- When confronted with the complex facts about the relationship between Peter Pan author/playwright J.M. Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies family, the makers of the well-received period drama Finding Neverland opted to feed viewers Hollywood’s usual crowd-pleasing pap.
- In Finding Neverland, Peter Llewelyn Davies (played by Freddie Highmore) is shown as J.M. Barrie’s chief inspiration for Peter Pan. However understandable from a dramatic standpoint, that doesn’t quite match the facts.
Finding Neverland vs. the facts: Drama about J.M. Barrie and the origins of Peter Pan has gone for crowd-pleasing myths
“There never was a simpler and happier family until the coming of Peter Pan,” J.M. Barrie writes in Peter and Wendy. In the 1911 novel, the Scottish author and playwright is referring to the Darlings, but, as already pointed out elsewhere, he might as well be alluding to the Llewelyn Davies family and his entrance into their lives in late 1890s London.
That singular relationship is the focus of Miramax Films’ award-winning period drama Finding Neverland, directed by Marc Forster and starring a name cast that includes Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Dustin Hoffman, Radha Mitchell, and, as the Llewelyn Davies boys, Freddie Highmore, Joe Prospero, Nick Roud, and Luke Spill.
Written by newcomer David Magee, this big-screen transfer of Allan Knee’s 1998 play The Man Who Was Peter Pan unabashedly skirts reality to present a Fantasyland account of how J.M. Barrie found the inspiration for his most famous work, the 1904 play Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.
This updated and extended three-part post presents a brief overview of the discrepancies between the known facts and Finding Neverland (partly by way of Knee’s play), in addition to information about Peter Pan’s literary and stage origins, and the fate of the five (not four) Llewelyn Davies boys.
For starters, below is a list of the Finding Neverland principals.
Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie
Garbed and made up to look as elegant and handsome as an Old Hollywood matinée idol, Academy Award nominee Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003) brings to movie-movie life J.M. Barrie (a.k.a. James M. Barrie; born James Matthew Barrie on May 9, 1860, in Kirriemuir, Angus), whose works also include Sentimental Tommy, Quality Street, The Admirable Crichton, The Little Minister, and Mary Rose.
Depp’s portrayal of the Peter Pan author – a tad childlike, all but desexualized – is evidence that the Finding Neverland creators went to great pains to ensure that early 21st-century audiences accept the mousy, diffident Barrie as a goofier, unthreatening Tyrone Power type.
Kate Winslet as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies
Three-time Oscar nominee Kate Winslet (Sense and Sensibility, 1995; Titanic, 1997; Iris, 2001) plays the widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (née Sylvia Jocelyn Busson du Maurier on Nov. 25, 1866), the ailing mother of the four boys to whom Johnny Depp’s J.M. Barrie becomes a surrogate father figure/playmate.
Like Depp vis-à-vis Barrie, Winslet looks nothing like the dark-haired, plaintive-looking Llewelyn Davies matriarch. Moreover, as explained further below, Sylvia’s husband, Arthur, was still around when Barrie became acquainted with the family.
Something else: There were actually five, not four, Llewelyn Davies boys. (See further below.)
Sylvia would die of lung cancer (her illness is not specified in Finding Neverland) at age 43 in August 1910.
Julie Christie as Emma du Maurier
Veteran Best Actress Oscar winner Julie Christie (Darling, 1965) plays Emma du Maurier (née Emma Wightwick, 1841–1915), Sylvia’s mother and the widow of cartoonist/novelist George du Maurier (1834–1896).
In Finding Neverland, the du Maurier matriarch is depicted as a rigidly upper-class dowager appalled at having the peculiar J.M. Barrie as an extended family member, though her great-granddaughter, Tessa Montgomery (granddaughter of actor Gerald du Maurier; daughter of Rebecca and The Birds author Daphne du Maurier) takes issue with the portrayal.
As reported by David Smith in The Guardian, Montgomery, who hasn’t seen the film, explains that in letters Emma wrote to Gerald, she appears to have been “a very affectionate and kind mother,” adding that the scene in which Barrie gets the idea for Captain Hook after witnessing Julie Christie’s Emma furiously waving a coat hanger sounds “really rather ridiculous. She might well be spinning in her grave.”
In the same The Guardian piece, screenwriter David Magee justifies his choices: “The character of Emma du Maurier totally has my sympathy and I hope she is beautifully redeemed in the end scenes. I never intended any character to be a villain in any way.”
