"Welcome to Sherwood!"
Classic swashbuckling adventure film, released in 1938. It was directed by
Michael Curtiz and
William Keighley (Curtiz took over because the producers weren't happy with Keighley's work) and written by
Norman Reilly Raine and
Seton I. Miller.
Hal B. Wallis was the producer, and
Tony Gaudio and
Sol Polito were the cinematographers. It starred
Errol Flynn as
Robin Hood,
Olivia de Havilland as
Maid Marian,
Basil Rathbone as
Sir Guy of Gisbourne,
Claude Rains as
Prince John,
Patric Knowles as
Will Scarlett,
Eugene Pallette as
Friar Tuck,
Alan Hale as
Little John,
Melville Cooper as the
Sheriff of Nottingham,
Ian Hunter as
King Richard,
Una O'Connor as Marian's maid, Bess,
Herbert Mundin as
Much the Miller's Son, and
Montagu Love as the
Bishop of the Black Canons.
The movie was nominated for
Best Picture (it lost to "
You Can't Take It with You") and won Oscars for Best Art Direction for
Carl Jules Weyl, Best Film Editing for
Ralph Dawson, and Best Original Score for
Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
I haven't seen every Robin Hood movie out there. Frankly, outside of the
Disney cartoon, I've only seen
snippets of most of the recent films about
Sir Robin of Locksley. But I can say, without a trace of doubt, that this is the best version of the Robin Hood legend ever made. It has all the
high points that you expect. It has Robin's
quarterstaff duel with Little John, it has Robin's
swordfight with Friar Tuck, it has the
archery contest, with Robin splitting the
arrow, it has Robin throwing back his head and
laughing loudly, it has
romance and
intrigue and
derring-do galore. It has Errol Flynn, the
patron saint of the
swashbucklers, doing the
stunts,
sword battles, and
quips we expect. It has Rathbone and Rains acting
deliciously evil. It has one of the classic Flynn/Rathbone
fencing duels, up and down stairs, over and under tables and chairs, in
shadow and in
light. It has Hale (reprising his role from a silent film from 1922) and Pallette verbally
sparring with each other. It has everything you want in a good swashbuckler. Go watch it now. Now, damn you, now!
Favorite Trivia Bits: the lead role was originally going to be played by...
James Cagney. Maid Marian's horse later got cast as
Trigger,
Roy Rogers' horse. And most of the
archery stunts were performed by the production's archery instructor,
Howard Hill, who was allowed to actually shoot the
actors and
stuntmen with real arrows (they were wearing heavily padded costumes and got paid an extra $150 per arrow). Hill also played the captain of the
archers in the archery duel, and the scene where Robin splits the arrow was actually done, in one take, with no
trick photography or
special effects, by Hill.
Research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)