Profiles

James Mason speaking to Look North in 1970

James Mason was born on May 15th, 1909 at Croft House in Marsh, Huddersfield. The youngest son of a successful Huddersfield textile merchant it's unlikely anybody thought he would end up on the Big Screen - after all they didn't even have the Talkies back in those days.

It looked as though Mason's career was all set out. From public school it was on to Cambridge and a career in architecture but at university he discovered a taste for the footlights. After being spotted in a student production by the London critics Mason started to apply for any acting job that was going. By the time of his death in 1984 he had played more than 100 screen roles and received three Oscar nominations and for a time he was one of Huddersfield's hottest properties.

James Mason in a very early TV part, December 1938

Tony Earnshaw, Artistic Director of Bradford's International Film Festival - now in its 15th year - explains what it was about Mason's screen personality that made him such a big star: "He was known as the 'star they love to hate'. When he first broke through he was this saturnine broody brute who beat up women. There was something in that which appealed to people. I don't know if women in the 1940s liked the concept of a bad boy. He wielded a whip and he used the flat of his hand. I mean this was pre-PC in every way but that kind of a personality made him a star and I think initially he revelled in it. Eventually it became too much like negative type-casting and he was anxious to escape from it."

But was there anything in Mason's Huddersfield background that may have given rise to his screen persona? Tony may have the answer: "I like to think that's just his standard Yorkshire background. There's a bit of Heathcliff in all of us, I think, but don't forget he was an extremely handsome man, very good looking...The standard requirements to become a movie star."

Mason's big breakthrough - 1947's Odd Man Out

By his own admission Mason couldn't wait to get away from Huddersfield. His big breakthrough came with the 1947 film Odd Man Out in which he gives a haunting performance as an IRA gunman shot during a bank raid. But, Tony points out, Mason the man was very different from Mason the screen villain: "He was desperate to become a leading man, a matinee idol and he wanted to do it on the American stage." In the 1950s he landed some very big Hollywood roles, co-starring with Judy Garland in A Star is Born (for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor) and playing opposite Cary Grant in Hitchcock's classic thriller, North By Northwest.

But Mason never really accepted the Hollywood studio system. Tony says: "He was his own worst enemy because he was difficult and he was awkward, and he was quite a perfectionist." This led him to refuse parts that he was required to do as part of his contract. Tony adds: "He was suspended for quite some time and it really put a kibosh on his career. He picked up a reputation for being difficult as he had in England. By the time he came back to the UK he was still picking up substantial roles in films but his years as a leading man really were over. He went from being a kind of ingenue to leading man, and then he kind of slipped into character roles. But, what an actor! I think he really was his own worst enemy."

Across the road from Mason's birthplace

Asked to choose his own favourite Mason performances, Tony confesses to being "a Horror junky". This is why a 1979 TV mini-series, Salem's Lot, is high up on his list: "He plays a kind of vampire wrangler. He's the epitome of elegant evil, this urbane character who you know is a bad guy. He's got to be bad, he's English. All the best villains are English."

However, for Tony there's one Mason role that really stands out: "If I was to pick one of his films [it would be] Lolita. You can't get better than the performance he gave as Professor Humbert Humbert, this terribly sad man who knows that he's doing something wrong and he can't stop himself. It's way ahead of its time, a really good interpretation of the book - Stanley Kubrick, who directed it, being very brave and James Mason playing in essence a paedophile before the term had really been coined. He's obsessed with, and lusting over, a young girl. I think that was immensely brave of him and it's the kind of thing that he would pursue and embrace. He wasn't frightened, and he wasn't a scaredy cat as an actor, and would do the kind of stuff that some actors maybe wouldn't."

The star's last role in 1984

James Mason left Hollywood in 1965, eventually settling in Switzerland with his second wife. He died there in 1984 but in his later years he seems to have become fond of his home town, making frequent visits there. Looking back in 1972 for the documengtary Home James, he says his mother's attitude to the town rubbed off on him: "She was always reaching for a grander way of life that was more than could be expected of Huddersfield." By this time he'd come to value Huddersfield people: "To me it's the way they talk, the way they build, the way they live their lives" and above all, it's what they do with their time off. The town's rich musical tradition, the trips to nearby Holy Trinity Church and rugby league were all part of Mason's own childhood.

And, in its turn, the town has paid its own homage to this great actor. In 2004 another very well-known Huddersfield thespian Patrick Stewart unveiled a bust of Mason which now has pride of place in the foyer of the town's Lawrence Batley Theatre. There's a blue plaque on Huddersfield Library and there's another plaque across the road from Croft House which was demolished in the 1970s. There's even a close named after him in the same street!

Bust of Mason unveiled by Patrick Stewart

Twenty-five years after Mason's death, Tony Earnshaw believes it's only right that this retrospective should be such an essential part of this year's Festival, especially for younger audiences who may never have seen a James Mason film at the cinema: "I think there's a purpose for showing films like this, not only to showcase a star who happens to have been born over a hundred years ago. We are kind of educating people to look at different styles and to try and persuade them that old black and white movies have a value. Not everything has to be about sex scenes, car chases, special effects and super heroes.

For the two weeks of the Festival we can see the very latest films right here in Bradford. We can meet the movie makers in person - stars like Virginia McKenna and directors like Terry Jones. And there are plenty of new cinematic experiences to be had including a series of indie films from the USA to which the Festival's given the tag line: "Movies you've never seen, made by people you've probably never heard of." Tony says: "On the other side of the scale we've got a season dedicated to James Mason - an actor that many people will have forgotten, that many people will never have heard of and of whom some people say, 'I did like James Mason when I was a kid'. They want to rediscover him. It's one of the balancing aspects of the Festival."