for competition between amateur oarsmen that had served in the Army, Navy or Air Force of any country who had fought for the Allied forces. The competition was called The Allied Forces Eights and was won by the Australian Imperial Forces. The Australian interstate championships resumed in 1920 and in 1922 this cup became the trophy for the championship eights and was renamed The King’s Cup. Murray Bridge won the interstate eights in 1920, 1922 and 1923 and the test race for Olympic selection in 1924.

According to the Australian Army Shop there was some resistance to the use of the cup as a trophy for the interstate championships:

The King’s Cup was presented by King George V to the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) Number One Crew on July 4th 1919 after the crew’s win at the Henley Peace Regatta. This historic post-war regatta brought together eight teams representing the Allies of the First World War. Australia fielded two crews – AIF Number One and AIF Number Two – for the eight-oared race. They vied against each other and against the USA, France, New Zealand, Canada and Cambridge and Oxford Universities for the prize.

In the end AIF Number One Crew defeated Oxford University for the prize, having also beaten AIF Number Two Crew in the first round and Cambridge University in the semi-final. The King’s Cup was presented to the crew's stroke, Captain M. C. Disher of the Australian Army Medical Corps before being taken by the Australian Imperial Expeditionary Forces Sports Control Board. The board shipped the trophy to the Australian War Museum.

Despite repeated requests to the Australian War Museum that the Cup be used as a perpetual trophy for the annual Interstate Eight-Oar Championship of Australia, the trophy remained locked away. Capt. Disher decided to petition King George V for the trophy’s release. He sent his petition via the Governor General to the King on October 30th 1920. The last line of his petition reads, “And your petitioner therefore humbly prays that your Majesty may be graciously pleased to make known your wishes in regard to the disposal of the said Trophy.”

The King’s response was conveyed by Winston S. Churchill, who wrote: “His Majesty commands me to inform you that it is his wish that the Cup should be used as a permanent trophy and be competed for annually in the Interstate Eight-Oar Race of Australia.”

In the HTBS posts The Case of CoD v Cods and More on Murray Bridge and 'The Cods' you can read about Murray Bridge’s adventures in Paris at the Olympics and on their trip to Ireland for the Tailteann Games where they competed in the international eights, fours and single sculls.

One of the photographs unearthed by Wayne is this one of The Cods stroke Wally Pfeiffer after he won the single sculls at the Tailteann Games in Ireland in 1924.

Dan Boyne's Kelly in Film Development!

Jack Kelly, Sr., is teaching his son, Jack 'Kell' Kelly, Jr., age 8, how to scull. Kell would later win the Diamonds at Henley twice, 1947 and 1949. Jack Kelly, Sr., had sent an entry for the 1920 Diamonds which was rejected by the Henley Stewards. Dan Boyne's book about the Kellys will now be a film.

In 2008, Dan Boyne came out with the hardcover copy of Kelly: A Father, A Son, An American Quest, and 2012 the paperback edition came out. At Christmas, Dan revealed that his book has been optioned for a film. HTBS caught up with Dan to ask him some questions:



HTBS: How has the sale gone with your book?



DB: I haven’t kept track of the exact sales figures, but I think Kelly has gone through its first printing in the paperback, which came out a few years ago. The hardcover is such a beautiful limited edition that I’m not sure will get printed again, so people should grab a copy before it goes out of print! More recently, with the announcement of the film option, the paperback has been selling so fast that Amazon can’t seem to keep enough copies in stock!



HTBS: Flashlight Films has now optioned to make your book into a film. Please tell us more about it.



DB: Flashlight Films is an independent motion picture company specializing in screenplay development. It was founded in 2009 by partners Allyn Stewart and Kipp Nelson. Stewart comes from Warner Brothers, where she was a senior executive for several years and worked on the academy award winning films Driving Miss Daisy and Dangerous Liaisons, among others; Nelson comes from the financial world, and was a former partner at Goldman Sachs. They specialize is acquiring stories from a wide range of sources and developing high quality screenplays with top filmmakers attached.


HTBS: Who is writing the script? 



