The Royal Film Performance: The Newsreel Years

As Ridley Scott's Gladiator II becomes the latest feature to be selected for the Royal Film Performance, Cinema Paradiso returns to the heyday of an annual gala that has raised millions of pounds for charity.

The Royal Family's earliest surviving encounter with the moving image took place at Balmoral Castle on 3 October 1896. Fitted with 60mm film, the camera had been built by T.J. Harrison of W&D Downey, who had been the Royal photographers since the 1860s. Queen Victoria was filmed riding along the terrace in a pony cart, as various children frolicked under the indulgent gaze of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra and the Duke and Duchess of Connaught.

On 23 November, Victoria got to see the footage in the Red Drawing Room at Windsor, where she confided in her diary, 'It is a very wonderful process, representing people, their movements and actions, as if they were alive.' The handcranked images can be found on the BFI website, but all trace has vanished of the 70mm record that Birt Acres made of the Prince and Princess of Wales visiting the Cardiff Industrial and Fine Art Exhibition on 27 June 1896. The future Edward VII had invited Acres and assistant Cecil Hepworth to screen the footage for 40 guests on 21 July and this event at Marlborough House has passed into history as the first Royal Command Film Performance.

An accompanying programme of 20 shorts was shown in a specially constructed marquee in the grounds. In addition to footage of the 1895 and 1896 Epsom Derby and the Henley Regatta, the Royal party also saw some boxing kangaroos, a speeding Northern Railway train, a chase sequence involving a pickpocket, and a display by Tom Merry the Lightning Artist, who sketched Prime Minister William Gladstone and the Leader of the Opposition, Lord Salisbury.

In November 1897, Queen Victoria was shown highlights from her Diamond Jubilee celebrations by H. J. Hitchins, who also arranged for an orchestra conducted by Leopold Wenzel to accompany a selection of

Lumière Cinématographe subjects. However, it wasn't until 1916 that a feature film was shown to a member of the Royal Family, when the Dowager Queen Alexandra saw Alma Taylor star in Cecil Hepworth's Comin' Through the Rye in the State Dining Room at Marlborough House on 4 August 1916.

Her son, George V, became the first reigning monarch to see a feature film, when Lew Waren was summoned to Buckingham Palace on 24 February 1917 to show Rex Wilson's adaptation of Tom Brown's Schooldays (1916), which has survived and can be seen for free on the BFI website. Yet, despite inaugurating the Royal Command Performance to aid of the Variety Artistes' Benevolent Fund in 1912, George didn't institute a similar annual event to benefit the Cinematograph Trade Benevolent Fund, which had been founded in 1924.

When Charles Laughton won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), however, the King and Queen Mary requested a private screening at the recently opened Odeon in Leicester Square. They also made the first Royal donation to the CTBF in 1936. The Succession crisis ensured that the mooted Royal Cine-Variety Performance was delayed, while the outbreak of the Second World War caused the inaugural event to be cancelled on 18 October 1939. Once peace returned, however, it was agreed that a glittering Royal Command Film Performance would do much to raise an embattled Britain's spirits and the newsreel cameras were invited along to ensure that the entire nation could join in.

The 1940s

Once it had been decided that the Royal Command Film Performance would be held at the Empire, Leicester Square on Friday 1 November 1946, discussions began in earnest over what to show to King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret. In the best British tradition, a viewing committee was formed to assess submissions and decide what would be suitable for such an august occasion, while also being of sufficient quality to keep the Royal party entertained.

Three films made the shortlist. Produced by MGM, but directed by Brummie Victor Saville, The Green Years was adapted from a novel by A.J. Cronin about an Irish orphan (Tom Drake) striving to convince his Scottish grandfather (Hume Cronyn) to let him study medicine. A biography by New Yorker Manuel Komroff inspired Bernard Knowles's The Magic Bow, which was produced by Gainsborough Pictures and had Stewart Granger miming to the playing of Yehudi Menuhin, as the 18th-century Italian violinist and composer, Niccolò Paganini.

But the committee voted in favour of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), an inspirational story about overcoming the trauma of war that was made all the more magical by a some cutting-edge special effects and a bold switch from Technicolor to monochrome that reversed the gambit employed by Victor Fleming in MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939). David Niven starred as the RAF pilot who falls in love with Kim Hunter's American radio operator, as his plane is about to crash. However, good friend Roger Livesey intervenes on his behalf in a celestial courtroom to give him a second chance at life.

The Daily Graphic was livid with the selection, as it insisted The Archers had pandered to Isolationist and anti-British sentiment in the United States. Had he still been prime minister, Winston Churchill might have intervened, as he had been furious with Powell and Pressburger for mocking the British officer class in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). But not only did Clement Attlee approve the choice, he also attended the screening, which was presaged by a reception at Claridge's. Gaumont newsreel cameras captured Ray Milland, Deborah Kerr, Dorothy Malone, Sally Gray, Joan Bennett, and Maria Montez among the guests, while so many gathered in Leicester Square that three policemen mounted on white horses were required to control the crowd.

