Jon Whiteley

[DAVID RAYNER]

Today, Saturday, February 19th, 2005, is Jon Whiteley’s 60th birthday and I have designed and printed a special birthday card for him and a day or so ago, I sent it to him at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where I believe he is Curator of Art. I don’t know whether he will acknowledge it (my name and address are included inside), but it’s the thought that counts.



I can only do this once, as he’ll never be 60 again. I could have bought a ready made card in Woolworths or some other card shop, but I thought it better to give it the personal touch.



I printed it on glossy, high quality, photographic quality card and there is a nice portrait photo of him in The Kidnappers (1953) on the front and scenes from his films Hunted (1952); The Kidnappers; Moonfleet (1955) and The Spanish Gardener (1956) on the back. Inside the card, I tell him that the card has been sent to him in recognition of all the happiness he’s brought to so many people over the years both through his cherished performances in motion pictures and in real life, which I think is as nice a compliment as I could possibly pay him.

[Allen Dace]

Well I never knew that's where he ended up!



Doesn't time fly? I did notice that he wasn't present in the lineup of past Oscar winners at the 70th Awards Ceremony 7 years ago although his 'The Kidnappers' co-star Vincent Winter was (sat alongside Shelley Winters). Sadly Winter died not long afterwards. Good to know that Whiteley is still going strong.

[DAVID RAYNER]

Yes, Alan, I'm very pleased that Jon has really made something of his life. It's not easy for child stars to adapt to the slow but steady process of turning into grown ups. Just look at what became of Bobby Driscoll as an example. But, looking at these child stars in their films as they were fifty or so years ago, it's impossible to predict what will happen to them in the future, Even if it seemed at the time that they had a wonderful future in store for them, so many of them did not.

[Rennie]

Originally posted by DAVID RAYNER@Feb 19 2005, 12:30 PM

Yes, Alan, I'm very pleased that Jon has really made something of his life. It's not easy for child stars to adapt to the slow but steady process of turning into grown ups]

Here is one that did adapt professionally. although looks-wise I am unsure!!



Jonathan Ashmore, of fleeting fame as young 'Joe' in 'Kid For Two Farthings. Now a professor.



PS Don't try and contact him as he refuses to discuss his brief film career, although admits that being 'Joe' paid for his private schooling

[DAVID RAYNER]

Well, he certainly had more hair in 1955, that's for sure. On the whole, British child stars seem to have adapted well to adulthood. Hayley Mills is a good example. But many American child stars seem to have fallen by the wayside. It must be very different over there, with a system that seems to go by the rule that no studio wants you when you're 14 and over the hill. Or, as the Americans would say, "not cute anymore".

[DAVID RAYNER]

A few days late posting this news, due to Britmovie being offline, but I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that on the morning of Thursday, April 7th, 2005, I received a very posh looking letter through the letterbox of my very humble abode postmarked Oxford. I thought Oxford? Who's sending me a letter from Oxford? I nearly collapsed with delight when I opened it. Inside, was a lovely letter from Jon Whiteley thanking me for the specially made 60th birthday card I had sent to him. In fact, he received it just as he was about to go abroad on business, which is why he didn't reply sooner. He says in the letter that he is very touched by the trouble I must have taken to make the card and included one or two anecdotes about his childhood film career, which he says now seems a world away from his present day work at the Ashmolean Museum. He also hopes that I, too, have a very happy birthday on the day.



Naturally, I am over the moon to receive the letter from him and it's very nice to know that he so appreciates the birthday card. I shall really treasure this letter for always.



By coincidence, one of his films, the 1955 MGM release MOONFLEET, is being shown on Channel 5 at 2pm, on Thursday, April 21st. Good God, it's fifty years old and they're still running it! Set in 1757 Dorset, but filmed entirely in Hollywood.

[DeeDee]

My gosh! There isn't a trace of that adorable little boy!

[fred kite]

does any one know what happend to this child actor who was in the spanish gardener andhunted with dirk bogarde....he was also in a swashbuckling film with stewart granger,......on tcm, i cant think of the film...

[Phil Turner]

Hello Fred. A thread on Jon Whiteley already exists called Jon Whiteley is 60 Today! It was started on 19 February, 2005 to celebrate Jon Whiteley's 60th birthday. Hopefully, you should find all the information you require there.



I am also a fan of his, and particularly enjoyed his performance in The Spanish Gardener. Incidentally, the film he made alongside Stewart Granger was called Moonfleet.



Regards

Phil Turner

[fred kite]

hello phil...and thanks........yep moonfleet.on the tip of my tongue.....

