THE BANDIT OF SHERWOOD FOREST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 396, 24 January 1947, Page 27

THE BANDIT OF SHERWOOD FOREST

(Columbia)

OU could, if you found the new adventures of Robin. Hood, his _ son, and his Merry Men be- ' ginning- to pall a little,

spenad quite a happy time playing a game, somewhat after the style of "Beaver," which would consist of spotting the anachronisms and historical inaccuracies in this Hollywood account, in Technicolour, of how Magna Carta was saved for posterity when the Regent of England planned to "withdraw" it and murder the boy King Henry III. I don’t mean such obvious ones as the accents, or the cowboy style of horseback riding which is indulged in by the outlaws even in the depths of Sherwood Forest. You can find many quainter touches than that. For example, as Miss C. A. Lejeune, whose knowledge of such esoteric matters is naturally greater than mine, has pointed out, the heroine of the story (Anita Louise) sports mascara’d eyelashes, the newest shade of lipstick, an excellent perm, and a dress with a zipfastener. Four up to Miss Lejeune. But I think I can beat Miss Lejeune at this game, for bless me if Robin Hood and his Merry Men, the very lads« who traditionally introduced the stout sixfoot yew bow and clothyard shaft to Merrie England and practically put archery on the map, aren’t armed here with miserable modern American, semiRed Indian-style flat bows of hickory or ash! Gad sir, it’s enough to make one’s blood boil. However, since not more than one picturegoer in ten thousand will feel like getting steamed up in company with me over this point, I suppose I had better say something about the story. Well, all you actually need to do is to imagine ai typical Western melodrama taking place in medieval England, with Nottingham Castle replacing the frontier town, and the Regent (Henry Daniell) substituting for the wicked sheriff. The goodies are, of course, Robin Hood himself-20 years older than when we saw him last, and now Earl of Huntingdon-his athletic son (Cornel Wilde), Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, and the rest of the boys from the Huntingdon ranch, slightly grizzled now but still able to pull a very mean bow-string and bring down a man-at-arms at 50 paces from the back of a galloping bronco. (Incidentally, the Bandits seem to be as plentifully supplied with arrows as their cowboy counterparts are with six-shooter ammunition and are equally wasteful with it; they don’t even bother to pick up their arrows after shooting them.) The .baddies are, naturally, the Regent, his retinue of robber barons, and their armoured minions. When the Regent holds a committee meeting and announces that he intends to scrap Magna Carta and begin grinding the faces of the poor again, only the valiant Earl of Huntingdon protests. | After a stirring speech about democracy and all that, he withdraws with dignity and takes to the greenwood again, sending out smoke-signals or something to gather his tribesmen together. Young

R. Hood, who has come down from Scotland to answer the call, gallops up with a cry of "Hi Yo, Sherwood!" (or something), and they are also joined by the Queen of England and her Lady-in-Waiting, Miss Anita Louise, who have slipped out of the back door of Nottingham Castle attired as scullery-maids (so they say) in order to provide the picture with romantic interest. So then the Huntingdon boys lay siege to the castle, where the young king is still immured and on the point of being bumped off the battlements by the Regent. Divers wily stratagems and deeds of quite incredible daring are performed; young R. Hood and the Regent fight it out man to man and the best man wins, bow-strings twang and villains bite the dust, Magna Carta and democratic government are restored to England, the liberated king rewards young R. Hood by making him an Oil like his father, and commands him to marry Miss A. Louise, whose mascara, perm, and lipstick show no evidence of what she has been through, and to spend his honeymoon at Sutherland Castle. Thus it was in the brave days of old. ~*