The plot may seem somewhat familiar: an unassuming Professor of Archeology battles against the growing might of pre-war Nazi Germany in a thrilling adventure with the future of the Western world on the line. He’s got a very common last name, and is known for his daring bravado. But this isn’t a blockbuster from Lucas and Spielberg – in fact, although it may have been partial inspiration for 1981′s Raiders of the Lost Ark, this film came out 40 years before that!

Forty years before the release of Raiders of the Lost Ark, British actor Leslie Howard released a movie he had directed and produced with his own money, generated from his role in the Hollywood blockbuster Gone With The Wind(1939), in which he played the character that will always be associated with him: honor-bound intellectual Southern gentleman Ashley Wilkes. Howard was passionate about the war effort, and especially wanted to alert a wider audience to the growing threat of Nazi Germany. Howard also desired to produce a film which updated his famous role as Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) from Revolutionary France to pre-World War II Europe. The result was an incredible feature film entitled Pimpernel Smith (1941), known as Mister V in the United States.

Howard played the title character of Professor Horatio Smith, who uses his cover as an absent-minded archeology professor to rescue victims of persecution out of the Nazi state. During one such daring adventure, he is wounded, revealing his secret to his admiring students, who enthusiastically join him in his fight. But things are complicated when one of his students brings a mysterious woman into their inner circle. Smith engages in a game of cat-and-mouse with his ruthless Gestapo adversary who has been assigned to hunt him down.

The film is even credited with inspiring Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, who in 1942 attended a private screening of Howard’s latest picture with his sister Nina. “On the way home,” Nina recalled, “he told me this was the kind of thing he would like to do.” Wallenberg went on to mount a rescue operation in Budapest that, conservatively estimated, saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Hitler’s gas chambers. It is doubtful whether any other movie has ever inspired an act of heroism on quite this scale.

Now available for the first time on DVD, Pimpernel Smith serves as a reminder of the power of cinema to change opinion and influence society. A profoundly moving film about the struggle for good in the world, Pimpernel Smith deserves to be seen by a wider audience. The Pimpernel Smith DVD can be ordered securely online at http://www.PimpernelSmith.com Indy fans will definitely not be disappointed!

- Laszlo Stainer