A List Of Robin Hood Movies Pre-Disney

When Walt Disney’s film, The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men hit the silver screen during its world premiere in London’s West End in March 1952 it joined a long list of movies based on the outlaws adventures, dating right back to those early pioneers of the motion picture industry. Here is a list of Robin Hood movies before the Disney magic:

1908/1909: Robin Hood and His Merry Men. Dir. Percy Stow. Clarendon Films. (Alternate Title: Robin and His Merry Men) Robin rescues a man from the gallows. (Silent)

1912: Robin Hood Outlawed. Dir. Charles Raymond. With A. Brian Plant. British and Colonial Films. Starring William Thomas? (Silent)

1912: Robin Hood. Dir. Étienne Arnaud and Herbert Blaché. With Robert Frazer, Barbara Tennant, Alex B. Francis and Arthur Hollingsworth. (Silent)

1913: In the Days of Robin Hood. Dir. F. Martin Thornton. With Harry Agar Lyons. Kinematograph. (Silent)

1913: Robin Hood. Dir. Theodore Marston. With William Russell, as Robin Hood , Gerda Holmes as Maid Marian, Harry Benham, James Cruze and William Garwood. Thanhouser (Alternate Title: Robin Hood and Maid Marian) Filmed with a static camera amid the cardboard Sherwood bracken. (Silent)

1919: My Lady Robin Hood. Dir. Jay Hunt. A Western. (Silent)

1922:Little Red Robin Hood. Dir. Joe Rock. (Silent)

1922: Robin Hood. Dir. Allan Dwan. With Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood, Enid Bennett as Maid Marian, Wallace Beery and Alan Hale. William Lowery as the Sheriff. United Artists/ Fairbanks. (Silent)

Fairbanks spent $750,000 on this movie, in which he produced, vaulted palisades and swung through the trees. It featured a specially built ‘medieval’ castle with a 450ft. banqueting hall. Alan Hale was to play Little John three times over 30 years.

1923: Robin Hood Jr. Dir. Clarence Bricker. With Frankie Lee as the young Robin Hood and Peggy Cartwright as Maid Marian. Philip Dunham as the Sheriff. The movie was dedicated to Douglas Fairbanks. East Coast Productions. (Silent)

1924: Robin Hood no yume. Dir. Bansho Kanamori. With Fujio Harumoto. Toa Kinema. (Silent) (Japan)

1932: The Merry Men of Sherwood. Dir. Widgey, R. Newman. With John Thompson, Eric Adeney and Aileen Marston. Delta Pictures.

1933: Robin Hood (Animation) Dir: Frank Moser.

1934: Robin Hood Junior. (Animation). Dir. Ub Iwerks.

1934: Robin Hood Rides Again. (Animation)

1935: Robin Hood (Animation) Dir: Joy Batchelor

1936: The Robin Hood of El Dorado Dir. William A Wellham. An unusual B Western. Starring Warner Baxter.

1936: An Arrow Escape (Animation) Dir. Mannie Davis/ George Gordon

1938: The Adventures of Robin Hood. Dir. Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. With Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Olivia De Havilland, Melville Cooper and Alan Hale.

Then the most expensive movie ever made by Warner Bros at two million dollars and interrupted by Flynn’s yachting trips. But, it remains for many, the definitive Robin Hood movie. The only part of the castle built for the movie was the portcullis, the rest was created by the matte process (by painting on glass).

1941: The Chinese Robin Hood. Dir. Wenchao Wu.

1941: Robin Hood of the Pecos. Dir. Joseph Cane. A Western with Roy Rogers and George ‘Gabby’ Hayes.

1942: Red River Robin Hood . Dir. Lesley Selander. A Western with Tim Holt and Cliff Edwards.

1943: Robin Hood of the Range. Dir. William A Burke. A Western with Charles Starrett.

1946:The Bandit of Sherwood Forest. Dir. George Sherman and Henry Levin. With Russell Hicks as Robin Hood, Cornel Wilde as his son, Anita Louise and Jill Esmond.

1946: Robin Hood of Texas. Dir. Lesley Selander. A Western with Gene Autrey and Lynn Roberts.

