Reel Classics: The Adventures of Robin Hood

Who has­n’t heard of the leg­endary Robin Hood, the Saxon knight who stood up against the oppres­sive Prince John and the Norman lords who took advan­tage of the Saxon com­mon­ers by way of tak­ing pos­ses­sion of their prop­er­ties and high tax­a­tion?  He was also known as Sir Robin of Locksley, and took to the woods of Sherwood Forest to lead his band of Merry Men against the oppressors—he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. 

The year is 1191, and England’s King Richard the Lion-Hearted has been away at war dur­ing the cru­sades.  Upon his return trip to England, he is cap­tured by Duke Leopold and held for ran­som.  His broth­er, Prince John, along with the treach­er­ous Sir Guy of Gisbourne, take advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion to seize pow­er and mon­ey from the Saxons in a pre­tense of col­lect­ing mon­ey for the King’s ran­som. Sir Robin bands togeth­er a group of those who have been exploit­ed by the Norman lords and leads a revolt.  His adven­tures lead to a meet­ing with the love­ly Lady Marian, the ward of King Richard.  He is quite smit­ten with her, and though at first, she sees him as trea­so­nous, she comes to under­stand his efforts when she wit­ness­es the impact of the Norman bru­tal­i­ty upon the Saxons. 

The Adventures of Robin Hood was released in 1938 and was filmed in Technicolor.  It starred Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Olivia de Havilland as Lady Marian, Claude Rains as Prince John, and Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy of Gisbourne.  Alan Hale played the role of Little John which was a reprisal of the role he played in the ear­li­er silent film from 1922, Robin Hood, star­ring Douglas Fairbanks.

A repli­ca of Nottingham Castle as it appeared in 1191 was built for this movie.  Reportedly this set alone cost almost one-third of the entire two mil­lion dol­lars bud­get­ed for the film.  The out­door scenes of Sherwood Forest were pri­mar­i­ly filmed in a state park in Chico, California.  In these scenes, you will find Robin at the foot of a giant oak tree called the Gallows Oak in the film.  It was report­ed to be the largest liv­ing oak in the world and sur­vived until 1979, when it was struck down by lightning. 

Today when we think of this movie, we auto­mat­i­cal­ly think of Errol Flynn, but he was not the ini­tial actor cho­sen for the role.  James Cagney was to play the role of Robin Hood but walked off the set.  The pro­duc­er, Hal Wallis, made the deci­sion to replace him with Errol Flynn.  This was the third film to see Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland togeth­er and they would go on to co-star in a total of eight films (includ­ing Captain Blood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and Dodge City).  Of course, we know Basil Rathbone from the Sherlock Holmes series and Claude Rains from the Universal Horror series film The Invisible Man as well as the clas­sic (and my all-time favorite) Casablanca. A side note here—Basil Rathbone and Claude Rains had served togeth­er pre­vi­ous­ly in real life dur­ing World War I.  They were in the same reg­i­ment (The London Scottish Regiment) and Rathbone was award­ed the Military Cross for his efforts.  Rains report­ed­ly lost 90% of the vision in his right eye from a gas attack.

I men­tioned above that the film was made in Technicolor, and it is tru­ly amaz­ing how intense the col­or is in this film.  I watched it again just the oth­er day and was impressed with how red the reds and green the greens come across.  Of course, col­or was fair­ly new and not real­ly com­mon back in 1938 though we take it for grant­ed today. The dia­logue is excel­lent as well.  One of my favorite quotes from the film has Lady Marian look­ing at Robin with shock on her face after he talks about lead­ing the Saxons against the Normans.  She says to him: “Why, you speak trea­son!”  He replies, with a wry grin: “Fluently!”

Given the nature of the sto­ry, one would expect to see lots of action in this film, and you will not be dis­ap­point­ed.  The action scenes actu­al­ly led to a cou­ple of injuries to the actors.  While film­ing the scene where Robin Hood is escap­ing the cas­tle, Basil Rathbone was knocked down and tram­pled by extras.  He also suf­fered a spear wound to his foot—needing eight stitch­es to close the wound.  Errol Flynn also suf­fered a jab from a sword in one of the sword fights.