Freddie Highmore as Peter Llewelyn Davies
Eleven-year-old Freddie Highmore plays Peter Llewelyn Davies (born in 1897), Barrie’s inspiration for the name and, according to Finding Neverland, the character Peter Pan.
In reality – especially in the 1911 novelization of the play, Peter and Wendy – the “spirit” of Neverland’s perennially youthful denizen is supposed to have more closely resembled Michael Llewelyn Davies (born in 1900), played by Luke Spill in the film.
The other two Llewelyn Davies brothers seen on screen are George (born in 1893) and John (“Jack,” born in 1894). They’re played by, respectively, Nick Roud and Joe Prospero.
The youngest, Nicholas (“Nico”; born in 1903) is absent from Finding Neverland, though his daughter, Laura Duguid, has a bit in the film, as the theater patron who asks Peter whether he is Peter Pan.
More details about the Llewelyn Davies boys can be found in the follow-up article. (See link at the bottom of this post.)
Radha Mitchell as Mary Ansell
Melinda and Melinda and Man on Fire actress Radha Mitchell plays J.M. Barrie’s neglected wife, Mary Ansell (1861–1945), an actress Barrie had met while doing the casting of his 1891 play Walker, London. (This particular Mary Ansell is not to be confused with the notorious London housemaid hanged in 1899 for having poisoned her sister.)
The “apparently unconsummated” Barrie-Ansell marriage lasted from 1894 to 1909, the year after she began a romantic liaison with novelist/dramatist Gilbert Cannan (House of Prophecy).
Barrie’s 1900 novel Tommy and Grizel offers a glimpse into their stunted relationship – e.g., “Grizel, I seem to be different from all other men. There seems to be some curse upon me that makes me unable to love as they do. I want to love you, dear one; you are the only woman I ever wanted to love; but apparently I can’t.”
Dustin Hoffman as Charles Frohman
In what amounts to an extended cameo, two-time Best Actor Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman (Kramer vs. Kramer, 1979; Rain Man, 1988) is seen as American theatrical impresario Charles Frohman (1856–1915) in Finding Neverland.
Frohman’s stage hits on Broadway and/or in London’s West End include Barrie’s Quality Street, The Admirable Crichton, and Peter Pan, plus Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, A.M. Willner and Fritz Grünbaum’s The Dollar Princess, and Oscar Straus’ A Waltz Dream.
Among his stars were Maude Adams (Broadway’s first Peter Pan), Ethel Barrymore, Billie Burke, E.H. Sothern, Julia Marlowe, and William Gillette.
Major Finding Neverland absentee
Contrary to a key narrative element in Finding Neverland, barrister Arthur Llewelyn Davies was very much alive when J.M. Barrie, then in his mid-30s, became acquainted with the Llewelyn Davies family in 1897. The lawyer and the author/playwright weren’t exactly buddies; as found in the Guardian article, “according to some accounts” the former (like Emma du Maurier in the movie) viewed the latter with suspicion.
In 1907, Arthur died at age 44 of cancer of the jaw. Barrie, who was to replace him as the boys’ paternal figure, paid for his medical treatment.
In the Rodney Bennett-directed BBC miniseries The Lost Boys (1978), written by author Andrew Birkin (J.M. Barrie & the Lost Boys: The Real Story Behind Peter Pan), Arthur Llewelyn Davies is played by Tim Pigott-Smith.
Also in the miniseries cast: Ann Bell as Sylvia, Ian Holm as (a far more accurate-looking) J.M. Barrie, Maureen O’Brien as Mary Ansell, William Hootkins as Charles Frohman, and Anna Cropper as Mary Hodgson, the Llewelyn Davies boys’ nurse – a crucial character in their lives and one that is nowhere to be found in Finding Neverland. (The boys themselves were each played by several child actors of different ages.)
Peter Pan origins
Peter Pan first surfaced – as a seven-day-old baby – in J.M. Barrie’s 1902 novel The Little White Bird. The boy who never grows up is presumed to have been originally inspired by Barrie’s brother David, who died at age 13 in an ice-skating accident.
As mentioned further up in this post, the final version of the character, especially the one found in Peter and Wendy, is closer to one of the Llewelyn Davies’ boys: Michael – who, in fact, was to have been the model for sculptor George Frampton’s 14-foot Peter Pan statue erected in 1912 in London’s Kensington Gardens, in the vicinity of Barrie’s old home on Bayswater Road.
