Robert Watson
The Sunday Post February 24, 1935
The Scot who stumped Hollywood
The village used in the film was built in the USA and was based on author JM Barrie’s birthplace, Kirriemuir. The film is set in rural Scotland in the 1840s. After Somerset Maugham, Barrie was the most popular playwright in Hollywood. The same village was used a year later when Stanley McLaurel travels to Scotland in the mistaken belief that he will inherit his late grandfather Angus Ian McLaurel’s substantial fortune in the film Bonnie Scotland.
Glasgow born Robert Watson takes up the Sunday Post story:
“Irishmen were best imitators of the Scots accent, Americans a close second, the English last on the list. That was one of the surprising discoveries I made when, as part of my job, I was asked to give would-be members of the cast a dialect test.
Naturally, many of the doric words (a dialect of North East Scotland) had be be anglicised to make the film understood world-wide. I realised all that but I tried to regain as much of the Scottish flavour as I could get away with. In fact Sir James Barrie himself had written to me to say he was so glad he had ‘so experienced a guard on duty. In my vocal test all they had to say convincingly was Auld Licht Kirk. Most failed because they said Auld Lickt Kurk.
"Of the actors finally chosen most of the supporting characters are Scottish and of Scottish descent with some Irishmen. The policeman is Andy Clyde and nanny is Mary Gordon. She got her big break in this film and has responded with a wonderful performance.”
Other Scots in the film are Barlow Borland; Olaf Hytten; Alec Craig and Ivan Simpson. Some of these character actors also feature a year later in the Laurel and Hardy feature Bonnie Scotland.
Robert takes up the story again:
“I was fortunate that I could call on lifetime friend from Glasgow James Gray and the famous Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in that city for books and records descriptive of the Barrie country - even down to a description of manse furniture which was then duplicated in Hollywood.Strange to find so much useful information about Kirriemuir, although 6000 miles away.”
The Scotsman, 10 September 1935 said:
“Hollywood’s efforts to re-create a Scottish atmosphere are commendable and scenes in the Auld Licht Kirk especially are remarkably effective. The film has little that will offend.”
The Auld Licht Kirk (church) was in the centre of Kirriemuir. The Auld Licht tradition was connected to the Old Testament teaching/view of God as being judgemental as opposed to the New Licht/New Testament where God is love.
Robert Watson was born in Glasgow on the 20th May1882, and educated at Shawlands Academy on the south side of the city.
In 1908 at the of age 26 he emigrated to Canada. He was an author, editor and screenwriter. For a time the family lived in Winnipeg before moving to the USA in 1933. They lived in Los Angeles and Robert was employed in the film industry. According to the Winnipeg Tribune of March 1940, he was assigned by Paramount Studios to the duties of Special Exploitation Consultant on a “forthcoming technicolour epic, North West Mounted Police, being filmed by Cecil B deMille and starring Gary Cooper.”
He died on 13th January 1948, aged 66 as a result of a car accident at Laguna Beach, California on New Year’s Eve.
The next article in the series will feature character actor Mary Gordon.