Writing
In 1931, Sir Malcolm Sargent – then a rising young conductor – acted as musical director for this first filmed musical version of Prosper Mérimée’s classic story of passion and fatal jealousy, Carmen. With a score based on Bizet’s opera, Gipsy Blood features celebrated American soprano Marguerite Namara as the capricious gypsy girl from the cigarette factory; her co-performers include Thomas Burke as Carmen’s tormented lover, Don José, and New Zealand-born baritone Lance Fairfax as his rival, the toreador Escamillo.
When linguistics professor Henry Higgins boasts that he can pass off Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle as a princess with only six months' training, Colonel George Pickering takes him up on the bet. Eliza moves into Higgins's home and begins her rigorous training after the professor comes to a financial agreement with her dustman father, Alfred. But the plucky young woman is not the only one undergoing a transformation.
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Eve and Peter fall in love at first sight at a New Year's Eve party, but are separated by Eve's jealous fiancé, Ralph. With neither knowing the other's name, they both spend the following day searching frantically for each other around London. Peter's only clue is a set of shop mannequins, all perfect likenesses of Eve - and all made by Ralph's factory.
In this film, specially taken for the BBC, viewers are given an idea of the growth of the television installation at Alexandra Palace and an insight into production routine. There will be many shots behind the scenes. One sequence, for instance, will show Adele Dixon as she appears to viewers in the Variety at 3.30 this afternoon, and will then reveal the technical staff and equipment in the studio that made this transmission possible.
The owner of a professional help agency poses as a poet at a wealthy patron's ball and prevents a necklace from being stolen by thieves.
'Rich man suspects wife loves poet.' (British Film Catalogue)
Which soldier will the naive, impressionable Raina choose to love - the unromantic, hard-nosed, tough Bluntschli, or the handsome, dashing, reckless (and extremely stupid) Sergius?
