By admin QUESTION: Why did Elizabeth Taylor replace Vivien Leigh in the film Elephant Walk?
Elizabeth Taylor replaced Vivien Leigh in the film Elephant Walk (1954) because Leigh dropped out midway through production, citing a nervous breakdown.
The big-budget Paramount film, based on a 1948 novel by Digby George Gerahty, using the pen name Robert Standish, was originally scheduled to star Vivien Leigh and her then husband, Laurence Olivier.
Although it was not their usual prestige production, the story had obvious mass audience appeal. It bears some similarities to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which had been a big success in 1940 for Olivier, his co-star, Joan Fontaine, and director Alfred Hitchcock.
The overbearing presence of a dead father replaced the dead wife and a house was destroyed by a herd of stampeding elephants rather than a fire.
Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Finch star in Elephant Walk
Before filming began, Olivier pulled out of Elephant Walk owing to conflicting commitments, but Leigh decided to go ahead with her role as newlywed Ruth Wiley.
Olivier’s role as her husband, John, who owns a tea plantation, was given to Peter Finch.
Within days, Leigh called in sick, and soon afterwards dropped out of the film altogether. Her mental health issues could be traced back to 1948 and she was eventually diagnosed with manic depression, now termed bipolar disorder.
Biographers have claimed that Leigh was deeply affected by the role of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, which she played both on stage and in the film version released in 1951, for which she received a Best Actress Oscar. However, the role of a disturbed, fading beauty was a little too close to Leigh’s own character for comfort.
In the spring of 1953, MGM contractee Elizabeth Taylor returned to work after the birth of her son, Michael Wilding Jr, in the January. She was only 21 to Leigh’s 39, but a resemblance between the two in build and colouring allowed the location footage of Leigh, in distance shots, to be retained.
John Rutherford, Sevenoaks, Kent
Vivien Leigh, circa late 1930s
QUESTION: Where did the term hanky-panky originate?
Hanky-panky originated in the early 19th century as a slang term for legerdemain, the skilful use of one’s hands when performing magic tricks. It quickly took on a figurative use for dirty business, underhand business or double dealing.
The earliest recording of the term is in an edition of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol 1, from September 1841: ‘Only a little hanky-panky, my lud. The people likes it; they loves to be cheated before their faces. One, two, three — presto — begone.
‘I’ll show your ludship as pretty a trick of putting a piece of money in your eye and taking it out of your elbow, as you ever beheld.’
Its definition as ‘sexual activity or dalliance, especially of a surreptitious nature’ has been with us since the middle of the 20th century.
In George Bernard Shaw’s 1938 play Geneva, he wrote: ‘She: No hanky panky. I am respectable; and I mean to keep respectable. He: I pledge you my word that my intentions are completely honourable.’
Mike Woodbridge, Nottingham
Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw pictured in 1856
QUESTION: What were 18th-century ‘circuit riders’?
Circuit riders were itinerant ministers, mainly associated with the Methodist Church in America, who travelled on horseback to preach to rural, often isolated, communities.
As organised churches were scarce on the American frontier, circuit riders spread religious teachings, established congregations and provided spiritual care in areas lacking clergy.
Their routes could cover hundreds of miles and required immense dedication.
A key figure was Francis Asbury (1745-1816), whose efforts did much to assure the continuance of the church in the New World. He travelled 5,000 miles a year, establishing circuits of 25 or 30 meeting places, often huts or cabins.
Asbury also set up teams of preachers, brave young men willing to ride a horse for weeks over wild country. By the 1780s there were more than 100 circuits established across the frontier.
The life of a rider was tough: days and nights were spent in the wild, food had to be hunted, foraged or begged from strangers, and there was a constant threat of violence.
The movement had mostly died out by the 1840s. As the US prospered, more Methodists came to live in cities so that there was population enough for a church building.
Alison Crawley, Modbury, Devon