1947: Robin Hood of Monterey. Dir. Christy Cabanne. A Western with Gilbert Roland.

1948:The Prince of Thieves. Dir. Howard Bretherton. With Jon Hall and Patricia Morison.

1948: Robin Hood-Winked. Dir. Seymour Kneitel. Animation with Popeye as Robin Hood.

1948: Nu luo bin han. Dir. Pengnian Ren. Made in Honk Kong. A female Robin Hood .

1950: Rogues of Sherwood Forest. Dir. Gordon Douglas. With John Derek, Alan Hale and Diana Lynn.

1950: Trail of Robin Hood. Dir. William Witney. A Western with Roy Rogers.

1951: Badal. Dir: Amyra Chakrabaty. An Indian version of the legend. With Premnath and Madhubala.

1951: Tales of Robin Hood. Dir. James Tinling. With Robert Clark as Robin Hood and Mary Hatcher as Maid Marian.

1952: Miss Robin Hood. Dir. John Guillermin. A British comedy starring Margaret Rutherford and James Robertson Justice.

1952: The Story of Robin Hood. Dir. Ken Annakin. With Richard Todd and Joan Rice. RKO-Disney. (Alternate Title: The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men)

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

Nottingham

The medieval town of Nottingham is beautifully reconstructed in Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood and the film also has one unique historical detail not included in other movies about the hero. The Sheriff has his own house in the town.

This is reflected in the fifteenth century ballad Robin Hood and the Potter, where Robin Hood dressed as a potter rides to Nottingham and sells five penny potts for the price of 3d:

Yn the medys of the towne,

There he schowed hes ware;

‘Pottys! pottys!’ He gan crey foll sone,

‘Haffe hansell ffor the mare!’*

Ffoll effen agenest the screffeys gate

Schowed he hes chaffare;#

Weyffes and wedowes abowt hem drow,

And chepyd ffast of hes ware.

*you will have a present the more you buy

# chaffare: merchandise

The screffeys gate (the sheriff’s gate) suggests the sheriff’s house, known in Nottingham as the Red Hall, near Angel Row, a manor house in the Norman borough of the town where Bromley House now stands.

Robin Hood’s links with Nottingham and its sheriff, go back to the very earliest surviving ballads. Robin Hood and the Monk, preserved at Cambridge University, is one of the most distinguished and oldest and has about 2,700 words. In the tale, Robin Hood regrets not having been to hear Mass for a fortnight, so he decides to go to Nottingham, only accompanied by Little John.

Whan Robyn came to Notyngham,

Sertenly withouten layn,

He prayed to God and myld Mary

To bring hym out save again.

He gos in to Seynt Mary chirch,

And kneled down before the rode;

Alle that ever were the church within

Beheld wel Robyn Hode.

Rising 126 feet, in the heart of the old Lace market, St Mary’s Church is the finest medieval building in Nottingham. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book, although a religious building was on the site well before the Conquest.

The original settlers around what is now known as Nottingham seemed to have occupied an outcrop of sandstone to the east. The earliest recorded name for what is now Nottingham is the Celtic, Tuigobacu, which means Cave Dwellers. (the caves were still being occupied during the medieval period). The modern name first appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 868 A.D: a Danish Army spent the winter in Snotta ing ham ‘a village belonging to Snotta’. The hame (home) of the ing (people) of Snot (The Wise). This original village seems to have been at the first point where the River Trent could be crossed safely.

Towards the end of the ninth century, Snotingehame was fortified with a ditch around the settlement, a rampart and a wooden palisade. In about 920 King Alfred The Great’s son, Edward the Elder built a fort at West Bridgford and a bridge over the River Trent. So the Tenth Century saw Nottingham become one of England’s new trading town’s its population grew to several hundred and the town’s western limit reached as far as Bridlesmith Gate.

After the Norman Conquest, King William ordered a castle to be built on the huge rocky red sandstone, on the site of the original Danish tower, to the south-west of the settlement. Sparing the local Saxons of the loss of their homes and property rights. It was originally made of wood and later re-built in stone in the twelfth century. Nottingham Castle remained outside the towns boundaries until the nineteenth century.

