The Great Garrick (1937)

The Great Garrick is a 1937 American historical comedy film directed by James Whale and starring Brian Aherne, Olivia de Havilland, and Edward Everett Horton. The film also features Lionel Atwill, Luis Alberni, Melville Cooper, and future star Lana Turner, who has a bit part. Based on the play Ladies and Gentlemen by Ernest Vajda, the film is about the famous eighteenth century British actor David Garrick, who travels to France for a guest appearance at the Comédie Française. When the French actors hear rumours that he said he will teach them the art of acting, they devise a plot to teach him a lesson. Though often overlooked by critics in favor of Whale's horror films, the The Great Garrick was chosen by Jonathan Rosenbaum for his alternative list of the Top 100 American Films.

Synopsis

In London in 1750, renowned English actor David Garrick announces onstage that he has been invited to Paris to work with the prestigious Comédie-Française. A person in the audience jeers that the French want him to teach them how to act. The playwright Beaumarchais (Lionel Atwill) returns to the Comédie-Française and attributes the remark to Garrick himself. The outraged French actors, led by their president, Picard (Melville Cooper), decide to make him an object of public ridicule. They take over a wayside inn where he will be staying, and Beaumarchais devises a plot intended to humiliate Garrick by frightening him into returning to England.

Actors