Nova Pilbeam Movies
15-year-old Nova Pilbeam was already a seasoned stage veteran when she made her screen debut as the youthful kidnap victim in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). She went on to deliver a superb performance as the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey in Nine Days a Queen (1934). Her first significant adult role was in Young and Innocent (1937), again for Hitchcock. Nova Pilbeam retired in 1939 upon marrying director Pen Tennyson, returning to the screen after Tennyson's death in WWII. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1948
Nazi war criminal Bruckner (Mervyn Johns) manages to escape capture at the end of WW II. Bruckner sets up shop in England, where he continues his diabolical germ-warfare experiments. Murdering an Australian physician, the regenerate Nazi assumes the dead man's identity to escape detection. His downfall comes when he falls in love with pretty lab assistant Tracy Shaw (Nova Pilbeam), and he refuses to murder her when ordered to do so by his superiors. The ending is right of the "hoist on his own petard" school of dramatics. Devil's Plot was released in the U.S. in mid-1953, and within a few months was making the TV Late-Show rounds. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1948
In this crime drama, three ancient, weird sisters begin planning to kill their half-brother in order to scare up the cash they need to keep their ramshackle mansion running. Poet Dylan Thomas helped write the screenplay. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nancy Price, Mary Clare, (more)
- 1947
In this melodrama, a fisherman begins studying to be a doctor. Although he isn't finished with medical school, he begins treating his landlady's daughter who is believed to have a terminal illness. He seems to cure her, and the case draws a lot of attention, some of it negative because he was unlicensed when he treated her. He still does not have a degree when he marries the daughter and begins practicing osteopathy. He soon finds success and happiness until he begins having an affair. Later he jilts his mistress and she kills herself. During the autopsy he is appalled to learn that it was actually his misdiagnosis of her illness and the resulting medical treatment that caused her to die. The distraught osteopath then takes off and does not return until his wife, whose disease has come back, begs him to help her once again. He succeeds and their happiness resumes. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Beatty, Carol Raye, (more)
- 1946
This holiday comedy is set during the Christmas of 1946 and centers upon a fellow who has returned to his native Canada to spend the Yule. When he receives a telegram from "the Fergusons," many memories of the Christmas they spent together come flooding back. The story jumps backward four years when the man was serving in the Canadian army and was stationed in England. This family took him in for the holiday. While there, the soldier finds himself pursued by the Fergusons' daughter and by their maid. The story then jumps to the present where the former maid--now in the military too--is seen preparing the soldier's Christmas dinner in their home. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Walls, Jeanne de Casalis, (more)
- 1944
The Yellow Canary was one of several wartime collaborations between British producer-director Herbert Wilcox and Hollywood's RKO Radio Pictures. The film stars Wilcox's wife Anna Neagle as pretty aristocrat Sally Maitland. Having alienated many of her friends with her prewar Nazi sympathies, Sally continues hobnobbing with the Third Reich once war has been declared. Actually, her pro-German activities are a sham; she's actually working hand and glove with the British government to smash an Axis spy ring in Canada. Along for the ride is British intelligence officer Jim Garrick (Richard Greene), who ultimately falls in love with Sally. There's a "mystery" angle to the plotline of The Yellow Canary, but it is largely ignored when the story takes a melodramatic turn in the last few reels. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna Neagle, Richard Greene, (more)
- 1942
The phrase "Loose Lips Sink Ships" takes on a new and special meaning in the cautionary British war drama Next of Kin. In grade-school-primer fashion, the film shows how careless talk can have a devastating and tragic effect in times of war, sometimes boomeranging on the "talker" in the form of lost loved ones. Extra attention is paid the gossipy "Ma" Webster (Mary Clare), whose casual revelation of troop movements, culled from a recent visit by her son, has long-ranging, fatal consequences. American critics, unmoved by the melodramatic breast-beating of Next of Kin, suggested that the film might cause viewers to swear off moviemaking rather than talking. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Basil Sydney, Frederick Leister, (more)
- 1941
Based on a stage play by M. J. Farrell and John Perry, Spring Meeting stars Enid-Stamp Taylor and Michael Wilding as Tiny and Tony Stamp-Collier, mother and son. Tiny is a wealthy British courtesan who hopes to arrange a profitable marriage for son Tony. The logical choice for a bride is beautiful but stuffy Joan Furze (played by Winston Churchill's daughter Sarah), but Tony insolently falls in love with Joan's fun-loving younger sister Baby (Nova Pilbeam). The film is stolen by Margaret Rutherford as an easily outraged maiden aunt and Henry Edwards as a miserly uncle. And in the tradition of British drawing-room comedies, the most admirable character in the story is family butler James (Basil Sydney), who solves everyone's problems just before the final-act curtain. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Enid Stamp Taylor, Michael Wilding, Sr., (more)