So a Norman settlement grew up around the shelter of the new wooden castle, leaving the Saxons largely undisturbed in their area around St. Mary’s Hill. For administrative purposes, two boroughs were set up, one French and one English, each had its own language and customs with a boundary wall running through the market place. To this day two maces are borne before the Sheriff of Nottingham, representing these two boroughs. The church of St. Peter was founded alongside St. Nicholas, both were in the French borough, whilst the pre-conquest church of St. Mary’s , visited by Robin Hood, was in the English.

Under this Norman protection in 1086 the two boroughs had between 600-800 people. The first of the Plantagenet king’s, Henry II commenced to re-build the castle and its fortifications around the town in stone. He also gave Nottingham its first Royal Charter in 1154 allowing the Burgesses (leading citizens) to try thieves, levy tolls on visiting traders and hold markets on Fridays and Saturdays. This charter also gave them the monopoly in the working of dyed cloth within a radius of ten miles.

The Market Square (the largest in England) quickly became a focal point of the town, it also had an annual fair and from 1284 Edward I permitted extra fair days and one of these days became what we now know as Goose Fair, when people from as far away as Yorkshire would come for the two day event.

During the medieval period, Nottingham’s main industry was wool manufacture. But there were many craftsman in the town and some of those occupations can be identified by the remains of its old street names, such as Wheelwright Street, Pilcher Gate, Boot Lane, Bridlesmith Gate, Blow Bladder Street, Gridlesmith Gate, and Fletcher Gate.

Because of its royal castle, Nottingham now gained importance. Almost all the medieval kings were visitors at one time or another. The importance of the castle is no better illustrated than by the continuous disputes over its ownership during the reign of Richard the Lionheart and his brother John. It was also under King John that the castle witnessed one of its most ghastly chapters, when in about 1212 he allegedly hung twenty eight young sons, of Welsh noble families, from the castle ramparts. Today, the area is still said to be haunted by the cries of the young boys.

As the power base of the midlands and the north, the monarch mobilized armies there, kept court, summoned councils and parliaments, or simply rode forth to enjoy the hunting in the vast woodland of Sherwood Forest that came to the edge of the common fields bordering the town.

The harsh laws of the forest were often a cause of tension and no more so, than in August 1175, when Henry rode into Nottingham in a rage accusing local people of breaking those laws. His son Richard I later set the cruel penalty for killing the king’s deer as mutilation by removal of the offenders eyes and testicles. The only authority in the town during this period was that of the king, via his chosen nobleman, the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

The Outlaws in Nottingham Square

15. Scathelok And Stutely Are Set Free

As the townspeople roared their approval, Robin cut down Will Stutely with his knife.
Drawing his sword, the Sheriff rushed towards the outlaw leader, but Will Scarlet, carrying a forester’s quarter staff, sent the Sheriff’s sword spinning out of his hand.
The square was now filling with acrid smoke and undercover of all this, some of Robin’s men released the unconscious Scathelok.
From the steps of his house, the Sheriff watched the outlaws riding away and called angrily for his foresters. But the townspeople now began to show their contempt, by pelting him with vegetables from the various stalls.
“Drive the cattle out of the square!” He commanded. His foresters moved forward and attempted to force the angry townsfolk back. But the arrival of a grim faced Prince John dispersed the crowd almost immediately.
“Where is the force of a hundred new foresters you’ve been boasting about?” The Prince asked the stunned Sheriff.
“Throughout the countryside,” he replied, “gathering the tax money it takes to maintain them.”
“Meanwhile,” the Prince raged, “a handful of outlaws dare to enter Nottingham in broad daylight, mock our justice and shames us before the townsmen!”
The Sheriff paused for a moment, “my lord, I have been guilty of holding this Robin Hood too lightly. On the morrow, I myself will lead a full force against him. Before I return, I will rid Sherwood Forest of the outlaw and every last one of his band.”

