Les Misérables
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Richard Boleslawski
Fredric March
Charles Laughton
Sir Cedric Hardwicke
Rochelle Hudson
Frances Drake
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
An obsessed policeman relentlessly pursues an escaped convict.
Director
Richard Boleslawski
Cast
Fredric March
Charles Laughton
Sir Cedric Hardwicke
Rochelle Hudson
Frances Drake
John Beal
Florence Eldridge
Jessie Ralph
Mary Forbes
Florence Roberts
Jane Kerr
Ferdinand Gottschalk
Charles Haefeli
Marilynne Knowlden
John Bleifer
Leonid Kinskey
Harry Semels
Eily Malyon
Ian Maclaren
Vernon Downing
Lyons Wickland
John Carradine
Lorin Raker
Perry Ivins
Thomas Mills
Lowell Drew
Davidson Clark
Pat Somerset
Herbert Bunston
Keith Kenneth
G. Raymond "bill" Nye
Robert Greig
Virginia Howell
Perry N. Vekroff
Harry Cording
Edward Cooper
Jacques Lory
Paul Irving
Roger Gray
Alden Chase
Claude Payton
Ethan Laidlaw
Montague Shaw
Margaret Bloodgood
Sidney Bracy
Christian J. Frank
Eric Wilton
Murdock Macquarrie
Billie Orlean
Jean Marion
E. Midge Ingleton
Emma Tansey
Nick Shaid
Joseph De Stefani
George Barraud
Gunnis Davis
William P. Carleton
Anders Van Haden
John Ince
Gertrude W. Hoffman
Mary Maclaren
Cliff Smith
G. Raymond "bill" Nye
Paul Palmer
Frank Mccarroll
Cecil Weston
Bradley Ward
Olaf Hytten
Cecile Elliott
Al Ferguson
George Guhl
Gerald Rogers
Wilfred Lucas
Leonard Mudie
George Macquarrie
Reginald Barlow
Monte Van Der Grift
Robert L. Stevenson
Heinie Conklin
Herbert Ashley
J. P. Mcgowan
Cyril Thornton
Pietro Sosso
Lillian West
Kathleen Chambers
Frank Hagney
Albert Prisco
Robert Wilber
Sam Baker
Everett Brown
Olin Francis
Frederick Peters
Leo Sulky
Philo Mccollough
Bud Fine
Leo Willis
Harry Wilson
T. C. Jacks
Art Miles
Dave Dunbar
Stan Blystone
Bob St. Angelo
Ray Burgess
Leon Beaumont
Lew Hicks
Al Ferguson
Jack Curtis
John Northpole
Raul Figarola
Billy Elmer
Kai Schmidt
Harry Webberly
Francis Powers
Joe Rickson
Hercules Mendez
Cyril Thornton
Tony Merlo
Elmer Pallard
Arthur Evers
Walter Stegmeier
Phillip Cash
J. J. Lentz
Maxine Cook
Roberta Mountjoy
Skipper Zeliff
Crew
Tom Andre
Emily Baldwin
Harry Bates
Ray Binger
Bill Bridgehouse
Jack Brown
Alice Carey
Charles Darwin
Richard Day
Ed. Ebele
Eddie Garvin
William Goetz
Raymond Griffith
Bert Hadley
Roger Heman
Julia Heron
Ralph Hoge
Jimmy Jackson
Larry Judge
Omar Kiam
Corynn Kiehl
Buddy King
Edward P. Lambert
Fred Lau
Arthur M. Levy
W. P. Lipscomb
Mace Litson
Raymond Lopez
Frank Maher
Mopo Mcclellan
V. L. Mcfadden
Barbara Mclean
Alfred Newman
Guy Pearce
Joseph M. Schenck
Lou Schreiber
Bert Shipman
John Shubert
Irving Sindler
Eric Stacey
Bill Thomas
Gregg Toland
Western Costume Company
John Westwood
Darryl Zanuck
Videos
Movie Clip
Hosted Intro
Film Details
Technical Specs
Award Nominations
Best Assistant Director
Best Cinematography
Best Film Editing
Best Picture
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
In the opening credits, this film is introduced as "Victor Hugo's Les Misérables." After the opening credits, the film includes the following quote from Victor Hugo: "So long as there exists in this world that we call civilized, a system whereby men and women, even after they have paid the penalty of the law and expiated their offenses in full, are hounded and persecuted wherever they go-this story will not have been told in vain." In detailed conference notes regarding the screenplay, in the Twentieth Century-Fox Produced Scripts Collection at the UCLA Theater Arts Library, studio head Darryl Zanuck is quoted concerning his views of the story: "The romance between Jean Valjean and Cosette is the most important element of the story and should be developed. His feeling for her when he first takes her is one of attachment. This later develops into devotion and culminates in her being his life blood. By treating it this way, the scene where he finally gives her up will absolutely slaughter audiences. This treatment will strike a human note in the picture and make it something much more important than just a finely conceived melodrama."
Director Richard Boleslawski and screenwriter W. P. Lipscomb also wrote and directed an earlier 20th Century Pictures historical epic, Clive of India. Sir Cedric Hardwicke was knighted the previous year by King George V for his work on the English stage. According to a review, 200 inmates of the Midnight Mission in Los Angeles were given roles as prisoners in the film for ten dollars a day for a week; Fredric March used nine different makeups; the film cost almost $1,000,000 to make; March and Charles Laughton were each paid $100,000, and Rochelle Hudson was borrowed from Fox. According to news items, the film was shot in thirty-four days, and Zanuck attended the New York premiere. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Cinematography (Gregg Toland), Film Editing (Barbara McLean) and Assistant Director (Eric Stacey). It was fifth on the list of 10 Best Pictures of 1935 in the Film Daily Nation Wide Poll of Critics of America, rated an "Honorable Mention" by the National Board of Review and was fifth on the list of New York Times reviewer Andre Sennwald's ten best films of the first six months of 1935. Other film versions of the novel include a four-part series produced by Vitagraph in 1909; a 1917 Fox Film Corp. production directed by Frank Lloyd and starring William Farnum (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1911-20; F1.2961); a 1934 French production starring Harry Baur and Charles Vanel and directed by Raymond Bernard; a 1947 Italian film entitled I Miserablili, starring Gino Cervi and Valentina Cortese and directed by Riccardo Freda; a 1950 Japanese production starring Sessue Hayakawa and directed by Daisuke Ito and Masahiro Makino; a 1952 Twentieth Century-Fox production starring Michael Rennie and Robert Newton and directed by Lewis Milestone; a 1958 French/Italian co-production starring Jean Gabin and Bernard Blier and directed by Jean Paul Le Chanois; a 1978 Norman Rosemont Production made for television starring Richard Jordan and Anthony Perkins and directed by Glenn Jordan; and a 1982 French production starring Lino Ventura and directed by Robert Hossein. A musical based on the novel, with French text by Alain Boubil and Jean-Marc Natel, additional material by James Fenton, and music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, opened in Paris in 1980. The American version of the musical, with lyrics by Boubil, Herbert Kretzmer, Jean-Marc Natel, Trevor Nunn and John Caird, had its premiere in Washington, D.C. on December 20, 1986.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States 1935
Released in United States March 1977
Released in United States on Video January 21, 1988
Released in United States 1935
Released in United States on Video January 21, 1988
Released in United States March 1977 (Shown at FILMEX: Los Angeles International Film Exposition (Treasures from UCLA Archives) March 9-27, 1977.)
