Waterloo Bridge (1940 film)

Waterloo Bridge is a 1940 remake of the 1931 film also called Waterloo Bridge, adapted from the 1930 play Waterloo Bridge. In an extended flashback narration, it recounts the story of a dancer and an army captain who meet by chance on Waterloo Bridge. The film was made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by Mervyn LeRoyand produced by Sidney Franklin and Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay is by S. N. Behrman, Hans Rameau and George Froeschel, based on the Broadway drama byRobert E. Sherwood. The music is by Herbert Stothart and cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg.

Waterloo Bridge stars Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh, her first film after the success of Gone with the Wind. The film was a success at the box office and nominated for two Academy Awards—Best Music for Herbert Stothart and Best Cinematography. It was also considered a personal favourite by both Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor.

Contents

 * 1 Plot
 * 2 Cast
 * 3 Production
 * 4 Reception
 * 5 Box Office
 * 6 Radio adaptations
 * 7 References
 * 8 External links

Plot
After Britain's declaration of World War II, Roy Cronin (Robert Taylor), an army colonel, is being driven to London's Waterloo Station en route to France, and briefly alights on Waterloo Bridge to reminisce about events which occurred during the First World War when he met Myra Lester (Vivien Leigh), a ballerina, whom he had planned to marry. While Roy looks at a good luck charm, a billiken that she had given him, the story unfolds.

Roy and Myra serendipitously meet on Waterloo Bridge and strike up an immediate rapport. On parting, Myra invites Roy to attend that evening’s ballet performance. Roy, already enamoured with the ballerina, cancels his dinner appointment with a fellow officer to attend the ballet. At the show’s end, Roy sends a note to Myra to join him for dinner. The note is intercepted by the directress of the ballet troupe, Madame Olga Kirowa (Maria Ouspenskaya) who forbids Myra from continuing her relationship with Roy. Madame Olga ultimately learns of Myra’s disobedience and dismisses her from the ballet troupe. Myra another dancer, Kitty (Virginia Field), who has sided with her friend is also asked to leave. Both young women then join together, sharing a small apartment, and look for work.

Hours before his planned marriage to Myra, Roy is suddenly deployed to active military duty in France, but assures Myra that his family will look after her and safeguard her welfare while he is away. Subsequently, Myra and Roy’s mother, Lady Margaret Cronin (Virginia Field), arrange to meet at a fashionable restaurant, their first introduction to each other.

Awaiting Lady Cronin’s very belated arrival, Myra scans a newspaper and faints on seeing the name of her fiancé Roy in a list of war dead. Dazed by grief and proffered wine, she relates poorly to Roy’s mother in a session of awkward miscommunication. She is reticent and apprehensive in the presence of the aristocratic, yet kindly Lady Cronin and does not disclose her knowledge of Roy’s reported death. Lady Cronin gracefully retreats, baffled by Myra’s behaviour. Myra, leaving the restaurant, faints again.

Unable to find employment, Kitty and Myra face a dire financial situation. Belatedly, Myra, who believed that Kitty was working as a stage performer, learns her friend has been working as a prostitute to support both of them. Too proud to reach out to Roy’s mother for help, the heartbroken Myra finds it necessary to join her friend Kitty in the same profession. A year passes.

What next transpires is the tragic denouement of love lost, found, and then lost forever. While offering herself to departing and arriving soldiers at Waterloo Station, Myra catches sight of an arriving Roy, who is alive and well; he had been wounded and interned in a POW camp for year. A reconciliation occurs—a joyous one for Roy, a bittersweet one for Myra. The couple visit Roy's mother at their estate in Scotland, where Myra, guilt-ridden, is confronted by the impossibility of a happy marriage to Roy. Her career of prostitution has made her feel she is beyond redemption, unworthy of Roy’s love.

Myra discloses her story to Roy's mother, who is sympathetic, but Myra tells her she cannot do Roy the injustice and then leaves Roy a goodbye note, and goes away "forever", returning to London. Roy follows, and with the aid of Kitty, looks for her, finally discovering the truth in the process. Meanwhile, Myra, depressed, reminiscing on and then traversing Waterloo Bridge, the location where the love affair began, takes her own life by walking into the path of a moving truck.

In the present, the older Roy reminiscinges about Myra professing her sincere love for only him. He tucks the charm into his coat pocket, gets into his car, and leaves.

Cast[edit]

 * Robert Taylor as Roy Cronin
 * Vivien Leigh as Myra Lester
 * Virginia Field as Kitty
 * Maria Ouspenskaya as Grune Madame Olga Kirowa
 * C. Aubrey Smith as Sr. Military officer/ The Duke
 * Lucile Watson as Lady Margaret Cronin
 * Janet Shaw as Maureen
 * Janet Waldo as Elsa

Production[edit]
MGM bought the 1931 version from Universal Studios when they did this remake. From its initial release, the 1931 film had been heavily censored because of official American objections to the portrayal of prostitution. The censorship was imposed first by local authorities, e.g., a Chicago police censorship board and, eventually by the Hays Office which made it impossible to exhibit the film anywhere in the USA from 1934.

The couple's initial encounter occurs during an air raid in the First World War. But bBecause of the Motion Picture Production Code, which had not been in effect when the 1931 film version was made, the plot of the 1940 version had to be changed and somewhat sanitized. In the original play and film, Myra is an ordinary chorus girl of easy virtue, and Roy is too naive to realize this until near the end. In the 1940 version, Myra is a ballerina in a prestigious dance company, who descends into prostitution only after mistakenly believing that Roy has been killed. In the first film, Myra is accidentally killed; in the 1940 version, she commits suicide in order not to involve Roy in a scandal.[3]

'Waterloo Bridge capitalized on Leigh's success the previous year in Gone with the Wind''. Taylor, meanwhile, was eager to show audiences that he was more than the suave and youthful lover he had played in such films as Camille and Three Comrades.''

Leigh wanted Laurence Olivier for the role of Roy Cronin, and was unhappy that Taylor had been cast in the part, although she had enjoyed him on the set of A Yank at Oxford.[4] She wrote to then-husband Leigh Holman, "Robert Taylor is the man in the picture, and as it was written for Larry, it's a typical piece of miscasting. I am afraid it will be a dreary job ..."

Taylor later said of his performance, "It was the first time I really gave a performance that met the often unattainable standards I was always setting for myself." Of Leigh, Taylor said, "Miss Leigh was simply great in her role, and she made me look better." Of all her films, Leigh stated this one was her favourite.[5] Taylor also felt this to be his personal favourite.

Reception[edit]
Waterloo Bridge opened in New York and shortly after in London to positive reviews.[6] "It owed much to the dialogue of Robert E. Sherwood's original play, and to good, shrewd screen directing."[7] [Note 1]

Box Office[edit]
According to MGM records the film earned $1,250,000 in the US and Canada and $1,217,000 elsewhere resulting in a profit of $491,000.[1]

Radio adaptations[edit]
Waterloo Bridge was dramatized as a half-hour radio play on two broadcasts of The Screen Guild Theater, the first on January 12, 1941 with Brian Aherne and Joan Fontaine and the second on September 9, 1946 with Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor. It was also presented as a half-hour broadcast of Screen Directors Playhouse on September 28, 1951 with Norma Shearer.