Kenneth Clark

by James Stourton

  Clark’s friends were delighted but not surprised by his appointment to the Film Division. Henry Moore thought that film ‘is easily the most powerful reflective medium for propaganda of all’.15 Lord Bearsted was less sure, telling Balniel: ‘I fear he may not be capable of dealing with the tough gang who run the film industry.’16 Clark wrote to his mother about his new job: ‘I am encouraged by the support of my colleagues – far more than I got in the gallery, although I am so much less qualified for the work…we are going to pay for some quite important productions and last Tuesday I persuaded the Treasury to allot me the formidable sum of £770,000…my great difficulty is to find a number of good stories which will carry my propaganda messages…I believe I am much attacked in trade papers but as I never look at them it doesn’t matter…Every day makes me a more committed socialist. Bureaucracy may be full of evils, but nothing could be worse than the present system, where private profit is the controlling factor…However I mustn’t turn this letter into a Ruskinian tract.’17

  Despite his lack of experience, Clark was cautiously welcomed into the industry. He gave an interview with Kinematograph Weekly18 in which he offered the conventional view that ‘no film is good propaganda unless it is good entertainment…the greatest of the anti-German agents is Donald Duck. The whole ethics of Disney’s work is that, while being superb entertainment, he portrays the popular hatred of regimentation’ – but then added the unfortunate remark: ‘if we lose the war let the non-British and Jewish elements in the industry realise what would happen to them under totalitarian control’. The remark was reported by the Daily Herald, which wondered why Clark had been appointed at all, reminding him that ten thousand unemployed British film technicians were still waiting for work.19

  The Film Division of the MoI both paid for the making of films and encouraged production companies to make the kind that were needed. Clark realised that these fell into two types: full-length entertainments, which only worked if the public did not recognise them as propaganda; and the short two-to-five-minute films that preceded them, which today would be called advertisements. Clark’s main claim to success in running the Film Division was to bring the leaders of the film industry into a closer cooperation. This seems perfectly plausible, although when he took over there were already several films in production, with titles such as Convoy, Contraband, Freedom Radio and Gestapo. He confessed to a colleague: ‘I am not in favour of propaganda films which show the wickedness of the Germans. It is very difficult to do this without also showing their efficiency and apparent invincibility.’20

  In February 1940 we find Clark inspecting the set of a U-boat for a film called All Hands, one of three being made on the ‘Careless Talk’ theme in production under Michael Balcon, starring John Mills and Dorothy Hyson. He gave an interview to Dilys Powell at the Sunday Times describing the Film Division’s two favourite themes: ‘What Britain is Fighting For’ and ‘How Britain Fights’. He believed that the first was best expressed by features showing humanity in national character, as in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (and later in the celebrated Olivier Henry V, which was approved during Clark’s tenure). The second was usually best expressed in short films, and occasionally in longer documentaries such as Michael Balcon’s Convoy.21

  Clark enjoyed the film world and its characters. He started including actors and directors in his dinner parties, as Harold Nicolson noted: ‘Dine with Kenneth Clark. Willy Maugham, Mrs Winston Churchill and Leslie Howard are there. We have an agreeable dinner and talk mostly about films.’22 But there was one particular director for whom Clark was to have a very soft spot. Gabriel Pascal appeared at the MoI without an appointment on a busy day, sat himself down and proceeded to outline all the films he would make for Clark. As Clark confessed, ‘to say that Pascal was a liar would be an absurd under-statement. He was a sort of Baron Munchausen, who never opened his mouth without telling some obviously untrue story.’23 Clark was delighted by this short, thick-set, shameless Hungarian imposter who had somehow persuaded Bernard Shaw to give him the film rights to his plays. Gabby Pascal appeared like a whirlwind in Clark family life, delighting the children with his fabulous stories. He would bombard Clark with telegrams from Canada (which he thought would be the perfect place to make patriotic films), full of brave promises and exhorting Clark to send over the best actors. A typical telegram reads: ‘This is Programme of six pictures for first year stop. Have all finances together to have studio ready in six weeks.’24 There is no evidence that anything they did together ever came to much, but Pascal joined Clark’s gallery of grotesques. As Clark’s son Colin wrote: ‘My father loved people like Gabby Pascal. Perhaps he was frightened of turning into his mother who had been so disapproving and so prim, and every now and then needed an injection of his boisterous and badly behaved father.’25

