There are several reasons to recall "Tower Of London". It gave Basil Rathbone one of his few chances to portray a character that could be compared to Lawrence Olivier's portrayal in another film of the same character. It had a performance by John Rodion, Rathbone's illegitimate son, who tried to follow his father's footsteps into movies but was ultimately unable to do so. It was one of the few films that Rathbone did with Boris Karloff (others being "Son Of Frankenstein" and "The Comedy Of Terrors"). It was, I believe, the first film that Rathbone did with Vincent Price (oddly enough some twenty three years later Price appeared as Richard III, in a remake of this film).
There is a story that Rathbone tells in his memoirs, "In And Out Of Character", of a practical joke played by himself and Karloff on Price. Price here was playing "false, perjured Clarence", that is George, Duke of Clarence, the middle brother between Edward IV and Richard III. The Duke of Clarence was in the Tower of London, charged with treason, when he died suddenly - reputedly he was purposely drowned in a "butt of Malmesey Wine" (a barrel of wine). Clarence, historically, was a very untrustworthy figure, who kept switching sides to better himself at everyone else's expense. In reality he was probably executed for treason. But rumor about the odd death in the barrel of wine spread, and eventually his death was thought to be due to the evil plotting of his brother Richard.
When the film was shot, Rowland V. Lee (the director) decided that wine could not be used for the barrel's liquid - it would be wasted and was too expensive. He used Coca Cola, which is dark looking like a dessert wine. Price had to be tipped upside down into the barrel full of this Coke, and hold his breath for about a minute, and then be pulled out. He was shot a few times to be sure they got the best take for the film. Then he was taken out of the barrel, and was resting when Rathbone and Karloff came over - they gave Price a bottle of Coke to drink and relax with!
The film has some novel touches in it, none of which are remotely true. Miles Mander's King Henry VI is killed by order of Richard while he is praying. Henry VI did die violently in the Tower of London in 1471, shortly after the failure of the attempt by Warwick the "Kingmaker" to restore him and the Lancastrians to the throne at the battle of Tewksberry. More likely, though, he was dispatched by order of King Edward IV. There was no box of wax dolls that Richard kept to remove the dolls representing the rivals he had knocked off. Mord is apparently a figment of the movie writer's imagination - no British monarch ever boasted of using a hangman to climb the genealogical tree to become king. Finally, I don't think that Richard's older brother, Edward IV (Ian Hunter), was such a ninny as to wink at Richard's acts of villainy as matters to laugh about while such a character came closer and closer to threatening the succession of Edward's own sons.
For all the errors, it is stylistically a good film, with Rathbone at his wormiest as the ultimate bad uncle and usurper. Karloff's Mord is one of the few villain's he played with absolutely no good points to his character.
It's not "Richard III", wherein Olivier (with Shakespeare) looks at the soul of a demonic villain. But as a good programmer it was worth watching.
About eleven days ago was August 22, 2006, the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth Field, the battle where Richard and his cause fell in 1485, destroyed by Henry Tudor. As it does every year, the "Richard III Society" put a notice in the death columns of the New York Times regarding the sad fate of the monarch, and concerning loyalty (Richard's death in battle is tied to the opportunistic switch in loyalties of the Earl of Stanley and his men in the battle). I still hope that one day some serious film director will try to produce a film version of Richard's career and story that shows that the evidence that he killed his nephews and most of those other "victims" is not proved and probably was not done by him. But I wonder if such a film as that would turn out to be acceptable with the public, which is now used to seeing Richard III as always being a super-villain.
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