Edmund Gwenn Movies

The 161-minute costume drama Green Dolphin Street is set in 1840, on an island off the coast of Newfoundland, (or at least, the MGM backlot facsimile of same). Boiled down to essentials, it's the story of two sisters, blonde Marguerite Patourel (Donna Reed) and brunette
Marianne Patourel (Lana Turner), daughters of the wealthy Octavius Patourel (Edmund Gwenn). The two women meet New Zealander William Ozone (Richard Hart) and both quietly fall in love with him, though he's far more interested in Marguerite. To get William away from her sister, the conniving Marianne encourages the young man to fulfill his dreams by enlisting in H.R.H.'s Navy, whereby he'll be shipped off to China. But William misses the boat (no pun intended) and becomes a fugitive. He and buddy Timothy Haslam (Van Heflin) pair up and ship out to New Zealand, where they found a lumber business. William gets soused one night and writes to the sister he loves, inviting her to join him in marriage - but drunkenly uses the other sister's name by mistake. Marianne, believing he meant to write to her, decides to set off for New Zealand to be with her intended. Meanwhile,
Timothy secretly pines for Marguerite - and that's only the set up for this broadly-scaled melodrama. Reportedly budgeted at $4 million, Green Dolphin Street was based on the somewhat better bestseller by Elizabeth Goudge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This second film version of Somerset Maugham's classic novel stars Paul Henreid as a clubfooted, introverted medical student--an Englishman in the novel, but not in the hands of the mittel-European Mr. Henried. Eleanor Parker is featured as Mildred, the vulgar, brassy cockney waitress in whom Henreid is foolishly enamored. The role of Mildred had made Bette Davis a star in the 1934 version of Bondage; the magic didn't happen for poor Ms. Parker, who'd spend several years in variable parts before achieving full stardom. The subject matter of the original Maugham novel, which explored how sexual obsession can ruin an otherwise rational man, was missing in the 1946 version thanks to timorous studio censors. To quote Alexis Smith, who played the second female lead, "The remake of Of Human Bondage shouldn't have been made." This 1946 version would disappear completely from view upon the occasion of the third filmization of Of Human Bondage in 1964, wherein Kim Novak was pathetically miscast as Mildred. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MGM's newest romantic team of James Craig and Frances Gifford head the cast of the glossy "B"-picture She Went to the Races. Gifford plays beautiful professor Ann Wotters, who develops a scientific method of picking winners at the race track. Craig portrays horsetrainer Steve Confield, who thinks that Ann's theories are all wet. Falling in love with Steve, Ann gets mixed up in a romantic triangle, the apex of which is socialite Hilda Spotts (Ava Gardner, who steals the picture). Edmund Gwenn, Sig Ruman and Reginald Owen provide screwball-comedy relief as three pedants who are subsidizing Ann's equestrian research. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by A.J. Cronin, The Keys of the Kingdom was the first big-budget effort of movie-newcomer Gregory Peck. This is the 137-minute chronicle of a Scottish priest (Peck), who is assigned a mission in China. Never very focused in his life or work, the priest finds plenty to keep his mind occupied in his new post; when he isn't coping with the starvation and poverty plaguing his flock, he must contend with China's bloody civil war. Nonetheless, he perseveres, and finds it difficult as an elderly man to retire. He returns to Scotland, where he finds a new purpose in life; that of ministering to youngsters who, like him, have trouble determining their place in the world. Keys of the Kingdom was one of the last 20th-Century-Fox films produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz before his career-shift to directing; Rose Stradner, Mankiewicz' then-wife, has an important role in the film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Female dogs tend to shed while in heat; this is why all the collies who've played doggy heroine Lassie in the movies have actually been well-disguised males. A magnificent animal named Pal was the screen's first Lassie in 1943's Lassie Come Home. Set in Yorkshire during the first World War, the film gets under way when the poverty-stricken parents (Donald Crisp, Elsa Lanchester) of young Joe Carraclough (Roddy McDowall) are forced to sell his beloved Lassie. While her new master, the duke of Rudling (Nigel Bruce), is pleasant enough, Lassie prefers the company of Joe and repeatedly escapes. Even when cared for by the duke's affectionate granddaughter, Priscilla (Elizabeth Taylor), Lassie insists upon heading back to her original home. This time, however, the trip is much longer, and Lassie must depend upon the kindness of strangers, notably farmers Dally (Dame May Whitty) and Dan'l Fadden (Ben Webster) and handyman Rowlie (Edmund Gwenn). Based on the novel by Eric Knight (originally serialized in The Saturday Evening Post), Lassie