Give Us the Moon
Give Us the Moon | |
---|---|
S.J. Simon | |
Produced by | Edward Black |
Starring | Margaret Lockwood Vic Oliver Roland Culver Peter Graves Jean Simmons |
Cinematography | Phil Grindrod |
Edited by | R. E. Dearing |
Music by | Bob Busby |
Production company | |
Distributed by | General Film Distributors (UK) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 95 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | £69,000[1] |
Give Us the Moon is a 1944 British comedy film directed and written by Val Guest and starring Vic Oliver, Margaret Lockwood and Peter Graves.[2][3]
Lockwood had just become a star with The Man in Grey and did the film because she did not want to be typecast as a villainess.
Plot
Made in 1943–44, the film is set in a future peacetime Britain, after the end of
Cast
- Margaret Lockwood as Nina
- Vic Oliver as Sascha
- Peter Graves as Peter
- Roland Culver as Ferdinand
- Frank Cellier as Pyke
- Eliot Makeham as Lunka
- George Relph as Otto
- Max Bacon as Jacobus
- Alan Keith as Raphael
- Jean Simmons as Heidi
- John Salew as Landlord
- Iris Lang as Tania
- Gibb McLaughlin as Marcel
- Irene Handl as Miss Haddock
Production
The film is based on the 1939 novel The Elephant is White, written by Caryl Brahms and her Russian émigré writing partner S. J. Simon, but the story was moved from Paris in the 1930s to London in the late 1940s. Brahms and Simon provided additional dialogue to director Val Guest's screenplay.
Val Guest said Lockwood "had been dying to do comedy and I had a big fight to get, even Ted, to get her to do" the film. "It was a great departure for her, it opened her up.... She had an enormous sense of fun, real lavatory laugh, raucous, and the ideal partner for her, and a real charmer, and I wrote him into every film I did as a juvenile lead was Peter Graves who had this great Niven like quality, in fact he looked like Niven in those days, great throwaway charm and sophistication, so I wrote him into all those movies."[4] Jean Simmons was cast in one of her first roles.[4]
The film came in under budget.[1]
Release
The film opened at the
Val Guest said "it wasn't a successful picture, perhaps too sophisticated for what they wanted, the whole idea of a club of people who didn't want to work, they became a club, a white elephant club, and were earning by their wits."[4]
References
- ^ a b Fowler, Roy (19 August 1988). "Interview Andy Worker". British Entertainment History Project.
- ^ Give Us the Moon at the TCM Movie Database
- ^ Erickson, Hal (2015). "Give Us the Moon (1944)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 30 July 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2016.
- ^ a b c Fowler, Roy (August–September 1988). "Interview with Val Guest". British Entertainment History Project.
- ^ "New films in London". The Times. 31 July 1944. p. 8.
- ^ The Wonderful World of Cinema, May 19, 2016: Oh! But You MUST See “Give Us the Moon”! Linked 2017-05-12
External links
- Give Us the Moon at IMDb
- Give Us the Moon at TCMDB