Frampton, however, chose another boy model. As found in J.M. Barrie & the Lost Boys, that left Barrie disappointed with the final product. “It doesn’t show the Devil in Peter,” he would complain.
Even so, Barrie himself was the one who placed an enthusiastic ad in The Times announcing the – otherwise unpublicized – erection of the statue:
“There is a surprise in store for the children who go to Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks in the Serpentine this morning. Down by the little bay on the south-western side of the tail of the Serpentine they will find a May-day gift by Mr J.M. Barrie, a figure of Peter Pan blowing his pipe on the stump of a tree, with fairies and mice and squirrels all around. It is the work of Sir George Frampton, and the bronze figure of the boy who would never grow up is delightfully conceived.”
Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up
Produced by Charles Frohman, the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up was first presented in December 1904 at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London. Thirty-seven-year-old Nina Boucicault played Peter (Kelly Macdonald in Finding Neverland), thus beginning the tradition of having small adult women cast as the flying, satyr-like boy.
Gerald du Maurier, Sylvia Llewelyn Davies’ brother and a supporting player in Barrie’s 1903 stage hit The Admirable Crichton, was cast as both George Darling (named after George Llewelyn Davies) and Captain Hook (instead of original choice Seymour Hicks).
Another notable actor in the original production of Peter Pan was animal impersonator Arthur Lupino, cast as the dog Nana. Lupino was the great-uncle of 1940s Warner Bros. star Ida Lupino (High Sierra, The Hard Way).
On opening night, fearing that the sophisticated London audience would be unresponsive, Barrie told the orchestra to put down their instruments and clap their hands at the moment when Peter Pan, in an attempt to save Tinker Bell’s life, asks the audience, “Do you believe in fairies? … If you believe, clap your hands!”
As the story goes, when Nina Boucicault’s Peter begged for the life of Tinker Bell, the audience response was so overwhelming that the actress burst into tears.
Peter Pan and the adult women in his life
In November 1905, Maude Adams starred as Peter Pan at Broadway’s Empire Theatre. Also produced by Charles Frohman, the play ran for 223 performances. As quoted in Phyllis Robbins’ Maude Adams: An Intimate Portrait, an impressed Mark Twain wrote the star, “It is my belief that Peter Pan is a great and refining and uplifting benefaction to this sordid and money-mad age; and that the next best play is a long way behind it.”
Adams would be followed by, among others, Marilyn Miller (1924), Eva Le Gallienne (1928), Jean Arthur (1950), Mary Martin (1954), Sandy Duncan (1979), and Cathy Rigby (1990, 1998). On television, a filmed version of Mary Martin’s musicalized stage production (music by Mark Charlap; lyrics by Carolyn Leigh*) was frequently broadcast, while Mia Farrow took a stab at the character in 1976.
On the big screen, Betty Bronson was a girlishly perky Peter Pan in Herbert Brenon’s 1924 silent version. Bobby Driscoll – a male actor for a change – provided Peter’s voice in Walt Disney’s 1953 animated version. Half a century later, Jeremy Sumpter brought to life J.M. Barrie’s brat/antihero in P.J. Hogan’s lavish, $130 million-budget Peter Pan.
And then there is Robin Williams as a grown-up Peter in Steven Spielberg’s 1991 revisionist fantasy Hook, costarring Finding Neverland’s Dustin Hoffman as the titular captain and Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell.
Among Broadway’s Captain Hook portrayers were Ernest Lawford (1906), Leslie Banks (1924), Boris Karloff (1950), Cyril Ritchard (1954), George Rose (1979), and J.K. Simmons (1990).
* Following a less-than-satisfying pre-Broadway West Coast tour, director Jerome Robbins (Oscar co-winner with Robert Wise for West Side Story, 1961) hired composer Jule Styne, and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green to add several new songs to the production.
Follow-up post: “‘Peter Pan’ Author & the Llewelyn Davies Boys: ‘Sad End’ to Four-Decade Relationship.”
Endnotes
Kate Winslet, Luke Spill, Nick Roud, Joe Prospero, Freddie Highmore, and Johnny Depp Finding Neverland images: Miramax Films.
See also: The Llewelyn Davies brothers’ tragic fate.
“Finding Neverland vs. the Facts: J.M. Barrie & Peter Pan Origins” last updated in February 2024.