Glenda Jackson as Lady Hamilton

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33004, 25 August 1972, Page 5

Glenda Jackson as Lady Hamilton

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent) LONDON, August 24.

Glenda Jackson’s ability to play historical film roles has landed her yet another in Hal Wallis’s new film, “A Bequest to the Nation,” as Lady Emma Hamilton. The film will highlight the last few weeks of Admiral Lord Nelson’s life with his ageing mistress, and will be quite unromanticised. “I’m not playing Emma as the beautiful lady of the Romney portraits but more as the subject of the rather cruel Gillray and Cruikshank cartoons—the woman who staggers through drink-

ing a bottle of brandy a day," says Miss Jackson. Emma, a blacksmith’s daughter, became the wife of Britain’s envoy to the Court of Naples, Sir William Hamilton, after she had lived under his protection for some years. Peter Finch will play Nelson to Glenda Jackson’s Emma.

Filming has already begun at Bath, Somerset, to the film script by Terence Rattigan, who has adapted it from his original stage play. Miss Jackson’s last historical film role was in Hal Wallis’s “Mary Queen of Scots,” in which she played Queen Elizabeth I with Vanessa Redgrave as Mary.