The Great Garrick

The Great Garrick is a 1937 American historical comedy film directed by James Whale and starring Brian Aherne, Olivia de Havilland and Edward Everett Horton. It also features Lionel Atwill, Luis Alberni, and Melville Cooper while future star Lana Turner has a bit part. The film was based on the play Ladies and Gentlemen by Ernest Vajda. Aherne plays the famous eighteenth century British actor David Garrick. The film was made by James Whale for Warner Brothers shortly after the troubled production of The Road Back which had met with controversy and opposition from the German government, and... strained his relationship with his bosses at Universal Pictures where he had worked for the past six years. The Garrick film was intended to be a more light-hearted effort. However, both it and his next film Port of Seven Seas were failures at the box office. Whale eventually returned to Universal where he saw out his contract largely by making B Movies. In 1750, David Garrick, the famous English actor, announces onstage that he has been invited to Paris to work with the prestigious Comédie-Française. A person in the audience jeers that they want him to teach them how to act.
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