In one of the scenes depict­ing a bow and arrow con­test, Robin is seen shoot­ing an arrow that splits an arrow already in the bulls­eye. This actu­al­ly occurred (no spe­cial effects) and was per­formed in one take by pro­fes­sion­al archer Howard Hill.  Related to bows and arrows, the film depicts numer­ous indi­vid­u­als being shot with an arrow dur­ing bat­tle.  Actors were paid $150 per arrow that they took when being shot.  They wore spe­cial padding, and the arrows were shot by the expert Howard Hill.

You may notice that the cred­its list two direc­tors.  The ini­tial direc­tor was William Keighley, who had also worked with Flynn on the film The Prince and The Pauper the pre­vi­ous year (1937).  That film had done well, and the stu­dio was very opti­mistic.  However, after see­ing some of the action scenes filmed in Chico, lead­ers at the stu­dio felt the scenes lacked the excite­ment they had hoped for.  When Keighley returned to the stu­dio after the shoots, he was told he was no longer the direc­tor.  He was replaced with Michael Curtiz (who lat­er went on to direct  Casablanca).  He and Flynn also had a his­to­ry, Curtiz hav­ing direct­ed Flynn in Captain Blood (1935) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936).  Reportedly the two did not care much for each oth­er.  Flynn took issue with Curtiz’s meth­ods in direct­ing and had clashed dur­ing the film­ing of The Charge of the Light Brigade.  Another fac­tor that may have led to their dif­fi­cul­ties was that Flynn was mar­ried to Curtiz’s for­mer wife, Lili Damita.

There is anoth­er “star” in this film that may take you by sur­prise.  Lady Marian is seen rid­ing a gold­en palomi­no.  The horse’s name was “Golden Cloud” and was leased from a sta­ble that pro­vid­ed hors­es for var­i­ous films.  The palomi­no was pur­chased by Roy Rogers for $2500 and renamed “Trigger” at the sug­ges­tion of his then-movie side­kick, Smiley Burnette.  “Trigger” appeared in his first film with Roy Rogers in 1938 (Under Western Stars).

Other actors con­sid­ered for var­i­ous roles includ­ed David Niven for the role of Will Scarlett, Orson Welles for the roles of Friar Tuck and King Richard, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr for the role of Robin Hood.  Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. report­ed­ly declined the role of Robin Hood as he did not want to take on the same role his father por­trayed in the 1922 film. 

The Adventures of Robin Hood was the most expen­sive film for the stu­dio to that date (about $2 mil­lion), but made all of that and more (over $4 mil­lion) as the stu­dio’s biggest finan­cial suc­cess of the year.  It was nom­i­nat­ed for four Oscars, includ­ing Best Picture.  Reviews at the time were very pos­i­tive.  The New York Times wrote, “A rich­ly pro­duced, brave­ly bedecked, roman­tic and col­or­ful show, it leaps bold­ly to the fore­front of this year’s best.”  Variety called it “a high­ly imag­i­na­tive retelling of folk­lore in all the hues of Technicolor, deserv­ing hand­some box office returns.”  The suc­cess stim­u­lat­ed dis­cus­sion for a sequel, Sir Robin of Locksley, but that nev­er came to pass.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is a film depict­ing the strug­gles of good vs. evil, the val­ue and impact of loy­al­ty and love, and the need to care for and about our fel­low human beings—all set in the beau­ty of 12^th Century England and filmed in glo­ri­ous Technicolor.

Internet Movie Date base (IMDb) rates the film at 7.9 out of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes has a crit­ics score of 100% and an audi­ence score of 89%.  Renowned film crit­ic Roger Ebert has it list­ed on his “Great Movies” list.  In 1995 The Adventures of Robin Hood was select­ed for preser­va­tion by the National Film Registry.

I scanned the inter­net and my ROKU to see where the film may be avail­able for stream­ing free.  I found it avail­able on the Movieland TV site.  It is also avail­able on DVD at the Clark County Public Library. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

As we begin this new year I want to thank those who fol­low this effort known as Reel Classics. I love these movies and look for­ward to shar­ing more as the new year pro­ceeds. I hope to have you along on this jour­ney through the films of past years. Happy New Year everyone!