Virtually everyone knows about Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. After all there's been more than 15 movies and television shows about them.

Some of the shows have been documentaries and others have been "fictionalizations". A documentary is - as the dictionaries tell us - "a film, television or radio program which claims to be factual and has no fictitious elements". A fictionalization is when the screenwriter makes the whole story up with just a minor guide from the historical events.

Then there's the docudrama, a vague and somewhat contradictory genre which on the one hand we're told is based on facts but which the scriptwriter can still make stuff up. One popular informational website states a docudrama "makes no promise of being entirely accurate in its interpretation. It blends fact and fiction for its recreation¹ and its quality depends on factors like budget and production time."

It might be tempting to say a documentary has expert talking heads explaining the subject matter supplemented with real film footage and photographs. Or in Henry and Anne's case there would be historical paintings such as the famous pictures by Hans Holbein who was Henry's court painter.

However, some of the more recent documentaries have actors playing the parts of the characters. They do, though, use the actual words spoken or written by the individual they're supposed to be.

For instance, in one of the documentaries, David Oakes was playing the part of Cardinal Woolsey's assistant, George Cavendish. Looking into the camera - "breaking the fourth wall" as it's called - he quoted George's famous description of how diligent the Cardinal was. Cardinal Woolsey, we hear,

... roose earely in the mornyng abought third jor of the clock, syttyng down to wright letters all which season my lorde neuer roose oons to pis."

Of course, for the film David delivered the lines in updated English.

The popular image of Henry VIII is as a shouting and pompous overbearing glutton who goes through wife after wife in his efforts to insure that the next monarch of England will be a king. But much of the recent documentaries and docudramas strive to portray the REAL Henry. Then we learn that he was highly educated and spoke and wrote a number of languages including Latin. As a young man he was handsome and athletic and personally participated in jousts and tournaments. He was also an avid tennis player and a keen musician and composer.

But it was the 1933 film The Private Life of Henry VIII starring Charles Laughton that solidified the popular image of Henry. There we see Henry was, yes, a shouting and pompous overbearing glutton who goes through wife after wife in his efforts to insure that the next monarch of England will be a king.

Whether rightly or wrongly Henry's life is often equated to the story of his six marriages, and a well-received BBC series in 1970 about Henry and his six wives was The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Henry was portrayed by Keith Mitchell and his wives were played by Annette Crosbie (Catherine of Aragon), Dorothy Tutin (Anne Boleyn), Anne Stallybrass (Jane Seymour), Elvi Hale (Anne of Cleves), Angela Pleasence (Catherine Howard), and Rosalie Crutchley (Catherine Parr). The stories adhere to history as well as can be expected especially when compressing nearly fifty years into six ninety-minutes episodes

The Private Life of Henry VIII covers about ten years of Henry's life and with the movie running only an hour and a half necessarily leaves out quite a bit. His first marriage of nearly 24 years to Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella (yes, THE Ferdinand and Isabella who bankrolled Christopher Columbus), was quickly disposed of in a title card. Then his romance and marriage to Anne Boleyn was put tidily away in the first few scenes. In fact the movie opens on the day of Anne's execution.

Once more honesty compels us to relegate the movie into the docudrama category although admittedly it's little bit of a stretch to hand it that much verisimilitude. Anne's execution is shown to be an event of public entertainment with bleachers set up around the scaffold and with much merriment and snide comments from an audience which was composed of the lower orders.

In actuality Anne's execution was held outdoors, yes, but in private in the courtyard of the Tower of London. The executioner - here the movie was d'accord with the historical record - was a swordsman imported from France, not the usual and often not too skilled English axeman.

The plot then moves through the succession of wives from Jane Seymour to Anne of Cleves then to Catherine Howard and finally to Catherine Parr. Admittedly the movie does tell us the gist of the story, but the details are considerably compressed, embellished, and invented.

Jane (played by Wendy Barrie) did give Henry a male heir who would become King Edward VI. And Jane did die due to complications of the childbirth, although not on the day of the birth as in the movie.

Henry's next wife was the German princess Anne of Cleves and according to the historical record Henry "lyked her not". But Anne - wisely - agreed to a formal end of the marriage and retired to country estates and a comfortable income granted by Henry.

On the other hand details of their wedding night as shown in the film - a few minutes playing cards - was pure screenwriters invention. The irony is that Henry's marriage to Anne was brief and yet Anne was played by Elsa Lanchester who was then and for the next 30 years was Charles's real-life wife.

The story continues with Henry's next marriage to Catherine Howard (Binnie Barnes). Here we see the new queen kept carrying on with her true love Thomas Culpepper (Robert Donat). Now it's not unreasonable to think that the real Catherine and Thomas were dallying about. But whether they really were as conflicted between their love for each other and their sense of duty to the king as shown in the movie is less clear. As in the movie, the liaison was finally revealed and turned out most unsatisfactorily, certainly for Catherine and Thomas.

Henry's last marriage was to Catherine Parr who was played by Everley Gregg. Catherine is shown to be of a rather bossy temperament, leading Henry at the end of the movie to look at the audience and say, "Six wives and the best of them's the worst."

Actually Catherine was particularly kind and caring to Henry and his children (two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, and his son Edward). The real Catherine, though, did come very nearly to being arrested for heresy. But when she learned of the king's suspicions, she was able to convince him that what appeared to be her questioning of proper religious teachings were simply her attempting to divert the king from his infirmities.

And he had plenty of them. By the time he died in 1547, Henry suffered from massive obesity, diabetes, constant indigestion and constipation, and the effects of a jousting accident which produced a concussion and chronic pain from an ulcerated leg wound that never healed.

The film reportedly cost £60,000 (about $7,000,000 in today's cash) and was filmed in five weeks - a quick shoot even in those days. The picture garnered good reviews and Charles even won the Academy Award for Best Actor. The movie was also nominated for Outstanding Production - now called Best Picture - but lost to Cavalcade, a film virtually no one remembers.

It's a bit confusing as to what year the award was for. Sometimes the articles say it was the 1933 Academy Awards and others that the year was 1934. But this is matter of semantics. You can legitimately refer to the Academy Awards for 1933 which means it's for movies release in 1933. If you refer to the time of the Academy Awards ceremony then it was 1934.

References and Further Reading

"Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant", David Starkey (presenter), BBC, 2009.

"The Private Life Of Henry VIII - Film (Movie) Plot and Review", Film Reference.

"The Private Life of Henry VIII: A Pork-Gorging, Head-Chopping, Liberty-Taking Romp", Alex von Tunzelmann, Reel History, The Guardian, December 10, 2014.

"Henry VIII’s Deteriorating Health - 1509-1547", Laura John, Historic UK, August 20, 2018.

The Private Life Of Henry VIII, Charles Laughton, Merle Oberon, Wendy Barrie, Elsa Lanchester, Binnie Barnes, Everley Gregg, Alexander Korda (director), Lajos Biró (writer), Arthur Wimperis (writer), London Films Productions, 1933.

"Inside the Body of Henry VIII", BBC, 2008.