Why "The King's Speech' worked for me

BSR's Anne Fabbri performs a useful service in pointing out that The King's Speech, the much acclaimed film about King George VI's struggle to overcome his stutter, rests on a faulty premise: the notion that kings and queens deserve our attention and support.

The concept of hereditary aristocracy, Anne reminds us, is anathema to democratic principles; it's the very reason America's 13 colonies rebelled against England in the first place. As Anne points out, Bertie (as George VI was called by his relatives) is an essentially dull fellow who lacks any discernible skill; he doesn't even write the speeches he has so much difficulty delivering.

"Isn't it about time we Americans stopped all this bowing and scraping and declared our independence once and for all?" Anne asks rhetorically. (See "On bowing and scraping before The King's Speech.")

All very true. Why, then, was I so taken by this film about idle fops who, in Anne's words, "live off the fat of the land and are exempt under British law from paying any taxes"? I can think of a few reasons.

First, any story about any individual struggling to overcome a physical or psychological handicap possesses universal appeal, even if the protagonist is an empty suit. Especially if he's an empty suit.

Truman and Joan of Arc

Second, The King's Speech concerns an unassuming fellow who, in a moment of crisis, rises to an occasion he never asked for— which can happen to any of us.

It happened, for example, to Harry Truman, an obscure politician who awoke one morning to find himself president of the United States in the middle of a World War and succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Joan of Arc, a teenage peasant girl who rallied the French to drive the English army from their land, is another example. It happened to Georges Picquart (1854-1914), the chief of the French Army's intelligence section during the Dreyfus affair; having discovered evidence that the Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus had been wrongly convicted of espionage, Picquart refused to back down, even when threatened with demotion and prison, and even despite his own anti-Semitic inclinations.

It also happened to the stagecoach and Pony Express superintendent Joseph Alfred Slade (1831-1864), the protagonist of my most recent book, Death of a Gunfighter. Slade was a manifestly flawed individual: a bigot, an alcoholic who became a dangerous bully when drunk, and a son of slaveholders who lacked any particular political convictions. Yet at a critical moment in American history, just before the Civil War, Slade cleaned up the struggling Central Overland stagecoach line, in the process saving the Union's only northern link to its richest state, California, and consequently saving the Union itself.

Robert E. Lee's failure

When your moment of truth comes, good breeding is no guarantee that you'll pass the test. Robert E. Lee, to cite the most egregious example, was bred to a life of leadership and exemplary high ideals. But at his critical moment he blew it, forsaking the oath he took at West Point and casting his lot with secession and slavery instead.

Next to these actors, George VI may seem like small potatoes. He was, after all, only a figurehead. But in 1940 the British royal family was a powerful symbol indeed, especially in contrast to the panoply of symbols with which gifted demagogues like Hitler and Goebbels were bombarding the German people.

At a time when it was still widely believed that "soldiers will die for a king but not for a politician" (as a French defense minister put it during the Dreyfus affair), Bertie's older brother Edward VIII chose to give up his throne for a woman. Bertie, whatever his other failings, clearly perceived (as his brother did not) the nature of his contract with the British people. At a critical moment in the history of democracy, he stepped up to the plate, and we are all the better for it.

Merit trumps blood

Anne Fabbri complains that the Royals in The King's Speech come off as "exceedingly boring chaps." To my mind, that's precisely the point of this film— and a very democratic point it is.

Lionel Logue, the king's speech therapist— and the film's most interesting character— lacks a hereditary title or even a doctorate. He's a self-made man possessed of a unique talent and a strong sense of self-esteem, both of which his royal client conspicuously lacks. Without Logue, George VI is a cipher; with Logue, the king is capable of making a meaningful mark in the world. Consequently, the king must play by Logue's rules, even to the extent of transporting himself to Logue's ramshackle office. Ultimately it's merit, not blood, that rules in this film.

The world I entered

The King's Speech appealed to me for another, more personal reason: my stake in what was happening in the world when I entered it. On the day I was born— June 10, 1942— Hitler's empire extended from Spitsbergen to the Sahara and from the Atlantic to the outskirts of Moscow.

That morning the German army opened a new front with an attack on the Russian army near Kharkov. Later that afternoon, in retaliation for the assassination of the deputy Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis demolished the entire town of Lidice, Czechoslovakia. The men of Lidice were executed, the women sent to concentration camps, the children herded off to what German officials called "appropriate educational institutions," and all the buildings were leveled.

If idle fops like George VI hadn't chosen duty over self-indulgence, you see, I might have wound up as a cake of soap, a fate that befell more than 50 of my relatives. To paraphrase Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman, attention must be paid.♦


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