Commandos Strike at Dawn | |
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Directed by | John Farrow |
Written by | C. S. Forester (story) Irwin Shaw |
Produced by | Sam Wood Buddy G. DeSylva (uncredited) |
Starring | Paul Muni Anna Lee Lillian Gish Sir Cedric Hardwicke Robert Coote |
Narrated by | Lester Cowan |
Cinematography | William C. Mellor |
Edited by | Anne Bauchens |
Music by | Louis Gruenberg John Leipold (uncredited) |
Production company | Columbia Pictures |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 100 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $1.5 million (US rentals) [1] |
Commandos Strike at Dawn is a 1942 war film directed by John Farrow and written by Irwin Shaw from a short story entitled "The Commandos" by C. S. Forester that appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in June 1942. Filmed in Canada, it starred Paul Muni, Anna Lee, Lillian Gish in her return to the screen, Cedric Hardwicke and Robert Coote.
Erik Toresen, a widower and peaceful man, is stirred to violence after the Nazis occupy his quiet Norwegian fishing village. German abuses lead Erik to form a Resistance group. He kills the head of the Nazis occupying his village, and then escapes to Britain, and guides some British Commandos to a raid on a secret airstrip the Germans are building on the Norwegian coast.
Inspired by 1941 commando raids in Norway, Columbia Pictures registered the name "Commandos Story" in 1941 feeling the title could spawn a film. [2]
Director John Farrow was a Commander in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve. [3]
The film was shot in the Greater Victoria, Canada, area. Saanich Inlet stands in for Norwegian fjords. The airstrip is what would become the Victoria International Airport. Hall's Boat House (now Goldstream Marina) is where the wharf scenes are shot. The Canadian Army provided a large number of troops as well as military equipment while the RCAF provided aircraft shown include two Bristol Bolingbrokes and two Westland Lysanders. [4] Canadian soldiers from the Battle Drill Training School in Vernon appeared in the film, Warrant Officer Class I Mickey Miquelon of the Calgary Highlanders and Warrant Officer Class II Lester Kemp. [5] The ship used in the film was HMCS Prince David (F89) a former CN Steamship which had been converted to an Armed Merchant Cruiser in 1940.
During the 1930s, Oak Bay, British Columbia was the original "Hollywood North" when fourteen films were produced in Greater Victoria between 1933 and 1938. An off-season exhibition building on the Willows Fairgrounds was converted to a film soundstage and films were produced with stars such as Lillian Gish, Paul Muni, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Edith Fellows, Charles Starrett and Rin Tin Tin Jr. The Willows Park Studio films include:
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for its score by the world-renowned opera composer, Louis Gruenberg and an uncredited John Leipold. This was Gruenberg's second Hollywood film score and second nomination for one; he'd moved to Beverly Hills in the late 1930s to supplement his income and hang out with fellow LA resident, Arnold Schoenberg, whose works Gruenberg had championed when these composers could still live in Europe and not Los Angeles County.
Ann Ronell fashioned a song Out to Pick the Berries from Gruenberg's score and wrote lyrics for a theme which became known as The Commandos March. [6]
Igor Stravinsky, who had been approached to score the film, completed his score before the film had been finished and negotiations to make revisions fell through. Stravinsky recycled the music he had prepared for the film into his Four Norwegian Moods. [7]
The film was meant to be released in 1943, but it was released early due to the failure of the Dieppe Raid. [8]
The following is an overview of 1936 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly 50 years. His theatre work included notable performances in productions of the plays of Shakespeare and Shaw, and his film work included leading roles in several adapted literary classics.
Oak Bay is a municipality incorporated in 1906 that is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is one of thirteen member municipalities of the Capital Regional District, and is bordered to the west by the city of Victoria and to the north by the district of Saanich. It is an eastern residential suburb of Victoria.
William Gilbert Barron, known professionally as Billy Gilbert, was an American actor and comedian. He was known for his comic sneeze routines. He appeared in over 200 feature films, short subjects and television shows beginning in 1929.
John Villiers Farrow, KGCHS was an Australian film director, producer, and screenwriter. Spending a considerable amount of his career in the United States, in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Wake Island, and in 1957 he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days. He had seven children by his wife, actress Maureen O'Sullivan, including actress Mia Farrow.
Robert Coote was an English actor. He played aristocrats or British military types in many films, and created the role of Colonel Hugh Pickering in the long-running original Broadway production of My Fair Lady.
Ann Carter was an American child actress who worked with dozens of film stars, compiling an "unimaginably distinguished résumé" despite an acting career which lasted only slightly more than a decade. She is best known for her starring role as Amy Reed in the film The Curse of the Cat People (1944), and also acted alongside stars including Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Bing Crosby, Fredric March, and Barbara Stanwyck among others.
Mona Barrie was an English-born actress, active on stage in Australia before establishing a career in the US, and in Hollywood films.
Egon Brecher was an Austria-Hungary-born actor and director, who also served as the chief director of Vienna's Stadttheater, before entering the motion picture industry.
Louis Gruenberg was a Russian-born American pianist and prolific composer, especially of operas. An early champion of Schoenberg and other contemporary composers, he was also a highly respected Oscar-nominated film composer in Hollywood in the 1940s.
George Zucco was a British character actor who appeared in plays and 96 films, mostly American-made, during a career spanning over two decades, from the 1920s to 1951. In his films, he often played a suave villain, a member of nobility, or a mad doctor.
Irving Pichel was an American actor and film director, who won acclaim both as an actor and director in his Hollywood career.
King Solomon's Mines is a 1937 British adventure film directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Paul Robeson, Cedric Hardwicke, Anna Lee, John Loder and Roland Young. A film adaptation of the 1885 novel of the same name by Henry Rider Haggard, the film was produced by the Gaumont British Picture Corporation at Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd's Bush. Sets were designed by art director Alfred Junge. Of all the novel's adaptations, this film is considered to be the most faithful to the book.
Joe Sawyer was a Canadian film actor. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1927 and 1962, and was sometimes billed under his birth name.
Billy Bevan was an Australian-born vaudevillian who became an American film actor. He appeared in more than 250 American films from 1916 to 1952. He died just before new audiences discovered him in Robert Youngson's silent-comedy compilations. The Youngson films mispronounce his name as "Be-VAN"; Bevan himself offered the proper pronunciation in a Voice of Hollywood reel in 1930: "Bevan" rhyming with "seven".
William Beatman Davidson was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 300 films between 1915 and 1947.
Constance Worth was an Australian actress who became a Hollywood star in the late 1930s. She was also known as Jocelyn Howarth.
Louis Jean Heydt was an American character actor in film, television and theatre, most frequently seen in hapless, ineffectual, or fall guy roles.
First Comes Courage is a 1943 American war film, the final film directed by Dorothy Arzner, one of the few female directors in Hollywood at the time. The film was based on the 1943 novel Commandos by Elliott Arnold, adapted by George Sklar, with a screenplay by Melvin Levy and Lewis Meltzer. It stars Merle Oberon and Brian Aherne.
Peter George Lynn was an American actor and writer.