Escape Me Never (1935 film)

Escape Me Never
Directed byPaul Czinner
Screenplay byRobert Cullen
Carl Zuckmayer[1] or Carl Mayer[2]
Based onEscape Me Never
1935 play and
The Fool of the Family
1930 novel
by Margaret Kennedy
Produced byHerbert Wilcox
StarringElisabeth Bergner
Hugh Sinclair
Griffith Jones
Penelope Dudley-Ward
CinematographySepp Allgeier
Georges Périnal
Freddie Young
Edited byDavid Lean
Music byWilliam Walton
Production
company
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • 1 April 1935 (1935-04-01)
Running time
102 minutes / USA: 95 min
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Escape Me Never is a 1935 British drama film directed by Paul Czinner, produced by Herbert Wilcox, and starring Elisabeth Bergner (recreating the role of Gemma as she created it onstage in New York and London), Hugh Sinclair and Griffith Jones.[3][4] The score is by William Walton with orchestration by Hyam Greenbaum.[5] Bergner was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance, but lost to Bette Davis. British readers of Film Weekly magazine voted the 1935 Best Performance in a British Movie to her.[6] The film is an adaptation of the play Escape Me Never by Margaret Kennedy, which was based upon her 1930 novel The Fool of the Family. That book was a sequel to The Constant Nymph, which was also about the Sanger family of musical geniuses, but there is a disjunct among the books and the films: the Sanger brothers are never mentioned in the 1943 film version of The Constant Nymph. Another film adaptation of Escape Me Never was made in 1947 by Warner Bros.

  1. ^ Filmografie, Carl Zuckmayer Gesellschaft (in German)
  2. ^ Escape Me Never at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
  3. ^ Andre Sennwald (24 May 1935). "Escape Me Never (1935) The Radio City Music Hall Presents Miss Bergner in the Film Version of Escape Me Never". The New York Times.
  4. ^ BFI Database entry
  5. ^ Lloyd, Stephen. William Walton, Muse of Fire (2001) p 149
  6. ^ "Best Film Performance Last Year". The Examiner. Launceston, Tasmania: National Library of Australia. 9 July 1937. p. 8. Retrieved 4 March 2013.