[darrenburnfan]

I've just been watching this on Film 4 and it occured to me that acclaimed child actor Jon Whiteley (eleven years old at the time this was filmed) despite being very good in this and all his other few cinema films and one television film and winning an Oscar for his performance in The Kidnappers (1953), was alright within his own range but, when called upon to be upset and to cry or sob, he was, without a doubt, the most unconvincing sobber in the entire film business. In fact, his "sobbing" scenes with Dirk Bogarde in The Spanish Gardener and with Richard Greene in The Christmas Goose episode of The Adventures of Robin Hood are cringe inducingly awful. How the directors passed them for inclusion in the final film is a mystery. They should not have asked him to play a scene beyond his capabilities. In fact, Richard Eyer in Fort Dobbs (1958) and even our own Mark Lester in Eyewitness (1970) ran rings around Jon Whiteley in the sobbing department. I'm not saying that they were better actors than Jon Whiteley, only that they could play certain scenes far better than he could.

[darrenburnfan]

The former Academy Award winning child actor Jon Whiteley is 65 years old on Friday, February 19th, 2010 and I would like to wish him many happy returns of the day. He was born in Monymusk, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1945 and, although he hasn’t made a film since 1957, he has done quite well for himself as an adult, being now the Curator of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Who would have thought that was to be in his future when he first appeared in films nearly sixty years ago? Below, to celebrate the occasion of his 65th birthday, are scenes I have chosen from the five cinema films and one television film he made in the 1950’s. He also made a now forgotten short film for the NSPCC.







Aged six, as Robbie Campbell with Dirk Bogarde in Hunted (Rank, 1951…released 1952). A six years old orphan boy, running away from his violent adoptive father, is abducted by a murderer on the run because he is the only witness to the crime. He takes the boy with him as he attempts to flee the country by sea. A superbly acted “road” movie, one of Dirk Bogarde’s finest. Jon Whiteley’s debut performance was outstanding, especially considering his tender age, prompting Dirk Bogarde to say of him that Jon was a real actor, not just a child actor.



At aged seven in 1952, following the success of Hunted, Jon appeared in a special short film entitled The Price Of Happiness, which was made by Data Film Productions for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which opened with a scene from Hunted where Dirk Bogarde grabs hold of Jon as the runaway boy is looking for somewhere to hide inside a derelict building on a bomb site. Jon explains to the audience that he wasn’t frightened by this situation as he and Dirk were only acting, but also explains that some children face similar experiences in real life. Jon then meets some orphaned children who have been placed with a new family by NSPCC Inspector Wilson. Jon and Inspector Wilson visit a hospital children’s ward and a children’s home and talk about some of the individual cases. The film ends with a direct appeal by Jon Whiteley to the viewer to help all those children who are less fortunate than himself. No stills are available. Does this historic film still exist? It would be interesting to find out…and to see it.







Aged eight, as Harry Mackenzie with five years old Vincent Winter as his brother Davey in The Kidnappers (Rank, 1953). Their performances in this film won them both a juvenile Oscar at the 1954 Academy Awards. Two orphaned brothers, denied a pet dog by their stern grandfather, “adopt” as a pet a baby they find seemingly abandoned in the woods.







Aged nine in his one and only Hollywood film, as John Mohune in Fritz Lang’s adaptation of the J. Meade Falkner novel Moonfleet, an early MGM CinemaScope film made in the summer of 1954 and released in 1955. An orphaned little boy (his third such role in a row) is sent to seek out one Jeremy Fox, a nobleman (Stewart Granger) who had been his mother’s lover (and thus possibly the boy’s father), but soon discovers that Fox, a rake and a dandy, is the leader of a gang of cut-throats and smugglers. The boy realises that his life is in great danger when he stumbles across their secret. Jon Whiteley described working with Fritz Lang as “like working with Michaelangelo.”







Aged eleven, as Erik Jenner in The Weapon (Eros, 1956). In this crime drama, Jon’s character is playing with another boy on a derelict bomb site when he finds a loaded revolver in the ruins. In a struggle over which of them should play with the gun, it accidentally goes off and Jon's pal is shot. Believing he has killed his friend, Jon goes on the run with the gun, pursued by the police and a murderer who had used the gun ten years earlier in a killing. Not yet available on DVD.







