BBC2 marked the centenary of Thomas' birth last night with a drama about his own final days in New York, where he died aged 39 in 1953, allegedly after drinking eighteen whiskies in the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village. Although I haven't been to the White Horse, I have walked past the Chelsea Hotel where he collapsed after his supposed alcoholic bout.
Tom Hollander, who played Thomas, apparently had to put on two stone to play the role and he did look quite like him but his performance reminded me somewhat of Chuck Berry's remark to the Rolling Stones when they recorded at Chess Studios in Chicago: "You nearly got it." I'm also not sure why an Englishman was cast as Thomas when there are plenty of Welsh actors who could have played the role such as the superb impressionist Michael Sheen.
It's a common question, isn't it? Why not get actors with the correct accent? I watched an episode of Ripper Street a while ago and a Liverpudlian character, referred to anachronistically as a Scouser (a comparatively modern term), spoke with a kind of Liverpool accent that you didn't hear when I was a child, let alone in the Victorian era. The actor concerned was not from Liverpool, and just went for the obvious, and getting it badly wrong in the process.
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