It was a good-humoured occasion, however, even though Stewart Granger got buffeted fighting his way into the foyer, where John Mills was chatting with Michael Redgrave and his nine year-old daughter, Vanessa. Margaret Lockwood also brought her daughter and Margaret Julia was joined by Juliet Mills in presented bouquets to the queen and the princesses after it had taken 12 minutes for the Royal car to cross the square to the theatre. After the screening (which had followed a short stage show), a line-up of stars was presented to the Royal visitors, with Pat O'Brien, Bessie Love, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Bud Flanagan, and Will Hay featuring in the Pathé coverage. Kim Hunter and Reginald Gardiner were also present at a celebration that made the front cover of just about every newspaper the next day.

Delighted with the way things had gone, King George agreed to continue to tradition by attending Henry Koster's The Bishop's Wife at the Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square on 25 November 1947. Cinema Paradiso users might remember the What to Watch Next article about the story of an angel (Cary Grant) who befriends the wife (Loretta Young) of a bishop (David Niven) in order to refocus the episcopal perspective. Intriguingly, however, the film was banned from public screening under the import tax that had been imposed by the Labour government during the Bogart vs Bacon dispute that we discussed in The Third Man At 75.

This was the Royal Family's first public appearance since Princess Elizabeth had married Prince Philip five days earlier and they were accompanied by King Michael of Romania and Queen Ingrid of Denmark. Compèring the stage show, Kent-born Bob Hope presented Hollywood's wedding gift, an album of signed star photos. Despite having won an Academy Award for H.C. Potter's The Farmer's Daughter (1947), Young was incredibly nervous about meeting the Royals, especially as Noël Coward had replied when she had asked about how low she had to curtesy with, 'To the floor, ducky!'

Bristolian Cary Grant was notable by his absence. But it was close to midnight by the time the King and Queen took their leave of American guests Robert Montgomery and Bonar Colleano and such British stars as Patricia Roc, Margaret Lockwood, Valerie Hobson, Greta Gynt, John Mills, Stewart Granger, the Oliviers, Googie Withers and John McCallum, Lilli Palmer and Rex Harrison, Ann Todd, David Niven, Phyllis Calvert, Kieron Moore, and Michael Wilding and Anna Neagle. The newsreel reveals the young boy who presented the bouquet to Princess Margaret to have been John Howard Davies, who had just taken the lead in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948). He would go on become one of television's finest director-producers, working on such comedy classics as Steptoe and Son, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Goodies, Fawlty Towers, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Only Fools and Horses, Yes Minister, and Blackadder.

A reception at The Savoy gave the chosen few a chance to calm their nerves before attending the third Royal Command Film Performance, Charles Frend's Scott of the Antarctic, which was held on a foggy London night at the Empire Leicester Square on 30 November 1948. John Mills starred as Captain Robert Falcon Scott, whose 1910-13 bid to reach the South Pole coincided with that of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Among the other Terra Nova principals were Derek Bond as Lawrence Oates, Reginald Beckwith as Henry Robertson Bowers, James Robertson Justice as Edgar Evans, Harold Warrender as Edward Adrian Wilson, and Kenneth More as Edward Evans.

As George VI was gravely ill and Princess Elizabeth had just given birth to Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth was accompanied by Princess Margaret and the Duke of Edinburgh. While the concerned crowd gave the Royal party a sympathetic welcome, the newspapers picked up on the bedlam caused by the bobbysoxers screaming for Alan Ladd. He was one of several Hollywood names in attendance, including Virginia Mayo, Michael O'Shea, Joan Caulfield, and Billy De Wolfe, who appeared in the stage show that started the evening's entertainment. As Laurence Olivier was compèring the revue, he was handed a piece of paper and the cinema fell eerily silent. Fortunately, it was only a goodwill message from the King and the Queen, who had noticed Patricia Neal's distress on the stage, promised to pass on her best wishes to her husband.

As the newsreel footage shows, Ronald Reagan, Neal's co-star in Vincent Sherman's The Hasty Heart (1949), escorted wife Nancy Davis to the cinema. They joined a greeting line that included Robert Donat, Vivien Leigh, Googie Withers, Sid Field, John Mills, Margaret Lockwood, Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor, Myrna Loy, Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons, Jean Kent, Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray, Jack Hulbert, Valerie Hobson, Glynis Johns, Sue Carol, and studio mogul Jack L. Warner. French child actor Bobby Henrey, who had just excelled opposite Ralph Richardson in Carol Reed's Graham Greene adaptation, The Fallen Idol (1948), presented Queen Elizabeth with a bouquet.

Thankfully, King George was well enough to attend the fourth Royal Film Performance, which had lost its 'Command', as it had been deemed redundant because the Royals had no say in either the picture they watched or the stars assembled to meet them. Frustratingly, Compton Bennett's That Forsyte Woman is not available on disc in this country, where the film adapted from the novels of John Galsworthy was known as The Forsyte Saga. This title was recycled for the BBC's famous 1960s tele-version and Christopher Menaul's acclaimed 2002-03 remake.

