tells Graum that the artefacts he has discovered disprove Nazi claims about the Aryan origins of the Germans. He predicts the Nazis will destroy themselves. In the end, Smith uses a distraction to escape into the fog, but promises to come back. Cast Leslie Howard as Professor Horatio Smith Francis Sullivan as General von Graum Mary Morris as Ludmilla Koslowski Hugh McDermott as David Maxwell Raymond Huntley as Marx Manning Whiley as Bertie Gregson Peter Gawthorne as Sidimir Koslowski Allan Jeayes as Dr. Beckendorf Dennis Arundell as Hoffman Joan Kemp-Welch as School-teacher Philip Friend as Spencer Laurence Kitchin as Clarence Elstead David Tomlinson as Steve Basil Appleby as Jock MacIntyre Percy Walsh as Dvorak Roland Pertwee as Embassy Official Sir George Smith A. E. Matthews as Earl of Meadowbrook Aubrey Mallalieu as Dean Ben Williams as Graubitz Ernest Butcher as Weber Arthur Hambling as Jordan Mary Brown as Girl Student W. Phillips as Innkeeper Ilse Bard as Gretchen Ernest Verne as German Officer George Street as Schmidt Hector Abbas as Karl Meyer Neal Arden as Second Prisoner Richard George as Prison Guard Roddy Hughes as Zigor Hwfa (Hugh) Pryce as Wagner Oriel Ross as Lady Willoughby Brian (Bryan) Herbert as Jaromir Suzanne Claire (aka Violette Cunnington) as Salesgirl Charles Paton as Steinhof Michael Rennie as Guard Captain (uncredited) Ronald Howard Minor role (uncredited) Production Leslie Howard had been aware of the Nazis in Europe and had developed a film treatment in 1938 based on the rescue of an Austrian anti-Nazi leader. The A. G. Macdonell story of "Pimpernel" Smith took the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy into modern times. Having played the leading role in the filmThe Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Howard took on the updated project as the first film he directed and co-produced. Production on "Pimpernel" Smith began in early 1941. Reception Released in the United States as Mister V, the film review in The New York Times noted: "It is all absurd derring-do, of course, and it follows a routine pattern. It lacks the headlong course of the top-notch British thrillers. But "Mister V" becomes a tense excursion because of Mr. Howard's casual direction, and even more because of the consummate ease and the quiet irony of his performance." During the Second World War, films shown at Chequers were the only recreational activity available to Winston Churchill, who felt that "the cinema is a wonderful