The Stocks

Although The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men is a Walt Disney film, synonymous with good wholesome family entertainment, the scenes in which Scathelok is struck across the face, whilst in the stocks and Will Stutely is hung up in a deer skin over a burning brazier and beaten continuously by foresters on horseback, are quite harrowing.
But this is definitely in-tune with medieval society, as punishment of this kind was thought to be the solution to every criminal or social offence, from stealing to adultery and heresy.
The stocks, as used for Scathelok, were a very common form of medieval punishment and had been used from Anglo-Saxon times till the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1405 a law was passed that required every town and village to have a set of stocks. Normally they were placed by the side of a roadway or on or near a village green.
The offenders foot wear was removed, exposing their bare feet, which was considered a form of humiliation during the middle ages. Their ankles would be placed between the holes of two pivoting boards of wood or iron, hinged at one corner with a lock at the other. Unlike the pillory, the offender was kept in a sitting position with their hands either chained or free.
Often the person could be punished for many days or even weeks in all weathers, during the heat of the summer or the freezing winter, living only on bread and water and exposed to the often very harsh treatment of the local townspeople. Apart from being pelted with stones and rotten fruit and vegetables, punches, cuts and even urination over the victims body was very common.
They were abolished in England along with pillories in 1837.

© Clement of the Glen

14. The Rescue

The townspeople had gathered outside the Sheriff’s house to watch the fate of poor Scathelok and Will Stutely, the poacher. Scathelok had been clapped in the stocks, but Stutely lay sewn up in the skin of the deer that he had dared to slay.

There was a murmur from the crowd when the Sheriff appeared, gazing down with satisfaction as the foresters moved about, busily preparing the torture.

“Hoist him up!” He ordered.

The foresters heaved on a rope that hauled up Will Stutely until he was swaying to and fro. There was a growl of disgust from the crowd which was quickly stifled. Two foresters then carried a burning brazier and set it below poor Will Stutely’s head. The Sheriff then watched with a evil smile as the stinging smoke irritated the poachers eyes and throat.

“Let this be a warning to evildoers that would flaunt our Midland laws! Begin!”

People began to scatter wildly as five horseman began to ride around the square, each striking in turn the hanging Stutely with their quarterstaffs.

“Shame!” Cried Scathelok desperately trying to see from the stocks, what was going on. But he was struck across the face by a forester and slumped down unconscious. This brought howls of protest from the local people.

But help was at hand. At the rear of the crowd a group of beggars and a palmer crouched down behind the deserted booths and waited for the horseman.

With Will Scarlet, Hawke, Cobly and Alfred, Robin rushed into the path of an encircling horseman and heaved him out of the saddle. Moments later the outlaw had rode into the square, whilst two more horseman were being unsaddled.

Merrie Christmas

I would like to wish all my readers a very merrie Christmas and I look forward to hearing from some of you in the new year!

This is how Robin, Marian and the outlaws might have enjoyed themselves at Christmas, taken from the ballad Robin Hood And Maid Marian :

A stately banquet they had full soon,

All in a shaded bower,

Where venison sweet they had to eat,

And were merrie that present hour.

Great flagons of wine were set on the board,

And merrily they drunk round

Their boules of sack, to strengthen the back,

Whilst their knees did touch the ground.

First Robin Hood began a health

To Marain his only dear,

And his yeoman all, both comly and tall,

Did quickly bring up the rear.

For in a brave vente* they tost off the bouls,

Whilst thus they did remain,

And every cup, as they drunk up,

They filled with speed again.

At last they ended their merriment,

And went to walk in the wood,

Where Little John and Maid Marian

Attended on bold Robin Hood.

In solid content together they liv’d,

With all their yeoman gay;

They liv’d by their hands, without any lands,

And so they did many a day.

But now to conclude, an end I will make

In time, as I think it good,

For the people that dwell in the North can tell

Of Marian and bold Robin Hood.

* brave vente: merry vein.

CHEERS!

Whistling Arrows?

The use of whistling arrows, by Robin and his band of outlaws in Disney’s Story of Robin Hood, is a unique addition to the legend by Lawrence Edward Watkin. But not as far fetched as some might think.

In fact, although now hardly ever used, whistling arrows were invented probably by the Nomads of Central Asia around 1,500 years ago. They used the whistling arrows to enliven their celebration of bumper harvests and major festivals. The earliest literary Chinese reference to such an arrow is in the Historical Annals of Sima Quian and it was Miedun who made whistling arrows and drilled his troops in their use. He ordered that:

when the whistling arrow is fired, anyone who does not obey the person who fired it will be executed...

