The Cure for Love

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The Cure for Love
The Cure for Love.jpg
Directed by Robert Donat
Written by Walter Greenwood (play)
Albert Fennell
Alexander Shaw
Robert Donat
Produced byRobert Donat
Starring Robert Donat
Renee Asherson
Dora Bryan
Cinematography Jack E. Cox
Edited by Bert Bates
Music by William Alwyn
Production
company
Distributed by British Lion Films
Release dates
29 December 1949 (London premiere)
6 February 1950 (UK general release)
Running time
98 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Box office£193,781 (UK) [1]

The Cure for Love is a 1949 British comedy film starring and directed by Robert Donat. The cast also includes Renee Asherson and Dora Bryan. The film was based on a hit play of the same name by Walter Greenwood about a mild-mannered soldier returning home after the Second World War.

Contents

Production

Donat had appeared in the stage play in 1945. [2] In 1948 it was announced he would make a film version for Alexander Korda. [3] It was his sole feature credit as director, although he had directed on stage.

Francis Wignall was chosen out of 3,000 boys to play a lead role. [4] Donat battled ill health during pre-production. [5] The production was shot at Shepperton Studios, with sets designed by the art director Wilfred Shingleton.

Reception

Trade papers called the film a "notable box office attraction" in British cinemas in 1950. [6] According to Kinematograph Weekly the 'biggest winners' at the box office in 1950 Britain were The Blue Lamp, The Happiest Days of Your Life, Annie Get Your Gun, The Wooden Horse, Treasure Island and Odette, with "runners up" being Stage Fright, White Heat, They Were Not Divided, Trio, Morning Departure, Destination Moon, Sands of Iwo Jima, Little Women, The Forsythe Saga, Father of the Bride, Neptune's Daughter, The Dancing Years, The Red Light, Rogues of Sherwood Forest, Fancy Pants, Copper Canyon, State Secret, The Cure for Love, My Foolish Heart, Stromboli, Cheaper by the Dozen, Pinky, Three Came Home, Broken Arrow and Black Rose. [7]

Cast

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The Cure for Love (play)

The Cure for Love is a comedy play by the British writer Walter Greenwood which premiered in 1945. Its West End run lasted for 219 performances at the Westminster Theatre between July 1945 and January 1946. Amongst the cast were Robert Donat, Renée Asherson, Charles Victor, Marjorie Rhodes and Joan White. The play portrays the return of an easy-going soldier to his Lancashire hometown after the Second World War. He falls in love with a young woman boarding at his mother's house, but struggles to break away from his faithless and calculating fiancée who intends to hold him to their engagement.

References

  1. Vincent Porter, 'The Robert Clark Account', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 20 No 4, 2000 p489
  2. "Gordon Gilmour's LONDON DIARY". The Sun . No. 11, 072. Sydney. 17 July 1945. p. 6 (LATE FINAL EXTRA). Retrieved 27 March 2017 via National Library of Australia.
  3. "LATEST FILM NEWS FROM ABROAD". The Sun . No. 11, 912. Sydney. 1 April 1948. p. 17 (LATE FINAL EXTRA). Retrieved 27 March 2017 via National Library of Australia.
  4. "STARRY WAY". The Courier-Mail . No. 3889. Brisbane. 14 May 1949. p. 2. Retrieved 27 March 2017 via National Library of Australia.
  5. "Hardest-workes man in British films is Donat". The Australian Women's Weekly . Vol. 17, no. 17. 1 October 1949. p. 44. Retrieved 27 March 2017 via National Library of Australia.
  6. Robert Murphy, Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain 1939-48 2003 p212
  7. Lant, Antonia (1991). Blackout : reinventing women for wartime British cinema. Princeton University Press. p. 233.