Focus: A Film Review (1948-1949)

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB COVER PERSONALITY BOBBY HENREY LITTLE Bobby Henrey, who plays the part of Felipe in Carol Reed’s i production, The Fallen Idol, was born on June 26th, 1939, on his mother’s I farm at Villers-sur-Mer, Calvados, about 15 miles from Caen. To be born in that locality at that time in the world’s history may not have seemed the best of auguries : to be born, in addition, during a raging thunderstorm, might have given the ! superstitious food for thought. Certainly most things could be expected to happen to such a child, and in fact quite a lot of them did. The family remained at the little Normandy farm throughout the “phoney” war and until the Fall of Paris when they fled before the advancing Germans. At St. Malo they [ managed to get aboard the last ship to leave France. The ship was harassed by German planes all across the Channel, but the family eventually arrived safely at the Savoy. Here they met C.B. Cochran, who found them a flat in Carrington House, overlooking Shepherd Market, where “Cocky” and his wife were themselves living, and here Bobby was destined to spend the whole war. He was 14 months’ old when the Battle of Britain started. From then on, like so many other children, he grew up amid scenes of terror and destruction : and he was wheeled out in his pram each morning across the debris left by the previous night’s raid. Tragedy nearly overtook the family during this period. One day, while he had been left in his pram outside the Mayfair Bakery in Curzon Street, a daylight raider dropped a bomb nearby which killed twenty people. Twenty seconds after his mother had removed him, the whole plate glass front collapsed. During the intensive February-March r raids of 1944, Bobby was taken by his mother to spend a week in the Wye Valley. He had hardly got there before he was nearly killed by a van outside their inn, so he was brought straight back to London. Because there were hardly any other children in the heart of London at this time, Bobby became quite a character during the raids. His whole story is told in his mother’s book, “A Village in Piccadilly”. When the war was over, he went back to Normandy with his mother in May 1946. They found the farm undamaged. While Caen itself was in ruins, the fighting had, in some miraculous fashion, swirled past the little village of Villers-sur-Mer. Nevertheless, the farmhouse itself had been the scene of a terrible tragedy. Denounced by his own son for being in possession of a shotgun, the farmer had been sent to a prison camp where he died. The son, as the price of his treachery, was given a motor-cycle by the' Germans, but the grandfather who had inspired this unnatural crime ended by paying the price of his shame. When, after the Germans had gone, the French police came to fetch him, he committed suicide. In June 1947, Mrs. Robert Henrey received a letter from Mr. W. J. O’Bryen, Production Executive of London Films Ltd., asking to see Bobby. He had seen the child’s photograph in “A Village in Piccadilly” and wished to test him for the part of Felipe in Carol Reed’s film. In August, Bobby was brought from Normandy for lunch at 146 Piccadilly, and flew back the same evening. The contract was signed in September, and a special aeroplane was sent to bring him to London on the 17th of that month. That same afternoon he started work in Belgrave Square on the first location shots of The Fallen Idol. (By courtesy of London Films ) 4., ■ ■ — <■ ■ — .... .... _ — ■ — . —