Let’s call it “Man Canny Monday” this week because Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540) was canny AF! Shrewd, wily, and incredibly clever until he wasn’t, Cromwell rose from a modest background to becoming one of the most important and trusted advisors of King Henry VIII. Cromwell aided the king in getting rid of two wives and marrying two more, though the last would lead to his own downfall.
Because of his connection to court, Thomas Cromwell shows up in frock flicks about Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and their circle. Movies and TV shows often attempt to reproduce this famous portrait of him:
But they also seem to confuse Cromwell’s costume with Sir Thomas More. The statesmen served the king together, although More refused to swear to the crown’s supremacy over the Pope, which lead to his execution.
Not sure if Thomas Cromwell ever wore the Collar of Esses (which was a livery collar aligned with Henry VIII), but there is a portrait miniature of him wearing an Order of the Garter collar (which he was awarded in 1537, before he fell from grace with the king).
There’s your costume nitpick for today! Now here’s the fellas who’ve portrayed Cromwell onscreen…
Franklin Dyall in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)
Leo McKern in A Man for All Seasons (1966)
John Colicos in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
Wolfe Morris in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970)
Kenneth Williams in Carry On Henry (1971)
Donald Pleasence in Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972)
Terrence Hardiman in God’s Outlaw (1986)
Danny Webb in Henry VIII (2003)
Ron Cook in The Other Boleyn Girl (2003)
James Frain in The Tudors (2007-9)
Iain Mitchell in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)
Nick Sampson in Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant (2009)
Mark Rylance in Wolf Hall (2015)
Stephen Fewell in Blood, Sex, & Royalty (2022)
Sean Bean in Shardlake (2024)
Who’s your favorite onscreen Thomas Cromwell, and why is it Mark Rylance?
I had seen Mark Rylance on stage in some of Shakespeare’s plays before he started doing films and television. The man is never less than brilliant.
My favourite Thomas Cromwell is the late, great Mr Leo McKern, partly for his deviously burly take on Old Crumb, partly because Mr
Mark Rylance is a curst Oxfordian and I would therefore like him to be locked in the stocks (or, failing that, burned at the stake).
Rylance’s Oxfordian take is his one great fault, alas!
Agreed about Leo. And for all Rylance’s brilliance as an actor, for me he never conveyed the physical menace that Mantel’s Cromwell was supposed to; Rylance was the nice Cromwell. But I think he would have made a really fine Thomas More.
The former curator of Elizabethan manuscripts at the Huntington Library, Dr. Mary Robertson, who is a Thomas Cromwell specialist and to whom Hilary Mantel dedicated “Wolf Hall,” told me that she shares the opinion that Mark Rylance was not sinister enough.
My crackpot casting theory is that Mr Ray Winstone would have made a spot-on Thomas Cromwell (and I wouldn’t sneer at the chance to see him as Thomas Wolsey either).
After all, who could better convey the “What is THIS doing in the Royal Circle?!?” dynamic so integral to the character, while also looking like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with?
Glad to hear the opinion of so distinguished a Cromwell specialist. And I don’t think Ed’s comment is at all crackpot. I would’ve liked to see Brendan Coyle have a chance at Cromwell.
Actually, that is exactly what Dr. Mary Robertson told me!
Amazing to hear that! Mark Rylance is no-question a fantastic actor. But sometimes the physical aspects are really important to the character: I’m not saying we should keep doing fat suits in the 21st century, but this role required someone who, to quote Martin Scorcese, “has the girth”.
Now I can’t get the idea of a clean-shaven, maybe hair-dyed Ray Winstone out of my head. Playing Henry VIII as an “East End gangster” in the Peter Morgan drama didn’t work, mainly because Winstone stuck out from all the other cast members, like the Tudor court adopted him after a pub fight. Winstone would’ve had the affability that can turn into sinister menace when required, someone with an underestimated intelligence precisely because he’s “not like us aristocrats”, someone who could be your best friend or worst enemy and back up a physical threat after years training abroad to fight to the death.
Unfortunately, IMO, Rylance (thin, kind-of-handsome, soft-spoken, the kind of actor who barely needs to move his face or change his tone and yet conveys everything in a micro-expression) and Mantel’s…extremely favourable writing of the character where many of the historical female characters are attracted to him, is like 50% of why Cromwell has so many historians and historical fiction fans excited about him for the last decade-and-a-half. I don’t think Winstone or a similarly stocky, beady-eyed actor would’ve aroused such admiration.
There’s record of who was granted the Collar of Esses, unlike the Garter, but it would really surprise me if Cromwell never was; Henry gave them out to a LOT of his top legal officials, and Cromwell was certainly one of those for a decade or so. But after August 1537 when he was made a knight of the Garter it’s unlikely that he would ever worn the much-less-significant Esses often, if ever, and certainly wouldn’t have had his portrait painted in it. (Indeed, that’s the kind of promotion that often prompted people to send back an existing portrait to be overpainted with their shiny new honour.) So I think that detail is perfectly legit, especially as he got the Garter so near the end of his life; if a movie begins before 1537, the production either has to shell out for two elaborate collars, or be wrong half the time, or not give him one at all!
But in Anne of the Thousand Days they would really have done better not to give him one at all; that biker chain looks terrible. As does that scraped-back-and-pomaded hairdo ; it looks downright
…. 18th-century!
(Sorry, I hit Send accidentally)
The collars tripped me up as I was trying to ID photos — I’m sure costume designers weren’t always doing the research or just used what they had easy access to. Like that crappy chain in Anne of the Thousand Days, yuck!
