Production
The Elusive Pimpernel was financed by Samuel Goldwyn and Alexander Korda. Neither director Michael Powell nor star David Niven was very interested in doing the film, but had their minds changed by threats of contract suspension. (Rex Harrison had been originally announced as the star.) Powell wanted to make the film as a musical, but was not allowed to, and the casting of Margaret Leighton was done over his objection. Goldwyn forced numerous additions and changes to the film but when Powell delivered the final cut, Goldwyn refused to make the final payment, which caused Korda to sue him.
The film was shot in 1949 at various British film studios in Boreham Wood, Elstree and Shepperton, Surrey. Location shooting took place in Bath, Dover, in Savernake Forest, on the Marlborough Downs, and in the stables of Carlton House Terrace, St. James's, London. In France, filming took place in the chateaux of the Loire Valley and on Mont Saint-Michel.
The Elusive Pimpernel was released in the U.K. in 1950, but because of the falling out between Korda and Goldwyn, didn't get an American distributor until July 1953 when Carroll Pictures acquired the rights. The film then premiered in New York City on 17 April 1954.
Niven's unhappiness at being forced to make the film later led to him severing his contract with Samuel Goldwyn.
Read more about this topic: The Elusive Pimpernel
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)