This storyline may sound somewhat familiar: an unassuming Professor of Archeology battles against the growing might of pre-war Nazi Germany in a thrilling adventure with the fate of many on the line. He’s got a very common last name, and is known for his daring bravado. But this isn’t a big-budget production from Lucas and Spielberg - in fact, although it may have been partial inspiration for the 1981 movie you’re probably thinking of, this movie came out 40 years before that!
In 1941, English actor Leslie Howard released a movie he had created with his own funds, earned from his appearance in the Hollywood blockbuster Gone With The Wind(1939), in which he played the character that will always be associated with him: honor-bound intellectual Southern gentleman Ashley Wilkes. Howard was passionate about the war effort, and especially wanted to alert a wider audience to the growing threat of the Third Reich. Howard also wanted to make a movie which updated his famous role as Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) from Revolutionary France to pre-World War II Europe. The result was an incredible feature film entitled Pimpernel Smith (1941), known as Mister V in the USA.
Howard played the title character of Professor Horatio Smith, who uses his cover as an foppish archeology professor to smuggle victims of persecution out of the Third Reich. During one such daring adventure, he is wounded, revealing his secret to his admiring students, who enthusiastically join him in his struggle. But things are complicated when one of his students brings a mysterious woman into their inner circle. Smith engages in a game of cat-and-mouse with his ruthless Gestapo adversary who has been assigned to hunt him down.
The film is even credited with inspiring Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish humanitarian, who in 1942 attended a private screening of Howard’s latest picture with his sister Nina. “On the way home,” his sister recalled, “he told me this was the kind of thing he would like to do.” Wallenberg went on to mount a rescue operation in Budapest that, conservatively estimated, saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazi concentration camps. It is hard to imagine that any other film has ever inspired an act of heroism on quite this scale.
Now available on DVD, Pimpernel Smith serves as a reminder of the power of cinema to change opinion and influence society. A profoundly moving film about the struggle for good in the world, Pimpernel Smith deserves to be seen by a wider audience. The Pimpernel Smith DVD can be ordered securely online at http://www.PimpernelSmith.com Indy fans won’t want to miss this one!
- Laszlo Stainer