Aged eleven (and reunited after five years with Dirk Bogarde in the title role), as Nicholas Brande in The Spanish Gardener (Rank, 1956…released 1957). A British consular official in Spain, Harrington Brande (Michael Hordern), a cold and bitter man whose wife has left him, is sent to a Spanish coastal town as British consul with his “delicate” eleven years old son Nicholas (Jon Whiteley), on whom he dotes and is so possessive of, that he won’t allow the boy to go to school or to have any friends, even boys of his own age. He just wants the boy all to himself. When Brande hires Jose, a handsome Spanish peasant, as gardener for the estate, the lonely boy and the gardener soon become very close friends and the gardener helps the boy to come out his shell and to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, like going on a fishing trip in the country, much to the consternation of the insanely jealous father, who goes to much trouble to destroy the relationship, even to having the gardener framed for theft and sent to prison. His son’s happiness means nothing to him….power over the boy is all that counts. At the time, 1956, Jon Whiteley’s parents were concerned about the implied sexual relationship between Jose and Nicholas in the novel by A. J. Cronin on which the film was based and wanted all references to it removed from the film. Rank assured them the film would be made for family consumption. But, even with all the altering, the film still comes across as ambiguous, prompting one critic to write: “The film's very likely homosexual relationship between the virile gardener and the effeminate youngster never materialises, even though it lays there like an omelette that never rises."







At age twelve, in his last screen appearance, as Davey in The Adventures Of Robin Hood filmed episode The Christmas Goose (ITC, 1957). A young boy, about to be beaten by the Lord of the Manor, is attacked by the boy’s only friend, his pet goose, Matilda. Enraged, the nobleman orders the goose to be taken to his castle and fattened up in order to be killed, cooked and eaten for the nobleman’s Christmas dinner. Davey enlists the help of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck to save his friend. Can they save Matilda before the nobleman carries out his threat? This was Jon’s last acting role. After this, it was back to school and then on to university for him.



As an actor, Jon was excellent within his own range, but he had his limitations. For one thing, he couldn’t cry or sob convincingly on cue and his attempts to do this in both The Spanish Gardener and The Christmas Goose sound truly awful. Some child actors could do it and others couldn’t. Unfortunately, Jon couldn’t. It’s difficult to imagine how he would have been in adult roles if he hadn’t stopped acting. Probably not very good. But then again, he could have surprised us all.

[darrenburnfan]

ABOVE: The start of the man hunt. Chris Lloyd (Dirk Bogarde) leads off six years old Robbie Campbell (Jon Whiteley) from the scene of the murder at the start of Hunted (The J. Arthur Rank Organisation, 1952). Scanned from a full page still in Film Review annual.







ABOVE: Family group. Left to right: Vincent Winter; Jon Whiteley; Jean Anderson; Duncan MacRea and Adrienne Corri in The Kidnappers (The J. Arthur Rank Organisation, 1953) Scanned from a full page still in Film Review annual.

[darrenburnfan]

I began to use my new scanner today and at long last I have been able to scan my 1957 Picturegoer Post Card photo of Jon Whiteley. I haven't got used to using the scanner as yet, so here is my scan of the Post Card and I hope it doesn't come out too big.

[barrule]

Thanks for putting on these nice photos from his films and I hope he had a nice birthday

Regards



Barrule

[darrenburnfan]

Thanks, barrule. If only he could have stayed young forever. But time marches on for us all, even for Jon Whiteley.

[darrenburnfan]

BELOW: Three more rare photos from my collection. These 1951 photos appeared in an edition of The Boys and Girls Cinema Clubs Annual and show, from the top: Jon Whiteley, aged six, feeding a duck on Dirk Bogarde's farm; Jon kissing his three years old sister Marsali good night at their home in Monymusk and Jon's eight years old sister, Fleur, playing a game of tug-a-war against Jon and Marsali in the garden of their home in Moneymusk.

[Joenoir]

Some great photographs, darrenburnfan. Thank you.

[darrenburnfan]

Glad you're pleased with them, Joe. It's amazing what rare photos you can find in old film annuals. Many of them have not been seen since they were first published.

[darrenburnfan]

ABOVE: Tuesday, July 13th, 1954. Jon Whiteley, the nine and a half years old Academy Award winning film star from Scotland, holds a toy monkey as he waits for his baggage to clear after arriving in New York aboard the S.S. Olympia. Jon is en route to Hollywood, where he is to co-star with Stewart Granger, George Sanders; Joan Greenwood and Viveca Lindfors in a new MGM CinemaScope production entitled Moonfleet.



BELOW: Frames from the finished film. Dorset, 1757: An orphan boy; an adventurer and a cipher hidden in a locket that belonged to a long dead pirate that leads to a fabulous lost diamond hidden forty feet down in the wall of the deepest well in England set the scene for this beautifully made swashbuckler directed by Fritz Lang and enhanced by a truly romantic and spectacular music score by the legendary Miklos Rozsa.