the project, donated film stock from Dr. Strangelove to Brownlow to help him finish the film. Veteran wartime BBC radio announcers Alvar Lidell and John Snagge gave their services free to voice reconstructed newsreels and radio broadcasts. Support was also given by director Tony Richardson, who helped to pay for the final production. The film had an estimated cast of 900, all volunteers, with several professional actors among them Sebastian Shaw and Reginald Marsh. A number of the extras in the film were members of British science fiction fandom, and a portion was previewed at a science fiction convention in Peterborough. Many of the British fascists in the film were themselves former members of the British Union of Fascists, and similarly, German ex-servicemen portrayed SS and Wehrmacht soldiers and airmen. The key role of Pauline, a nurse evacuated from Salisbury to London, was played by Pauline Murray. The film was partially shot in Grim's Dyke. Though the cast was almost entirely amateur, It Happened Here helped to launch the career of its cinematographer, Peter Suschitzky, who went on to work on such films as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Empire Strikes Back. Release It Happened Here premiered in September 1964 at the Cork Film Festival and was shown one month later at the German Mannheim International Film Week. Some Jewish groups protested against the inclusion of seven minutes of footage of a British fascist speaking against the Jews and for euthanasia, claiming the inclusion of this material gives a platform to unapologetic neo-Nazis despite the film's strongly anti-Nazi theme. In response, this was cut from the original release, though it was restored thirty years later, after Brownlow regained the rights to the film. Reception After eight years of production, the film's initial release was stormy. Many people were upset by the idea that the villains in the story were not just the Nazis but their British collaborators. The film seemed to be saying that fascism can rise anywhere under the right circumstances, and that people everywhere could fall under its spell. Research prior to the film from various Nazi-occupied territories (including the Channel Islands) suggested that this was indeed the case. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: "The acting by unfamiliar people is beautifully natural and restrained, particularly that of Pauline Murray in the principal role. Through her human and subtle generation of an ungrudging sympathy,