Death Takes a Holiday
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Death Takes a Holiday is a 1934 film produced by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Mitchell Leisen, with a screenplay by Maxwell Anderson and Gladys Lehman which was based on a play by Alberto Casella. It opened at the Paramount Theatre, New York on February 23, 1934 with a running time of 79 minutes.
Fredric March stars as Death, with Evelyn Venable, Guy Standing, Katherine Alexander, Gail Patrick, Helen Westley, Kathleen Howard, Kent Taylor and Henry Travers also in the cast.
The film is a romantic fantasy about Death (played by March), appearing on earth and taking the human form of Prince Sirki, to discover why people fear him. As Death is drawn further into the mortal world he becomes fascinated by the people he meets, particularly the beautiful young Grazia (played by Venable), the only person he meets who seems to have no fear of him. Throughout the world people notice that there is no death - even as war rages it is observed that there are no casualties and even plants and flowers do not wither and die as they should. (Of course, this is happening because Death is on his holiday.)
Death Takes a Holiday was a commercial success, and drew mainly positive comments from reviewers. Time described the film as "thoughtful, [and] delicately morbid" while Mordaunt Hall for the New York Times wrote that "it is an impressive picture, each scene of which calls for close attention". Richard Watts, Jr for the New York Herald Tribune described the playing of Fredric March as one of the film's "chief virtues".
A 1971 Universal Studios television production featured Yvette Mimieux, Monte Markham, Bert Convy and two veterans from the era of the original production, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas. Loy related in her biography that the production was marred by a decline in filming production standards, and described a frustrated Douglas storming off the set and returning to his home in New York, when a tour guide interrupted the filming of one of his dramatic scenes to point out Rock Hudson's dressing room. By that point, of course, Universal had gained the rights to the 1934 original.
The film was remade in 1998 as Meet Joe Black (similar in premise, but otherwise almost completely different), which was also made by Universal.
[edit] References
- Loy, Myrna and Kotsilibis-Davies, James - Being and Becoming, Alfred A. Kopf, Inc. 1987, ISBN 1-55611-101-0
- Quirk, Lawrence J. - The Films of Fredric March, The Citadel Press, 1971, ISBN 0-8065-0413-7
- Quirk, Lawrence J. - The Films of Myrna Loy, ? Press, 1980, ISBN ?
