5. When Knights Were Bold - The Films

When Knights Were Bold was filmed three times during the silent era and once as a ‘talkie’. The following information is taken from IMDB and the British Film Institute:

WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD (1916 - UK)
Script by Frank Miller, directed by Maurice Elvey
Produced by London Film Company
Cast:
James Welch            Sir Guy de Vere
Janet Ross               Lady Rowena
Gerald Ames            Sir Brian Ballymote
Hayford Hobbs        Widdicombe
Gwynne Herbert      Isaacson
Philip Hewland         Barker
Bert Wynne             Whittle
Edna Maude            Aunt Thornridge
Marjorie Day          The Maid
Douglas Munro
BFI synopsis: “ Comedy in which commoner inherits title and wins Lady after a dream set in medieval times.”

IL CAVALIERE DEL SILENZIO (1916 - Italy)
Directed by Oreste Visalli
Produced by Aquila Films
Cast:
Giulio Del Torre
Signor De Mori
Jeanne Nolly
Leo Ragusi
Claudia Zambuto
Gero Zambuto
 

WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD (1929 - UK)
Directed by Tim Whelan
Produced by British and Dominions Film Corporation
Cast:
Nelson Keys                    Sir Guy de Vere
Miriam Seegar                 Lady Rowena
Eric Bransby Williams     Sir Brian Ballymore
Wellington Briggs            Widdicombe
Lena Halliday                   Lady Walgrave
Martin Adeson                 Barker
Hal Gordon                      Whittle
Edith Kingdon                  Aunt Thornridge
E.L. Frewyn                      Dean
Fanny Wright
(The BFI has E. E. Frewen as the Dean.)

The British and Dominions Film Corporation was set up by Herbert Wilcox (the IMDB credits him as Producer) and an advert for the company appeared in The Daily Express on February 15th, 1928. Wilcox also went on to produce the 1936 musical version.

WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD (1936 - UK)
Script by Douglas Furber and Austin Parker, directed by Jack Raymond
Musical Numbers by Harry Perritt, George Windeatt, Maurice Sigler, Al Goodhart, Al Hoffman
Cinematographer: Freddie Young
Produced by Capitol Film Corporation
Cast:
Jack Buchanan            Sir Guy De Vere
Fay Wray                     Lady Rowena
Garry Marsh               Brian Ballymote
Kate Cutler                 Aunt Agatha
Martita Hunt              Aunt Esther
Robert Horton            Cousin Bertie
Aubrey Mather           The Canon
Aubrey Fitzgerald       Barker, the butler
Robert Nainby            Whittle, the 'boy'
Moore Marriott          The Tramp
Charles Paton             The Mayor
Barry Fitzgerald
Terry-Thomas
Michael Wilding
Runtime: 76 min
BFI synopsis: “Sir Guy de Vere inherits his father’s estate only to be greeted with hostility from the rest of the family when he goes to live in the family's ancestral home.”

The 1936 version of When Knights Were Bold is available on DVD from the Turner Classic Movies site.

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The 1936 film contained several musical numbers: ‘I’m Still Dreaming’ and ‘Let’s Put Some People To Work’ by Al Goodhart, Al Hoffman and Maurice Sigler, and ‘Forward, Onward We Go’.

Jack Buchanan singing ‘Let’s Put Some People To Work’ from When Knights Were Bold.

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Daily Express (21 February, 1936 - p.4)

ANYTHING this local farmyard product has it owes to the presence of Jack Buchanan.
     I don’t know whose idea it was to make the famous Christmas kiddie-comedy into a musical talkie. But, granting the premise that it had to be, and nobody could do a thing about it, Jack was the man to play Sir Guy de Vere.
     He still has that easy-going charm which has steered him through many an ill-written scene without a tomato being thrown. He needs all of it here.
     The producers of the film have gone to a lot of trouble and expense to make it what they doubtless regard as cinematic. That is to say that, blanched with terror of critical too-much-dialogue onslaughts, they have added a lot of scenes not in the play, in which people rush about a good deal (injecting action).
     They start off with a scene in Poona, introduced by a map in case you thought it was just a new American abbreviation of piano-tuner.
     Then there are big fight scenes showing the attack on the castle during the dream sequence, and an extremely peculiar procession of medieval knights on variously shaped bicycles. Apart from the stock “Gadzooks!” jokes, this is about the only attempt to capitalise on the possibilities here presented for rich anachronistic comedy.
     In spite of its laudable effort to put more action into a fairly static play, the film script is a rare triumph of unimaginativeness.

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The Times (24 February, 1936 - p.10)

LONDON PAVILION
     When Knights Were Bold.—The trouble with the films in which Mr. Jack Buchanan appears is that they have no imaginative ambitions. It is obvious that in this musical version of the farce made famous by the late Mr. Bromley Challenor a lot of time and money have been spent on the dream sequences which show Sir Guy de Vere (Mr. Buchanan) back in the Middle Ages, but the only reflection they leave is that they are allowed to go on far too long and that if they are intended as satire on such films as The Crusaders they should have more point and venom. Lack of imagination again, and it is a thousand pities that Mr. Buchanan, who potentially has so much to give to light comedy, is content with films worthy of a player with a quarter of his talents. There are moments, especially at the beginning, as Sir Guy is finding exactly how difficult and feudal his relations can be, when the film breaks into something like freshness and invention—there is one good song which finished disappointingly soon. Miss Fay Wray takes the part of the Lady Rowena with a surprising and triumphant seriousness, but it is not enough, and When Knights Were Bold still leaves Mr. Buchanan in search of his film.

