MovieChat Forums > Brighton Rock (1951) Discussion > Carol Marsh

Carol Marsh

posted 19 years ago by kellychristinah
18 replies | jump to latest

Personally she was the glue that held this film together so well. While Attenborough is exceptional, and he has the Midas touch in every project, it was Carol Marsh's ingenuity and compassion that made this film warm and frightening all wrapped into one. I truly believe this actress was underlooked, and extremely talented. She played Alice in Wonderland in the Lou Bunin version of the story. Which was a bizarre puppets and live action film, that seemed a challenge to act. But Marsh's versatility is evident. She has played a vampire, a warm hearted sister, a innocent fool of a waitress, and Alice. Not a bad list of roles. I'm not sure if anyone else agrees with me that she was just wonderful in this film.

It seemed after the Hammer film "Horror of Dracula" she dwindled off into lost actress land. Perhaps she wasn't unique enough to be a successful actress in America? Whatever the reason her career seemed to end after that film.

Which is by far Christopher Lee's finest!

[–] 19 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Paul75 18 years ago

I agree, I think she was fantastic in Brighton Rock. Does anyone know what happened to her?

[–] celestialstarfire 18 years ago

She was too pretty to be the true Rose.

[–] kellychristinah 18 years ago

I believe Carol Marsh is still alive. I'm sure shes a grandma and elderly now, probably just enjoying her life. Probably still lives in Great Britain. She was lovely, and perhaps too pretty to play the plain jane Rose, but She does have a squeaky clean childlike look that worked well for that character.

[–] zygimantas 18 years ago

I agree on both counts, she was a little too pretty, and charming with those big childlike eyes... but I forgive all that because she really did a good job convincing me about the character of Rose. She was great, I'd love to see some of her other films but they're a little hard for me to come by.

[–] BigJohnPeacehaven 18 years ago

The following was published in 1998 and is from 'Breakfast in Brighton' by Nigel Richardson.

I hadn’t expected to find Carol Marsh. The general feeling was that she had drifted away somewhere a long time ago. But then a reporter on the 'Argus' [the local newspaper in Brighton] gave me her phone number.

Carol lived in Bloomsbury but we arranged to meet, at her suggestion, on the lower concourse of the Canary Wharf station. The last tine I had seen her she wore a spotted dress and tears glistened on her cheeks as she listened to Pinkie’s voice saying ‘I love you…’ She said on the phone, ‘You’ll recognise me from the blue woollen coat.’ In fact I recognised the sad, crinkly-eyed smile, intact after fifty years. Rose worked as a waitress in Snow’s café. Carol and I drank tea in the Canary Wharf Café Rouge.

She had made a few films after 'Brighton Rock'. ‘People kept telling me, “When the next film comes out you’ll be a star forever.” But it never happened.’ She had done lots of theatre and radio and now she lived a reclusive life, ‘with no one to please and no one to hurt me.’

She was seventeen when she made the film, but by her own reckoning had an emotional age of about ten. Like Rose, she had been dreadfully preyed upon and 'Brighton Rock' was an unhappy memory. ‘People were very, very cruel. Why didn’t they just leave me alone?’ I said I thought she was luminous in the film and she replied that the thought of how good she might have been crucified her now.

‘I’ve never seen the film and I couldn’t bear to. I could not. All I’ve seen are when I’ve been sitting at home and clips come on the television. I was riveted by one shot of me running down the pier and saying, “Pinkie!” I thought, my God, what a sweet little girl. So naturally sweet.’

I asked Carol to sign my copy of the novel. I had in mind a variation on Greene’s inscription to Attenborough: ‘From your perfect Rose’, but Carol said this would be big-headed.

She wrote: ‘It was lovely meeting you. From “Rose”.’

[–] zygimantas 17 years ago

wow. fascinating, thanks for transcribing.

[–] LarrupinLou 15 years ago

I agree on both counts, she was a little too pretty, and charming with those big childlike eyes... but I forgive all that because she really did a good job convincing me about the character of Rose.

I forgive her because she was a little too pretty and charming with those big childlike eyes. :-D

I love her in all the movies that I have seen her in. She's just adorable.

No blah, blah, blah!

[–] me_tallbear 15 years ago

Oddly enough, I saw it (Brighton Rock) for the first time this evening on Turner Classic Movies (Jan. 6, 2009).

I was totally captivated by Rose, and I thought she looked familiar... it finally hit me - I had just seen her over Christmas (as I have in most every one these many years) in the 1951 version of "A Christmas Carol" (called "Scrooge" in England), featuring Alistair Sim as Scrooge.

She played Scrooge's sister Fan, who died giving birth to Scrooge's nephew Fred. She is in one other scene, in which she comes to retrieve Scrooge home from school, where he has been left to stay all alone for Christmas vacation once again by his stern father, who has finally yielded to her loving persistence.

She is so warm and enchanting, one can easily believe that Scrooge still loved her long after his heart had turned to flint toward the rest of the world.

