The Scarlet Pimpernel (1. The Scarlet Pimpernel is a 1. British adventure film directed by Harold Young and starring Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, and Raymond Massey. Based on the 1. 90.

Plot summary, cast and crew information, and user comments. The Scarlet Pimpernel is a 1934 British adventure film directed by Harold Young and starring Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, and Raymond Massey. Based on the 1905 play. The poet laureate is mistaken for the Pimpernel and sent to the guillotine.

Baroness Orczy and Montagu Barstow and the classic 1. Baroness Orczy, the film is about an eighteenth- century English aristocrat who leads a double life, appearing as an effete aristocrat while engaged in an underground effort to free French nobles from Robespierre's Reign of Terror. The film was produced by Alexander Korda. In 1. 79. 2, at the bloody height of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, vengeful French mobs are outraged when again and again French aristocrats are saved from death by the audacious "Band of the Scarlet Pimpernel", a secret society of 2.

English noblemen, "one to command, and nineteen to obey". Among the latest scheduled for execution are the Count de Tournay, former ambassador to Great Britain, and his family. However, one of the Scarlet Pimpernel's men visits them in prison disguised as a priest and gives them a message of hope. As the prisoners are being escorted to the cart to be taken to the guillotine, the guards take the count away; French leader Maximilien Robespierre wishes to question him further. The countess and her daughter are rescued and spirited away to England. Back in Paris, Robespierre meets with Chauvelin, the republic's new ambassador to Britain, to discuss the problem of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Summoning the Count de Tournay, they offer him his life in return for information from his English contacts as to the Pimpernel's true identity.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English baronet and friend of the Prince of Wales. Sir Percy cultivates the image of a fop in order to throw off suspicion. His pose is so successful that not even his French wife Marguerite suspects the truth. Though the two are in love, Sir Percy no longer trusts his wife because of her past denunciation of the Marquis de St. Cyr, which led to the execution of the marquis and his family.

• A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF BARONESS ORCZY, THE CREATOR OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL By Peter Royston (Study Guide and Souvenir Brochure for The Scarlet Pimpernel).
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Through his network of spies, Chauvelin discovers that Armand St. Just, Marguerite's brother is one of the Scarlet Pimpernel's agents.

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Chauvelin orders Armand's arrest, then uses the threat of his execution to force Marguerite into helping him discover the identity of the Pimpernel, who he knows will be at an upcoming ball. At the ball, Marguerite intercepts a message given to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, a member of the Pimpernel's band, stating that the Pimpernel will be in the library at midnight. She passes the information along to Chauvelin, who goes to the library to find only Percy, apparently asleep. While waiting, Chauvelin falls asleep; when he wakes up, he finds a message from the Pimpernel mocking him.

The next morning, Percy and Marguerite travel to their house in the country. There, Marguerite breaks down and tells her husband of Armand's arrest and her deal with Chauvelin. Confronting her, Percy learns the truth behind the denunciation of the marquis; he had her imprisoned for consorting with his son. After the revolution freed her, she told her friend Chauvelin, who was the one who denounced them. Promising to use his influence at court on Armand's behalf, Percy leaves for London. Afterward, Marguerite notices a detail on a portrait of the 1st baronet hanging in the library – on his finger is a ring decorated by a pimpernel.

Realizing that she has inadvertently betrayed her own husband, she rushes out of the room, only to be presented a letter from Chauvelin announcing that he had discovered the Pimpernel's true identity as well. Racing back to London, she warns Ffoulkes that Percy's life is in danger.

Ffoulkes agrees to mobilise the band to warn Percy. To lure Percy into his trap, Chauvelin has both Armand and the Count de Tournay transferred to Boulogne- sur- Mer. Despite the vigilance of Chauvelin's men, the Pimpernel frees the two men from prison through bribery. However, one of the prison guards tells Chauvelin that the Pimpernel will be at a certain tavern (the Lion d'Or) that evening. Marguerite goes there to warn Percy, only to be arrested by Chauvelin and his troops. Percy arrives at the appointed time and is met by a gloating Chauvelin.

