Movies - The Winslow Boy

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The Winslow Boy
is an English play by Terence Rattigan based on an actual incident in the Edwardian era, which took place at the Royal Naval College, Osborne House. The play was later made into a famous film in 1948 which was directed by Anthony Asquith, starring Robert Donat as Sir Robert Morton, Cedric Hardwicke as Arthur Winslow, and Margaret Leighton as Catherine Winslow. The film was remade in 1999, this time directed by David Mamet, starring Nigel Hawthorne and Jeremy Northam as Arthur Winslow and Sir Robert Morton KC, respectively.

Set against the strict codes of conduct and manners of the age The Winslow Boy is based on a father's fight to clear his son's name after the boy is expelled from Osborne Naval College for stealing a postal order. To clear the boy's name was imperative for the family's honour; had they not done so, they would have been shunned by their peers and society. The boy's life would have been wrecked by the stain on his character.

The play was inspired by an actual event, which set a legal precedent; the case of George Archer-Shee, a cadet at Osborne in 1908, who was accused of stealing a postal order from a fellow cadet. His elder brother Major Martin Archer-Shee, was convinced of his innocence, and persuaded his father (also called Martin) to engage lawyers. The most respected barrister of the day, Sir Edward Carson was also persuaded of his innocence, and insisted on the case coming to court. On the fourth day of the trial, the Solicitor General accepted that Archer-Shee was innocent, and ultimately the family was paid compensation.

Plot

Ronnie Winslow, a cadet at the Royal Naval College, is accused of the theft of a postal order. An internal enquiry which grants him no chance of defence, finds him guilty and his father, Arthur Winslow, is requested to remove his son from the college. Unwilling to accept the verdict, Winslow institutes his own enquiries and engages a friend and family solicitor, to assist him, including the briefing of a top barrister, Sir Robert Morton, should the case come to court.

The government is unwilling to allow the case to proceed, but after heated debates in the House of Commons, the government yields, and the case does come to court. Morton is able to discredit much of the supposed evidence and the government finally withdraws the charges against Ronnie. Although the family win the case, each of them has lost something along the way: Dickie Winslow has been forced to pull out of Oxford due to the shortness of money, Catherine loses her relationship with a fiancée, and Arthur Winslow loses his good health.

Differences between real life and fiction

In the play, Rattigan quotes from actual parliamentary debates and court transcripts, but makes major changes to the characters and the timing of events, moving them closer to the start of World War I. He also intoduces several fictional characters: a sister, Catherine Winslow, a suffragette and, as we learn in the final lines of the play, a potential future politician; her erstwhile fiancée, John Watherstone; and Desmond Curry, a solicitor who eventually proposes to Catherine.

Martin Archer-Shee junior was a very different character from the failed university student, Dickie Winslow, of the play. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1910, and in his mid-thirties at the time of the case.

Whilst the play gives only indirect reference to the court case and the parliamentary debates, the 1948 film introduces scenes from these events that are not in the play.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Winslow Boy ]

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