BOOTLEG FILES 937: “Fallen Angels” (1974 British television version of the Noel Coward comedy starring Joan Collins and Susannah York).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Maybe someday.
One of the hottest tickets on Broadway today is the revival of Noel Coward’s 1925 comedy “Fallen Angels,” starring Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara is Tony Award-nominated performances. But if you can’t make it to Broadway – or if you can but don’t want to pay elevated prices to see that show – I would like to direct your attention to a 1974 British television of “Fallen Angels” starring Joan Collins and Susannah York.
And I bet I know what you’re thinking. It’s either (1) “Wow, I didn’t know there was a British TV version of that play” and/or (2) “Joan Collins and Susannah York doing Noel Coward – this I have to see.”
Yes, I freely admit I had those two thoughts when I discovered this was on YouTube. But then I had a third thought after watching the production: “Well, that didn’t work.”
The material is slight to the point of being gossamer. The upper-middle-class Julia (Susannah York) is happy to see her husband Fred (Michael Aldridge) depart for a weekend’s golf trip with his friend and upstairs neighbor Willy (Ronald Fraser). Willy’s wife, Jane (Joan Collins) arrives at Julia’s apartment in a fright – she just received a postcard from Maurice, a French lover she had prior to her marriage. Julia was also in a relation with Maurice prior to her marriage to Fred.
In his postcard, Maurice announces he has arrived in London and would like to stop by to see them. The women are thrown into a panic, uncertain if they will be able to resist Maurice’s considerable charms. They initially plan to pack their bags and leave before Maurice arrives, but then decide to stay and see if he can still romance them.
The women get drunk on cocktails and champagne in Julia’s apartment while anticipating Maurice’s arrival. But the alcohol unleashes the women’s rivalry for Maurice’s attention and they have a major quarrel. Jane storms out after harsh words are exchanged.
The next morning, Julia imagines that Jane ran off with Maurice. When Willy comes to the apartment looking for his wife, Julia tells him that Jane left him for Maurice. But she didn’t – she spent the night alone at a hotel, and on her way home she ran into Fred and told him that Julia ran off with Maurice. Jane and Fred arrive to find Julia and Willy, and the situation runs the risk of being an emotional calamity before Maurice turns up. He assures the husbands he is not running off with their wives, but states that he took an upstairs apartment. Maurice invites the couple to see his new flat – the men decline, but the women accept the invitation. As the husbands try to make sense of what occurred, they hear Maurice and their wives upstairs singing a romantic French tune.
Part of the problem with this version of “Fallen Angels” is having half of the Noel Coward source material chopped out. On stage, the comedy runs for two hours. But for the Anglia TV presentation, the material has been truncated to a very tight 51 minutes. As a result, the pacing and balance of Coward’s composition is significantly compressed, with the story unfolding so quickly that the characters barrel through the material in a preposterously comic style rather than allowing their comedy of errors unfold properly.
It also doesn’t help that Joan Collins and Susannah York are playing their roles as if they are trying to knock the socks off the audience members is the last row of the balcony. Had this been done on stage, they would have created memorable theater. But this was a television production that was mostly framed in close-up and medium shots, and the camera magnifies their overdone acting, doing the women and their fans no great favors. Donald McWhinnie is credited as the director, and it is a shame that he couldn’t calibrate Collins and York to fit the parameters of their medium.
In comparison, Michael Aldridge’s Fred and Ronald Fraser’s Willy are perfectly understated, and they come across as such nice men that it is difficult to comprehend why they would want to be married to such loud and silly women. But the real fun is Lally Bowers as Saunders, the sophisticated maid whose vast intellect and droll sense of humor makes her employers look like ninnies. She is the ultimate gem, a comedy supporting player who steals the show with effortless ability.
As for the object who sparks the women into a frenzy, French singer Sacha Distel is only on screen for a few minutes. He’s an amiable but dull man with a Shemp Howard haircut, and Distel’s mild presence offers no clue that his character could be a hot-blooded lover.
“Fallen Angels” was co-produced by Ron Kass, who was married to Collins at the time and would later produce her films “The Stud” (1978) and “The Bitch” (1979). Collins was still a few years away from her career reinvention as Alexis on “Dynasty,” and “Fallen Angels” was a relatively rare prestige production that came when her career was being wasted in B-movies and TV guest appearances.
I am unaware of “Fallen Angels” ever being shown on American television, nor have I found it on an American DVD or Blu-ray label. You can see it in this unauthorized posting on YouTube, but quite frankly I wouldn’t make it a priority:
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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