By the Sword by Richard Cohen

Author:Richard Cohen [Cohen, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-43074-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

Frederick was breathless. “Now what do we do?”

“You jump over my sword,” said Ferdinand, “and I’ll jump over yours.”

“What good will that do?”

“It will give us something to do.”

‡ During his years in London Rathbone had been a pupil of both Félix Grave and Léon Bertrand. He could be generous to fellow actors. Discussing The Court Jester (1956), in which he played opposite Danny Kaye in a deliberate spoof of medieval melodramas, he wrote in his autobiography, “We had to fight a duel together with sabre. I don’t care much for sabre but had had instruction in this weapon during my long association with all manner of swords.… After a couple of weeks of instruction Danny Kaye could completely outfight me! Even granted the difference in our ages, Danny’s reflexes were incredibly fast, and nothing had to be shown or explained to him a second time.”8 Rathbone put Kaye’s aptitude down to his being a brilliant mimic (about the same period, the French mime Marcel Marceau was also an excellent fencer), but his memory played him false: at the insistence of the production heads Kaye’s fencing was doubled—partly because Rathbone was then sixty-four, partly for the timing of the comedy effects, and partly for Kaye’s own safety, as he had to parry a number of cuts to head and legs with his eyes closed.

Later, after his success in The Court Jester, Rathbone was at his Hollywood club taking a foil lesson watched by two old fencing hands. Each time he neared them they would intone, recalling the famous exchange that runs through the film, “Get it? Got it. Good.” Finally Rathbone could stand it no longer. Flinging off his mask he turned and seethed, “Please stop it.”

§ To give Nadi’s invective some support, a list, “Things You Need to Know About the Movies,” is currently circulating on the Internet. Entries include:

Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language, a German accent will do;

Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite;

The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris;

You can always find a chain saw when you need one;

—and so on. The one on swordplay reads: “It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight … your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.”

‖ In another Flynn movie, They Died with Their Boots On, a 1941 film of the years leading up to Custer’s Last Stand, the actor Bill Mead was thrown by his horse, and although he had the presence of mind to cast his sword forward to avoid falling on it, it stuck in the ground hilt down and he impaled himself fatally. More recently, Laurence Olivier listed the injuries he suffered as an actor. They include:

3 ruptured Achilles tendons

Untold slashes including

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