Sunday, October 14, 2012

AS SEEN ON TV: SIR HUMPHREY ORFORD


Here's an ASOTV showcase to kick off the Halloween season......

SIR HUMPHREY ORFORD

AS SEEN IN:
'Alfred Hitchcock Presents'
"The Silk Petticoat"

CREATED BY:
Joseph Shearing
(Marjorie Bowen)

PORTRAYED BY:
Michael Rennie

From the source:
It is round the person of Humphrey Orford that this tale turns, as, at the time, all the mystery and horror centered; yet until his personality was brought thus tragically into fame, he had not been an object of much interest to many; he had, perhaps, a mild reputation for eccentricity, but this was founded merely on the fact that he refused to partake of the amusements of his neighbors, and showed a dislike for much company.

But this was excused on the ground of his scholarly predilections; he was known to be translating, in a leisurely fashion, as became a gentleman, Ariosto’s great romance into English couplets, and to be writing essays on recondite subjects connected with grammar and language, which were not the less esteemed because they had never been published.

His most authentic portrait, taken in 1733 and intended for a frontispiece for the Ariosto when this should come to print, shows a slender man with reddish hair, rather severely clubbed, a brown coat, and a muslin cravat; he looks straight out of the picture, and the face is long, finely shaped, and refined, with eyebrows rather heavier than one would expect from such delicacy of feature.

Review by:
Steve Calvert
"The Scoured Silk" is a particularly nasty story, but you will have to read it yourself if you want to know how nasty because I do not want to give away too much of the plot. The two main characters are Mr Orford and the young lady he is engaged to Marry Elisa Minden. Mr Orford is a scholar whose life's work seems to be the process of translating Ariosto's romance into English Couplets and writing essays on recondite subjects connected with grammar and language -- now doesn't he sound an interesting guy? Orford is middle-aged and considerably older than his fiancee. He has also been married before. In fact, twenty years ago, when his first wife came to live with him at the house in Covent Garden Elisa Minden was just a small child watching from the railings around her house. Nobody saw much of Flora Oxford after that and it was not long before she died. But that was twenty years ago and now the child is a lovely young woman. Though it must be said that it was Elisa's father who arranged the marriage and not Elisa herself and after Mr Orford takes her to see Flora Orford's place of interment and tells her what a wicked woman she was, displaying a certain amount of delight about her death, Elisa begins to have second thoughts and who can blame her?


O'BSERVATION:
The published story takes place many decades earlier than the TV adaptation.


BCnU!

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