"The Lady Vanishes" characters Charters and Caldicott.
heh i don’t know about that but if u want to see more of those two, watch carol reed’s night train to munich (1940), great fun and includes margaret lockwood and chalders and caldicott as well as a young and dashing rex harrison. same writers as the lady vanishes and hitch was supposed to direct but had already left for hollywood. the characters of chalders and caldicott are meant to represent the british upper middle class who ignored the fascist tide sweeping europe for as long as they possibly could and are an example of british self deprecating humor. this may be the last light hearted film leading up to the war. chalders and caldicott are comic relief of course, and indicative of certain englishmen’s attitudes toward the world (they are mainly concerned with cricket scores, etc). it hadn’t occurred to me they were a ‘couple’ but it seems odd they are always together and i believe they appeared in at least two other films during the war, altho i haven’t seen them, including the lady vanishes propaganda spinoff millions like us (1943) d. frank launder. i will have to ask a rabid english hitchcock fan i know if this seems likely.
I don’t think there can be any doubt that they are a gay couple. The scene in the hotel shows them in bed together sharing a newspaper, one with his shirt off and other with his pants off.
haha! i first saw the film as a kid which could be why i never questioned this! ^ the characters were so popular they had their own bbc series in the 1980s. they were also part of the original script for the third man!
Well, maybe. It seems more to me like they’re just a couple of guys in a Laurel and Hardy comedy team relationship. As I recall the scene above, they’ve got to share a room with a maid in a crowded hotel. The maid at one point enters the room where they’re reading the paper (checking the test scores, of course) in bed, and seems to jump to the gay conclusion, which leaves them rather non-plussed.
seems like they were also sharing a pair of pajamas for some reason? i doubt this scene could’ve passed the american censors though
I’d have to re-watch the movie — which isn’t a bad idea.
Not just Laurel and Hardy, but Morecambe and Wise (most popular British comic double act)
peter smith
I had never seen The Lady Vanishes until recently and found the two supporting actors of Charters and Caldicott (played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) to be the most interesting. One thing that fascinated me was how ambiguous there sexuality was. Now of course this is 1938 and Hitch has had homosexual characters in his films before and after this time but with these two you could argue they were a couple going to a cricket match or just two friends doing the same thing. Agree?