Come Home was released quite some time after Knight's death. Like all the Lassie sequels turned out by MGM between 1943 and 1951, Lassie Come Home was lensed in Technicolor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 80-star cast of Forever and a Day would certainly not have been feasible had not most of the actors and production people turned over their salaries to British war relief -- a point driven home during the lengthy opening credits by an unseen narrator. The true star of the film is a stately old manor house in London, built in 1804 by a British admiral (C. Aubrey Smith) and blitzed in 1940 by one Adolf Hitler. Through the portals of this house pass a vast array of Britons, from high-born to low. The earliest scenes involve gay blade Lt. William Trimble (Ray Milland), wronged country-girl Susan (Anna Neagle), and wicked landowner Ambrose Pomfret (Claude Rains). We move on to a comic interlude involving dotty Mr. Simpson (Reginald Owen), eternally drunken butler Bellamy (Charles Laughton), and cockney plumbers Mr. Dabb (Cedric Hardwicke) and Wilkins (Buster Keaton). Maidservant Jenny (Ida Lupino) takes over the plot during the Boer War era, while the World War I sequence finds the house converted into a way-station for soldiers (including Robert Cummings) and anxious families (including Roland Young and Gladys Cooper). Finally we arrive in 1940, with American Gates Pomfret (Kent Smith) and lady-of-the-house Lesley Trimble (Ruth Warrick) surveying the bombed-out manor, and exulting over the fact that the portrait of the home's founder, Adm. Eustace Trimble (Smith), has remained intact -- symbolic proof of England's durability in its darkest hours. The huge cast includes Dame May Whitty, Edward Everett Horton, Wendy Barrie, Merle Oberon, Nigel Bruce, Richard Haydn, Donald Crisp, and a host of others -- some appearing in sizeable roles, others (like Arthur Treacher and Patric Knowles) willingly accepting one-scene bits, simply to participate in the undertaking. Seven directors and 21 writers were also swept up in the project. Forever and a Day was supposed to have been withdrawn from circulation after the war and its prints destroyed so that no one could profit from what was supposed to have been an act of industry charity. Happily for future generations, prints have survived and are now safely preserved. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MGM's A Yank at Eton follows the same basic formula as the 1938 Robert Taylor starrer A Yank at Oxford, with a wartime angle thrown in. This time it's Mickey Rooney as the cocky young American who is shipped off to England to complete his education. Upon his arrival in the hallowed halls of Eton, Timothy Daniels (Rooney), bereft of common courtesy or a sense of tradition, wastes no time alienating the rest of the students. Eventually of course, Timothy knocks the chip off his own shoulder and becomes a model student and top athlete. Freddie Bartholomew, Rooney's costar in so many MGM classics of the 1940s, plays Timothy's upper-classman half-brother Peter Carlton, who applies a little "tough love" to bring our headstrong hero into line; also seen as the school bully is new MGM contractee Peter Lawford, who in 1938 had made his American film debut in the Rooney-Bartholomew starrer Lord Jeff. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One Night in Lisbon is one of several pre-1942 films which used the screwball-comedy form to comment upon the raging war in Europe. While transporting American warplanes to the beleagured RAF, Texas flyboy Dwight Houston (Fred MacMurray) is caught in a London air raid. Scurrying to a shelter, Dwight meets icy, well-bred Briton Leonora Pettycote (Madeleine Carroll), with whom he falls in love--a feeling that is far from mutual at first. Eventually responding to Dwight's charms, Leonora agrees to join him for a night's revelries (as soon as the Nazi bombers head home, that is), but their budding relationship is complicated by the unexpected presence of Dwight's ex-wife Gerry Houston (Patricia Morrison and Leonora's erstwhile sweetheart, Cmdr. Peter Walmsley (John Loder). Escaping their respective suitors, Dwight and Leonara end up in neutral Lisbon, only to land in the middle of a Nazi spy ring. Although poor Leonora gets the worst of it at the hands of the villains, she is game enough to realize that she wants to spend the rest of her life with the footloose Dwight. The film is filled to overflowing with familiar character faces, including Britishers Edmund Gwenn and Dame May Whitty, French émigré Marcel Dalio and even perennial Laurel and Hardy foil James Finlayson. One Night in Lisbon was based on There's Always Juliet, a pre-WW2 play by John Van Druten. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jack Benny brings his own distinctive touch to Brandon Thomas' venerable (and oft-filmed) stage farce Charley's Aunt. Utilizing a gloriously unconvincing broad-A English accent, Benny is cast as Lord Fancourt Babberly, a somewhat overaged undergraduate at Oxford University. Babbs' roommates Jack Chesney (James Ellison) and Charley Wyckeham (Richard Haydn, in his film debut) are desirous of inviting their lady friends Kitty Verdun (Arleen Whelan) and Amy Spettigue (Anne Baxter) to their quarters, but first they must secure the services of a proper escort. When Charley's aunt Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez (Kay Francis) is detained, Jack and Charley coerce Babbs, who has dressed up as an old lady for a school play, to pose as the absent Donna Lucia. The fun really begins when, for reasons far too complicated to detail here, both Jack's father Sir Francis Chesney (Laird Cregar) and Amy's uncle Stephen Spettigue (Edmund Gwenn) romantically pursue the bogus aunt. The third-act arrival of the real Donna Lucia only adds to the comic confusion-but at least poor Babbs has finally found a lady friend closer to his own age. The female-impersonation angle in Charley's Aunt has been known to descend into vulgarity, but Jack Benny remains both hilarious and tasteful throughout. Understandably, the film was one of Benny's favorites. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The schizophrenic screenplay of The Earl of Chicago is rendered even more bizarre by the uneven performance by Robert Montgomery. He plays Silky Kilmont, a Runyonesque American gangster who inherits a British title (Earl of Gorley) and mansion. Taking charge of his new estate, Silky has an amusing time trying to acclimate himself to the customs of the "landed gentry". Things take a sinister turn when Silky discovers that his trusted attorney Doc Ramsey (Edward Arnold) is actually a bigger crook than he is. In a rage, Silky murders Ramsey, then goes into what appears to be a catatonic shock, refusing to defend himself at his murder trial. Blood finally tells at the climax when Silky Kilmont, aka the Earl of Gorley, meets his fate with a dignity and decorum worthy of his aristocratic forebears. The queasy atmosphere of the film is heightened by its utter lack of romance; outside of character actress Norma Varden, there are barely any women in the film at all. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Fourteen scriptwriters spent five years toiling over a movie adaptation of war correspondent Vincent Sheehan's Personal History before producer Walter Wanger brought the property to the screen as Foreign Correspondent. What emerged was approximately 2 parts Sheehan and 8 parts director Alfred Hitchcock--and what's wrong with that? Joel McCrea stars as an American journalist sent by his newspaper to cover the volatile war scene in Europe in the years 1938 to 1940. He has barely arrived in Holland before he witnesses the assassination of Dutch diplomat Albert Basserman: at least, that's what he thinks he sees. McCrea makes the acquaintance of peace-activist Herbert Marshall, his like-minded daughter Laraine Day, and cheeky British secret agent George Sanders. A wild chase through the streets of Amsterdam, with McCrea dodging bullets, leads to the classic "alternating windmills" scene, which tips Our Hero to the existence of a formidable subversive organization. McCrea returns to England, where he nearly falls victim to the machinations of jovial hired-killer Edmund Gwenn. The leader of the spy ring is revealed during the climactic plane-crash sequence--which, like the aforementioned windmill scene, is a cinematic tour de force for director Hitchcock and cinematographer Rudolph Mate. Producer Wanger kept abreast of breaking news events all through the filming of Foreign Correspondent, enabling him to keep the picture as "hot" as possible: the final scene, with McCrea broadcasting to a "sleeping" America from London while Nazi bombs drop all around him, was filmed only a short time after the actual London blitz. The script was co-written by Robert Benchley, who has a wonderful supporting role as an eternally tippling newsman. Foreign Correspondent was Alfred Hitchcock's second American film, and remained one of his (and his fans') personal favorites. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this British wartime propaganda film, a Nazi spy creeps into England and is taken in by a kindly family who have no idea who he really is. He repays their kindness by using their home as a radio base for his communiqués to other Nazis regarding the location of British targets for German planes and paratroopers. The plot really thickens when the Nazi falls in love with the daughter. When the Nazis attack, the Nazi houseguest kills one of his own officers. He is then dragged out and shot just before the British bombers fly over and destroy the home. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this early film from director Sir Carol Reed, Edmund Gwenn stars as Joe Higgins, a hardworking tugboat captain who is ecstatic when he learns that he has won a lucrative soccer pool. To celebrate, Higgins quits his job and invites all his pals to the local tavern for a wingding. But during the party, the validity of the Liverpudlian captain's win comes into question. Star Gwenn would later be remembered by most movie lovers for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of Kris Kringle in 1947's Miracle on 34th Street. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide