Originally a baritone in opera, Langley made his film debut in 1922 for Herbert Wilcox and was an instant hit in heavy, villainous roles gaining the description of ‘Britain’s best ‘bad man’ and the British Lon Chaney.
‘Sinister strength is the essence of his movie personality and he is one of the best villains on the British screen.’ The Picturegoer April 1924
Born in the spring of 1888 in Ramsgate, Kent, Herbert George Langley was the son of a coffee house and restaurant keeper called John Simon Gevesta Langley and he had an older brother Sidney and a younger sister called Dorothy. Little is known of his early years but on 2nd August 1909, at the age of twenty-one he married Ethel Mary Billyeald in West Kensington and was described as a ‘musician.’ A son, John Bryan Billyeald Langley, was born in Fulham, London, on 29th December 1909.
Langley clearly had a day job (as a musician) but was singing in his spare time at various functions such as the Forest Hill Cricket club annual dinner in late October 1909. However, his career as a professional singer began with the Thomas Beecham Opera company and he appeared in Richard Strauss’s comic opera Feuersnot at His Majesty’s (1910), Boris Godounow at the Aldwych (1916), La Boheme, Drury Lane (1917), Othello and Prince Igor at Covent Garden (1919), Pagliacci at Covent garden (1919) and various seasons of grand opera at the Palladium, Shaftesbury and other theatres in London and regional cities. His greatest achievement was probably playing Iago in Verdi’s Othello.
A lively personality, he knew much about his colleagues who included Caruso, Eva Turner, Norman Allin and Chaliapin. When Thomas Beecham’s company disbanded due to financial constraints he joined the newly formed British National Opera Company in late 1921. He toured the regions and had short seasons at Covent Garden and His Majesty’s through the 1920s. In 1922 during the tour of Lady of the Rose, Langley was described as having a fine voice and giving dramatic acting.
As the leading bass-baritone of the BNOC he played almost every night. He described the role of the baritone as nearly always the bad man who had a lot of ‘dirty work’ to do. But in his early days he never played anything more ferocious than Valentine in Faust. He was most versatile and could turn at will from a broadly comic character like the pompous Beckmesser in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg to the grim villainies of Iago in Othello or the subtle wiles of the lawyer Gianni Schicchi in the Puccini opera of that name.
It must have been these bad-man characteristics that endeared him to Herbert Wilcox and Graham Cutts when they were casting The Wonderful Story (1922). Langley explained that he had some spare time on his hands and accepted an offer to appear in the film. As a screen actor he was perfect since he was tall, with a powerful build, handsome in a rugged way with dark hair and piercing dark eyes.
The Wonderful Story was made on a very slight budget by the fledgling Graham-Wilcox productions in late 1921 over only eight days. Without lavish expenditure on sets, crowds, stars and other accessories it was a tragic but simple story about two brothers who live humbly together in a modest cottage in an old country village. One is to marry (Herbert Langley) but on the eve of his wedding he has an accident and is paralysed, thereafter watching the eventual courtship and marriage of his brother (Olaf Hyteen) to the girl he loves (Lilian Hall Davis). On release the film was adored and described as irrisistable, interesting, gripping and a masterpiece and the acting exemplary.
Herbert Langley gave fine work mostly done lying on his back in bed as an invalid and was described as ‘a born screen actor: his sincere though at times sinister personality makes him an outstanding figure at once.’ Thereafter, he claimed he would have not made another picture if Herbert Wilcox had not insisted. ‘Films pursue me’ he said ‘pretty much as I pursue my victims.’
For their next project, and thinking big, Graham-Wilcox productions took a lease on the whole of the vacant Famous Players Lasky studio at Islington to film Flames of Passion (1922). With the American actress Mae Marsh as lead Cutts said he was going to make Flames of Passion as lavish as The Wonderful Story was simple with a budget of £45,000. Described as powerful, dramatic and with a universal appeal, it was however, a lurid tale in essence about baby murder reflecting high and low life. Playing the drunken chauffeur and ultimately the murderer, Herbert Langley was regarded as being a little too heavy in his bad man part but his performance was hailed as polished, outstanding and exceptional. ‘His best piece of work is immediately after he has murdered the baby; the dread realization stuns him and leaves him dumb and horror stricken. This was excellent and if he had adopted the same air of restraint throughout, his performance would have been flawless’
Langley missed appearing in Mae Marsh’s second picture Paddy the Next Best Thing (1922), and when Cutts left Herbert Wilcox, the latter directed the oriental fantasy Chu Chin Chow (1923) starring the American actress Betty Blythe and filmed in Algiers and Berlin. Slated by the critics as being too long, boring and unevenly photographed, it was seen as an ‘acute disappointment’ and ‘a bad picture.’