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Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand) (4 July, 1936)

TIVOLI THEATRE

     With the coming of every Buchanan picture to the screen, the public are immediately on tip-toe with expectancy for some new, real song hits, and they will certainly not be disappointed in Jack’s latest success, “When Knights Were Bold,” which is the main attraction at the Tivoli Theatre. Two of the numbers which enhance the entertainment value of the film are “I’m Still Dreaming” and “Let’s Put Some People to Work,” sung in Jack’s own inimitable breezy style. “When Knights Were Bold” gives an intimate glimpse of Buchanan’s own favourite style of acting, as the producers, Capitol Films, gave him free rein in selecting the story for this, his first “World Standard” production, and he has chosen a mirthful mix-up, brimful of laughs, riotously funny situations, spicy interludes, and catchy songs. The exploits of a New York star reporter who assists the police in solving a mysterious crime, only to find himsslf in jeopardy, are vividly depicted in the second feature, “The Murder Man,” starring Spencer Tracy, with Virginia Bruce, Lionel Atwill, Harvey Stephens, and Robert Barratt.

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The New York Times (31 March, 1942)

THE SCREEN; Ancient Accident

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

The Little Carnegie Playhouse refuses to let cold turkeys lie, and again it has raided the ice-box for another relic from a British studio, which it is offering to local audiences as though it were just grabbed off the roost. You may rest assured it wasn't. It is all of six years old—this exceedingly moldy farce-comedy entitled “When Knights Were Bold”—and the only cleverness which it betokens is that of the exhibitors who have previously passed it up.

It is, to state it briefly, a pointless trifle, a minor vaudeville skit, in which Jack Buchanan, pretending to be an English baronet, has a difficult time comprehending the feudal posing of some pompous relatives. Then he gets conked on the head and dreams the time is 1400, which gives rise to such gags as the following - Halberdier: “What’s afoot?” Buchanan: “Twelve inches, I think.” And, after some aimless aping of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” the time switches back to the present—or rather, to 1936—and Mr. Buchanan espouses the beautiful Lady Rowena, who is merely Fay Wray.

If the Little Carnegie is anxious to show none but British product, why doesn’t it play in revival some really memorabe films? We can think of two dozen British pictures such as “The Ghost Goes West,” “South Riding,” “To the Victor” and “Drums,” not to mention the Hitchcock classics, which most certainly retain their appeal. Why expose a blunder which had better be forgot?

Ancient Accident

WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD, adapted by Douglas Furber and Austin Parkes from the play by Charles Marlowe; directed by Jack Raymond; produced in England by Capitol Films. At the Little Carnegie Playhouse.
Sir Guy de Vers . . . . . Jack Buchanan
Lady Rowena . . . . . Fay Wray
Brian Ballynote . . . . . Garry Marsh
Aunt Agatha . . . . . Kate Cutler
Aunt Esther . . . . . Martitia Hunt
Cousin Bertie . . . . . Robert Horton
The Tramp . . . . . Moore Marriott

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Rod Crawford gives the following plot summary on IMDB:
“Happy-go-lucky soldier Guy De Vere must leave India and return to the family seat at Little Twittering, for he has inherited the family title. Sir Guy finds all his relatives to be frozen stuffed shirts... except lovely cousin Rowena, who is mad about knighthood and chivalry. Struck in the head by a falling suit of armor, Guy dreams he and Rowena are back in 1400, as the unabashed farce continues...”

And the fantasy element gets it a review by Dave Sindelar on the Scifilm site:
“The heir to an ancestral home returns from India to meet his family for the first time. He discovers they are all stiff and joyless, but he falls for his cousin, the Lady Rowena.You know, some of these movies really do leave me scratching my head when I try to decide whether they rightfully belong in the fantastic movie genres or not, and this is one of them. The basic plot of this musical-comedy certainly doesn't give any indication of having a fantastic premise, and for most of the movie I was wondering what would come up. However, the last third of the movie consists of a dream sequence in which our hero ends up in the middle ages and must defend the castle against an onslaught of invaders. It's here that the comedy really takes an anarchic turn, and the question becomes whether outrageous anarchic comedy qualifies as fantastic cinema. However, scenes in which the knights come riding in on bizarre bicycles, and a series of gags involving magnets both push this into the realm of fantasy, so I guess it does qualify to some extent. The movie itself is quite amusing and very British. Barry Fitzgerald and Terry-Thomas both appear somewhere in this movie, though I wouldn't be able to point them out.”

I also came across the following in the William K. Everson Archive at the New York York University. It’s a copy of the programme notes for a showing of the film on September 28th, 1970 at the Theodore Huff Memorial Film Society:

Finally, in Fay Wray’s autobiography, “On The Other Hand”, the film is mentioned in the following passage:

“     A second film with Jack Buchanan was produced by Herbert Wilcox, who arranged the very best contract I ever had. It was totally uncomplicated, not a ‘whereas’ or ‘in the event’ or any kind of legal phrasing. All on one page, it stipulated salary and billing only. Jack, of course, was to have billing over me. When the film, When Knights Were Bold, was finished and was about to be shown in Piccadilly Circus, Vincent Sheehan had come to town. He and John and I were en route to dinner at Boulestin’s in the Strand. I saw workmen putting up lights on the huge marquee of the theater, my name on top of everything. I knew that was wrong but I enjoyed my dinner thoroughly. I had never had a French red wine before: Nuit Saint George. A lovely nuit for me! By the time we passed the theater on our return taxi ride, my lovely nuit was over. Jack Buchanan’s name was up there where mine had been. I wondered if he, too, might have been dining in the Strand that night!”

[Swedish poster for “Bland Balde Riddersman” designed by Gosta Aberg (1905-1981).]

[Spanish poster for “Frac en la Edad Media” (“A Tailcoat in the Middle Ages”).]

[The Longford Cinema in Stretford, Manchester, February 1937.]

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6. When Knights Were Bold - The Musical

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