Ronald Colman-The Story of Mankind

By request for Terri Riegler

Another British actor with a long and varied Hollywood career was Ronald Colman. Although known for his mellifluous voice, Colman actually started out early in silent films, becoming nearly stereotyped as a great lover in the Valentino mold (often teame dwith actress Vilma Banky) before mixing in adventure with such classics as the original BEAU GESTE. In the early days of sound, his voice helped him easily make the transition that other stars were unable to make. In 1929, Colman appeared in the first of two performances as "Bulldog" Drummond, one of those dashing, roguish but sophisticated mystery-solving gentlemen who dotted the B pictures throughout the thirties and forties and later (along with their female counterparts) ruled the TV airwaves. It got him an early Academy Award nomination. Soon enough, though, he had risen to even bigger and better things. As Hollywood began to produce more and more classic, literary-based fare throughout the next decade, Colman was there. He starred in RAFFLES, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, IF I WERE KING and the still-unsurpassed romantic adventure that is LOST HORIZON.

Perhaps feeling Ronald Colman, born in 1891, was getting a bit old in a field that even then doted on the ludicrous "flavor of the month" concept, his output lessened in the early 1940's but he was not ready to be relegated to has-been status by any means. 1942's RANDOM HARVEST brought a second Best Actor nomination and in 1948 he actually won the Oscar for A DOUBLE LIFE.

By that point, Colman had taken a perhaps unusual career turn by becoming a semi-regular on radio's long-running JACK BENNY SHOW...playing and parodying himself as Jack's veddy British neighbor! His wife, Benita, appeared also and their enjoyable, good-natured mocking of cliches and conventions associated with British Hollywood brought them their own successful series on both radio and television, THE HALLS OF IVY.

With his cultured and widely imitated voice, the actor was a natural for radio and began to take less and less film roles. One that he did take, in 1950, was CHAMPAGNE FOR CAESAR, an absolutely delightful spoof of television, advertising and intellectuallism co-starring Vincent Price before he got typecast in horror roles.

Around that same time, a young man named Irwin Allen, a former publicist, was wetting his feet as a film producer by making a couple of lackluster solo comedy features with his friend Groucho Marx. In 1953, however, his fortunes changed when an Allen-produced documentary, THE SEA AROUND US, went on to win the Best Documentary Oscar. Over the next few years, Allen looked for and found a number of unique properties to produce. One of these was THE STORY OF MANKIND.

THE STORY OF MANKIND was a classic 1921 children's book--the first to win the coveted Newbery Award--written by the marvelously named Henrik Willem van Loon. The book, now public domain and available in its entirety online at various places, is a thick collection of historic episodes that influenced the world as it came to be.

For the movie, it was decided that a framing device would be needed. Allen, in spite of huge television success in the 1960's with LOST IN SPACE, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA and other science-fiction series would return in the 1970's to all-star big screen disasters. It all started however, with THE STORY OF MANKIND...a disaster of the other kind.

Touting "the biggest star cast ever on one screen," the ads for the film fail to mention that few of them even appear in the same scenes together due to the very episodic nature of the picture. Technically, for instance, this is also the final film for the Marx Brothers...but only because Groucho (Allen's old friend you'll recall and possibly influential in getting other stars to join up by his presence), Chico and Harpo all appear seperately in brief vignettes.

The framing sequence that was decided on featured an interstellar courtroom setting in which a tribunal was formed in heaven in order to determine if mankind had gone too far by discovering the so-called "super H-Bomb." Vincent Price, by now associate dwith more sinister roles than not, appears as the devilish Mr. Scratch to argue for the eradication of all mankind. For the defense, we are offered "the Spirit of Man" as embodied by a most earnest (you knew we'd get back to him eventually, didn't you?) Ronald Colman.

Dressed initially like some noir film detective, Colman chews the scenery throughout as he debates Price's devil figure as to what the ultimate fate of the human race should be. As earlier in CHAMPAGNE FOR CAESAR, the interplay between Price and Colman is fun but the rest of the film becomes an interminable he said/he said history lesson with lots of stock footage (an Allen trademark) and such bizarre casting as Peter Lorre as Nero, a young Dennis Hopper as Napolean Bonaparte and a not-so-young Hedy Lamarr as Joan D'Arc.

If you were wondering, Colman's character prevails and we're allowed to survive as a species but we're put on alert--much like in the earlier THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL--that the powers that be will be keeping an eye on us.

If it all sounds kind of comic-booky, there was, in fact, a comic book adaptation from Dell Comics! The adaptation, however, in spite of presenting Price and Colman prominently on its cover, reportedly eliminates completely their appearances and the framing sequence itself.

A spectacular failure, it became, as previously stated, Irwin Allen's first disaster movie and probably drove him into what would become his very successful television career. Vincent Price continued a slow career ascension that took him from the depths of the blacklist days to the status of film legend in spite of a number of bizarre blips such as this in his resume. Following this picture, Ronald Colman, already a film legend, was according to at least one report, cast in THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED but he died the following year without being able to do the picture. The role he was reported to have had was filled by another aging but dapper actor, George Sanders...who also married Colman's widow Benita.

In the years since, THE STORY OF MANKIND has become a trivia question while real Colman films such as LOST HORIZON have endured in revivals and restorations. That incredible voice has inspired numerous parodies and cartoon voices and comic book artist Steve Ditko even based his character DOCTOR STRANGE on Colman's visual look during the strips peak period (Initially it had been seemingly based on Price!). Later on, post-Ditko, as the character was finally given an origin story, it was based in part on LOST HORIZON. Many Ronald Colman movies continue to turn up on television...but for some reason, THE STORY OF MANKIND hardly ever shows up at all.