Held on 17 November 1949, this was the only Royal Film Performance to be hosted by the Odeon Marble Arch and the King was accompanied by Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses. Despite an icy wind, it proved a nice family night out, as Princess Elizabeth sailed for Malta the next day to join Prince Philip, who had been stationed there by the Royal Navy. A crowd of 10,000 flocked to the venue and 600 police officers were required to keep order, as the great and the good of the film world raised £30,000 for the

Cinematograph Trade Benevolent Fund.

Emcee Ben Lyon narrated a special film that picked out stars Gregory Peck, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Ann Sothern, Rosalind Russell, George Murphy, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Richard Todd, Joan Dowling, John Mills, Margaret Lockwood, Michael Wilding, Bebe Daniels, Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Jean Kent, Stanley Holloway, Alec Guinness, Moira Lister, Ralph Richardson, Carol Reed, Anton Karas, Honor Blackman, and Jack Hulbert, as well as couples Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle, Googie Withers and John McCallum, Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim, and Trevor Howard and Helen Cherry. Each received an engraved sterling silver commemorative coin.

With over 30 household names on parade, this was perhaps the most star-studded of all Royal Film Performances, which even reunited the big picture's stellar trio of Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, and a bearded Errol Flynn. Although they didn't appear in any of the newsreel footage, Hollywood royalty in the form of Loretta Young, Ray Milland, and Esther Williams were photographed at a charity auction for the St Anne's Maternity Hospital for Unmarried Mothers. In addition to being the only one-off host of the annual Royal jamboree, the Odeon Marble Arch also has the dubious distinction of being the only venue to have disappeared. The imposing edifice was demolished in 1964 to make way for a state-of-the-art cinema. However, this fell victim to the Marble Arch Place scheme in 2016.

Also gone is The Ritz in Birkenhead, which had only recently been renovated after serious German bomb damage when it opened its doors to the first Royal Film Performance outside London. Although no members of the Royal Family travelled to Merseyside, Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon, Gregory Peck, Margaret Lockwood, Valerie Hobson, John McCallum, Christine Nordern, and Richard Todd made the trip. In addition to seeing the Galsworthy drama, the audience also got to enjoy a stage show featuring Nat Allen and His Orchestra, jugglers The Five Chinas, and the peerless music-hall dance trio, Wilson, Keppel and Betty. Ben Lyon also did a strip, while Peck and Lockwood sang a duet before the live segment ended with a chorus of 'Auld Lang Syne'.

The 1950s

The new decade began with controversy. Could the King watch a film in which his great-grandmother was portrayed by a Hollywood actress? The selection committee needn't have tied itself in knots, however, as Irene Dunne had made the unique request to meet George VI and Queen Elizabeth after she had been cast as Queen Victoria in Jean Negulesco's The Mudlark, which has been adapted from a novel by American journalist, Theodore Bonnet. Dunne had been keen to learn about Victoria's personality and mannerisms and the King had been pleased to help and met with the actress at Windsor Castle.

The story was loosely rooted in fact and centres on Wheeler (Andrew Ray), an orphan who makes a living scavenging from the Thames mudbanks. Having heard that Queen Victoria (Dunne) is the mother of the nation, he makes his way to Windsor, where she is in mourning for her late husband, Prince Albert. Despite the entreaties of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (Alec Guinness) and trusted Scottish ghillie, John Brown (Finlay Currie), the Queen refuses to return to public duties. Until she meets the young intruder...

Monday 30 October 1950 was cold and rainy. But a crowd of around 8000 still gathered outside the Empire Leicester Square to greet the Royal party. Queen Elizabeth and princesses Elizabeth and Margaret wore black to mark the passing of the Swedish king and their dresses contrasted strikingly with the brighter colours worn by the assembled guests. By all accounts, there had been friction between some of the visiting Hollywood stars and the CTBF organisers about seating arrangements and positioning in the greeting line, with some in the press warning that the Royal Film Performance could be scrapped if the event was going to be hijacked by squabbling celebrities.

The King himself had intervened when film industry grandees had debated whether to cut scenes that might cause offence to the Royal Family. Indeed, George VI insisted on seeing the same version as the public (although his mother, Queen Mary, requested a private screening of her own to ensure that protocols had been observed). According to the stars interviewed by the press, the King had particularly enjoyed the show, with Dunne revealing that he had asked about the latex make-up that had taken two hours to apply each morning to age her for the part of the fiftysomething monarch. Comedian Ted Ray also divulged that Queen Elizabeth had told his son, Andrew, not to worry about forgetting to call her 'Your Highness', as it was difficult to remember such things when one is excited.

