Chapter Seven: Stage to Screen Pride and Prejudice: Hollywood's First Austen and Its Unrealized Screenplays
It was a bumpy road from Helen Jerome's hit Broadway and West End Play, Pride and Prejudice: A Sentimental Comedy (1935-36), to the big screen and MGM film version starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. We've long known that it's a story featuring missteps, an unfortunate death, and countless Darcys and Elizabeths. There were also staggering numbers of screenwriters. Read more about their little-known attempts to update Austen in their failed, but fascinating, unpublished screenplays. These unpublished scripts range from the daring to the ridiculous, in a circuitous path that led to the first Hollywood Austen.
It was a bumpy road from Helen Jerome's hit Broadway and West End Play, Pride and Prejudice: A Sentimental Comedy (1935-36), to the big screen and MGM film version starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. We've long known that it's a story featuring missteps, an unfortunate death, and countless Darcys and Elizabeths. There were also staggering numbers of screenwriters. Read more about their little-known attempts to update Austen in their failed, but fascinating, unpublished screenplays. These unpublished scripts range from the daring to the ridiculous, in a circuitous path that led to the first Hollywood Austen.
P. S. Read more, too, about that strange, oft-repeated yarn that claims Austen on the big screen is all thanks to Harpo Marx.