Pride and Prejudice ( 1940 film ) - wikipedia Pride and Prejudice ( 1940 film ) Pride and Prejudice Theatrical release poster Directed by Robert Z. Leonard Produced by Hunt Stromberg Written by Helen Jerome ( dramatization ) Screenplay by Aldous Huxley Jane Murfin Based on Pride and Prejudice 1813 novel by Jane Austen Starring Greer Garson Laurence Olivier Mary Boland Edna May Oliver Maureen O'Sullivan Ann Rutherford Frieda Inescort Music by Herbert Stothart Cinematography Karl Freund Edited by Robert Kern Production company MGM Distributed by Metro - Goldwyn - Mayer Release date July 26, 1940 ( 1940 - 07 - 26 ) ( USA ) Running time 117 minutes Country United States Language English Budget $1,437,000 Box office $1.8 million Pride and Prejudice is a 1940 American film adaptation of Jane Austen 's novel Pride and Prejudice, directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. The screenplay was written by Aldous Huxley and Jane Murfin, adapted specifically from the stage adaptation by Helen Jerome in addition to Jane Austen 's novel. The film is about five sisters from an English family of landed gentry who must deal with issues of marriage, morality, and misconceptions. The film was released by MGM on July 26, 1940, in the United States and was critically well received. The New York Times film critic praised the film as `` the most deliciously pert comedy of old manners, the most crisp and crackling satire in costume that we in this corner can remember ever having seen on the screen. '' Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 4 Reception 5 Box office 6 Awards 7 Changes from novel 8 References 9 External links Plot Mrs. Bennet ( Mary Boland ) and her two eldest daughters, Jane ( Maureen O'Sullivan ) and Elizabeth ( Greer Garson ), are shopping for new dresses when they see two gentlemen and a lady alight from a very expensive carriage outside. They learn that the men are Mr. Bingley ( Bruce Lester ), who has just rented the local estate of Netherfield, and Mr. Darcy ( Laurence Olivier ), both wealthy, eligible bachelors, which excites Mrs. Bennet. Collecting her other daughters, Mrs. Bennet returns home, where she tries to make Mr. Bennet see Mr. Bingley, but he refuses, having already made his acquaintance. At the next ball, Elizabeth sees how proud Darcy is when she overhears him refusing to dance with her, and also meets Mr. Wickham, who tells Elizabeth how Darcy did him a terrible wrong. When Darcy does ask her to dance with him, she refuses, but when Wickham asks her in front of Darcy, she accepts. The Bennets ' cousin, Mr. Collins ( Melville Cooper ), who will inherit the Bennet estate upon the death of Mr. Bennet, arrives, looking for a wife, and decides that Elizabeth will be suitable. At a ball held at Netherfield, he keeps following her around and wo n't leave her alone. Darcy surprisingly helps her out and later asks her to dance. After seeing the reckless behavior of her mother and younger sisters, however, he leaves her again, making Elizabeth very angry with him once more. The next day, Mr. Collins asks her to marry him, but she refuses point blank. He then becomes engaged to her best friend, Charlotte Lucas ( Karen Morley ). Elizabeth visits Charlotte in her new home. There, she is introduced to Lady Catherine de Bourgh ( Edna May Oliver ), Mr. Collins ' `` patroness '', and also encounters Darcy again. At Charlotte 's insistence, Elizabeth sees Darcy who asks her to marry him, but she refuses, partly because of the story Wickham had told her about Darcy, partly because he broke up the romance between Mr. Bingley and Jane, and partly because of his `` character ''. They get into a heated argument and he leaves. When Elizabeth returns home, she learns that Lydia has run away with Wickham but they were not married. Mr. Bennet and his brother unsuccessfully try to find Lydia. Darcy learns of this and returns to offer Elizabeth his services. He tells her that Wickham will never marry Lydia. He reveals that Wickham had tried to elope with his sister, Georgiana, who was younger than Lydia at the time. After Darcy leaves, Elizabeth realizes she loves him but believes he will never see her again. Lydia and Wickham return to the house married. A short time later, Lady Catherine arrives and tells Elizabeth that Darcy found Lydia and forced Wickham to marry her by providing Wickham with a substantial sum