  During the early part of the war Clark was besieged by artists clamouring for jobs, and also by some writers. His old friend John Betjeman had written in desperation after Clark had given him bad news over a job: ‘I bear no grudge…but for the sake of W. Butterfield, J.L. Pearson and Burges*1 do your best for yours, John Betjeman.’26 Clark then had a ‘brainwave while shaving’, and rather quixotically brought Betjeman into the ministry as a deputy in his own division. But as Clark told Betjeman’s biographer, ‘Can you imagine John being at home in the MoI?…I got him into the MoI and thought we could find something for him to do, but we didn’t. He was under me and we had some good laughs. Every now and then I got him to write an introduction or some piece of some sort. Which he did very well.’27 Clark explained, ‘I wanted his flexibility and originality of mind and also his charm – because, essentially, ours was a public relations role.’28

  Almost Betjeman’s first job was to be sent to meet one of Britain’s great film moguls, Sir Sidney Bernstein, in his office in Golden Square. The only mystery in this story is why Clark, who greatly enjoyed such people, left the meeting to Betjeman. ‘What,’ Betjeman asked Bernstein, ‘should the government be doing about film and propaganda?’ Bernstein simply opened a drawer and produced a prepared document, which suggests that Clark had already been in touch: ‘British Film Production and Propaganda by Film’.29 This emphasised the importance of entertainment, and also of the newsreel – which in fact accorded with Clark’s views. Clark offered Bernstein a desk at the MoI, which he refused to accept as long as ‘the appeaser’ Chamberlain was prime minister; he only changed his mind when Churchill came to power. In the event, Bernstein was particularly helpful in persuading the industry to screen government films and gather audience feedback. He would reappear later in Clark’s life, when Clark was setting up Independent Television.

  In February 1940 the German propaganda machine paid Clark the compliment of caricaturing him in a broadcast from Bremen.30 It reported that ‘the Films Dictator of Ministry of Misinformation, Sir Kenneth Clark’ had informed the press that he wanted to arrange a film of the ‘Altmark incident’, in which 299 British prisoners of war being transported through Norwegian waters in a German ship had been rescued by HMS Cossack. The German broadcast claimed that Clark, who ‘a generation ago would not have been admitted to a single self-respecting club’, had tried and failed to hire Charles Laughton for the project. However, no film was ever made (or probably ever planned) of the incident that made famous the phrase ‘The navy’s here!’

  Clark reflected on his time at the Film Division in a November 1940 lecture at the Royal Institution entitled ‘The Film as a Means of Propaganda’.31 He cited Miss Grant Goes to the Door (the counterpart to the ministry leaflet ‘If the Invader Comes’, which had been produced during the Battle of Britain in anticipation of invasion) as an example of a bad short film. In the film a maiden lady steals a German parachutist’s gun and shoots him. The conventional stage trick which enabled Miss Grant to take a gun from a trained soldier, Clark thought, was unrealistic in the extreme. Newsreel, he told his audience, had been made difficult by the reluctance of the services to grant facilities to
film crews. He went on to applaud (with as much horror as admiration) the German propaganda film Baptism of Fire, an account of the invasion of Poland, and declared that the two British films of which he was proudest were London Can Take It, which was to have such an effect on public opinion in America, and Britain at Bay, narrated by J.B. Priestley. Clark had by now shifted his position on one point – that propaganda films were no good if they did not have entertainment value. He now believed that they must be of the highest quality, have form and movement, and that above all they must hold the audience’s attention.