Percy distracts him long enough for Armand and the count to board the ship, but as he prepares to leave, Chauvelin announces that he has Marguerite in custody. Watch A Royal Affair Online Hitfix. Percy surrenders on the condition that she be freed. He is led away by soldiers to be shot by a waiting firing squad.

Chauvelin exults at the sound of gunfire, but Percy returns to the tavern very much alive, revealing that the men in uniform are in fact his. After securing Chauvelin in the basement, Percy joins his wife on the ship back to England. They seek him here, they seek him there,Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in Heaven? Is he in Hell? That damned, elusive Pimpernel.

Production[edit]Alexander Korda, a Hungarian who had been born in a town not far from Baroness Orczy's farm, had recently had great success with the actor Charles Laughton in the film The Private Life of Henry VIII, so he asked Laughton to play the role of Sir Percy.[1] When the announcement went out to the press, the reaction from the Pimpernel's many fans was negative; the pug- nosed Laughton was thought inappropriate to play the suave Sir Percy. Korda thus gave the role to Leslie Howard, with Merle Oberon as Marguerite.

Leslie Howard set the standard with his portrayal of Sir Percy Blakeney. Reception[edit]The Scarlet Pimpernel was the sixth most popular film at the British box office during 1. References[edit]^"The Scarlet Pimpernel".

TCM. Retrieved 2. December 2. 01. 3. ^"The Film Business in the United States and Britain during the 1. John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny, The Economic History Review. New Series, Vol. 5. No. 1 (Feb., 2. 00. External links[edit].

A Brief Biography Of Baroness Orczy, The Creator Of The Scarlet Pimpernel. A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF BARONESS ORCZY, THE CREATOR OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNELBy Peter Royston(Study Guide and Souvenir Brochure for The Scarlet Pimpernel)She was named Emmuska Magdalena Rosalia Maria Josepha Barbara Orczy (pronounced Ort- zee). Born into a rich, affluent life, she used her love of romance, mystery, disguise and especially heroism to create The Scarlet Pimpernel.

She writes in her autobiography, Links In the Chain of Life: "I have so often been asked the question: 'But how did you come to think of The Scarlet Pimpernel?' And my answer has always been: 'It was God's will that I should.' And to you moderns, who perhaps do not believe as I do, I will say, 'In the chain of my life, there were so many links, all of which tended towards bringing me to the fulfillment of my destiny.."She took her subjects from history because modern life and modern ideas bored her. She hated modern art with its "naked ladies with green thighs and faces like acidulated pumpkins." She believed in gallantry and chivalry.

She believed in heroes. My imagination was already then at work.."Born in 1. Tarnaors, Hungary, she spent her first years in a time of "splendid feudal lords ensconced in their opulent chateaux, medieval still in their magnificence." Emmuska's father was a nobleman in the court of Franz Joseph, leader of the Austrian- Hungarian Empire; the Orczy family traced their line back to the famous hero Arpad, who came into Hungary before the Norman Conquests. From the start, she was a romantic. When she and her sister played, Emmuska would always be the dashing prince come to save the damsel in distress. She always wanted to be the hero: "in a childish, obscure way, my imagination was already then at work on doughty deeds of valor, on noble heroes, dare- devil adventures and on hapless victims of cruel persecutions.."Years later she remembered her family home: a great, rambling farmhouse on the river Tarna that had been in the family for generations.

In her memory, the house was always filled with the noise of opulent parties, joyful dancing and gypsy music. At the end of the 1. Industrial Revolution was producing timesaving, effort- saving machinery. Emmuska's father, Felix, wanted to update the equipment on his farm. Like much of the peasantry throughout Europe, the workers on the Orczy farm were afraid that the new machinery would replace them. Many of them called the machines the work of the devil.

As Orczy later wrote, "they were frightened, they knew not of what.""So Romantic, So Medieval.."On a hot July evening when Emmuska was three, the family held a grand party for her elder sister's birthday. It was to be a masquerade party in which "everyone was to dress up in some fantastic guise. The women were to don male attire and the men to wear bodices and petticoats." She remembered, with the vivid imagery of a three- year old's eyes, a wild party, "so gay, so romantic, so medieval."Just as the party reached its peak, she and her sister were hastily put to bed. After being tucked in, she remembered seeing a red glow at her window and thinking it must already be sunrise. When she and her sister went to the window she saw the truth: the farm workers had set fire to the barn and the stables. The fire had spread to the crops, and the harvest was ruined.

She was three years old. In one night she was confronted with two elements that were important in her later work: peasants rebelling against the aristocracy, and the delightful mystery of masks. Later she would make her hero a master of disguise and an audacious plotter against the tyranny of the mob."My spiritual birthplace.."After the disaster, the Baron moved his family throughout Europe, trying to recoup his losses. He finally brought them to England in 1. Wimpole Street. Emmuska was fifteen years old. She was often asked about her ancestry: "You are Hungarian born, aren't you?

Nothing English about you?" To which she replied: "No, nothing; except my love, which is all English." When she came to London, she didn't speak a word of English, but after six months, she was proficient enough to earn a special prize. The family reveled in the social and artistic life of London. Her father was an amateur musician who wrote his own compositions for the orchestra. Their house became a salon of sorts for the musical geniuses of that time; visitors included Liszt, Gounod and Wagner. Once she was asked, "Baroness, you have the real distinction of having lived equal amounts of time in England and Hungary, you know both ways of living, so you can compare the two places better than anyone else. Please tell me, how would you compare the life style of the two countries?" To which she replied, "Well, I would say the Englishman lives like a king and eats like a pig, and the Hungarian lives like a pig, but God knows he eats like a king." (from The Cuisine of Hungary by George Lang, Bonanza Books)From the first, she loved London, and called England her "real, my spiritual, birthplace..""Dreams of glory and fame.."She had a real drive to do something great: "eating out my heart in all sorts of vain longings and dreams of glory and fame to be attained.." In her early life she tried to express these experiences and longings in an artistic form. Her father tried to develop her musical talent, but she did not have an ear for music.

She moved to painting, "a mad desire to adopt an artistic career." She was soon attending the West London School of Art, and Heatherley's studio school. Although her pictures were good enough to hang at London's Royal Academy for three years, she wasn't satisfied: "Soon I realized that it was going to be mediocrity for me. Mediocrity again, my bugbear, my nightmare!"Although she was not destined to be a painter, art school did change her life forever, for it was there she met a young illustrator named Montague Barstow, the son of an English clergyman, whom she eventually married. It was the start of a joyful and happy marriage, "for close on half a century one of perfect happiness and understanding of perfect friendship and communion of thought."The two newlyweds reveled in the artistic life of London at the end of the 1. They attended concerts, went to exhibitions, the opera, and especially the theatre!"One of our greatest delights was the theatre."The Barstows went to the theatre every night, befriending some of the rising stars in the English theatre like Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, and A. W. Pinero. They reveled in all types of theatre: the classical plays that London is known for, farces, comedies and "real melodrama, hot and strong." Orczy loved the melodramas, those plays where emotions and romance where at their height. The melodramas were full of vivid life, the theatres more like circuses, where you could buy sandwiches and lemonade, and boo at the villains and shout hurrah for the heroes.

The theatre is where she became interested in thrillers, or "marrow- freezing dramas" as she called them, with titles like "Lady Audley's Secret," "The Lonely Man of the Ocean," or (a favorite of hers) "The Vicissitudes of a Servant Girl." Describing them, she could also be describing her future work: "Virtue was inevitably triumphant in the end. Vice, as exemplified by the villain, brought about its own chastisement; and comedy was always on the side of virtue.""I felt in my heart a kind of stirring.."Along with other painters and illustrators, the Barstows knew many of London's writers. With the complete lack of inhibition or fear that seemed to be the focus of her personality, she decided to try writing.

Amazingly, she sold her first stories right away to Pearson's magazine, and the editor asked for more. In 1. 88. 8 she came close to a real life horror story when she and her husband, only married a week, returned home only to see the police and a crowd forming on the pavement. The legendary "Jack the Ripper" had murdered a young woman just outside the Barstows' door.