The Remington portable is on top of the filing cabinet as Jim Broadbent, playing Kempton Bunton in The Duke, is caught in the act of wrapping up the Goya by Helen Mirren, playing Bunton's wife Dorothy.
An early contender for the Movie With Typewriter Oscar is The Duke, a very popular and much acclaimed British comedy-drama about Kempton Canwon Bunton and the theft of Francisco Goya's painting Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London on August 21, 1961. This was the only time artwork has ever been stolen from the National Gallery. The delightful film stars Jim Broadbent as Bunton and Helen Mirren as his wife, Dorothy. The abundance of scenes showing Broadbent typing on a Glasgow-made grey Remington portable amply qualifies The Duke for our special category Academy Award. As well, there are lines of Leceister-made Imperial 66s in scenes shot at what purports to be Scotland Yard.
At the time of the robbery, Bunton was a 57-year-old
unemployed driver, of Yewcroft Avenue, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in the
north-east of England. Constantly sacked from various jobs, Bunton had plenty of time on
his hands to sit at his typewriter in a spare bedroom writing scripts for television mini-series. The stories in folders were piled up in a wardrobe in the bedroom, alongside
the stolen painting. At the end of the movie, audiences are informed that none
of the many scripts typed and submitted by this ambitious aspiring playwright were
accepted for production by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Broadbent-Bunton is shown
receiving one rejection letter from the BBC, telling him it doesn’t find much
call for “grief” stories.
The real Kempton Bunton (1904-1976)
Between 1961-65, Kempton Bunton gave British
police plenty of grief. Finally the Bunton case reached the Old Bailey, the
Central Criminal Court in London, and was heard from November 4-9, 1965. This
was the subject of a 2016 book by American lawyer Alan Hirsch, The Duke of
Wellington, Kidnapped!: The Incredible True Story of the Art Heist That Shocked
a Nation. Hirsh wrote that the presiding judge Carl Aarvold was “once
oddly described by a journalist as ‘not only gracious in defeat but fluent in
French, a rare combination’.” Hirsch pointed out that Aarvold made the odd
judicial decision to instruct the jurors that they must acquit Bunton if they
believed that he always intended to return the painting. “[Aarvold] was
actually following the letter of Britain’s exceedingly odd larceny statute,”
Hirsch wrote. “Bunton’s defence team wisely latched on to the wording of the
law, which said you are guilty of theft only if you intend to ‘permanently
deprive’ the owner of his possession. The problem for the defence was that
while Bunton returned the painting, he did not return the frame [which the
Buntons had lost]. All of this tied the judge up in knots during his
instruction to the jury.” Even so, the jury managed to follow his instructions
- finding Bunton not guilty of stealing the painting, but guilty of stealing
the frame. Bunton served three months.Bunton’s motive was to benefit “the good of mankind” and to pay off BBC TV licences for pensioners. His wife Dorothy (née Donnelly) considered her husband as, “above all a frustrated author who had written a novel and several plays without ever managing to get a line published”. However, 11 months after Bunton died, in April 1976, the Liverpool Daily Post put Bunton’s own typed words into print. The story was headlined, “How I Stole the Goya”.
No comments:
Post a Comment
I do not accept anonymous comments.
I only allow comments under User IDs provided I know who that person is.
Do not ask me to evaluate typewriters.
Comments must be relevant to the post.
As the author of these posts, I make the decisions about what they contain - it is not open to discussion.