Langley played the part of Hassan appearing in various disguises as the Chinese mandarin, the water seller, the fakir, the oil merchant and the Indian Prince. This gave him ‘great scope for his finished and impressive art.’ But, for some he did not ‘make Hassan the jovial rascal one knew on the stage’ and his strong and brutal performance was too much as he was striving ‘too consciously for sinister effect.’ His passionate scenes were also seen as being ‘violent without being either alluring or repulsive.’
After making Chu Chin Chow with the UFA film company in Berlin, Wilcox made a deal with a Viennese company to film Southern Love (1924), starring Betty Blythe once again, but this time in Vienna in August 1923. It was not a good experience and Wilcox felt he had been misled by the Austrian’s promises about facilities and expertise not to mention the stifling heat and an actors strike. A colourful story set in Spain about a gypsy dancer, her love affairs and a revengeful count, it was viewed as definitely not a high-brow production but merely a vehicle for the exploitation of Betty Blythe’s ample charms of dress and dance. Langley was admired for giving a ‘violently emotional study of the savage gipsy sweetheart’ and was described as ‘a really great artiste with a dominating personality with a splendid dramatic sense.’
Wilcox gave the film a spectacular premiere at the Albert Hall, which had been transformed into a bull-ring. Over seven thousand specially invited guests came to see the film along with a special prolog featuring a troupe of Spanish Gypsies and four opera singers including Herbert Langley.
In the spring of 1924 at the time of the premiere Langley was touring with the British National Opera Company and said he enjoyed film-making but missed his music. ‘Anyhow, I am not going to play in films again until someone offers me something other than a villian’s part. In four films I reckon I’ve killed, harmed or wronged about a dozen people and I’m, sick of it. It’s getting me a bad name. I’d like to be a hero for a change.’
With tongue in cheek, it was noted by The Picturegoer magazine, that nobody loved Herbert Langley’s screen characters, for their table manners were aweful and their morals worse. Yet despite his screen persona, he enjoyed the reputation of being a cheery fellow with an obliging disposition and a tendency to burst forth into song upon the slightest provocation and he enjoyed strenuous manual labour in the grounds of his home at Uxbridge. In contrast to saying he wanted different film roles in future and would like to be hero rather than a villian, he then insisted that he wanted to take a break from films ‘I’m sticking to my own job, which consists of plotting, killing and being killed to music.’
Continuing his career as an opera singer, in the summer of 1924 he was with the Wylie-Tate Pierrots at the Central pier Blackpool for the season and turned down a film offer from Gloria Film Company of Berlin. He continued touring with the British National Opera Company, but in early 1927 Harry B. Parkinson filmed a series of four short opera films called ‘Cameo Opera’s’ for Song Films Limited of Manchester. They were well-produced and beautiful filmed versions of famous operatic numbers using various members of the British National Opera Company including Herbert Langley. A strange concept for us to understand, but at the time, it was thought that there was great skill in how the dramatic episodes of the story were pictorialised and appropriate tunes and songs blended to them. At the special premiere of the first three – Maritana, Bohemina Girl and Rigoletto -staged in the London Hippodrome on 28th June, the stars of the films appeared and sang to accompany the scenes in which they appeared. Other subjects followed including Lily of Killarney, Faust, Carmen, La Traviata, Daughter of the Regiment, Martha, Il Travatore, Wagner’s Ring and Samson and Delilah. At the time Langley appeared with BNOC in Cavalleria Rusticana at the London Coliseum (1927) and The Barber of Saville at Kings Hammersmith (1927). He also appeared in Nigel Playfair’s rendering of the Comic Opera La Vie Parisienne in 1929 at the Lyric Theatre.
Thereafter, Langley continued his career in opera with a few further film appearances. He was given a leading role in Cupid in Clover (1929), a story about the love affairs of a farmer’s daughter. Thought to be poor in story but rich in pictures of English rural life it was observed that Langley ‘would have been good if he had not been allowed to overact.’
With the advent of sound, he had small roles in a further six films in the 1930s. In later life he became a drama critic for a publication called London and living in Tunbridge Wells, Kent he helped out in the studio for dramatic art that opened in 1946. Herbert Langley died 13th September 1967 aged 78 in London.
All images (unless specified in the caption) and text © copyright Gary Chapman / Jazz Age Club and must not be re-used without prior consent
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London’s Hollywood: The Gainsborough Studios in the Silent Years by Gary Chapman
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