DB: The script is being written by Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson, who were nominated for an Academy Award for David O. Russel’s celebrated film The Fighter (2010). It is probably a very good fit, since Kelly himself was quite a boxer as well as an Olympic oarsman.



HTBS: As you are the author of the book, and a rowing expert, will you have any influence on the script?



DB: I have been shown some early versions of the script and provided my input, but I have yet to see the finished product. I’ve been told by the producers that the Kelly story has been something of a challenge to render into an acceptable screenplay. Partly I think this is due to the complexity of Kelly’s life, which covers many fields of endeavor--sports, romance, politics, business, and even Hollywood. 


On the latter front, of course, the temptation is to “play the Grace Kelly” card, and include her in the story. But this story really isn’t about her; it’s about her dad and her brother, the Irish and English, and the power of one man’s will to succeed. Grace, however, did seem to have her father’s drive—it was just directed in another field of endeavor. And, of course, it is ironic that one of the Kellys married into a royal family, after coming from such modest roots!

HTBS: Armie Hammer, who played both the Winklevoss brothers in the film The Social Network, is one name that has popped up playing Jack Kelly Sr. Any other names that you can mention playing other characters? Any good English actor playing Kelly’s 1920 Olympic rival Jack Beresford Jr.?



DB: Jake Gyllenhaal is the other name that was mentioned to me to play Kelly. I haven’t heard anything about the Beresford character, but there are plenty of great British actors who could take on that role. I just hope the rowing is authentic, which is not an easy thing to pull off!



HTBS: You were the “rowing consultant” for The Social Network, and you have now been asked to take on the same position for the Kelly film. Is the Kelly film going to be a “rowing movie”, or a movie with some rowing scenes?



DB: At this point, since I have not seen the final script, I can’t say how much rowing will be involved. Certainly there will be a lot more than in The Social Network, where the rowing was really just used as window dressing. In one of  the earlier drafts of the Kelly script I read, there was a nice scene of Kelly watching a sculling race on the Schuylkill as a boy, which is how he originally got interested in the sport. And of course, there will have to be a scene for his duel with Beresford at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp. Lastly, they will have to show Kell, or Jack Kelly Jr., winning the Diamond sculls in 1947. This is the tricky part, I imagine; to show the lapse of time between the two generations.



HTBS: You are the director of recreational sculling at Harvard, will you also teach the actors how to scull and row?



DB: I’d love to, of course! I’ve worked on a number of rowing films and commercials, and been an extra in others. I worked with Josh Pence and Armie Hammer quite a bit in The Social Network, and they seemed to manage the rowing scenes quite well. Of course, Josh had already rowed before, at Dartmouth, so he didn’t need much attention. It was pretty challenging to set them loose in a pair, however; especially when the director wanted them to keep switching sides!



HTBS: Are you looking forward to getting back to Henley to shoot scenes – after all, there was some marvellous scenes from Henley Royal Regatta in The Social Network, and Jack “Kell” Kelly Jr., won the Diamonds at Henley in 1947 (and 1949), a race that was denied his father in 1920.



Photo: Mystic Seaport

DB: It was great fun to be at Henley during The Social Network shoot; and at Dorney Lake, where much of the filming also took place. As many people who read my row2k.com columns know, it was quite a coup to be allowed to film during the actual regatta. There were weeks, if not months, of negotiation prior to the shoot, and no one believed it would actually happen. But once the Henley Stewards finally gave director David Fincher the nod, we were all treated remarkably well.  


Filming, of course, it not all fun and games, and there was a lot of stress with Henley shoot, mostly due to the fact that we were on such a tight time table. We were only allowed one or two takes, so the oarsmen had to be managed very precisely (which is not always an easy task). Then, one of the guys broke an oarlock just before we were set to roll, which could have been a complete disaster! Luckily, we were able to swoop in from the umpire’s launch and get it fixed with just seconds to spare. Needless to say, it is not an experience I would ever care to repeat!



HTBS: Do you have any idea when the movie is going to be released?



DB: I have no idea, but hopefully in the next few years. These Hollywood projects can move very slowly or very fast. Hopefully this one will be the latter!