Among the decent turnout of homegrown talent were Alec Guinness, Glynis Johns, Valerie Hobson, Jean Kent, Margaret Lockwood, Michael Wilding, Ray Milland, Petula Clark, Richard Attenborough, Richard Todd, and John Mills, while the Hollywood contingent included Vera-Ellen, Claudette Colbert, Tyrone Power, Montgomery Clift, James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, and Gloria Swanson, who had just made a sensational comeback as Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950). She and Clift made the trek to the Cardiff Empire later in the week for a regional screening that attracted such British names as Terry-Thomas, Lisa Daniely, Richard Murdoch, Beatrice Campbell, Googie Withers and John McCallum, Valerie Hobson, Petula Clark, and Jack Warner, who had just played the role for which he would forever be synonymous, PC George Dixon, in Basil Dearden's The Blue Lamp (1950).

Sadly, the 1950 Royal Film Performance was to be the last the King would attend with his wife and daughters. Such was the decline in his health that he had to make do with a home screening of Harry Watt's Where No Vultures Fly (1951). The press had objected to the selection of this Ealing drama, which paired Anthony Steel and Dinah Sheridan in the story of a game warden attempting to set up an animal sanctuary in East Africa. Many had expected the CTBF committee to have plumped for the Festival of Britain feature, John Boulting's The Magic Box, which was the subject of one of Cinema Paradiso's What to Watch Next articles. Others, however, had lobbied for Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle's Florence Nightingale biopic, The Lady With a Lamp, while Carol Reed's An Outcast of the Islands, Brian Desmond Hurst's Scrooge, Anthony Kimmins's Mr Denning Drives North, and the multi-directored Encore had also been mentioned in dispatches, alongside such Hollywood fare as William Wyler's Carrie, George Stevens's A Place in the Sun, and Jean Renoir's The River.

A few days after Winston Churchill had returned to 10 Downing Street, Bonfire Night proved cold and damp at the Odeon Leicester Square. As Princess Elizabeth was in Malta, Princess Margaret accompanied her mother and had to intervene when Lisbeth Scott was accidentally introduced as Zachary Scott, who was standing next to her in the line-up. Jane Russell stole the show in a red velvet gown, although Van Johnson's red socks caught the eye of Princess Margaret, who was embarking upon the romance with Group Captain Peter Townsend that would be re-enacted by Vanessa Kirby and Ben Mills in the first two seasons of The Crown (2016-17).

Among the Hollywood attendees spotted in the Pathé and Movietone newsreel coverage were Joan Rice, Dan Duryea, Fred MacMurray, Orson Welles, and Marlene Dietrich, while the Brits included Peggy Cummins, Peter Lawford, Robert Beatty, Merle Oberon, Margaret Rutherford, Hermione Baddeley, Jean Kent, Elizabeth Taylor, and Michael Wilding, whose own age-gap romance would lead to matrimony within the year.

By the time of the next Royal Film Performance on 27 October 1952, King George had lost his battle with cancer and Elizabeth II had ascended the throne. Over 20,000 fans thronged outside the Empire Leicester Square to see the new queen arrive with the Duke of Edinburgh. But there was no sign of Mario Lanza, the singing star of Alexander Hall's Because You're Mine, which had been roundly condemned in the British press for being a 'second-rate American army barrack-room burlesque' and 'the most banal and tasteless' picture ever chosen for the CTBF gala.

Despite the brickbats, the chance to be present at Queen Elizabeth's first Royal Film Performance brought several major stars to the West End. Charlie Chaplin, who had just released Limelight (see our What to Watch Next article ), was almost as popular with the crowd and the press as the Royals and he relished being back on home turf. Gene Kelly, Kirk Douglas, Rock Hudson, Evelyn Keyes, and Yvonne De Carlo represented Hollywood, with the latter being so starstruck by Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh that she enlisted Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. to introduce her so that she could ask for their autographs.

Among the other familiar British faces were John Mills, Margaret Lockwood, Jack Warner, Googie Withers and John McCallum, Valerie Hobson, Petula Clark, Veronica Hurst, Joan Dowling, Harry Fowler, Richard Todd, Peggy Cummins, James Hayter, John Bentley, and Celia Johnson, whose six year-old daughter, Kate, presented Her Majesty with a bouquet. By all accounts, the Royal sisters didn't think much of the film and were reported to have been seen giggling at scenes that were not intended to be amusing.

Such rumours put added pressure on industry bigwigs like J. Arthur Rank, Reginald Bromhead, and Robert Wolff to come up with something more befitting the Coronation year edition at the Odeon on 27 October 1953. Once again, however, the papers had misgivings, as Harold French's Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue featured scenes of Scottish Jacobite Rob Roy MacGregor (Richard Todd) leading clan forces against the troops of King George I (Eric Pohlmann), who required an interpreter, as he only spoke German. As the picture had been produced by Walt Disney, there was nothing overtly subversive suggested by an adventure story that had been filmed in the Highlands. But the press protested that Queen Elizabeth should have been spared such manifestations of historical dissent so early in her reign.

While 60 stars had fought for the spotlight the previous autumn, a more manageable 19 turned up on a crisp night to participate in the stage show produced by director Anthony Kimmins. Disney also added a live-action short, Bear Country, to the programme, which also contained the Mr Magoo cartoon, Safety Spin, and The Figurehead, an animation by John Halas and Joy Batchelor, the husband-and-wife team whose career Cinema Paradiso celebrated in Animal Farm At 70.