Mark Rylance for the win!
Side fact – did you know the portraits of Cromwell and More (both Holbein) at the Frick face each other? They are placed on the same wall, forever judging each other, forever conversing, with a fireplace between them.
Hah! Good for the Frick ;)
As I recall, Bellini’s “St. Francis in the Desert” is between them; he and his–donkey? mule?–make nice intercessories. A wonderful room, in any case.
John Colicos will always live in my science fiction imagination, possibly stronger than in my historical one :)
Did you see that his prayer book shown in his portrait was recently found?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/prayer-book-owned-by-thomas-cromwell-adviser-to-henry-viii-was-hidden-in-plain-sight-for-centuries-180982370/
I know this doesn’t count, but I VASTLY preferred Ben Miles in the RSC production of Wolf Hall to Mark Rylance. I was lucky enough to catch it NYC when it hopped the pond and on top of just having a better physical presence for someone who used to be a boxer, I think Miles straddled the cold politician and man who keeps his people close so much better than Rylance.
The only two of these I’ve seen is “The Tudors” and “Wolf Hall.” I saw “Anne of the Thousand Days” so long ago, that I don’t remember a thing about it. It was interesting contrasting the portrayals by James Frain and Mark Rylance. There was an episode before things started going south for Cromwell, when he was discussing doctrine with an aide or his son – can’t quite remember – but Frain was quite warm and personable in that short scene. It felt like a glimmer of something human in his character outside of the political player, although of course, in the execution scene he was quite the contrast to Thomas More’s calm acceptance. Mark Rylance’s portrayal, on the other hand, seemed extremely controlled, contained – very much an observer of people and situations around him. In truth, considering how Cromwell rose so far above the situation he was born into, it does seem to be a more natural portrayal of someone who carefully insinuated himself into better and better jobs. He used his intelligence, but he wasn’t showing off to the people who mattered. As an aside, I had gone to a friend’s opening weekend of a play at the Gielgud, and Mark Rylance happened to be a couple of rows behind us. He seemed to be nice enough at being recognized, and thankfully the woman next to me who was waving to him didn’t run over and ask for a selfie or an autograph.
I’ve seen quite a few comments over the years crediting James Frain’s portrayal of Thomas Cromwell for a re-assessment of him. Much like Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, he could’ve done with some more convincing aging and uh, padding in his costume. I like Frain, but he’s far too handsome and doesn’t switch up his Leeds accent for an Essex one. Not that anyone in the 16th century would’ve sounded like the regional accents England has now, but even in a sea of barely-trying-to-conceal all the Irish accents in “The Tudors”, this one stood out for me ;)
Anyway, yes, showing Cromwell’s home life a bit and his secret visits to Evangelical preachers made him closer to a three-dimensional character than pretty much any previous depiction. I just wish the show didn’t have a scene with his wife Elizabeth in the 1530s when she’d actually been dead for years, but that’s hardly one of the top ten inaccuracies (in a show I love dearly).
You’re missing one: Benjamin Whitrow (Mr. Bennet!) played Cromwell in the 1988 version of A Man for All Seasons.
Not really a patch on the 1966 version, but it does have John Gielgud, Roy Kinnear, Vanessa Redgrave and, er, Charlton Heston as More.
Most sadly miscast. The ascetic, aristocratic Gielgud was totally wrong for jumped up butcher boy Wolsey and while I totally sympathize with Heston’s desire to play More he was physically all wrong for the part.
I really liked Benjamin Whitrow as Cromwell! A 180 from the Leo McKern portrayal, he likely tried to banish such an iconic performance from his head to reduce comparisons in a re-adaptation of an already famous play/movie. I liked putting The Common Man (Roy Kinnear) back in this tv movie version, I think 1966 audiences would’ve found the fourth-wall breaking too theatrical if it’s not coming from the main character, like Richard III or Alfie, but a character without a character, just someone who uncomfortably represents what you or I might do in these situtations.
I must Leo McKern looks the most like the portraits of Cromwell, and he is such good fun in that movie it’s almost easy to forget how unfairly they caricature him. I think his demeanour also makes sense for Cromwell. Cromwell was actually known for being quite personable, even though he was emotionally perhaps reserved inside. Rylance I think, in an attempt to capture that sense of inward imensions and cautiousness, makes him a little too reserved. Which is emphasised by the cut-short dialogue compared to the Wolf Hall books, which alllowed Cromwell to be a bit more vocal.
*must say
Leo McKern is the best physical match for the real Cromwell and John Colicos is a deliciously evil villain but Rylance looks more like More than Cromwell.
Interestingly the real Cromwell had something of a reputation for helping ladies in distress. Mary Tudor for example regarded him as a friend, protector and something of a mentor.
Excellen
Excellent, as always! I’m glad you used “Man Canny Monday”, but I do know of people who have an actual literary crush on the Mantel version of Cromwell for…reasons. :D
One correction: in 1988’s “God’s Outlaw” you have the wrong picture. The late great Terrence Hardiman did play Thomas Cromwell, but this photo is of fellow long-faced austere-looking actor Bernard Archard, who played (an utterly humourless) Thomas More.
This movie had everything: a silly Anne Boleyn potrayal, More letting it be known he wears a hair shirt (something only his family and confessor knew) for religious clout, childishly black-and-white depictions of the theological and sociological issues with translating and mass producing a Bible in vernacular langugage, a typically good Roger Rees performance marred by hilarious biker-gang mutton chops Tyndale grows while in exile, etc.