HTBS: If I remember it right, you yourself has actually been in a “rowing movie”. Which movie was that, and what was the scene/s?



DB: I was a rowing extra in a pretty awful version of David Halberstam’s book, The Amateurs. The film was called Rowing Through, and you can probably rent it on DVD if you want a good laugh. The rowing scenes, and much of the acting, are awful. Xeno Muller was an extra, too, and he was hilarious to be around—always making jokes and teasing the actors. I was also in a Denzel Washington film called The Great Debaters, where I very briefly row up the Charles. Lastly, I was in a PBS documentary called the Irish in America, where I also scull a bit. 



HTBS: Thank you, Dan, for taking the time, and good luck with the film. We at HTBS are keeping our fingers crossed that Kelly will be a good rowing movie.



DB: My pleasure!

Learn from the Legends

The Finnish Legend Pertti Karppinen in 1976.

On Monday, 5 August, HTBS's friend Bryan Kitch, of the brilliant blog Rowing Related, posted a marvellous old video in his series "Video of the Week". The good fellow Bryan also sent a tweet to HTBS (@boatsing) to make sure that we would not miss this 'education movie', showing among others Pertti Karppinen's and Peter-Michael Kolbe's sculling styles. The film, "Learning with Legends", is a true gem and we would not like any of HTBS's readers to miss it. That is why we happily direct you to Bryan's Rowing Related - enjoy, and thank you very much Bryan! Watch "Learning with Legends" here. (Seeing Karppinen sculling takes me back to the 1970s and a couple of Nordic Championships held in Denmark and Sweden where no one was able to give the Gentle Finn a match.)

The 148th Harvard-Yale Regatta Video

Most of you have probably already seen this video elsewhere, but if not ~ enjoy!

Daniel James Brown and his Boys in the Boat

Last Sunday evening I had the pleasure of attending an event at Stonington Harbor Yacht Club in Stonington, Connecticut, where Daniel James Brown, author of The Boys in the Boat, gave a talk about his newly published book. I am sorry to say that it was not that well attended, but among the folks who came were rowers and others connected with rowing, so there was no lack of intelligent rowing questions asked at the end of Brown’s talk. Brown started by telling us about how he came to write this story. He is not a rower – he knew absolutely nothing about the sport when he began this project – but through connections he visited the Boathouse at University of Washington (in Seattle), where the ‘boys in the boat’ plied their oars in the 1930s, especially for the upcoming 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Their shell Husky Clipper is still in the Boathouse, and their story is well-known, of course, by the Husky rowers. Brown spent some time in the coach launch to follow some of the Husky rowers of today to learn more about the sport of rowing.

The author then read an exciting part of his book, about a rowing race, and there is no question about it, Brown knows how to write a compelling scene, in this particular case it was both thrilling and entertaining – and ‘correct’ from a rowing point of view. I asked some questions about Ran Laurie, who stroked the British eight in the Olympic final, and also about Noel Duckworth, who coxed the Englishmen’s boat which was in the final, but did not medal; both men are in The Boys in the Boat. (Unfortunately, I had only managed to read the first couple of chapters of the book before coming to this event.) For my last question, I asked if Brown had any news about the film which is to be based on his book. He was deliberate in saying (not that he actually had more information) what we already have read elsewhere, that the Weinstein Company has bought the rights for an upcoming film adaptation of his book. He has met the scriptwriter, but in his contract with the Weinstein Company, nothing is mentioned that Brown should, or has the rights to, read the film script before a company starts shooting the film.

Those of us who had assembled at Stonington Harbor Yacht Club all hope that it will be a good rowing movie, especially as there are very, very few good movies about rowing around; right now I can only think of one which I am terribly fond of (although it is not perfect!): Bert and Dickie (called Going for Gold in America). My advice to the film company is: get a real rower, coach and rowing historian to look at the script before you mess up the details. Give me a call and I will give you some names (no, my name not included).

