Thought You'd Seen The First Movie About A Daring Archeologist Fighting Nazi Germany? Think Again!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) May 22, 2008 -- This storyline may sound somewhat familiar: a resourceful Archaeologist goes up against the growing might of pre-war Nazi Germany in a thrilling adventure with the fate of many on the line. He's got a very common last name, and is known for his daring bravado. But this isn't a blockbuster from George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg - in fact, although it may have been partial inspiration for the first Indiana Jones movie in 1981, this movie came out forty years before that!

Forty years before the release of Raiders of the Lost Ark, English actor Leslie Howard released a movie he had made with his own funds, earned from his role in the Hollywood blockbuster Gone With The Wind(1939), in which he portrayed the character that will always be associated with him: honor-bound intellectual Southern gentleman Ashley Wilkes. Howard was passionate about the war effort, and was concerned with alerting a wider audience to the growing threat of Nazi Germany. Howard also desired to make a movie which updated his famous role as Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) from Revolutionary France to pre-World War II Europe. The result was an incredible feature film entitled Pimpernel Smith (1941), known as Mister V in the United States of America.

Howard portrayed the title character of Professor Horatio Smith, who uses his cover as an absent-minded professor of archeology to rescue victims of persecution out of Nazis Germany. During one such daring rescue, he is wounded, which discloses his secret to his admiring students, who enthusiastically join him in his struggle. But things are complicated when one of his students brings a mysterious woman into their inner circle. Smith engages in a game of cat-and-mouse with his ruthless Nazi adversary who has been assigned to hunt him down.

This movie is even credited with inspiring Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish humanitarian, who in 1942 attended a private screening of Howard's latest film with his sister Nina. "On the way home," his sister recalled, "he told me this was the kind of thing he would like to do." Wallenberg went on to mount a rescue operation in Budapest that, conservatively estimated, saved 15,000 Hungarian Jews from Hitler's gas chambers. It is hard to imagine that any other movie has ever inspired an act of heroism on quite this scale.

Now available on DVD, Pimpernel Smith serves as a reminder of the power of cinema to change opinion and influence society. A profoundly moving film about the struggle for good in the world, Pimpernel Smith deserves to be seen by a wider audience. The Pimpernel Smith DVD can be ordered securely online at http://www.PimpernelSmith.com

Indy fans will definitely not be disappointed!

Gone With The Wind     Indiana Jones     Leslie Howard     Mister V     Pimpernel Smith     The Scarlet Pimpernel