Prince Philip and Princess Margaret joined the Queen in greeting American box-office favourites like Gary Cooper, Jeanne Crain, Dennis O'Keefe, and Richard Basehart, as well as veteran studio head, Adolph Zukor. Alongside Richard Todd and Glynis Johns, co-stars James Robertson Justice and Finlay Currie wore kilts for the occasion and drew admiring glances from the Royal trio, as well as compatriots Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness, George Cole, child star Mandy Miller, Moira Shearer; Kenneth More and Kay Kendall, who may have been disappointed that Henry Cornelius's Genevieve had not been chosen for such a glamorous showcase.

Sadly, neither Rob Roy nor Curtis Bernhardt's Beau Brummell is currently available on disc in the UK. Given the furore caused by their selection for the Royal Film Performance, this is not perhaps surprising. A frequent attendee at the gala, Stewart Granger took the role of the eponymous Regency dandy. But it wasn't his decadent lifestyle that appalled the press, but a scene in which King George III (Robert Morley) tries to throttle the Prince of Wales (Peter Ustinov) during a manic episode.

One paper opined, 'Whoever chose it deserves the Order of the Royal Boot,' while others wondered why, after years of boring the Royal Family, the CTBF selection panel had elected to embarrass it instead. Rumours circulated that the Palace was running out of patience and that the entire event might be removed from the Royal diary.

In his autobiography, Dear Me, Ustinov explained that the film had been picked 'because the committee in charge of such events decided that nothing interested royalty more than royalty. It was only when Robert Morley as George III attempted to strangle me - a most realistic performance - that suddenly a hideous doubt sprang up in the minds of those responsible that the sight of one of the Queen's not-too-distant ancestors attempting to strangle another one in a fit of insanity was perhaps not the happiest of diversions for Her Majesty, and the press the next day bubbled with that particular form of pious hypocrisy which has marked all recent British scandals, large or small.'

The offending scene had been removed, however, before Queen Elizabeth arrived at the Empire on 16 November 1954. Ustinov produced the brief stage show, which was followed by Tonight in Britain, a 20-minute short about the shows playing in London, which included clips of Hattie Jacques belting out 'My Old Man Said Follow the Van' at the Players' Theatre music hall and Jean Carson singing the praises of the capital at the Café de Paris.

Pathé went to town with a bumper edition of its newsreel that was narrated by Jack Hawkins. He cracked showbizzy jokes while pointing out such stars as Shelley Winters, Jane Russell, Anna Neagle, John Mills, Michael Redgrave, Jean Simmons, Susan Steel, Peter Finch, Brenda De Banzie, John Gregson, Ronald Shiner, Donald Sinden, Jack Warner, Freddie Mills, Susan Stephens, Janette Scott, and Valentina Cortese. Despite the jovial tone, however, the Queen and Prince Philip beat a hasty retreat and the monarch informed Sir Winston Churchill during their weekly audience that she had not been amused by the screening.

As a consequence, Sir Frank Lee, the Permanent Secretary at the Board of Trade, wrote a sternly worded memo, which read: 'There is no doubt at all that the quality of the films shown to HM on the last four occasions (which I have also had the misfortune to attend) ranged from the mediocre down to the vulgar and distressing. The whole evening is a long and garish ordeal; it is not surprising that both HM herself and most outside critics should ask whether the selection of the main film to be shown could not be radically improved.'

The advice was taken, as the picture chosen for the 10th edition was Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief. Moreover, it was also decided to ditch the stage revue and reduce the length of the meet-and-greet line. Thus, it was a smiling Queen who emerged from her car outside the Odeon on 31 October 1955, as she knew there would be no trick to spoil her treat.

Hitchcock and wife Alma Reville were presented to the Royal party, while the Movietone footage picked out Ava Gardner, Katy Jurado, Rossano Brazzi, and Gina Lollobrigida, alongside such British stalwarts as Kenneth More, Richard Attenborough, Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, and Peter Ustinov. However, the cameras seemed more interested in such starlets as Diana Dors, Belinda Lee, Virginia McKenna, June Thorburn, and Janette Scott. Unfortunately, neither Cary Grant nor Grace Kelly attended, although the latter did have a royal wedding to plan in Monaco.

A decade after they had helped launch the institution, Powell and Pressburger had the honour of becoming the first film-makers to be chosen for the Royal Film Performance twice. Screening at the Empire Leicester Square on 29 October 1956, The Battle of the River Plate recalled the pursuit of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, by three Royal Navy cruisers, HMS Ajax, HMS Exeter, and HMS Achilles. Her Majesty was accompanied by Princess Margaret and Lord Mountbatten, who particularly enjoyed meeting some of the veterans from the engagement in the South Atlantic.

The paparazzi, however, were more interested in three blonde guests, even though Marilyn Monroe and Anita Ekberg were accompanied by their husbands, Arthur Miller and Anthony Steel. Those familiar with Simon Curtis's My Week With Marilyn (2011) will know that Monroe was in London to make The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Laurence Olivier. He didn't attend the gala and, thus, missed the chance to meet Brigitte Bardot, who had just become the talk of Europe in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman (1956).