Daniel James Brown is a nice fellow – and I am not writing this because he told me that he was a reader of HTBS or signed my copy of his book – but he has tried to write an honest story about rowing and the hardship which all the ‘boys in the boat’ went through before, during and after their Olympic gold medal race in the Berlin Games.

A review of The Boys in the Boat will soon be posted on HTBS. Read an interview with Daniel James Brown here.

Steve, Jack and Bossie Found in Cyberspace

Tim Koch writes,

Typing ‘rowing’ into the YouTube search engine and then ploughing through the results is rather like rowing itself – you have to do an awful lot of dull and sometimes painful work in order to get gold. After a lot of ‘internet steady state’ I recently experienced the thrill of a big win. A commercial company called Huntley Film Archives has put up an eleven-minute film made at Thames Rowing Club in 1923 or 1924 (not ‘1930s’ as they state). It is particularly exciting for two reasons. Firstly, it shows three of the greatest Putney personalities of the inter war period and secondly, it shows rowing of a very high standard in slow motion and with very close up shots, both unusual for the time. Unfortunately, the internet version is in low resolution and has a copyright ‘watermark’ but the original film held in the Huntley Archive is undoubtedly a sharp 16mm or even 35mm print.

The start to 48 seconds shows the exterior of Thames Rowing Club at Putney with crews leaving the boathouse and other crews rowing past.

After this there is a ten-second (slightly self-conscious) shot of the great coach, Steve Fairbairn, 1862-1938 (not ‘Fairburn’ as stated).

Steve Fairbairn as depicted on the Mile Post.

Between 58 seconds and 1 minute 17 seconds the film shows the Thames RC ‘First Eight’ for 1923 with the Henley Grand Challenge Cup. The crew was C.G. Chandler, R.G. Bare, J. Beresford Jnr, C.H. Rew, A.F. Long, K.C. Wilson, H.L Holman, S.I. Fairbairn and J. Godwin.

From 1 min 17 sec to 5 min 10 sec there are instructional sequences for sweep rowing showing TRC eights on the water between Putney and Hammersmith. As I have already said, it was unusual for cameramen of the period to get so close to the action. This was not shot on a long lens to achieve the close ups, if it had been the picture would be much more unstable and would have a reduced depth of field. The caption at 3 min 40 ecs says ‘There are not many eights that would bear inspection from the Ultra Rapid ‘. This was British Pathe’s slow motion camera which they were obviously very proud of and which they used in many sporting films. We must assume that these sequences show the classic ‘Fairbairn Method’ of rowing as approved by the master himself.

Between 5 min 10 sec and 6 min 35 sec there are marvellous shots of Jack Beresford Jnr. (1899-1977; on the left), Britain’s greatest sculler of the inter war period. The film is perhaps even better shot than the sweep rowing material. The cameraman must have been standing on the bow of a close-following (perhaps overlapping) launch to get a wonderful high shooting angle of Beresford in his single scull. The caption at 5 min 45 sec says ‘It’s obvious why he is a champion’ and this is very true. The style may not be what we would use today but note the speed with which his legs go down.

From 6 min 35 sec we have ‘the don’ts of sculling’, very gamely illustrated by the great coach, boat builder and father of champions, John Thomas Phelps (1877-1942), better known as ‘(Young) Bossie Phelps’ – not ‘Bossy’ as stated. I have never seen pictures (still or moving) of Bossie in a boat before.

Bossie Phelp

The film ends with a caption stating something that, if it was true in 1923, it is still true now:

If you contemplate rowing

- Remember -

When you know All about it you will be too old to do it.

Watch Out for Lord Paddington’s Wiggling Ears…

In the series of short rowing sequences in a film, we have now come to slap-stick movies, or in this case, the 1940 A Chump At Oxford with the comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Fate has it that Stan and Ollie have ended up in Oxford to get the best education possible. Meredith, their valet, recognises Stan as Lord Paddington, the best athlete and scholar Oxford University has ever had. Lord Paddington once lost his memory after a window in his room fell down on his head. When the accident happens again, Stan turns back into Lord Paddington, who has the ability to wiggle his ears when he gets upset and in a fighting mood.