  More trying times at the MoI arrived with Colonel Norman Scorgie, appointed as deputy director-general in order to impose discipline on the ramshackle organisation. Scorgie was a martinet who was not in fact a soldier at all, but a civil servant drafted across from the Stationery Office. He took the rank of colonel, and immediately made his feelings about his new charges known by putting up prep-school-type notices telling them they were ‘slack’ and should ‘pull their socks up’ and ‘all pull together’. This was too much for Betjeman, who was in the lift one day when he identified Scorgie (whom he had never met). He turned to the almost deaf liftman, saying in a stage whisper, ‘I say, have you seen anything of this fellow Scroggie? They tell me that he’s not really pulling his weight.’ The inevitable consequence was that Scorgie appeared in Clark’s office: ‘The egregious Colonel Scorgie instructed me to get rid of him, he said he’s half baked and I said he’s very clever: If he has one idea a month that no one else in this beastly building has in a whole year, he’s worth keeping.’32

  But it was a chance conversation with Betjeman one day that Clark always claimed (with tongue half in cheek) was his most lasting achievement at the MoI: ‘Knowing that he shared my tastes I said “John you must go up to the canteen. A most ravishing girl has just appeared there – clear brown complexion, dark eyes, wearing a white overall – she’s called Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.” ’ Unfortunately there are several claimants for the honour of being the midwife of the only great poem to come out of the MoI.*2 Betjeman was given a brief stay of execution before taking up a position as press attaché in Dublin.

  Sir John Reith finally got his way, and promoted Clark in April 1940 to Controller of Home Publicity, assuming charge of several further divisions. His job at the Film Division was taken by his old friend from Shell, Jack Beddington.33 Clark’s new position was one of considerable power, but – as he himself ruefully pointed out – he became the object of ‘everyone with a scheme for saving the country, reforming the world, or, more modestly, spending vast sums of money on advertising campaigns’.34 Whatever their cause, they all sang the same song: ‘All we want is a blessing.’ The main part of his new job, however, operated through the numerous daily committees he chaired, or merely attended. Some, like the Dunkirk Emergency Committee, were convened in response to a particular crisis, and were temporary. But among all the permanent committees the two most important, which met most days, were the Policy Committee, attended by the ministers and senior members of the ministry staff, and the Planning Committee, chaired by Clark, which usually immediately followed it, and was convened to put policy into action. A typical Planning Committee agenda might examine the desirability of warning the public that German bombers were bound to get through; the countering of defeatism by an ‘Anger Campaign’; a campaign to bring home what England means; ‘Life Under German Rule’; and ‘Victory is Possible’.

  One of the first things Clark did in his new role was to produce a report on home morale: ‘In retrospect the only interesting feature was the amount of evidence that came in on how low morale in England was, much lower than anybody had ever dared to say. But there was obviously nothing that we could do about it, except to hope that by some miracle we could win a few battles.’35 Crisis followed crisis; we can follow, for instance, events surrounding Dunkirk through Harold Nicolson’s diary, in which he describes how Clark was summoned to Walter Monckton’s office at the MoI, where General Macfarlane told them that the British army in France was surrounded at Dunkirk, and the problem was how to communicate this to the public. Blame the French? The Belgians? The politicians?36 In the event the work of the MoI’s Emergency Dunkirk Committee was taken over by the cabinet, and Clark went to Downing Street to discuss the planned rescue mission. The evacuation of the troops from France using the ‘little ships’ was a brilliant publicity coup – certainly the greatest of the war up to that point. How far Dunkirk was an MoI success, and the extent of Clark’s involvement, are unclear, as the responsibility was taken over by the cabinet; but it seems likely that the celebrated BBC ‘little ships’ appeal did not emerge from the MoI.37

  Clark grasped that the public needed to be satisfied that the war could be won, and that Britain was hitting back. Posters, pamphlets, films, campaigns and speeches were the stock-in-trade of the MoI Planning Committee. A poster of Churchill with a background of Hurricane fighter planes and Cruiser tanks was an instant success, and at the behest of Churchill himself, the ministry undertook a campaign in 1940 warning against the dangers of rumour. Although it doubted that this would be successful, the MoI had no option but to comply, and Clark was put in charge. He consulted an advertising agency about the proposed phrase ‘Silent Column’, and prepared a poster, radio and press work, but the whole thing became the butt of public jokes. In fact, so many campaigns were inflicted on the British people by the MoI that Aneurin Bevan asked in Parliament: ‘Is the Minister aware that the impression is now universal that if the Germans do not manage to bomb us to death, the Ministry of Information will bore us to death?’

