A Very Hungarian Affair

Baroness Emmuska Magdalena Rosalie Maria Josefa Barbara Orczy, born in 1865, was the daughter of aristocrat Baron Felix Orczy, a Hungarian-Jewish musician and composer, who left his homeland in 1868 with his young family after their home was vandalized by peasants. They eventually settled in London. Baron Orczy wanted his daughter to study music but she opted for art school instead. This is where she met her husband, Montagu Barstow. Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel herself in just five weeks but could not find a publisher for the book. So, together with her husband, she wrote a play based on the book which was produced for the stage in 1903. The novel was then published in 1905.

Enter Alexander Korda who was born in 1893 in what is now Hungary and who had formed his own production company, London Films. It was Korda who originally put The Scarlet Pimpernel on film. Korda had actually wanted Charles Laughton for the title role, but by that time the public already had an idea of what Sir Percy Blakeney looked like and it wasn't Charles Laughton.

And this leads us to our star, Leslie Howard. Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a British mother, Lilian (née Blumberg), and a Hungarian-Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner. Although born in England, Howard did live for a time in Vienna, Austria, where his father wanted the family to experience the richness of the cultural innovation and intellectual brilliance happening there. That experience is said to have influenced Howard for the rest of his life.

Leslie Howard and Walter Rilla
in The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1935

Subscribe to Leslie Howard by Email