At 55:28, in the long ‘European’ version of the movie, we see a plaque of all of Lord Paddington/Stan’s achievements as a sportsman, including ‘International [sic] Oarsman of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race’. Unfortunately, that very scene is missing in the YouTube version below, but will be found in the longer version here.



It might be that Laurel and Hardy’s slap-stick humour can seem out of date for us nowadays, but honestly, they are still more entertaining than most of our time’s so called comedians….

An Englishman Abroad

Here is another one of those films that is not a rowing movie, but has a short rowing sequence – you blink at the wrong moment and you missed it… However, I find it a very entertaining movie. An Englishman Abroad (1983), with a script by the famous British playwright and author Alan Bennett, is based on a true story.

In 1958, the British Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was performing Hamlet in Moscow. In the interval Coral Browne, who played Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude, got an unexpected guest in her dressing room when an English gentleman barged in, quite drunk and threw up in her sink. He didn't give her his name, but it was soon revealed that he is Guy Burgess, one of the so called ‘Cambridge Five’, the ring of spies who were recruited at Cambridge in the 1930s by the Russians to spy on Great Britain (and the USA). In 1951, Burgess defected to Moscow together with Donald Maclean. In 1963, 'the third man', Kim Philby, escaped from Beirut to Moscow.

Back at the hotel, someone slipped a note under Browne’s door. The message said that Burgess would like to have Browne over for lunch, and could she please bring a measuring tape. And so the story rolls on…

 Alan Bennett and Alan Bates.

Guy Burgess is played by Alan Bates and Coral Browne plays herself!

The ‘rowing sequence’ is only 10 seconds long, at 50:10 – 50:20.

You will find a synopsis here (warning spoiler alert!)

Enjoy:

Rowing Film: Symphony of Motion

Symphony of Motion (original movie) from Ken Santucci on Vimeo.

You have probably read or heard this saying by one of the true legends of American rowing, George Pocock,

It’s a great art, is rowing.

It’s the finest art there is.

It’s a symphony of motion.

And when you’re rowing well

Why it’s nearing perfection –

And when you reach perfection

You’re touching the Divine.

It touches the you of you’s

Which is your soul.


As you can read above, not only did Pocock have a way of building boats, he also had a way with words. In the 1970s, a rowing movie was made which borrowed its title from Pocock’s ‘symphony of motion’. In this film we meet George Pocock, and also his son, Stan, and other legends in American rowing, Bill Tytus, Harry Parker, Ted Nash, Hart Perry and others.

The quality of the film might not be the best, but just listen to what they are all saying, true words of wisdom…

Special thanks to Mrs. B. who found this film in cyberspace!

... but I Like These Best!

"IT'S THE SCHOOL-KIDDIES' HENLEY!"

Here is a funny little clip from a 1932 'School-Kiddies' Henley', some improvised rowing races for boys and girls under the age of 14 from British Pathe. Despite the fun rowing, school children on field trips really only have one thing on their mind - food. Listen to the last comment from the interviewed boy.

Mitchell & Kenyon – The Rowing Collection

Greg Denieffe writes,

Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon founded the firm of Mitchell & Kenyon in 1897. The company was one of the largest film producers in the United Kingdom in the 1900s, with slogans like “Local Films for Local People” and “We take them and make them”.

Between 1900-1913, filmmakers Mitchell & Kenyon roamed Northern England, Scotland and Ireland filming the everyday lives of people at work and play. For 70 years, 800 rolls of this early nitrate film sat in sealed barrels in the basement of a local shop in Blackburn. Rediscovered by local historian Peter Worden in the early 1990s and subsequently acquired by the British Film Institute in June 2000 this collection has been the subject of an ambitious four-year restoration and research project. (Gary W. Tooze of DVD Beaver).

The films were shot and shown, perhaps on the same day, in local halls and early cinemas. People would pay for the privilege of seeing themselves as others did. The results of the restoration were originally shown on BBC as a three-part series, The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon. The series was released on a DVD and followed up with three other DVDs – Electric Edwardians: The Films of Mitchell and Kenyon, Mitchell & Kenyon – Edwardian sports and Mitchell & Kenyon in Ireland.

