"Pimpernel" Smith (released in the US as Mister V) is a 1941 British anti-Nazi thriller, produced and directed by its star Leslie Howard, which updates his role in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) from Revolutionary France to pre-Second World War Europe. The British Film Yearbook for 1945 described his work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda".

The film helped to inspire the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg to lead a real-life rescue operation in Budapest that saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi concentration camps during the last months of the Second World War.

It is one of the most prestigious movies made by British National Pictures.

Plot

In the spring of 1939, months before the outbreak of the war, eccentric Cambridge archaeologist Horatio Smith takes a group of British and American archaeology students to Nazi Germany during the Long Vacation to help in his excavations. His research is supported by the Nazis because he professes to be looking for evidence of the Aryan origins of German civilisation.

However, he has a secret agenda: to free prisoners of the Nazis, including inmates of the concentration camps. During one such daring rescue, he hides disguised as a scarecrow in a field and is inadvertently shot in the arm by a German soldier idly engaging in a bit of target practice to frighten the prisoners digging in the field. He still manages to free a celebrated pianist from the work gang. Later, his students guess his secret when they notice his injury and connect it to a newspaper story about the wounding of the latter-day Scarlet Pimpernel. They enthusiastically volunteer to assist him.

German Gestapo General von Graum is determined to find out the identity of the "Pimpernel" and eliminate him. Von Graum forces Ludmilla Koslowski to help him by threatening the life of her father, a leading Polish democrat held prisoner by the Nazis. When Smith finds out, he promises her he will free Koslowski.

With Smith masquerading as a well-connected official responsible for creating the German-American Bund and his students pretending to be American journalists, they visit the camp in which Koslowski is being held. They knock out their escort and strip them and themselves of their clothes. Koslowski and four other prisoners put on the uniforms and suits and escape with Smith. The students pretend to be unconscious when they are discovered during rounds. They threaten the camp authorities with horrible publicity in the American press.

By now, von Graum is sure Smith is the man he is after, so he stops the train transporting the professor, the students and various packing crates out of the country. The professor has mysteriously disappeared from the train. When von Graum has the crates opened, he is disappointed to find only ancient artefacts from Smith's excavations. The students slip across the border by joining a Cook's Tour group.

Smith comes back for Ludmilla. They flee on a train, but are caught at a border crossing by von Graum's men. Ludmilla, despite wanting to stay with Smith, is ordered to reboard the train. Von Graum gloats over Smith's capture and reveals that the invasion of Poland has begun that very night. He allows Smith to stand outside next to the border gate, ordering his men to leave them alone, hoping to shoot him "while trying to escape". Smith draws von Graum's attention to an artefact inadvertently left behind on the platform. Von Graum picks it up, then smashes it on the ground when Smith says it proves that there was no early Aryan civilization; the sound brings von Graum's men. When he turns toward them and orders them back, Smith vanishes across the border into the foggy night. Von Graum futilely shouts, "Come back!" Smith replies, "Don't worry. I shall be back. We shall all be back."

Cast

  • Leslie Howard as Professor Horatio Smith
  • Francis Sullivan as General von Graum
  • Mary Morris as Ludmilla Koslowski
  • Hugh McDermott as David Maxwell
  • Raymond Huntley as Marx
  • Manning Whiley as Bertie Gregson
  • Peter Gawthorne as Sidimir Koslowski
  • Allan Jeayes as Dr. Benckendorf
  • Dennis Arundell as Hoffman
  • Joan Kemp-Welch as School-teacher
  • Philip Friend as Spencer
  • Laurence Kitchin as Clarence Elstead
  • David Tomlinson as Steve
  • Basil Appleby as Jock MacIntyre
  • Percy Walsh as Dvorak
  • Roland Pertwee as Embassy Official-Sir George Smith
  • A. E. Matthews as Earl of Meadowbrook
  • Aubrey Mallalieu as Dean
  • Ben Williams as Graubitz
  • Ernest Butcher as Weber
  • Arthur Hambling as Jordan
  • Mary Brown as Girl Student
  • W. Phillips as Innkeeper
  • Ilse Bard as Gretchen
  • Ernest Verne as German Officer
  • George Street as Schmidt
  • Hector Abbas as Karl Meyer
  • Neal Arden as Second Prisoner
  • Richard George as Prison Guard
  • Roddy Hughes as Zigor
  • Hwfa (Hugh) Pryce as Wagner
  • Oriel Ross as Lady Willoughby
  • Brian (Bryan) Herbert as Jaromir
  • Suzanne Claire (aka Violette Cunnington) as Salesgirl
  • Charles Paton as Steinhof
  • Michael Rennie as Guard Captain (uncredited)
  • Ronald Howard (uncredited)

Production

Development

Leslie Howard had been aware of the Nazis in Europe and had developed a film treatment in 1938 based on the rescue of an Austrian anti-Nazi leader. The A. G. Macdonell story of "Pimpernel" Smith took the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy into modern times.

Having played the leading role in the film The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Howard took on the updated project as the first film he directed and co-produced.