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COVER PERSONALITY
CAROL MARSH
'J'EN years ago Catholic Film News had the pleasure of featuring
a 17-year-old girl named Maureen O’Hara who had just made great success in her first major film role in Jamaica Inn. For the first number of Focus, which incorporates Catholic Film News, we have the pleasure of featuring another 17-year-old girl who has made a great success of her first film role. This time it is Carol Marsh in Brighton Rock.
There are other points of similarity between the two actresses. They are both Catholics; both were pupils at Sacred Heart Convents; both had stage experience with repertory companies before coming to the screen; both had the advantage of being directed in their first big film-parts by men of unusual ability and intelligence. Eric Pomer and Charles Laughton were responsible for Maureen’s debut. John Boulting directed Carol Marsh.
But there the similarity ends: or at least I hope so. For Maureen O’Hara has become the victim of those who saw a chance to capitalise on her undoubted beauty and natural glamour. As a result, most of the parts she has had in the past ten years have given her opportunity to do little more than pose.
With Carol Marsh it is altogether different. When John Boulting advertised for a girl to play the part of Rose in his film version of Grahame Greene’s Brighton Rock, he was looking for someone “naive and tolerably, but not excessively, pretty ... a girl with acting ability”. So when a slightly built girl, brown-haired, blueeyed and reserved, was called from the Rank Charm School into the Boulting Brothers’ office, no one was unduly enthusiastic. But when she read the part with Richard Attenborough, the producers realised that they had discovered a girl with personality and talent. For Carol Marsh has that rare ability of being able to “come alive” when she plays a part.
It is true that in John Boulting, Carol Marsh had an unusually able and persuasive director; but even the most persuasive of directors must have something to direct, and in Carol Marsh, John Boulting was presented with intelligent co-operation. It is a great test of an actress’s ability to be able to show' conviction in a humble role. She is then deprived of the assistance of glamorous clothes and aristocratic surroundings. She has to depend entirely on her powrer to create. It is easier to detect the false note in such a part than in the elaborately furnished piece where the staging and mounting itself is apt to distract one’s attention.
As the little tea-shop waitress in Brighton Rock, Carol compels conviction. Fascinated by the sadistic, introverted race-gangster, Pinkie, she becomes just that kind of unsophisticated innocent child wrho so often falls victim to the wrong kind of man.
If Carol Marsh can only steer her course between those who will want to glamorise her and those wrho will want to stereotype her, she has all the natural talent which will enable her to become an important contributor to the screen. John Vincent.
Samuel Walker (Printers and Publishers) Ltd., Hinckley, Leicestershire.