Golden touch puts Jane Austen on top in Hollywood

MARIANNE MACDONALD

Media Correspondent

Emma Thompson was celebrating yesterday after winning two prestigious Golden Globe awards for Sense And Sensibility, the Jane Austen novel which she adapted for the big screen and in which she stars as Elinor Dashwood.

The actress, 36, accepted the awards - for screenwriting and best dramatic picture - on Sunday, with a speech that might have been written by the 19th-century novelist. "It is horribly gratifying. I am bloated with pride," she told the Los Angeles audience.

Industry experts are predicting that her humorous adaptation, which goes on cinematic release in Britain on 23 February, could take some pounds 50m in worldwide box-office receipts.

Ms Thompson said after the ceremony that she had never expected the screenplay, which she adapted in the Eighties - "long before I became famous as an actress" - to be made.

In the event, she split up with her husband, Kenneth Branagh, during the filming last year and became close to co-star Greg Wise, 29, who plays the cad, John Willoughby.

The Austen phenomenon has been swelled by Bloomsbury's publication of Ms Thompson's screenplay and diaries of the filming process (she admitted in one entry to finding co-star Hugh Grant "repellently gorgeous") - and by a tie-in version of the novel, featuring herself on the cover.

A Penguin account of the making of the BBC series of Pride and Prejudice has experienced "absolutely astonishing" sales of 112,000 since it went on sale in September, according to Tony Lacey, Penguin's publishing director, while its own tie-in version of the novel, with co-stars Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle on the cover, has clocked up sales of 148,000 since August.

That Sense and Sensibility should bag two Golden Globe awards - which are seen as pointers to the Oscars - shows the commercial potential of Austen in the United States.

The film has taken $13.5m (pounds 8.9m) since it opened in the US six weeks ago, even though it has only been out on small-scale release. The BBC television series of Pride And Prejudice was watched by an average of 11.1 million US households when it was shown in two-hour episodes on three consecutive nights last week.

Meanwhile Persuasion, BBC Films' subtle adaptation, just beginning its cinematic release over here, has grossed $4m in America and features on 20 US film critics' top 10 lists of films for 1995. Time magazine and the New York Post both placed it at number one.

Alison Thompson, who has been selling Persuasion abroad, describes its success in the US as "absolutely extraordinary". She admits: "I heard that an LA agent had said: 'Let's get this Jane Austen woman on the phone'."

Such popularity in America would have astounded Austen, who gave little evidence of being aware of the country in her lifetime and who referred to it only once in her six novels.

The single reference is made by Tom Bertram in Mansfield Park when, after being rude about his neighbour, Dr Grant, he realises he is within earshot. Forced to cover up, he exclaims hastily: "A strange business this is in America, Dr Grant! What is your opinion?"

"I think Americans view her from a different viewpoint," says Deirdre Le Faye, who edited Austen's letters. "It's all tied up with being terribly olde-worlde, terribly pretty. For them Eng-land is a strange foreign coun- try; for us it is part of our past."

"The bottom line is that she tells darn good stories," says Fiona Finlay, the producer of Persuasion. "A lot of the novels are love stories and there's a crying need for that kind of entertainment at the moment. It's amazing Austen's been away from Hollywood so long."

Others bear testimony to the fact that Americans not only watch Jane Austen, but read her too - there is a very active Jane Austen Society in North America. "They're very well aware of her and they don't seem to have difficulty relating to her," Brian Southam, chairman of the Jane Austen Society in Britain, said.

America loves Jane, page 15