In a nice coincidence, Hemoine Badderly, who played the inquisitive woman on Pinky's trail in Brighton Rock, was also in this version of Christmas Carol, as Bob Cratchit's wife.

Merry "Little Christmas" to all.

[–] dylanfan-2 13 years ago

Thank you for pointing out the "Christmas Carol" connection. You beat me to it by 2.5 years! I wonder if you have seen the new version of Brighton Rock and have compared Andrea Riseborough's performance as Rose with that of Carol Marsh. It's very interesting to compare the two!

Ms. Riseborough's Rose is paradoxically more mousey and more defiant than that of Ms. Marsh. Pinky seems to bring out this Rose's inner gangster. She defends Pinky so extremely that she actually pulls a knife on Ida (Helen Mirren): something neither the Rose of the book nor the Rose of the first film would conceivably have done!

John B.

[–] fortunate1 14 years ago

I saw "Brighton Rock" for the first time at the Film Forum in New York last summer, and am watching it again now on TMC. On the big screen, R.Attenborough's acting was a little bit more mordant than we're used to anymore -like the 'projecting to the back of the house' performances that stage actors brought to the cinema in its youngest days. On TV, his scenery-chewing is slightly more tolerable.

My post, though, is more to do with Carol Marsh. I find her utterly beguiling in this role, and am a little disappointed with the contributors above -I can only assume they're the sort of English who like nothing better than to take others 'down a peg'- that complain she's too pretty for the part. One of the many joys of this film is that she lights up the screen, and endears herself (or her character, anyway -which is the whole point) to us.

And, as much as I abhor those "how would you remake this film?" threads, I have to say that I see a fascinating blend of Emily Watson and Samantha Morton in her screen persona.

[–] zygimantas 12 years ago

oh I don't know.. too pretty for the part, it only means that the character in my opinion was not this bright eyed smiling baby.. charming and lovely.. doesn't mean she didn't own it, she sure did.

[–] fortunate1 12 years ago

"too pretty" is what others have said, not I -although most would accept that the "too" does imply a bright-eyed smiling woman, if not a baby.

[–] spookyrat1 11 years ago

""too pretty" is what others have said,"

I suppose a devotee of Graham Greene's novel may allege that. Then again he co -wrote the screen play so may well have had some influence in Carol Marsh's selection for the role.

I thought hers was a very compelling performance.

[–] jhpen22 11 years ago

I've just seen the film for the first time--to my regret. I agree with fortunate1 down to the last comma. But the reason for my posting does not have to do with Marsh's performance or appearance but with the centrality of her character to Greene's plot. Rose is another version of Scobie in The Heart of the Matter, Querry in A Burnt-out Case, the whiskey priest, and most other Greene protagonists. But in this case, the protagonist is split between two characters: Pinkie, who rejects the saving power of love and Rose who, in accepting it, is redeemed. Of the two, then, it's not Pinkie (or Attenborough, whose evil comes close to the best portrayers of Iago) who most engages me; it's Rose (and Marsh). The entire thrust of Greene's fiction is "the...appalling...strangeness of the mercy of God," a line that is given here to the nun. Or, as Father Rank tells Mrs. Scobie after her husband's suicide, "For goodness sake, Mrs. Scobie, don’t imagine you -- or I -- know a thing about God’s mercy." That Rose accepts this appalling and strange mercy, granted by love, Carol Marsh makes luminously clear.

[–] MrEdnablackadder 10 years ago

Personally I've never found Carol a very interesting actress. She was a graduate of the infamous "Company of Youth", which was known, back in the day, for producing just enormous quantities of British Roses which acted and spoke exactly in the same way. Its list of notable alumni isn't very long and not all of them are good. Carol seems to be a typical product of the school, without much of a distinctive screen persona or charisma. She's fine in this, as her frailty and - to be blunt- blandness might suit the weak-willed, naive Rose. But Andrea Riseborough is unquestionably a far more talented actress (even if the new Brighton Rock doesn't hold a candle to the original). Of course, both Marsh and Riseborough are too beautiful for the part, but Andrea has a chameleonic quality about her and actually downplays her glamour in 99% of her roles.

[–] fosolitude 9 years ago

I thought I was the only one! I saw Alice in Wonderland when I was probably eight and never forgot Carol Marsh. There was something I liked about her that's hard to identify. A couple of years ago I saw Brighton Rock and she has that same unidentifiable allure. There is a simple warmth to her in Brighton, her character could have been very forgettable if anyone else were cast. Pinkie sees an insipid, fawning fool but the audience sees something else in her, something not written in the script. It's a shame that Carol had a disappointing career after that and Alice. Why wasn't her value recognized?

[–] franzkabuki 8 years ago

I found her one-dimensional pure-heartedness, her extreme naivety and stupid, literally boundless devotion to that obviously creepy gangster (feelings she seemed to develop pretty much overnight) quite insufferable. Even her voice sounded like a mouse squeaking submissively in the corner.

"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan