The Prisoner of Zenda - Adaptations

Adaptations

The novel has been adapted many times, mainly for film but also stage, musical, operetta, radio, and television. Probably the best-known version is the 1937 Hollywood movie. The dashingly villainous Rupert of Hentzau has been interpreted by such matinee idols as Ramón Novarro (1922), Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1937), and James Mason (1952).

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1895–96), was co-written by Hope and Edward Rose. It opened as a play in New York in 1895 starring E. H. Sothern and the next year on the West End in London, starring Evelyn Millard.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1913)—Starring James K. Hackett, Beatrice Beckley, David Torrence, Fraser Coalter, William R. Randall and Walter Hale. Adapted by Hugh Ford and directed by Ford and Edwin S. Porter, it was produced by Adolph Zukor and was the first production of the Famous Players Film Company.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1915)—Starring Henry Ainley, Gerald Ames, George Bellamy, Marie Anita Bozzi, Jane Gail, Arthur Holmes-Gore, Charles Rock and Norman Yates. It was adapted by W. Courtney Rowden and directed by George Loane Tucker.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1922)—Starring Ramón Novarro, Lewis Stone, Alice Terry, Robert Edeson, Stuart Holmes, Malcolm McGregor and Barbara La Marr. It was adapted by Mary O'Hara and directed by Rex Ingram.

• Princess Flavia (1925), an operetta with the score by Sigmund Romberg.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)—Starring Ronald Colman as Rassendyll and Rudolph, Madeleine Carroll as Princess Flavia, Raymond Massey as Michael, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Rupert of Hentzau, C. Aubrey Smith as Colonel Zapt and David Niven as Captain Fritz von Tarlenheim. David O. Selznick decided to produce the film, partly as a comment on the Edward VIII abdication crisis, and it was directed by John Cromwell. Of the many film adaptations, this is considered by many to be the definitive version. Leslie Halliwell puts it at #590 of all the films ever made, saying that the "splendid schoolboy adventure story" of the late Victorian novel is "perfectly transferred to the screen", and quotes a 1971 comment by John Cutts that the film becomes more "fascinating and beguiling" as time goes by. Halliwell's Film Guide 2008 calls it "one of the most entertaining films to come out of Hollywood".

• Colman, Smith and Fairbanks reprised their roles for a 1939 episode of Lux Radio Theatre, with Colman's wife Benita Hume playing Princess Flavia.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1952)—Starring Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, Louis Calhern, Jane Greer, Lewis Stone, Robert Douglas, James Mason and Robert Coote. Stone, who played the lead in the 1922 version, had a minor role in this remake. It was adapted by Edward Rose, (dramatization) Wells Root, John L. Balderston, Noel Langley and Donald Ogden Stewart (additional dialogue, originally uncredited). It was directed by Richard Thorpe. It is a shot-for-shot copy of the 1937 film, the only difference being that it was made in Technicolor. Halliwell judges it "no match for the happy inspiration of the original".

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1961) U.S. television adaptation (DuPont Show of the Month), starring Christopher Plummer and Inger Stevens.

• Jhinder Bandi (ঝিন্দের বন্দী - trans. "The Prisoner of Jhind") (1961), a Bengali film directed by Tapan Sinha, starring Uttam Kumar and Soumitra Chatterjee, based on the eponymous novel written by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay as an adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda.

• Zenda (1963), a musical that closed on the road prior to a scheduled opening on Broadway. Adapted from the 1925 Princess Flavia.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1979) — A comic version, starring Peter Sellers, Lynne Frederick, Lionel Jeffries, Elke Sommer, Gregory Sierra, Jeremy Kemp, Catherine Schell, Simon Williams and Stuart Wilson. It was adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais and directed by Richard Quine. In this version Sellers plays the King, his father, and the other main character Syd Frewin, a London Hansom Cab driver, who finds himself employed as a double to the King and eventually changes places with him permanently. This comic version is not strictly true to the book but has been thought by many to capture its spirit very well.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1984)—BBC adaptation starring Malcolm Sinclair.