Thankfully a number of short rowing clips are included as follows:

Mitchell & Kenyon – Edwardian Sports

Kingston Rowing Club at Practice (3 May 1902). This clip is 4:32 long and the opening commentary states that it takes place on the River Humber but it should more correctly state that it is the River Hull. Kingston-upon-Hull is a town in North East Yorkshire situated next to the Humber Estuary. Watch out for the sculler at the end of the clip, paddling along smoking a pipe!

Final of International Cup at Cork Regatta between Leander and Berlin (23 July 1902). This clip is only 2:32 long and was previously included in an earlier posting on HTBS called Royal Visits Benefit Irish Rowing.

The booklet accompanying the DVD has this to say about the rowing clips:

Rowing, too, was emerging in the Edwardian period as both a popular leisure pastime and a sporting occasion. Two films selected here illustrate both the amateur nature of the sport and the problems of shooting sporting events at the time. Final of International Cup at Cork Regatta, filmed at the Cork International Exhibition on 23 July 1902 features Leander from Henley-on-Thames and Berlin Rowing Club. Leander won the race but the film appears to be more of a series of spectator shots rather than action on the river. Kingston Rowing Club at Practice, shot in May 1902, emphasises the comic nature of the event as opposed to the sporting, with audience appreciation in the later showing of the film centring on the rowers falling into the river.

Mitchell & Kenyon in Ireland

There are three rowing clips on this DVD as follows: Two-oared Boat Race, Sundays Well, Cork (1902), Crews practicing on River Lee at Cork Regatta (20 July 1902) and Final of International Cup at Cork Regatta between Leander and Berlin (23 July 1902). They can be found together as one clip of 4.47 with the slightly misleading title of Mitchell & James Kenyon -1901-Rare Video of Ireland-Part 11.

The booklet with this DVD also has a short paragraph on the rowing clips as follows:

The Cork Exhibition was also a venue for some of the sporting titles shot in Ireland, rowing being one of several spectator events held during the summer. Two boat races took place in Cork during this period: the first International Gig Races of 21-23 July at Cork International Regatta, glimpses of which can be seen in Two-oared Boat Race, Sundays Well, Cork (1902); and the Final of International Cup at Cork Regatta between Leander and Berlin (1902) held on 23 July. Leander, who won the competition, was founded in Henley-on-Thames in 1818 and are the world’s oldest and most renowned club [sic].

As HTBS readers will know, Leander was indeed founded in 1818, but on the Tideway. There are at least three surviving rowing clubs older: Brasenose College Boat Club, Jesus College Boat Club and Westminster School Boat Club.

Sunday’s Well Boating and Tennis Club was founded in 1899 and in 2009 published a history researched by historian Kieran McCarthy and written by Irish Examiner sports journalist, Alan Good. The promo for the book reads:

Beautifully situated just west of Cork city centre on the banks of the Lee, the club emerged as a by-product of annual boating regattas at the Mardyke. Boating, with a high society classification in the 19th century, was a popular pastime on the river adjacent to Sunday’s Well. Due to limited revenue, boating events such as mini regattas were not organised every year, but the races are remembered for the Chinese lanterns and bunting that illuminated the gardens at the riverbank, as well as the balloon and firework displays at sundown. In 1899, inspired by a successful Sunday’s Well Regatta and Water Carnival held that July, the Sunday’s Well Boating and Tennis Club was founded. It was formed by a number of organisers of the regatta, several of whom were residents in Sunday’s Well.

I can’t remember Sundays Well Boat Club taking part in any IARU (Rowing Ireland) organised regatta and I have never seen their name in any old programmes, but some years ago I purchased an old postcard featuring them, as they do play a part in Irish rowing history.

Posted in Dublin, Ireland on 27 November 1903.

Thomas's 'Backwards' is Out!

Slightly more than a year ago, 19 August, 2011, HTBS wrote about Sarah Megan Thomas and the making of her rowing movie Backwards in and around Philadelphia. Not only was she playing the lead role, Abi, but she had also written the film script and produced the film. Last Thursday, the film opened in Philadelphia, with some of the members of the U.S. women’s rowing team present at the premiere (see photos from Row2K here).

