The Browning Version

The Browning Version

Andrew Crocker-Harris

Millie Crocker-Harris

Frank Hunter

Frobisher

Taplow

Fletcher

Wilson

Lord Baxter

Mrs. Frobisher

Carstairs

Betty Carstairs

Rev. Williamson

Mrs. Williamson

Boy in Upper 5th Science Class (uncredited)

Mrs. Saunders (uncredited)

Gilbert's Senior Boy (uncredited)

Mrs. Wilson (uncredited)

Bryant (uncredited)

Head Boy (uncredited)

Pupil (uncredited)

Taxi Driver (uncredited)

Mrs. Sanders (uncredited)

School Doorman (uncredited)

Pupil (uncredited)

The original Broadway production of "The Browning Version" by Terence Rattigan opened at the Coronet Theater on October 12, 1949, ran for 69 performances and starred Maurice Evans.

Director Anthony Asquith's father was Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, who - as Home Secretary - signed the warrant to arrest Oscar Wilde. It was Wilde's trial and subsequent imprisonment that sent a chill over England's gay and creative community for the next sixty years. When playwright/screenwriter Terrence Rattigan met Asquith for the first time, he recalled being profoundly aware of who the director's father was. Rattigan had the misfortune to come of age as a gay man in the 1930s, when homosexual relationships between consenting males in England was still a prosecutable offense with jail sentences of up to two years at hard labor. Even with a great deal of self-censorship, critics and audiences found the hints of homosexuality in Rattigan's first play ("First Episode") shocking. Any homo-erotic reference in a play's subject material was enough to halt its production by the Lord Chamberlain of England. The best Rattigan could do (until well into the 1960s) was to veil his own sensibilities and create dramas critiquing the heterosexual norms of his day. In Crocker-Harris's after-dinner monologue to Hunter, the reference to "two kinds of love" is as close as the playwright ever comes to naming the love that dare not speak it's name, even in 1951 England.

In 1993, director Mike Figgis was dressing for a dinner party at the home of Ridley Scott's producer and happened to switch on this version of the Rattigan play. He became so riveted that he arrived late to the party. After explaining the reason for his tardiness, his host told him that coincidently he had recently optioned the remake rights and was looking for a director. Figgis went on to direct the 1994 remake with Albert Finney.

Andrew Crocker-Harris: I may have been a brilliant scholar, but I was woefully ignorant of the facts of life.

Frobisher: A good chap, Hunter, in many ways but no sense of discipline and of course like all scientists a trifle narrow minded.

Andrew Crocker-Harris: You must excuse me. I had prepared a speech, but I find now that I have nothing to say. Or rather, I have three very small words, but they are most deeply felt. They are these: I am sorry. I am sorry because I have failed to give you what you had the right to demand of me as your teacher: sympathy, encouragement, and humanity. I'm sorry because I have deserved the nickname of Himmler. And because, by so doing, I have degraded the noblest calling that a man can follow: the care and molding of the young. I claim no excuses. When I came here, I- I knew what I had to do, and I have not done it. I have failed. And... miserably failed. But I can only hope that you and the countless others who have gone before will find it in your hearts to forgive me for having let you down. I shall not find it so easy to forgive myself. That is all.