He was also an Americian actor who appeared in many British films of the 1940s and 50s. The 3rd November club has a fascinating essay by Tony Williams which examines Colleano's career and the way that Anglo-American relations were reflected in the films of the period more generally:
Colleano, who married the British actress Susan Shaw, died in a car crash in 1958. The BBC site has an archive report on his death and its aftermath.During the second sequence of Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (US Stairway to Heaven, 1946), the image changes from Technicolor showing David Niven’s last moments as an RAF flyer before he descends from his plane without a parachute to a monochrome heaven awaiting his arrival.
His former co-pilot (Robert Coote) waits at the entrance by permission of a glamorous 1940s Angel Receptionist (Kathleen Byron). All new arrivals proceed slowly to the information desk where they receive their wings for the next stage of their heavenly journey. The sole exceptions are a group of brash American airmen led by Bonar Colleano (1924-1958) who rush to a Coca Cola machine and crowd towards her until their leader attempts to instill some order into them.
For audiences of the 1940s and 1950s, this slim, angular, exuberant figure is easily recognizable as the one actor who personified the wartime image of the visiting Yank often referred to as “Over Paid, Over Sexed and Over Here” by disdainful Brits who both welcomed American involvement in the Second World War and also resented the intrusion of a foreign culture into England’s “green and pleasant land.”
2 comments:
Interesting thanks. I haven't time to read it yet but will as soon as.
Meantime, here's a manual trackback through space and time to a nearly two years old related post.
(There were some comments but they've been gone for a Burton of late.)
"the one actor who personified the wartime image of the visiting Yank often referred to as “Over Paid, Over Sexed and Over Here” by disdainful Brits who both welcomed American involvement in the Second World War and also resented the intrusion of a foreign culture into England’s “green and pleasant land.”
Oh dear, and we couldn't have that kind of disdain could we? No doubt this was a dig at present-day 'Brits' too (I'm English myself, not a 'Brit') who resent the influx of foreign cultures that are changing our country beyond recognition - only this time we're being ungrateful not because they're helping fight a war but because they're doing the jobs us lazy lot won't do. Is that about the gist of it? Yep, typical liberal bullshit aimed at anyone who doesn't follow the liberal wet dream of living in multicultural dream - though having lived in the back-streets of Birmingham for 45 years I can attest to it being a nightmare! Stupid liberal berk.
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