- 1941
Another cheeky entry from the Aldwych Theatre farceurs, Banana Ridge is based on a play by Aldwych perennial Ben Travers. Alfred Drayton plays a wealthy, respected gentleman suddenly confronted with old flame Isabel Jeans. She shows up out of nowhere, claiming that her illegitimate son is his. The possibility of scandal creates a brouhaha with Drayton's wife Adela Dixon, and daughter Nova Pilbeam. Old chum Robertson Hare offers to help Drayton out--and nearly wrecks his own marriage in the process. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1940
In this patriotic drama, the courage of a German pastor is presented as he makes a public stand against Nazi philosophies and actions. Unfortunately, the outspoken fellow is sent to a concentration camp where he is beaten and tortured. Still he manages to escape and give one final sermon to his congregation before he is gunned down. The story is based on an actual event. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wilfred Lawson, Nova Pilbeam, (more)
- 1939
Cheer Boys Cheer is a provincial British comedy with slight Romeo and Juliet undertones. Edmund Gwenn and Moore Marriott play rival brewery owners who detest the sight of one another. Not so their children--the son of one man, the daughter of the other--who fall in love. One glance at the film's title, and the viewer knows that boy and girl will not take poison in the end. For so modest an endeavor, Cheer Boys Cheer has a remarkable talent lineup: Edmund Gwenn, Moore Marriott, Jimmy O'Dea, Nova Pilbeam and Alexander Knox in front of the cameras, and Walter Forde and Ronald Neame on the production end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
As early as 1937's Young and Innocent, Alfred Hitchcock was beginning to repeat himself, but audiences didn't mind so long as they were thoroughly entertaining-which they were, without fail. Derrick De Marney finds himself in a 39 Steps situation when he is wrongly accused of murder. While a fugitive from the law, De Marney is helped by heroine Nova Pilbeam, who three years earlier had played the adolescent kidnap victim in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. The obligatory "fish out of water" scene, in which the principals are briefly slowed down by a banal everyday event, occurs during a child's birthday party. The actual villain, whose identity is never in doubt (Hitchcock made thrillers, not mysteries) is played by George Curzon, who suffers from a twitching eye. Curzon's revelation during an elaborate nightclub sequence is a Hitchcockian tour de force, the sort of virtuoso sequence taken for granted in these days of flexible cameras and computer enhancement, but which in 1937 took a great deal of time, patience and talent to pull off. Released in the US as The Girl Was Young, Young and Innocent was based on a novel by Josephine Tey. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nova Pilbeam, Derrick de Marney, (more)
The first film version of The Man Who Knew too Much proved to be the international "breakthrough" film for British director Alfred Hitchcock, transforming him from merely a talented domestic filmmaker to a worldwide household name. While vacationing in Switzerland, Britons Leslie Banks and Edna Best befriend jovial Frenchman Pierre Fresnay. Not long afterward, Fresnay is murdered. He whispers a secret in Banks' ear before expiring. This is witnessed by several sinister foreign agents, who kidnap Banks' daughter Nova Pilbeam to keep him from revealing what he knows: That a diplomat will be assassinated during a concert at London's Albert Hall. Unable to turn to the police, Banks desperately attempts to rescue his child himself, still hoping to prevent the assassination. The film's now-famous setpieces include the "Siege of Sidney Street" re-creation and the climactic clash of cymbals at Albert Hall, followed by the crucial scream of Edna Best. German film star Peter Lorre made his English-speaking debut in The Man Who Knew Too Much, though he was still monolingual in 1934 and had to learn his lines phonetically. Written by A. R. Rawlinson, Charles Bennett, D.B. Wyndham Lewis, Emlyn Williams and Edwin Greenwood (an impressive lineup for a 75-minute film!), Man Who Knew Too Much was remade by Hitchcock himself in 1956. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leslie Banks, Edna Best, (more)
- 1934
This lush historical drama chronicles the brief reign of the late Henry VIII's successor, Lady Jane Grey. After only nine days on the throne, she was beheaded at the behest of the treacherous Mary Tudor. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cedric Hardwicke, John Mills, (more)
- 1934
Fourteen-year-old British actress Nova Pilbeam (best known for her work in Hitchcock's Man Who Knew too Much and Young and Innocent) plays the title role in Little Friend. When her parents (Matheson Lang and Lydia Sherwood) decide to divorce, poor Felicity Hughes (Pilbeam) seeks out a way to bring them back together. She tells a few "white lies" on the witness stand, which merely exacerbates the situation. Finally she attempts suicide, and it is this that brings Mr. and Mrs. Hughes back to their senses. Surprisingly, the Margaret Kennedy-Christopher Isherwood screenplay isn't as sappy and overdone on screen as it plays on paper. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Matheson Lang, Nova Pilbeam, (more)