Above you can watch a video how the film was made, while below is a trailer of the film ~ enjoy!

View the 1950 Empire Games in New Zealand

After I had posted yesterday's piece about the 1950 rowing at the British Empire Games in New Zealand, I received an e-mail from Tim Koch who happily reported that he had found an interesting film on YouTube about the 1950 Games (see above). Tim writes that there is six minutes of rowing in this film (and it starts at 4min 25secs into the film). Tim says: 'It's great stuff though the close ups must have been filmed during practice. It shows that England were never in contention in the eights and that Australia won on the very last stroke.'

The film also shows the single sculls, the doubles, pairs and the coxed fours races. As I neglected to mention the results in the doubles, pairs and coxed fours in yesterday's post, here you are: Double Sculls: M.T. Wood and M.S. Riley, Australia, beat D. Simonson and J. Schneider, New Zealand, and J. Brown and J.W. Tinegate, England. Pairs: W.J. Lambert and J.W. Webster, Australia, beat H. Gould and D. Gould, Australia. Coxed Fours: New Zealand (bow W. Carroll, 2. W. James, 3. J. O'Brien, stroke E. Johnson and cox K. Fox) beat Australia (bow K.T. Gee, 2. C.W. Winkworth, 3. E.E. Elder, stroke L.E. Montgomery and cox D. McGonagle).

Tim also left a comment in yesterday's blog post: 'A footnote for rowing nerds: This crew used "fixed pin" (as opposed to "swivel") rowlocks at Henley and in New Zealand. They were the last crew to win the Grand using these.' In Swing Together: Thoughts on Rowing Dickie Burnell discusses the merits of fixed pins and swivels in an Appendix. While many believe that fixed pins were used by 'Orthodox' crews and the crews rowing 'Fairbairnism' used swivel rowlocks, it is not the case. In the beginning, Fairbairn had crews using fixed pins and Orthodox crews later used swivels. Before the English eight went to compete on Lake Karapiro, the crew debated if they were going to use fixed pins or swivels. As Tim writes, they came to use fixed pins in the race on Lake Karapiro.

For those of you who might be uncertain what a 'fixed pin' is there is a great film showing a Cambridge practice for the 1948 Boat Race where the Light Blues are using fixed pins while they are 'tubbing' and training in the boat.

CAMBRIDGE CREW IN TRAINING

‘Bert And Dickie’: Drama Or Farce?

Let's continue with the 1948 Olympic rowing from a little different angle. Here HTBS's Tim Koch writes about the BBC film Bert and Dickie (called Going for Gold in America):

It is normally advisable to take a ‘Dr Johnson’ approach to any drama centred on rowing. The 18th-century man of letters famously said:

‘Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s dancing on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.’

Films about rowing are rare and are rarely done well. Film makers prefer to make dramas about popular land based sports as the action sequences are considerably easier to shoot and edit to produce a reasonably convincing scene where an actor is portraying a top class athlete. As far as I know the only rowing sequence in a movie that convinces those who know about the sport is the Henley scene  in The Social Network. When ‘rowing dramas’ are made they tend to closely follow the clichés set out in the guide ‘How to Make a Rowing Movie’ on the now sadly inactive ‘Tideway Slug’.

Geoffrey Palmer is playing Dickie's father, the 1908 Olympic rowing champion 'Don' Burnell.

Bert and Dickie, however, threatened to be different. Firstly, it was made by the BBC who, famously, are rather good at this sort of period drama. Secondly, it had what film and TV people call ‘high production values’ that is, they spent time and money attempting to get it right. Thirdly, it employed some very talented actors in both lead and supporting roles. This included the wonderful Geoffrey Palmer who, as far as I know, had never appeared in anything bad – despite always playing much the same character. Finally, a large part of Britain and the world are in an ‘Olympic Mood’. At the present time many of us are susceptible to a ‘feel good story’ of plucky chaps winning against the odds. I wanted to like this programme.

The basic ingredients of a dramatic story are all there. An ‘odd couple’ are thrown together by circumstances not of their making. They do not like each other. There is social snobbery and economic deprivation. Eventually they learn to ‘pull together’ because they realise that they have a common goal and because they discover that they have a common problem. In this case, the problem is slightly mad fathers, Dickie’s dad representing the old order where it’s the taking part that counts, Bert’s dad representing the future, believing that winning is all. The tension on the Henley Reach is punctuated by gentle humour on land. There are several delightful cut aways to conversations between the Prime Minister and Chairman of the British Olympic Committee as they wrestle both with the great concepts and the mundane detail of the Games. There are funny and touching scenes where post war ‘austerity’ Britain attempts to make the best of things, especially in the presence of the over cossetted Americans. Unfortunately, the cutaway scenes where Bert’s banished girlfriend (a slightly superfluous role) watches the races from a TV shop in Scotland with a local policeman relaying the commentary to the crowds outside (and to the viewer of course) is an unsatisfactory device. Possibly it is some sort of homage to the British ‘Ealing’ comedies of the 1950s.

Of course, the eternal problem of a story ‘based on real events’ is that we all know how it ends. Thus we have to enjoy the journey that takes us to the predictable and inevitable conclusion – in this case Olympic glory and approval from respective fathers.

A review of this journey on Hear The Boat Sing must be slightly different to one in most other places. ‘Dramatic criticism’ is one part but for rowing historians there is also the question of the accuracy of people, events and objects.

How does Bert and Dickie work as a piece of entertainment? It is commonly observed that ‘drama’ is real life with the boring bits taken out. In this necessary process the characters can become slightly one-dimensional, emotions can, unnaturally, change in an instant and all difficulties are unrealistically permanently overcome. ‘B and D’ is not immune from these faults – but very few dramatic productions are. For me, these criticisms did not spoil my enjoyment of ‘the journey’ from start to finish. The combination of an intelligent script, good acting, high production values and wonderful cinematography (with light use of CGI) makes a very simple story work. It is, simply, a bit of fun. For Brits, still basking in post-Olympic Regatta success with their cynicism blunted, the pleasure is highlighted.

Was it ‘accurate’? In a couple of words – pretty much. Yes, the sculling was bad, we knew it was going to be, let’s accept it and move on. The boats and equipment seemed correct. The costumes were fine bar the inaccuracy, pointed out by Jack Beresford’s daughter, that her ‘father’ was portrayed wearing a brown suit at the Olympic Regatta! The stand in for the Leander clubhouse was a little over grand and the unimpressive Leander pontoon was replaced by the more substantial Eton Rafts but there is nothing ‘wrong’ with such things. The only inaccuracy that made me wince was when Don Burnell said that he won an Olympic gold medal in 1908 in ‘the men’s eights’. I am sure that Burnell senior would have never made such a 21st century gender distinction, it was like having the character say something like ‘you is well good’. On the other hand, I did actually learn something. The film portrayed Jack Beresford Jnr. as, in Chris Dodd’s words, ‘mentor rather than coach’. I would have dismissed this as one of the things film makers do to keep the story flowing had Chris not agreed that this was in fact the case.

I must further commend writer William Ivory (on the right) and director David Blair because, not only was their production reasonably accurate, but it was also brave in that it did not avoid introducing slightly difficult ideas for a non-rowing audience. In the best traditions of the BBC, there was little ‘dumbing down’. There were references to rowing’s contracted amateur – professional debate, detail on rigging and rowing technique, and a discussion on using the repêchage system to gain an advantage. These ideas could have easily been passed over to keep the interest of the least attentive viewer, something all too common in modern film and television.
 
The ‘clincher’ for me (and anyone associated with this blog) came with a scene towards the end, just before ‘the big race’. Bert is handed a note that says: ’Make the boat sing’. It almost made up for the over sentimental father-son reconciliations on the finish pontoon. However, Bert and Dickie, for all its predictably, is a dog that dances well.

There is a tribute to Bert and Dickie by ‘JBT’ on YouTube, here.