The large crowd outside the cinema also delighted in seeing the Hollywood quartet of Joan Crawford, Arlene Dahl, Vera-Ellen, and Victor Mature. The newsreel crews also made sure cinemagoers noted the presence of Norman Wisdom, A.E. Matthews, Sylvia Syms, Laurence Harvey, and Dinah Sheridan, alongside two of the film's stars, John Gregson and Anthony Quayle.

Although Gene Kelly had previously attended the Royal Film Performance, he was otherwise detained when George Cukor's Les Girls screened at the Odeon on 4 December 1957. As the newsreel shows, Queen Elizabeth, Prinee Philip, and Princess Alexandra entered the cinema without acknowledging the large crowd cheering them from Leicester Square. Indeed, the majority of those waiting in the cold were more eager to catch a glimpse of Tommy Steele, the rock'n'roll singer-cum-actor whose invitation suggested that the Royal Film Performance had moved on from the old stagers of British show business and now afforded an opportunity for the Royal guests to become acquainted with those who had made their names over the previous year.

Jack Hawkins and Kenneth More still answered the call, as did Victor Mature, who represented Hollywood alongside the legendary director, Cecil B. DeMille. Sophia Loren was the face of continental cinema, while the British crowd included Jill Ireland and David McCallum, Yvonne Mitchell, Heather Sears, George Baker, Stanley Baker, Michael Craig, Anne Heywood, and Dorothy Tutin.

During the following year, Queen Elizabeth met Sophia Loren again at the Royal Film Premiere of Carol Reed's The Key on 29 May. She also shook hands with Frank Sinatra on 10 October at the Royal Film Premiere of Peter Glanville's Me and the Colonel. Both events took place at the Odeon Leicester Square, but there was no Royal Film Performance in 1958.

The occasion returned in February 1959, when Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret came to the Empire Leicester Square to see Ronald Neame's adaptation of Joyce Carey's The Horse's Mouth. Alec Guinness is on fine form in this comedy about Gulley Jimson, an eccentric artist who lives on a houseboat and doesn't care whom he upsets or inconveniences, so long as he gets the picture he wants.

Curiously, while Guinness and Kay Walsh are identified in the newsreel as the stars of the film, the title isn't mentioned once. The focus falls more on the assembled stars, with Lauren Bacall being the pick of the Hollywood visitors. Richard Todd, Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Janette Scott, Peter Arne, Frankie Vaughan, June Cunningham, Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers, Max Bygravees, and Ian Carmichael are all spotted by the camera. The commentator also reveals that the Queen Mother spoke in French to veteran star Maurice Chevalier, who had just reminded audiences of his insouciant talent in Vincente Minnelli's Gigi (1959). Presumably, when asked about the encounter in later years, the boulevardier replied, 'Ah, yes. I remember it well.'

The 1960s

The decision to switch the Royal Film Performance to the spring meant that Queen Elizabeth had to miss out on Daniel Mann's The Last Angry Man at the Odeon Leicester Square on 28 March 1960, as she had just given birth to Prince Andrew. In her place, the Duke of Edinburgh was accompanied by the Duchess of Kent and Princess Alexandra and they saw a worthy, but rather forgotten drama about a TV executive seeking to rescue his career by profiling a doctor who tends to the marginalised in a rundown neighbourhood.

This is notable primarily for being the final film starring Paul Muni, who had headlined Howard Hawks's Scarface (1932) and won an Oscar for William Dieterle's The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936). Neither Muni nor David Wayne could be persuaded to cross the Atlantic, leaving Carol Lesley, Richard Todd, Leslie Caron, Mylène Demongeot, Nancy Kwan, Terry-Thomas, Kenneth More, Marla Landi, Charlie Drake, and Noël Coward to fight for the attention of the newsreel cameras when they weren't focussed on Britain's new rock idol, Cliff Richard.

The sense that the Royal Film Performance was becoming a photo op for fading or rising celebrities was becoming irresistible, as cinema started to lose its lustre and crowds became keener to see pop singers and television personalities than movie stars. The CTBF didn't help its own cause by continuing to select pictures that nobody really wanted to see. For the third year in a row, the Pathé newsreel didn't even mention the title of the film that had brought the Royal party to the West End. But the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and her husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones, seemed pleased enough to be out meeting 18 stars on 2 February 1961, even if their enthusiasm for the prospect of seeing Bob Hope and Lucille Ball in Melvin Frank's The Facts of Lifedidn't fill them with great enthusiasm, even though Ball had received a Golden Globe nomination and the picture had been recognised in five craft categories at the Academy Awards.

Among those on their best behaviour in the Odeon's Circle Lounge were John Mills, Adam Faith, Shirley-Anne Field, Max Bygraves, Kenneth More, Jack Hawkins, Warren Beatty, and Joan Collins. Intriguingly, someone had mischievously invited Tony Hancock and Sidney James, even though their long-running association had come to an end at Hancock's behest the previous year. Fortunately, they were positioned at opposite ends of the line-up, with Sid being joined by his frequent Carry On co-star, Liz Frazer.