Arrow whistles and whistling arrows are in fact two separate objects and have separate uses. A whistling arrow has a sharp point and can be a lethal projectile. An arrow whistle has a whistle but no sharp point and is used mainly for signalling and can be made of bronze, iron, wood, bone or horn.

Mongolians often used arrow whistles during hunting, after they discovered that the sound of the arrow flying above the animal’s head, made it stop, giving time to loose a second conventional arrow for the kill.

But apart from hunting, the whistling arrow was primarily used for signalling and sending messages during battle, particularly amongst the Japanese, who would often tie small notes (called Ya-Burne) around the shaft of the arrow as it whined through the air. This sound that the whistling arrow made, was also used against the opposition as a form of psychological warfare during battle and the Japanese often would have their massed ranks of archers send off hundreds of whistling arrows, filling the sky with an eerie, threatening noise above the heads of the enemy. In Samurai times such whistling arrows were fired to signify the beginning of a battle. In Shinto archery rituals, whistling arrows are used to call upon the attention of the gods.

Whistling arrows were used in medieval Europe, although details of this are rather slim. But it is known that they were combined with barbed arrows during battle and targeted at the charging horses to send the animals into panic and confusion. Therefore disrupting the advancing knights.

© Clement of the Glen

Michael Hordern

Michael Murrey Hordern is one of the many delightfully talented actors that appeared in Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men. He was born on 3rd October 1911 at Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire in England, the son of Captain Edward Joseph Calverly Hordern of the Royal Indian Navy, and his wife Margaret Emily Murray. It was during his education at Brighton College that he developed a passion for acting, but his early years were spent as a schoolteacher and later as a travelling salesman, acting only in his spare time.

His first professional engagement on the stage came with the part of Ludovico in a production of Othello in 1937 at the Peoples Palace in East London. He later joined the repertory company of the Little Theatre in Bristol, where he met his future wife Grace Evelyn Mortimer. They were married in 1943 and later had one daughter, Joanna.

Hordern soon began to get bit parts in films, including a small part in The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938 with Errol Flynn, his first official movie debut came in Carol Reed’s Girl in the News a year later.

With the outbreak of WWII, his acting career was suspended as he served in the Royal Navy reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander RNVR. But it soon resumed after the war as he continued to find work in all media. His remarkably smooth resonant voice and rather mournful face was utilized in in nearly twenty productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, Stratford, at the Old Vic and West End. Two of his Shakespearean roles in particular, King Lear and Prospero, it is said, could have been written for him!

His extensive movie career ( he appeared in over a hundred films and nearly as many TV performances) include playing Marley’s Ghost with Alistair Sim in A Christmas Carol in 1951, Scathelok in Disney’s Story of Robin Hood in 1952 and Desmosthenes in Alexander the Great in 1956, Cicero in Cleopatra in 1963 and Baptista in Taming of the Shrew in 1967. His debut on American television came when his part in the Disney movie Dr Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh was shown on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Colour in 1964 on NBC.

In the 1967 movie ,The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Hordern played the role of a pathetic Kim Philby type and a year later he took the part of Thomas Boleyn in Ann Of A Thousand Days.

His distinctive, mellow voice was often used in narration, such as in the animated film Watership Down in 1978 and his work in radio resulted in his performance as Gandalf, in the BBC’s Lord of the Ring’s with Ian Holm and John Le Mesurier, becoming arguably the definitive version.

His finest film performance came in 1983 when he took on the role of a disillusioned journalist in England Made Me and this prolific, much loved character actor was finally rewarded with a knighthood for his services to theatre, that same year by Queen Elizabeth. Brighton College later named a room in his honour and had a bronze bust commissioned.

His versatility remained right up to his later years, appearing in movies, radio, theatre productions, television films and mini series and even an appearance in a pop video with Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees in 1984!

In the final years of his remarkable life he moved to Dartmoor to enjoy his favourite hobby, fly fishing and became the narrator of the popular Children’s Television series Paddington Bear.

In 1993 he published his autobiography A World Elsewhere. He died in Oxford on May 2nd 1995 of kidney disease.

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007