Plot
Moscow based newspaper reporter Philip Sutherland (Clark Gable) is in love with Marya (Gene Tierney), a ballerina. He and radio broadcaster Steve Quillan (Kenneth More) go to see her perform Swan Lake with the Bolshoi Ballet, and a pleased Philip learns that Marya wishes to marry him and accompany him home to San Francisco.
They are married in the U.S. embassy, where they are warned that obtaining an exit visa is often quite difficult. On their honeymoon, they meet Christopher Denny (Richard Haydn), an Englishman married to Marya's good friend Svetlana (Anna Valentina), who is pregnant. But when he is seen taking innocent photographs, Denny is taken into custody and banished from Russia.
Svetlana gives birth to a son in Philip and Marya's apartment. Cold War tensions are heightened, and when the Sutherlands attempt to leave, Marya is detained. Philip flies home alone and is unable to get permission to return.
He travels to London, where he and Joe Brooks (Bernard Miles), an experienced boatman, hatch a scheme to sail to Tallinn where the Bolshoi is scheduled to perform, in order to clandestinely leave with Marya. At first, he asked Christopher to sail with him so that they could also spirit away Svetlana. But, Christopher declines, as he does not want to subject his young son to the rigors of the sea. Before sailing off, Christopher shows up at the dock ready to join the journey, explaining that his son died after becoming ill with a fever just a few weeks prior. Quillan offers to help by giving them coded instructions on his radio broadcasts as to what time they will meet Marya and Svetlana in the Gulf of Finland. At their rendezvous point, Svetlana swims out safely to the boat, but says an added ballet performance has forced Marya to stay behind.
Philip swims ashore. Stealing a medical officer's clothes, he attends the ballet. During the bows at the end of the ballet, Marya pretends to faint after seeing Philip in the audience. After examining her in a backstage room, Philip departs with her (apparently to the hospital). But, dancer Valentina Alexandrovna (Belita) recognizes him as her husband and informs the authorities. The couple flee. In the pursuit their car goes off a pier. They leap safely into the water, and swim together to the dinghy. Philip and Marya embrace as Joe rows them to the boat.
Gene Eliza Tierney was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed for her great beauty, she became established as a leading lady. Tierney was best known for her portrayal of the title character in the film Laura (1944), and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Ellen Berent Harland in Leave Her to Heaven (1945).
Kenneth Gilbert More, CBE was an English film and stage actor.
Theodore Meir Bikel was an American actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist, and political activist. He appeared in films, including The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Kidnappers (1953), The Enemy Below (1957), I Want to Live! (1958), My Fair Lady (1964), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), and 200 Motels (1971). For his portrayal of Sheriff Max Muller in The Defiant Ones (1958), he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64, is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. First composed in 1935, it was substantially revised for its Soviet premiere in early 1940. Prokofiev made from the ballet three orchestral suites and a suite for solo piano.
Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya was a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress. In post-Soviet times, she held both Lithuanian and Spanish citizenship. She danced during the Soviet era at the Bolshoi Theatre under the directorships of Leonid Lavrovsky, then of Yury Grigorovich; later she moved into direct confrontation with him. In 1960, when famed Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova retired, Plisetskaya became prima ballerina assoluta of the company.
Belita Jepson-Turner, known professionally as Belita, was a British Olympic figure skater, dancer, and film actress.
Delmer Lawrence Daves was an American screenwriter, film director and film producer. He worked in many genres, including film noir and warfare, but he is best known for his Western movies, especially Broken Arrow (1950), The Last Wagon (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Hanging Tree (1959). He was required to work exclusively on studio-based films after heart trouble in 1959, one of which, A Summer Place, was a huge commercial success.
The Kidnappers is a 1953 British film, directed by Philip Leacock and written by Neil Paterson.
Choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Royal Ballet production of Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 9 February 1965.
Chroma is a one-act contemporary ballet created by Wayne McGregor for the Royal Ballet. The work received its premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 17 November 2006. The ballet is performed to a combination of original music by Joby Talbot and arrangements of music by Jack White of the White Stripes, with orchestrations by Christopher Austin. The ballet was a great success, winning a number of awards, including the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production, and led to The Royal Ballet appointing McGregor as resident choreographer.
The Angry Hills is a 1959 American-British war film directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Robert Mitchum, Stanley Baker and Elisabeth Müller. It is based on the novel by Leon Uris.
Never Let Me Go may refer to:
Karel Štěpánek was a Czech actor who spent many years in Austria and generally played German roles onscreen. In 1940 he moved to the UK and spent much of the rest of his career acting there.
Evgenia Viktorovna Obraztsova is a Russian ballerina. She is a prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, and with the Mariinsky Ballet.
Melba is a 1953 musical biopic drama film of the life of Australian-born soprano Nellie Melba, written by Harry Kurnitz and directed by Lewis Milestone for Horizon Pictures, marking the film debut of the Metropolitan Opera's Patrice Munsel.
Escape Me Never is a 1947 American melodrama film directed by Peter Godfrey, and starring Errol Flynn, Ida Lupino, Eleanor Parker, and Gig Young.
Svetlana Aleksandrovna Lunkina is a Russian-Canadian ballerina who is a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada.
Nathalie "Natasha" Krassovska (1918–2005) was a Russian born prima ballerina and teacher of classical ballet most noted for her work with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Following her decades-long career, she moved to the U.S., where she founded the Krassovska Ballet Jeunesse. Krassovska taught, choreographed and performed until her death.
Svetlana Fyodorovna Orlova is a Soviet and Russian film actress. She has appeared in over forty roles and was dubbed the "first beauty of Soviet cinema fairy tales" for her roles in films such as Granddaughter of Ice, The Princess on a Pea, and Finist, the brave Falcon.
Came the Dawn is a 1949 thriller novel by the British writer and journalist Paul Winterton under the pseudonym of Roger Bax. Set in the Soviet Union it drew on Winterton's experience as Moscow correspondent for the News Chronicle and BBC. It was published in the United States by Harper under the alternative title Two If by Sea.
