Caroline Alice Lejeune(27 March 1897 – 31 March 1973) was a British writer, best known for serving as the film critic forThe Observerfrom 1928 to 1960. She was among the earliest newspaper film critics in Britain, and one of the first British women in the profession. She formed an enduring friendship early in her career withAlfred Hitchcock,“when he was writing and ornamenting sub-titles for silent pictures,” as she later wrote.[1]
Family
editLejeune was born on 27 March 1897 in Didsbury,Manchester,[2]the youngest in a large family of eight children[3]that eventually resided at 10 Wilmslow Road, Withington, Manchester. Her father, Adam Edward Lejeune, born inFrankfurtin 1845 ofHuguenotancestry, was acottonmerchant who had come toEnglandafter doing business inFrankfurt.He died atZürich,Switzerland,on October 28, 1899[4]when his daughter was two years old. Her mother, Jane Louisa, who was the daughter of the Nonconformist minister DrAlexander Maclaren,was a friend ofC. P. Scottand ofCaroline Herford,who was Caroline's godmother and headmistress ofLady Barn House School,where Caroline received her elementary education. She and four of her sisters (Franziska, Marion, Juliet and Hélène) received their secondary education atWithington Girls' School,of which their mother, Scott, and Caroline Herford were among the founders.[5]
After leaving school, unlike her sisters, she rejected her place atOxford Universityand studied English Literature instead at theVictoria University of Manchester.[3]
Journalism and other writing
editPartly through her mother's friendship with Scott, Lejeune found work writing forThe Manchester Guardian(nowThe Guardian), initially as a music critic. Her main interests were inGilbert and Sullivan,VerdiandPuccini.However, she was increasingly excited by the cinema. Her firstGuardiancontribution on film compared the "beauty of line" that she saw in Douglas Fairbanks's swashbuckling performance inThe Mark of Zorro(1920) with the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev.[6]
With her mother accompanying her,[7]she moved to London in 1921 and the next year she began writing a column for a paper calledThe Week on the Screen.[8]It was about this time that she befriended Hitchcock. In 1925[9]she marriedEdward Roffe Thompson,a psychologist and journalist. (Their home at Lane End was near her mother's home in Pinner.)[10]Their son,Anthony Lejeune,was born in 1928.[11]That year she leftThe Manchester GuardianforThe Observer(which then had no connection with theGuardiangroup), where she remained for the next 32 years, although she also contributed to other publications includingThe New York Times,contributing articles about British cinema to the American paper's Sunday drama section.[12]
She wrote an early book on the subject ofCinema(1931), and her film reviews are anthologised inChestnuts in her Lap(1947) and posthumously inThe C. A. Lejeune Film Reader(1991), edited by her son Anthony Lejeune. In the postwar years she was also atelevisioncritic for a time, and she adapted books for the medium, writing scripts for the BBC'sSherlock Holmes television series(1951),ClementinaandThe Three Hostages
Lejeune's film reviews have long been compared to those ofDilys Powell,whose criticism forThe Sunday Timesoverlapped for about 21 years with Lejeune's commentary forThe Observer.[13]Unlike Powell, Lejeune became increasingly disillusioned by various trends in films and, shortly after she had expressed her disgust atMichael Powell's filmPeeping Tom,she resigned fromThe Observerfollowing the release of Hitchcock'sPsychoin 1960; she walked out of press screenings of both films.[7][14]Subsequently, she completedAngela Thirkell's unfinished last novel,Three Score Years and Ten(1961) and wrote an autobiography,Thank You for Having Me(1964).
Death
editLejeune died at the age of 76 on 31 March 1973.[15]She had been a resident ofPinnerfor more than forty years.Peter Sellerssaid of her that "her kindness, her complete integrity, and her qualities as an observer and a commentator have gained her the unqualified admiration of my profession. She respects integrity in others and has no harsh word for anyone whose honest efforts end in failure. Everything she has written, I am sure, has come as much from her heart as her head, and the high quality of her writing, and the standard of film-making she encourages, have made her work a part of cinema history."[16]
References
edit- ^Henry K. Miller, 'Sympathetic Guidance: Hitchcock and C. A. Lejeune',Hitchcock Annual,vol. 20, 2015
- ^Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- ^abLewis, Naomi (10 March 2019)."Thank You for Having Me by CA Lejeune – archive, 1 March 1964".The Observer.Retrieved8 April2019.
- ^The Guardian,1 November 1899
- ^"The Founders of Withington Girls' School".Withington Girls' School. Archived fromthe originalon 30 September 2011.Retrieved22 August2011.
- ^Henry K. Miller, "How Diaghilev's Ballets Russes kept British cinema on its toes",Guardianfilm blog, 22 December 2010
- ^abHutchinson, Pamela (2 March 2015)."CA Lejeune: the pioneering female film critic who changed our view of cinema".The Guardian.Retrieved7 April2019.
- ^Hutchinson, Pamela (19 June 2018)."A pantheon of one's own: 25 female film critics worth celebrating: 15. CA Lejeune".Sight & Sound/BFI Film Forever.Retrieved8 April2019.
- ^Caroline A Lejeune England and Wales Marriage Registration Index, 1837-2005.Family Search. Retrieved 20 April 2018.(subscription required)
- ^Lejeune, C. A. (1971)Thank You for Having Me.London: Tom Stacey; pp. 114, 178
- ^"Anthony Lejeune".The Times.6 March 2018.Retrieved7 April2019.(subscription required)
- ^"C. A. Lejeune Dies; British Film Critic".The New York Times.Associated Press. 2 April 1973.Retrieved7 April2019.
- ^Davies, Rebecca (25 July 2008)."Women on film".Prospect.Retrieved8 April2019.[permanent dead link]
- ^Patterson, John (13 November 2010)."Peeping Tom may have been nasty but it didn't deserve critics' cold shoulder".The Guardian.Retrieved7 April2019.
- ^The Observer, 8 April 1973
- ^The TimesObituary, 2 April 1973
- Lejeune, C. A. (1964)Thank You for Having Me.London: Hutchinson (autobiography)
- Miller, Henry K. (2015) 'Sympathetic Guidance: Hitchcock and C. A. Lejeune',Hitchcock Annual,vol. 20, 2015
External links
edit
- C.A. Lejeuneat theBFI'sScreenonline
- Caroline Lejeuneat Women Film Pioneers Project