  It is not always clear which campaigns and slogans can be attributed to Clark. The best evidence lies in surviving memos from him, for instance those concerning the poster campaign ‘This is What We are Fighting For’.38 Years later, in a speech to the National Trust, Clark explained this in elegiac terms: ‘Every time we had a new minister or director-general, which was almost once a month, he used to summon us together and say with the air of someone who had a brilliant new idea, “We must decide what we are fighting for!” It was a difficult question. We all knew what we were fighting against. But what were we fighting for? Democracy? Parliamentary institutions? They didn’t sound very inspiring to me, and many of the civilisations which I admired most had got on well enough without them. My mind, on these occasions, was a blank. But in my mind’s eye I had a clear vision of a small English town – halfway between a town and a village – Tetbury or Long Melford. There it all was: the church, the three pubs, the inexplicable bend in the road, the house with the stone gate where the old lady lived…I used to think “That is what we are fighting for.” The thought of the Germans marching in there…made me very angry.’39

  Harold Nicolson gives us a vivid picture of Clark, the imperishable aesthete, in his office at the MoI: ‘I go into KC’s room for something and there lying on its pillow with eyes upstaring is the most beautiful marble head. For the moment I assume that it is Greek until I look at the hair and lips which are clearly Canova. It is a bust of the Duc de Reichstadt which K had picked up in a junk shop…I do so admire K’s infinite variety. He does not like being here really and wld be far happier going back to the Nat-Gallery and vaguely doing high-brow war service. Yet he works like a nigger here merely because he loathes Hitler so much.’40

  Duff Cooper, a friend of Churchill, was appointed Minster of Information in May 1940. He and Clark never saw eye to eye, and Cooper proposed to appoint the Conservative politician Lord Davidson to take over the Home Front Section of the ministry – effectively over Clark. Davidson had already made his opinion clear to Nicolson that ‘Kenneth Clark and I are too intellectual to get a real nation-wide appeal and that it ought to be in the hands of professional advertisers’.41 Clark was philosophical, as Nicolson noted: ‘this will be difficult especially as I doubt whether Kenneth Clark will consent to remain under such conditions. [Clark] is very nice about it all and rather agrees that publicity of the nature we shall
now require needs a bull rather than a china collector and that Davidson is probably the best bounder we can get.’42 Jane told their friend Lord Crawford, ‘Alas K has no control of Duff and dislikes him. He is a coarse fellow,’ and again: ‘Duff is trying to sack K and put Lord Davidson in his place.’ According to Jane, Cooper thought the MoI ‘too leftist’.43 But Davidson was in fact appointed under Clark.

  September 1940 brought the Blitz. The main concern at the MoI was, once more, home morale; they wondered whether it could be sustained in the light of the worsening situation overseas. Nicolson described Clark’s anxieties: ‘K confided his misery over the destruction of so many beautiful things. He felt that more bombing of cities, the capture of Egypt and a German peace offer would put the popular press against continuing the war and the MoI.’44 Clark described what he saw in the West End of London to Lord Crawford: ‘From Ministry of Information written from the cellar during a raid. Apart from the human problem, the destruction is very painful. St. James, Piccadilly, the Clubs, Carlton House Terrace, Kensington Palace all struck last night, the first demolished. Every night sees the end of some fine building – also, I must admit, of a lot of bad ones.’45

  One night in early 1941 when they both happened to be there, the Clarks’ new flat at Gray’s Inn Square was destroyed. They were blown out of bed, but fortunately not harmed. After this Clark slept either in the basement of the MoI or occasionally at the Russell Hotel nearby. His air-raid misery was not over, as Nicolson recorded: ‘Kenneth Clark appeared at the Policy Committee in blue flannel coat and striped trousers. He has lost his all in a fire at the Russell Hotel.’46 This confined Clark to the MoI basement at night, where the cartoonist and architectural historian Osbert Lancaster was a fellow occupant. Lancaster described the dormitory as ‘wonderfully bizarre’: ‘There picking his way delicately, albeit somewhat bad temperedly, one may observe Sir Kenneth Clark with a seventeenth-century folio under one arm and a set of pale blue crepe de chine sheets over the other searching where he may lay his head.’47