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Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham –
Still Frenemies after all These Years
The latest Robin Hood film is reported to be a financial failure, and there is no surprise in that. Simply to see the screen shot used in advertising, a vague figure huddled in an impossibly large hood and a quilted coat that would be too fey for a junior high cheerleader, is to be warned off.
The last good screen Robin Hood was the fox in the Disney cartoon (1973). After that, the various films dump onto the viewer a series of pouty, sullen, hoody Robin Hoods who look like sniveling taggers who have just discovered that their spray paint has run out. The modern versions are dimly lit, muddy, dark, brooding, and, worst of all, preachy. Howard Pyle (https://www.biography.com/people/howard-pyle-9449021) cobbled together from the old stories the most famous book about Robin Hood, and the best films all borrow from Pyle. The worst films ignore Pyle, and are as Miz-Grundy-screechy as the remake of Murphy Brown.
Robin Hood is, first of all, meant to be fun. A writer or producer who ignores that exhibits disdain for his audience. There are good arguments for Robin Hood being either a historical man or possibly a combination of real outlaws. The earliest tales and ballads present an often naughty, almost Chaucerian bad boy, and one who loses fights as often as his wins them. Pyle’s Robin Hood is a much better man, with a much better sense of justice, but still he is great fun.
Douglas Fairbanks’ 1922 silent turn as Robin Hood is a wonder film, and you get to participate by reading the dialogue for yourself. The piano is optional.
The most famous Robin Hood is that Tasmanian devil himself, Errol Flynn, in the beautifully lit and staged 1938 version. The ultimate Snidely Whiplash, Basil Rathbone, a hero of the First World War (https://sistercelluloid.com/2015/11/05/world-war-i/)is the snideliest, whiplashiest Sheriff of Nottingham ever, and beautiful Olivia de Havilland the most elegant Marian. Even the scene where Marian is trying to conceal a letter from the Sheriff is brilliant in its table-top choreography.
Richard Todd, who fought at the Pegasus Bridge in 1944 (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/5460628/D-Day-I-was-the-first-man-out-of-the-plane-over-Normandy.html) starred in a very good Disney live-action film in 1952.
For your ‘umble scrivener, the best Robin Hood of all is Richard Greene (Royal Armoured Corps, Second World War). His television series was filmed in England (which looks like England, not California) from 1955-1959, brilliantly produced by Hannah Weinstein (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0918438/). M. Weinstein’s 142 half-hour shows are rattling good fun indeed, as any Robin Hood film should be, but she also develops characters and situations with a now rare sense of justice and historical sensitivity. Her half-hour plays are ethical without ever lapsing into screeching and preaching.
Weinstein also allows her Robin Hood sometimes to find himself in comical situations as in the old tales, but still G-rated.
The Robin Hood stories are great fun, and the movie versions will again be joyful when the producers stop misusing Robin and his merrie men as loudspeakers for hectoring audiences about how wrong they are about everything.
And, hey, producers, turn on the lights – the sun does shine in England.
As that archer, swordsman, hero, lover, and righter of wrongs might say, quoting from Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, “I’m STILL big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
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