of money. She also tells her that she can strip Darcy of his wealth if he marries against her wishes. She demands that Elizabeth promise that she will never become engaged to Darcy. Elizabeth refuses. Lady Catherine leaves in a huff and meets with Darcy outside who had sent her to see Elizabeth to find out if he would be welcomed by her. After Lady Catherine 's report, Darcy comes in and he and Elizabeth proclaim their love for each other in the garden. Mr. Bingley also meets Jane in the garden. The movie comes to a close with a long kiss between Elizabeth and Darcy and Mr. Bingley taking Jane 's hand, while Mrs. Bennet is spying on both couples and seeing how her other daughters have found good suitors. Cast Garson as Elizabeth Bennet Olivier as Darcy Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet Laurence Olivier as Fitzwilliam Darcy Mary Boland as Mrs. Bennet Edna May Oliver as Lady Catherine de Bourgh Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane Bennet Ann Rutherford as Lydia Bennet Frieda Inescort as Caroline Bingley Edmund Gwenn as Mr. Bennet Karen Morley as Charlotte Lucas Collins Heather Angel as Kitty Bennet Marsha Hunt as Mary Bennet Melville Cooper as Mr. Collins Edward Ashley Cooper as George Wickham Bruce Lester as Mr. Bingley E.E. Clive as Sir Willam Lucas Marjorie Wood as Lady Lucas Vernon Downing as Captain Carter Production The filming of Pride and Prejudice was originally scheduled to start in October 1936 under Irving Thalberg 's supervision, with Clark Gable and Norma Shearer cast in the leading roles. Following Thalberg 's death on September 13, 1936, pre-production activity was put on hold. In August 1939, MGM had selected George Cukor to direct the film, with Robert Donat now cast opposite Shearer. The studio had considered filming in England, but these plans were changed at the start of the war in Europe in September 1939, which caused the closure of MGM 's England operations. Cukor was eventually replaced by Robert Z. Leonard due to a scheduling conflict. Reception The film was critically well received. Bosley Crowther in his review for The New York Times described the film as `` the most deliciously pert comedy of old manners, the most crisp and crackling satire in costume that we in this corner can remember ever having seen on the screen. '' Crowther also praised casting decisions and noted of the two central protagonists : Greer Garson is Elizabeth -- ' dear, beautiful Lizzie ' -- stepped right out of the book, or rather out of one 's fondest imagination : poised, graceful, self - contained, witty, spasmodically stubborn and as lovely as a woman can be. Laurence Olivier is Darcy, that 's all there is to it -- the arrogant, sardonic Darcy whose pride went before a most felicitous fall. TV Guide, commenting upon the changes made to the original novel by this adaptation, calls the film `` an unusually successful adaptation of Jane Austen 's most famous novel. Although the satire is slightly reduced and coarsened and the period advanced in order to use more flamboyant costumes, the spirit is entirely in keeping with Austen 's sharp, witty portrait of rural 19th century social mores. '' The reviewer goes on to note : Garson never did anything better than her Elizabeth Bennet. Genteel but not precious, witty yet not forced, spirited but never vulgar, Garson 's Elizabeth is an Austen heroine incarnate. Olivier, too, has rarely been better in a part requiring the passion of his Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights but strapping it into the straitjacket of snobbery. The film received a 100 % rating from Rotten Tomatoes. Box office According to MGM records the film earned $1,849,000, resulting in a loss of $241,000, despite the fact that its budget was $1,437,000. Awards Pride and Prejudice received an Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Black and White ( Cedric Gibbons and Paul Groesse ). Changes from novel This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( January 2018 ) The film differs from the novel in a number of ways. The period of the film, for example, is later than that of Austen 's novel -- a change driven by the studio 's desire to use more elaborate and flamboyant costumes than those from Austen 's time period. Some scenes were altered significantly. For example, in the confrontation near the end of the film between Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Elizabeth Bennet, the former 's haughty demand that Elizabeth promise never to marry Darcy was changed into a hoax to test the mettle and sincerity of Elizabeth 's love. In the novel, this confrontation is an authentic demand motivated by Lady Catherine 's snobbery and, especially, by her ardent desire that Darcy marry her own daughter. References ^ Jump up to : Glancy, H. Mark `` When Hollywood Loved Britain : The Hollywood ' British ' Film 1939 - 1945 '' ( Manchester University Press, 1999 ) ^ Jump up to : The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles : Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study. ^ Jump up to : Crowther, Bosley ( August 9, 1940 ). `` ' Pride and Prejudice, ' a Delightful Comedy of Manners ''. The New York Times. Retrieved August 16, 2014. ^ Jump up to : `` Pride and Prejudice : Notes ''. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved August 16, 2014. Jump up ^ `` Pride and Prejudice ''. TV Guide. Retrieved August 16, 2014. Jump up ^ Pride and Prejudice ( 1940 ) @ Rotten Tomatoes Jump up ^ `` Pride and Prejudice ( 1940 ) ''. The New York Times. Retrieved August 16, 2014. External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pride and Prejudice ( 1940 film ). Jane Austen portal Pride and Prejudice on IMDb Pride and Prejudice at the TCM Movie Database Pride and Prejudice at AllMovie Pride and Prejudice at the American Film Institute Catalog The films of Robert Z. Leonard The Master Key ( 1914 ) Judge Not ; or The Woman of Mona Diggings ( 1915 ) Secret Love ( 1916 ) The Plow Girl ( 1916 ) On Record ( 1917 ) A Mormon Maid ( 1917 ) The Primrose Ring ( 1917 ) At First Sight ( 1917 ) Face Value ( 1918 ) The Bride 's Awakening ( 1918 ) Danger, Go Slow ( 1918 ) The Delicious Little Devil ( 1919 ) The Miracle of Love ( 1919 ) April Folly ( 1920 ) The Restless Sex ( 1920 ) The Gilded Lily ( 1921 ) Heedless Moths ( 1921 ) Peacock Alley ( 1922 ) Fascination ( 1922 ) Broadway Rose ( 1922 ) Jazzmania ( 1923 ) Mademoiselle Midnight ( 1924 ) Circe, the Enchantress ( 1924 ) Cheaper to Marry ( 1925 ) Time, the Comedian ( 1925 ) Bright Lights ( 1925 ) Dance Madness ( 1926 ) Mademoiselle Modiste ( 1926 ) The Waning Sex ( 1926 ) A Little Journey ( 1927 ) The Demi - Bride ( 1927 ) Adam and Evil ( 1927 ) Tea for Three ( 1927 ) Baby Mine ( 1928 ) The Cardboard Lover ( 1928 ) A Lady of Chance ( 1928 ) Marianne ( 1929, silent ) Marianne ( 1929, musical ) The Divorcee ( 1930 ) In Gay Madrid ( 1930 ) Let Us Be Gay ( 1930 ) The Bachelor Father ( 1931 ) Five and Ten ( 1931 ) It 's a Wise Child ( 1931 ) Susan Lenox ( Her Fall and Rise ) ( 1931 ) Lovers Courageous ( 1932 ) Strange Interlude ( 1932 ) Peg o ' My Heart ( 1933 ) Dancing Lady ( 1933 ) Outcast Lady ( 1934 ) After Office Hours ( 1935 ) Naughty Marietta ( 1935 ) Escapade ( 1935 ) A Tale of Two Cities ( 1935 ) The Great Ziegfeld ( 1936 ) Piccadilly Jim ( 1936 ) Maytime ( 1937 ) The Firefly ( 1937 ) The Girl of the Golden West ( 1938 ) Broadway Serenade ( 1939 ) New Moon ( 1940 ) Pride and Prejudice ( 1940 ) Third Finger, Left Hand ( 1940 ) Ziegfeld Girl ( 1941 ) When Ladies Meet ( 1941 ) We Were Dancing ( 1942 ) Stand By for Action ( 1942 ) The Man from Down Under ( 1943 ) Marriage Is a Private Affair ( 1944 ) Week - End at the Waldorf ( 1945 ) The Secret Heart ( 1946 ) Cynthia ( 1947 ) B.F. 's Daughter ( 1948 ) The Bribe ( 1949 ) In the Good Old Summertime ( 1949 ) Nancy Goes to Rio ( 1950 ) Duchess of Idaho ( 1950 ) Grounds for Marriage ( 1951 ) Too Young to Kiss ( 1951 ) Everything I Have Is Yours ( 1952 ) The Clown ( 1953 ) The Great Diamond Robbery ( 1953 ) Her Twelve Men ( 1954 ) The King 's Thief ( 1955 ) Beautiful but Dangerous ( 1955 ) Jane Austen 's Pride and Prejudice Characters Bennet family Elizabeth Bennet Fitzwilliam Darcy William Collins Lady Catherine de Bourgh Mr. Wickham Films Pride and Prejudice ( 1940 ) Bridget Jones 's Diary ( 2001 ) Pride & Prejudice : A Latter - Day Comedy ( 2003 ) Bride and Prejudice ( 2004 ) Pride & Prejudice ( 2005 ) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ( 2016 ) Television Pride and Prejudice ( 1958 ) Pride and Prejudice ( 1967 ) Pride and Prejudice ( 1980 ) Trishna ( 1985 ) Pride and Prejudice ( 1995 ) Will be Somewhere ( 2004 ) Lost in Austen ( 2008 ) Death Comes to Pemberley ( 2013 ) Novels Darcy 's Story ( 1995 ) Bridget Jones 's Diary ( 1996 ) Mr. Darcy 's Daughters ( 2003 ) Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman An Assembly Such as This ( 2003 ) Duty and Desire ( 2004 ) These Three Remain ( 2005 ) Austenland ( 2007 ) Love, Lies and Lizzie ( 2009 ) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ( 2009 parody ) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies : Dawn of the Dreadfuls ( 2010 parody ) Death Comes to Pemberley ( 2011 ) Longbourn ( 2013 ) Other First Impressions ( 1959 musical ) Pride and Prejudice ( 1993 musical ) Beyond a Joke ( 1997 ) Stolthet och fördom ( 2011 opera ) The Lizzie Bennet Diaries ( 2012 web series ) Austenland ( 2013 film ) See also Pride & Prejudice ( soundtrack ) Pemberley List of literary adaptations Jane Murfin Plays and screenplays Smilin ' Through ( 1919 ) Way Back Home ( 1931 ) What Price Hollywood ? ( 1932 ) Our Betters ( 1933 ) The Little Minister ( 1934 ) Spitfire ( 1934 ) Roberta ( 1935 ) Alice Adams ( 1935 ) The Women ( 1939 ) Pride and Prejudice ( 1940 ) Dragon Seed ( 1944 ) Family & Relationships Laurence Trimble Donald Crisp Aldous Huxley Novels Crome Yellow ( 1921 ) Antic Hay ( 1923 ) Those Barren Leaves ( 1925 ) Point Counter Point ( 1928 ) Brave New World ( 1932 ) Eyeless in Gaza ( 1936 ) After Many a Summer ( 1939 ) Time Must Have a Stop ( 1944 ) Ape and Essence ( 1948 ) The Genius and the Goddess ( 1955 ) Island ( 1962 ) Short story collections Limbo ( 1920 ) Mortal Coils ( 1922 ) Little Mexican ( 1924 ) Two or Three Graces ( 1926 ) Brief Candles ( 1930 ) Collected Short Stories ( 1957 ) Non-fiction The Perennial Philosophy ( 1945 ) Grey Eminence ( 1941 ) The Devils of Loudun ( 1952 ) The Doors of Perception ( 1954 ) Poetry The Burning Wheel ( 1916 ) Jonah ( 1917 ) The Defeat of Youth ( 1918 ) Leda ( 1920 ) Arabia Infelix ( 1929 ) The Cicadias and Other Poems ( 1931 ) Collected Poetry ( 1971 ) Travel writing Along the Road ( 1925 ) Jesting Pilate ( 1926 ) Beyond the Mexique Bay ( 1934 ) Essay collections On the Margin ( 1923 ) Essays New and Old ( 1926 ) Proper Studies ( 1927 ) Do What You Will ( 1929 ) Vulgarity in Literature ( 1930 ) Music at Night ( 1931 ) Texts and Pretexts ( 1932 ) The Olive Tree ( 1936 ) Ends and Means ( 1937 ) Words and their Meanings ( 1940 ) Science, Liberty and Peace ( 1946 ) Themes and Variations ( 1950 ) Adonis and the Alphabet ( 1956 ) Heaven and Hell ( 1956 ) Collected Essays ( 1958 ) Brave New World Revisited ( 1958 ) Literature and Science ( 1963 ) The Human Situation : 1959 Lectures at Santa Barbara ( 1977 ) Moksha : Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience ( 1999 ) Screenplays Pride and Prejudice ( 1940 ) Madame Curie ( uncredited, 1943 ) Jane Eyre ( 1943 ) A Woman 's Vengeance ( 1947 ) Prelude to Fame ( 1950 ) Alice in Wonderland ( uncredited, 1951 ) Radio script `` Jacob 's Hands : A Fable '' ( 1956, published 1997 ) Plays The Discovery ( 1924 ) The World of Light ( 1931 ) The Gioconda Smile ( 1948 ) The Genius and the Goddess ( 1957 ) The Ambassador of Captripedia ( 1965 ) Now More Than Ever ( 1997 ) Other books The Art of Seeing ( 1942 ) The Crows of Pearblossom ( 1944 children 's book, published 1967 ) Selected Letters ( 2007 ) Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pride_and_Prejudice_(1940_film)&oldid=853315971 '' Categories : 1940 films English - language films 1940s drama films 1940s romantic drama films American black - and - white films American drama films American films American romantic drama films Films scored by Herbert Stothart Films based on adaptations Films based on Pride and Prejudice Films directed by Robert Z. Leonard Films set in country houses Films whose art director won the Best Art Direction Academy Award Metro - Goldwyn - Mayer films Romantic period films Screenplays by Aldous Huxley Screenplays by Jane Murfin Hidden categories : Articles needing additional references from January 2018 All articles needing additional references Talk Contents About Wikipedia Беларуская Català Deutsch Ελληνικά Español فارسی Français Italiano עברית Magyar മലയാളം مصرى Nederlands 日本 語 Occitan Polski Português Română Русский Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska Türkçe Українська 中文 18 more Edit links This page was last edited on 3 August 2018, at 21 : 48 ( UTC ). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: who played mr darcy in the 1940 film version of pride and prejudice
Answer: Laurence Olivier