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the international theatrical release of Doctor Syn, Alias the Scarecrow, the 1963 James Neilson English Walt Disney made-for-TV family adventure thriller ("A man of two faces... who rode in defiance of a king's tyranny!"; released theatrically in 1964 in the U.S.; it's original TV title was "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh"; "Based on 'Christopher Syn' by Russell Thorndike and William Buchanan") starring Patrick McGoohan (in the title role as Dr. Syn), George Cole, Tony Britton, Sean Scully, Michael Hordern, Geoffrey Keen, Patrick Wymark, and Jill Curzon. Note that after this movie was released theatrically in the U.S., it was also released around the world, over a period of years (and oddly, the first English release predated the first U.S. theatrical release by a short time, in 1963). Note that this movie was based on a fascinating series of books written by Russell Thorndike! In 1915, Thorndike (who was the brother of Sybil Thorndike, the famous English actress) was with his sister, and they learned there was a dead body that had been found on the street below their living quarters. They began to try to imagine how the body got there, and they came up with the story of a respectable country vicar who actually was a smuggler, and had been a pirate in a previous life, and one of his old enemies had caught up with him and murdered him! When he was a smuggler, he was known as "The Scarecrow", but when he had been a pirate, he was known as "Captain Clegg"! Thorndike wrote a novel based on this, which was called "Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh", and published it in 1915. He then served in World War I, and after, he became an actor like his sister, and he put writing behind him. In the late 1920s, he began to write again, and in 1935, he revived his Doctor Syn character, with a series of five books published between 1935 and 1939, and one later one in 1944, and all of those five books are "prequels" to his 1915 book, greatly expanding on the character's earlier life! In 1937, after the first four novels were published, Gaumont British made a movie, called "Dr. Syn", based on the character, with George Arliss in the lead role. In 1962, Hammer Films in England made a movie based on this character, and it was called "Captain Clegg" (but it was released in the U.S. by Universal as "Night Creatures"), starring Peter Cushing. The following year, Walt Disney made this TV movie based on the character called "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh", and then because it proved very popular, it was given a theatrical release in 1964 as "Doctor Syn, Alias the Scarecrow". In 1974, the English movie "Carry On Dick" presented a humorous takeoff on the Dr. Syn character, but since that time, there have been no more films based on this character, although there was a stage version in 2001, performed in England in the actual Romney Marsh area that the stories were set in. The author's son was in this production (and Russell Thorndike, an accomplished actor, had himself played Dr. Syn in some 1930s stage productions).
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Artist: Paul Wenzel

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