History was made the following year, as Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins's West Side Story became the first title chosen for the Royal Film Performance to have won the Oscar for Best Picture. In fact, it took 10 awards in all for its thrilling reworking of the Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein musical that had itself been inspired by William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. See Cinema Paradiso's What to Watch Next item on Steven Spielberg's 2021 remake.

Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon accompanied Queen Elizabeth to the Odeon on 1 May 1962, where they were presented to Robert Wise and cast members Russ Tamblyn, Richard Beymer, and George Chakiris. Reflecting the growing popularity of what would become known as 'arthouse cinema', Leslie Caron, Dany Robin, Melina Mercouri, and Claudia Cardinale added some continental élan to Pathé's first colour record of the event, while German Horst Buchholz reunited with Yul Brynner, his compadre from John Sturges's The Magnificent Seven (1960). With Beatlemania still a year away, Cliff Richard and Pat Boone competed for the clean-cut singer spotlight, while Goon Peter Sellers took his place alongside fellow Brits, Richard Todd, Richard Attenborough, Sylvia Syms, Janet Munro, and Peter Finch.

As the Empire had been remodelled, the Odeon Leicester Square became the official base of the Royal Film Performance. However, Alexander Mackenrick's Sammy Going South was the last to benefit the Cinematograph Trade Benevolent Fund, as it changed its name in 1964 to the Cinema & Television Benevolent Fund, This, too, would be rethought in 2017, when the Film and Television Charity came into being.

On 2 February 1963, the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon, Princess Alexandra, and her fiancé, Angus Ogilvy, went up West to see whether world-weary hunter, Cocky Wainwright (Edward G. Robinson), could help 10 year-old Sammy Hartland (Fergus McClelland) find his Aunt Jane in the South African city of Durban after his parents had been killed in an air raid on Port Said. Robinson was proudly protective of McClelland during the evening and they were joined by co-star Orlando Martins, who would seem to have been the first Black actor to be presented to the Royals at a Film Performance.

Everyone seemed pleased to see 1930s star Jessie Matthews in the line-up (rent any of her films from Cinema Paradiso and you won't be disappointed), alongside Norman Wisdom, James Robertson Justice, Liselotte Pulver, and Richard Todd, who was becoming as ubiquitous as John Mills, who brought along his Disney-starring daughter, Hayley, to watch him compère the stage show.

Todd would also be in his best bib and tucker in February 1964, when the Odeon welcomed the Duke of Edinburgh to see Michael Gordon's Move Over, Darling. While James Garner was on hand with wife Lois Clark, there was no sign of Doris Day. Or of Elizabeth II, who was heavily pregnant with Prince Edward. Samantha Eggar and George Peppard were over from the States, while Britt Ekland and Sylva Koscina mingled with such British stars as Millicent Martin, Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, Leslie Phillips, Stanley Baker, Margaret Rutherford, and Honor Blackman, who was seen on the newsreel in animated conversation with Prince Philip.

With the Pathé and Movietone segments rarely running more than two minutes, it's a source of frustration that so much time is taken up annually by recurring shots of the Royal car gliding up to the Odeon and its occupants being glad-handed by such industry worthies as Reginald and Ralph Bromhead, J. Arthur Rank, John Davis, and Cecil Bernstein.

Wives were added to this foyer party during the 1960s, but the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon, and Prince William of Gloucester quickly made their way to the Odeon staircase on 15 February 1965 to meet the fine turn out of stars from Richard Brooks's rousing adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. Along with Peter O'Toole, James Mason, Curd Jürgens, and Daliah Lavi, Jean Simmons got to accompany her new director spouse after having previously attended on several occasions on the arm of ex-husband, Stewart Granger.

Following the fortunes of a merchant seaman as he strives to rebuild his reputation after being accused of cowardice, this all-action epic was typical of the kind of big-screen prestige product that Hollywood executives hoped would lure viewers away from their TV sets and back into cinemas. Hence, the number of studio suits who had to be negotiated inside the door of the Circle Lounge before the Royals could get to chinwag with such stellar thesps as Sean Connery and Diane Cilento, Robert Morley, Susannah York, Maximilian Schell, Marie-José Nat, Peter Finch, and Sid James.

Although London was now the epicentre of the Swinging Sixties, the Royal Film Performance remained unruffled. Indeed, the images captured by the monochrome newsreel cameras at the Odeon on 14 March 1966 differed little from those at previous galas, as the grand old men of British cinema welcomed Queen Elizabeth and the Duke and Duchess of Kent. They had come to see James Hill's Born Free, which had been adapted from Joy Adamson's account of how she and her husband, George, has reared an orphaned lion cub in the wilds of Africa. Married co-stars Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers graced the occasion. although things might have been livelier had they brought Elsa along.

