Identity of the changeling prince
According to IMDB, the changeling prince was played by Sheila Brown.
But Kenneth Anger, author of Hollywood Babylon, claimed he played the part.
Does anyone know which is correct? Thank you.
TCM ran a newsreel regarding the Hollywood premier of this film. It showed two parents arriving with a small child identified with a girl's name. That girl was unmistakably the child who played the prince. I don't recall the girl's name, but Kenneth Anger's claim cannot be correct, unless he was born a girl.
shareThank you very much. Kenneth Anger always seemed a little "eccentric" to me -
he probably fantasized the whole thing.
Also, all the Warner Bros. studio casting forms and call sheets identify Sheila Brown as the child actress who played the Prince. On top of that, there's also first-hand accounts from Mickey Rooney and Olivia DeHavilland that Brown played the role.
____
View my films at: www.youtube.com/comedyfilm
Anger has made many dubious claims over the years (in 1984 he told reporters that Tennessee Williams did not die by accident but was murdered by a male prostitute who "forced" a medicine bottle cap down his throat!). My guess is he thought he could get away with the Changeling Prince lie because the cast records were supposively lost. Unfortunately for him, they were found.
share
Maybe Kenneth Anger went by the name "Sheila Brown" during the filming of the movie. Where is "Sheila Brown" now? Has it ever been proved or disproved that his mother was a Hollywood Seamstress? There has to be some sort of truth to Angers claim. Maybe he just visited the set with his mom then reinvented the events for his public persona? Who knows!?!
I did the math, and realized that Kenneth Anger would have been about 8 years
old at the time of the movie. So unless his scenes were filmed some time in
advance, or he was unusually small for his age, he would have been a bit old
to play the prince. I would guess the prince to be no older than 5.
I think you may be close to the truth. Check out Kenneth Anger's entry in Wikipedia. It claims that his mother dressed him as a girl to get the part. Also, his participation was corroborated by Mickey Rooney.
shareWith all due respect to Wikipedia, it is easy to insert falsehoods into it.
I would like to see that corroboration by Mickey Rooney. Did he really corroborate it? And if so, was it within the last ten years, because I'm not sure I'd take too much stock in Rooney's memory lately.
Also, did Anger ID himself as Sheila Brown before or after that name was found to be on the records as playing the prince?
I read that Billy Barty (who also shared scenes with the Prince), in a documented report, stated that Sheila Brown was a living, breathing little girl and not a boy in drag. I now completely believe Billy Barty. I noticed that there was a Sheila Brown listed in the credits of The Little Rascals short Three Men In A Tub. I have that on DVD, so I watched it thoroughly over and over. In the group of kids in the background watching the race is a little girl who looks like a slightly older Prince. Midsummer Night's Dream was done in 1935, and Three Men In A Tub was done in 1938. I'm convinced that it's the same person, in which case Sheila Brown is Sheila Brown, and not Kenneth Anger. As for her "disappearance", why is that surprising? Apparently she was only a background player who never had any dialogue. I don't recall Kenneth Anger ever claiming to be part of The Little Rascals.
shareTCM claims that the prince is Anger.
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/353248%7C25790/A-Midsummer-Night-s-Dream.html
(It's the last paragraph for those who don't wamt to trudge through the whole thing)
"Sometimes I doubt your commitment to sparkle motion."
[deleted]
But, then again, they say Max Reinhardt was German. He was born in Austria.
share