Trivia / The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

• Acting for Two: Deborah Kerr plays three roles: Edith Hunter in 1902, Barbara Wynne in 1918-1919, and Angela Cannon in 1939-1943. This was intended to illustrate how they remind Candy of Edith.
• Actor-Shared Background: The unfortunately-named Austrian emigre Adolph Anton Wilhelm Wahlbruecke (stage name Anton Walbrook), who played Theo, exiled himself from Austria when it became a right-wing dictatorship in The Roaring '20s.
• Backed by the Pentagon: Filming was made difficult by the wartime shortages and by Churchill's objections leading to a ban on the production crew having access to any military personnel or equipment. But they still managed to "find" quite a few Army vehicles and plenty of uniforms.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Winston Churchill acquired the false impression that the film was a straightfoward parody of the Colonel Blimp character, and was so annoyed that he attempted to shut down production, thinking that the film could damage morale. He never actually watched it, and so never learned that in fact it was a tribute to the sort of virtues that he liked to think he embodied (apart from his fervent imperialism, which is not something that Candy appears to be invested in).
• Creator Couple: Frau von Kalteneck, a friend of Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, was played by Roger Livesey's wife Ursula Jeans; although they often appeared on stage together this was their only appearance together in a film.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Emeric Pressburger considered this the best of his and Michael Powell's films.
• The Danza: John Laurie as John Montgomery Murdoch.
• Executive Meddling:
  • In this case, executive branch meddling. Winston Churchill hated the film so much that he attempted to stop it from being made, forbid the use of government property for the army scenes, and withheld it from release outside the UK for two years.^note  This might be why the guys out to capture the Colonel are driving U.S. Army issue (but not marked) Deuce and a halves (in the cab shots you can see the steering wheel is on the left side).
  • On a more conventional note, the film's American release totally shortened the film and butchered the complex flashback structure, by making it into chronological order. It wasn't until 1980 that the film played in its original form in America. It was also re-titled as The Adventures of Colonel Blimp. Worse, some American prints were released in black-and-white.
• Inspiration for the Work: According to the directors, the idea for the film did not come from the newspaper comic strip by David Low but from a scene cut from their previous film, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, in which an elderly member of the crew tells a younger one, "You don't know what it's like to be old." Michael Powell has stated that the idea was actually suggested by David Lean (then an editor) who, when removing the scene from the film, mentioned that the premise of the conversation was worthy of a film in its own right.
• Romance on the Set: Michael Powell had an affair with Deborah Kerr while filming. Though their affair only lasted about a year, Powell admits in his autobiography that Kerr was the love of his life.
• Star-Making Role: First got Deborah Kerr noticed.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The filmmakers wanted Laurence Olivier to play Clive Candy, but he was prevented from being furloughed from the Navy by Winston Churchill, who didn't want the film to be made. Churchill didn't want to bolster the production with an actor and star of Olivier's caliber, as he felt the movie was critical of a type of British patriot.
  • Powell wanted Wendy Hiller to play Deborah Kerr's parts but she pulled out due to pregnancy.
• Write What You Know: Emeric Pressburger, a Hungarian Jew who lived in Berlin, modeled Theo's speech at the immigration bureau on his own experience entering Britain.

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