Three other couples caught the camera's eye, as Laya Raki and Ron Randell, Leslie Caron and Warren Beatty, and Rachel Roberts and Rex Harrison joined the line-up. But the organisers had clearly gone down the glamour route in the hope of making a few front pages, as Ursula Andress, Raquel Welch, Catherine Deneuve, and Julie Christie were pursued by the paparazzi. The latter had just won the Oscar for Best Actress for John Schlesinger's Darling (1965) and co-star Dirk Bogarde made an overdue debut at the Royal Film Performance, alongside James Fox, Woody Allen, Christopher Lee, and Carl Foreman, the American writer-producer who had been accused of Communist sympathies during the HUAC witch-hunt. He had been blacklisted along with Lester Cole, a member of the Hollywood Ten, who had been forced to pen Born Free under the pseudonym, Gerald L.C. Copley, which made this a politically bold choice for a charity event attended by the monarch.

Acting royalty rather put Princess Margaret in the shade on 27 February 1967, as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton braved the pouring rain to see Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew. Hollywood's original power couple, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, had headlined the first sound version of Shakespeare's play in 1929, but the battling Burtons brought their unique insight to the roles of Petruchio and Katharina, as they traded barbs in 16th-century Padua.

The picture earned Oscar nominations for its handsome production design and costumes and the gladrags were in plentiful evidence among the guests in the Circle Lounge. The newsreel commentator identified Mia Farrow as 'Mrs Frank Sinatra', as she lined up alongside Virna Lisi, Gina Lollobrigida, Jean Seberg, Charlotte Rampling, and Martha Hyer, as well as such male stars as Laurence Harvey, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, John Mills, Stanley Baker, Zero Mostel, and Tom Courtenay. But it was Burton and Taylor who brought the 'wow' factor back to a gala that had rather slipped into a rut.

The following year saw Franco Zeffirelli make history by becoming the first solo director to have two works chosen for the Royal Film Performance. His record has since been beaten, however, by Charles Jarrott ( Anne of the Thousand Days, 1970; Mary, Queen of Scots, 1972; Lost Horizon, 1973) and Steven Spielberg ( Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977; Empire of the Sun, 1988; Always, 1989).

Showing on 7 March 1968, as Prince Charles joined his parents for the first time, Romeo and Juliet also broke the taboo of exposing the Royals to nudity. In 2022, however, co-stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey sued Paramount Pictures for coercing them into disrobing for the bedroom scene when they were just 17 and 16 respectively, only for the civil suits seeking multi-million dollar damages to be dismissed by judges Alison Mackenzie in May 2023 and Holly J. Fujie in October 2024.

Zeffirelli and his actors were among the usual roster of stars at the Odeon. Richard Attenborough had now replaced John Mills and Richard Todd as the most expected attendee, but Peter Ustinov, Joan Collins, and Tommy Steele also returned alongside Roger Moore, David Hemmings, Carol White, Danny Kaye, and the Israeli duo of Chaim Topol and Daliah Lavi. Reinforcing the impression that guests were now being invited more for their newsworthiness than their status, Patrick Macnee escorted Linda Thorson to the show to publicise the fact that she had replaced Diana Rigg in The Avengers (1961-91).

A whiff of scandal also pervaded proceedings in February 1969, as Ronald Neame's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie became the first X-rated Royal film. However, the prospect proved irresistible for the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon, Princess Alexandra, and Prince Michael of Kent, whose entry into the Odeon foyer was accompanied by Scottish pipers.

Adapted from a novel by Muriel Spark, the story takes place in 1930s Edinburgh, where Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith) teaches at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls. Headmistress Miss Mackay (Celia Johnson) disapproves of her views on politics and culture and her dalliances with the music and art teachers, Gordon Lowther (Gordon Jackson) and the married Teddy Lloyd (Robert Stephens). But it's one of the 'Brodie Set', Sandy (Pamela Franklin), who sees through Miss Brodie's cant about cultivating the 'crème de la crème'.

Maggie Smith (who would win an Oscar for her impeccably judged portrayal) and husband Robert Stephens joined Pamela Franklin and Ronald Neame at the screening, which also attracted such stars as Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts, Roger Moore, Nyree Dawn Porter, Ron Moody, Melina Mercouri, Linda Harrison, Irina Demick, Richard Zanuck, Michael Redgrave, Robert Vaughn, and Peter Sellers. British Movietone recorded the event in colour, but Pathé News stuck to black and white for what would be its last hurrah after 22 editions of what its commentators had consistently called 'the biggest night in the cinema year'.

Movietone would continue throughout the 1970s, although Thames Television stole a march by presenting colour specials throughout the decade, which combined interviews with Chris Kelly and a commentary on the ceremonial by Judith Chalmers. But it was the end of an era, as the annual gala lost its monochrome mystique and some believed that the same fate befell the Windsors on 21 June 1969 after 38 million subjects had tuned in to watch Royal Family, a documentary that went behind the scenes of The Firm at work and play. Nevertheless, the Royal Film Performance remains a fixture on the Palace calendar and Cinema Paradiso shall return to its post-60s presentations at a later date.