Forever and a Day **** (1943, Claude Rains, C Aubrey Smith, Cedric Hardwicke, Jessie Matthews, Charles Laughton, Roland Young, Gladys Cooper, Brian Aherne) – Classic Movie Review 9383

’78 stars in one Great Picture!’

Europeans in Hollywood gave their services free for RKO Radio Pictures’s black and white drama 1943 Forever and a Day about a London house from 1804 to the Blitz so that the profits could go to war relief (though there weren’t many profits, as it turned out).

Even if the dramas aren’t very exciting, the casts are. Among the slew of actors, Claude Rains, C Aubrey Smith, Cedric Hardwicke, Jessie Matthews, Charles Laughton, Roland Young, Gladys Cooper and Brian Aherne stand out memorably.

It also stars Anna Neagle, Ray Milland, Dame May Whitty, Gene Lockhart, Edmund Gwenn, Ian Hunter, Reginald Owen, Buster Keaton, Ida Lupino, Edward Everett Horton, June Duprez, Eric Blore, Merle Oberon, Una O’Connor, Nigel Bruce, Robert Cummings, Richard Haydn, Elsa Lanchester, Sara Allgood, Robert Coote, Donald Crisp, Ruth Warrick, Kent Smith, Herbert Marshall and Victor McLaglen.

The most entertaining episode is the one in which Dexter (Ivan Simpson)’s boozy butler Bellamy (Charles Laughton) watches a bath installed by maker Mr Dabb (Cedric Hardwicke) and inept Wilkins (Buster Keaton).

There are 78, mainly British stars, seven directors and the largest number ever of credited writers – 21. It is all packed in into 104 minutes.

The directors are René Clair, Edmund Goulding, Cedric Hardwicke, Frank Lloyd, Victor Saville, Robert Stevenson and Herbert Wilcox.

The writers are Charles Bennett, C S Forester, Lawrence Hazard, Michael Hogan, W P Lipscomb, Alice Duer Miller, John Van Druten, Alan Campbell, Peter Godfrey, S M Herzig, Christopher Isherwood, Gene Lockhart, R C Sherriff, Claudine West, Norman Corwin, Jack Hartfield, James Hilton, Emmet Lavery, Frederick Lonsdale, Donald Ogden Stewart and Keith Winter.

Also in the cast are Billy Bevan, Arthur Treacher, Aubrey Mather, Harry Allen, Ethel Griffies, Barbara Everest, June Lockhart, Stuart Robinson, George Kirby, Doreen Monroe, Max Beatty, Connie Leon, Joy Harrington, Philip Ahn, Sara Allgood, Claud Allister, Lionel Belmore, Ray Bolger, Clyde Cook, Mary Gordon, Richard Haydn, Halliwell Hobbes, Dennis Hooey, Charles Irwin, Cecil Kellaway, Walter Kingsford, Queenie Leonard, Doris Lloyd, Montagu Love, Moyna McGill, Ivan Simpson, Anna Lee, Alec Craig, Patric Knowles, Daphne Moore and Wendy Barrie.

Alfred Hitchcock was prevented by scheduling from directing the sequence involving Ida Lupino as Jenny Jones, so René Clair took over, using Hitchcock’s script.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9383

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