The Mudlark
Encyclopedia
The Mudlark is a 1950 film
1950 in film
The year 1950 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 15 - Walt Disney Studios' animated film Cinderella debuts.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:*Ambush...

 made in Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 by 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...

, is a fictionalized account of how Queen Victoria was eventually brought out of her mourning for her dead husband, Prince Albert. It was directed by Jean Negulesco
Jean Negulesco
Jean Negulesco was a Romanian-born American film director and screenwriter....

, written and produced by Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures.Johnson was born in Columbus, Georgia. He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Herald Tribune...

 and based on the 1949 novel of the same name by American artillery sergeant and newspaperman Theodore Bonnet (1908–1983). It starred Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama...

, Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE was an English actor. He was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. He later won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai...

 and Andrew Ray
Andrew Ray
Andrew Ray was an English actor who was best known as a child star.He was born Andrew Olden , in North London, the son of the famous radio comic Ted Ray and his wife, showgirl Dorothy...

.

"Mudlark
Mudlark
A Mudlark is someone who scavenges in river mud for items of value, especially in London during the late 18th and 19th centuries.Mudlarks would search in the muddy shores of the River Thames during low tide, scavenging for anything that could be resold and sometimes, when occasion offered,...

s" were street children who survived by scavenging and selling what they could find on the banks of the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...

. The film was a hit in Britain and made an overnight star of Andrew Ray, who played the title character.

Plot

A young street urchin (Andrew Ray
Andrew Ray
Andrew Ray was an English actor who was best known as a child star.He was born Andrew Olden , in North London, the son of the famous radio comic Ted Ray and his wife, showgirl Dorothy...

), half-starved and homeless, finds a locket containing the likeness of Queen Victoria (Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama...

). Not recognizing her, he is told that she is the "mother of all England." Taking the remark literally, he journeys to Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...

 to see her.

When he is caught by the palace guards, the boy is mistakenly thought to be part of an assassination plot against the Queen. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE was an English actor. He was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. He later won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai...

) realizes that the boy is innocent and pleads for him in Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...

, delivering a speech that indirectly criticizes the Queen for withdrawing from public life. The Queen is infuriated by the speech, but she is genuinely moved upon meeting the boy for the first time, and once again enters public life. Disraeli's long speech in the House of Commons (lasting 6½ minutes) appears to be uninterrupted by cutting - a remarkable feat by Guinness.

Cast

  • Irene Dunne
    Irene Dunne
    Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama...

     as Queen Victoria
  • Alec Guinness
    Alec Guinness
    Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE was an English actor. He was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. He later won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai...

     as Benjamin Disraeli
  • Andrew Ray
    Andrew Ray
    Andrew Ray was an English actor who was best known as a child star.He was born Andrew Olden , in North London, the son of the famous radio comic Ted Ray and his wife, showgirl Dorothy...

     as Wheeler
  • Beatrice Campbell
    Beatrice Campbell
    Beatrice Campbell was a British stage and film actress. She was born in County Down, Northern Ireland.-Career:After a distinguished London stage career, Campbell entered film in the mid-1940s...

     as Lady Emily Prior
  • Finlay Currie
    Finlay Currie
    Finlay Jefferson Currie was a Scottish actor of stage, screen and television.Currie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1878. His acting career began on the stage. He and his wife Maude Courtney did a song and dance act in the US in the 1890s. He made his first film in 1931...

     as John Brown
    John Brown (servant)
    John Brown was a Scottish personal servant and favourite of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom for many years. He was appreciated by many for his competence and companionship, and resented by others for his influence and informal manner...

    , Queen Victoria's servant
  • Anthony Steel as Lieutenant Charles McHatten
  • Raymond Lovell
    Raymond Lovell
    Raymond Lovell was a Canadian-born film actor who performed in British produced films. He mainly played supporting roles, and was often seen as slightly pompous characters...

     as Sergeant Footman Naseby
  • Marjorie Fielding
    Marjorie Fielding
    -Selected filmography:* Quiet Wedding * Spring in Park Lane * Conspirator * The Mudlark * The Lavender Hill Mob * Mandy * The Magic Box...

     as Lady Margaret Prior
  • Constance Smith
    Constance Smith
    Constance Smith was an Irish film actress, known as a contract player of 20th Century Fox in the 1950s.-Biography:...

     as Kate Noonan
  • Edward Rigby
    Edward Rigby
    Edward Rigby was a British character actor.-Early life:Rigby was the son of Jamaican-born Dr. William Harriot Coke and his wife Liverpool-born Mary Elizabeth of 17 High Street, Ashford. He was educated at Haileybury, and Wye Agricultural College...

     as The Watchman
  • Ernest Clark
    Ernest Clark
    Ernest Clark was a British actor of stage, television and film.-Early life:Clark was the son of a master builder in Maida Vale, and was educated nearby at St Marylebone Grammar School. After leaving school he became a reporter on a local newspaper in Croydon...

     as Hammond
  • Wilfrid Hyde-White
    Wilfrid Hyde-White
    Wilfrid Hyde-White was an English character actor.-Early life and career:Wilfrid Hyde White was born at the rectory in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, the son of William Edward White, canon of Gloucester Cathedral, and his wife, Ethel Adelaide Drought...

     as Tucker

Award nomination

The Mudlark was nominated for the Academy Award for Costume Design
Academy Award for Costume Design
The Academy Award for Best Costume Design is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for achievement in film costume design....

 in a black-and-white film (Edward Stevenson and Margaret Furse
Margaret Furse
Margaret Furse was an Academy Award-winning English costume designer.-Personal life:She was born Alice Margaret Watts on 18 February 1911 to Punch magazine illustrator Arthur G. Watts and his wife, Phyllis Gordon Watts. She married art director Roger Kemble Furse on 4 December 1936 at Chelsea Old...

).

Historical inspiration

In the semi-historical novel upon which this film was based, the story of the young mudlark Wheeler (aged ten in the film, but seven in the book) sneaking into Windsor Castle in 1875 to see Queen Victoria was inspired by a December 14, 1838 incident involving Edward Jones
The boy Jones
Edward Jones , or the boy Jones, as he was called by the British newspapers of the early Victorian era, was a notorious intruder into Buckingham Palace between 1838 and 1841. He later became the subject of a children's book and the film The Mudlark...

. A boy was discovered in Buckingham Palace. At first mistaken for a chimney-sweep, until he ran off across the lawns, he was apprehended by a policeman. (Sweeping of chimneys by boys was not made illegal until 1840.) The boy gave his name as Edward Cotton and said that he had been born in the palace; later he claimed to have been living there for only a year, after having come from Hertfordshire. In fact, his name was Edward Jones, the 14-year-old son of a tailor who lived in Bell Yard, some 300 yards distant from the palace, who had turned him out for ill conduct. He had been employed as an errand boy by a carver and gilder in Coventry Street, but had disappeared three days previous to his arrest after saying that he wanted to see the palace's Grand Staircase to sketch it and also to see the Queen (who was actually then at Windsor). At the Westminster Sessions on December 28, the magistrate's court jury found him not guilty of theft and he was taken back by his employer, who described him as an extremely good lad. (Some details were taken from contemporary reports in the London newspapers The Times, The Sun and The Standard.) The full history of the intruder has been revealed in Jan Bondeson's book Queen Victoria's Stalker: The Strange Story of the Boy Jones (2010).
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