Anne of Windy Poplars ** (1940, Anne Shirley, James Ellison, Henry Travers, Patric Knowles) – Classic Movie Review 10,481

Anne Shirley is back as the imaginative orphan lass Anne Shirley in Jack Hively’s 1940 Anne of Windy Poplars, a second attractive but not quite so appealing RKO adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery children’s classic, a sequel to 1934’s Anne of Green Gables.

Now married to her childhood sweetheart Gilbert Blythe (Patric Knowles) and trained as a teacher, Anne Shirley starts as a vice-head in a new school, where she finds herself in the middle of a town feud and rejected by the Pringle family, led by matriarch Hester (Ethel Griffies) and Aunt Ernestine (Katharine Alexander).

Although the story is less enchanting than before, Anne Shirley (originally Dawn O’Day in films) is again captivating in the title role, whose name she used in real life after making Anne of Green Gables.

Also in the cast are James Ellison, Henry Travers, Patric Knowles, Slim Summerville, Elizabeth Patterson, Louise Campbell, Joan Carroll, Katharine Alexander, Minnie Dupree, Alma Kruger, Marcia Mae Jones, Ethel Griffies, Clara Blandick, Gilbert Emery, Wright Kramer, Jackie Moran, Nora Cecil and Grady Sutton.

Anne of Windy Poplars [Anne of Windy Willows] is directed by Jack Hively, runs 86 minutes, is made by RKO Radio Pictures, is released by RKO, is written by Michael Kanin and Jerry Cady, based on the novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery, is shot in black and white by Frank Redman, is produced by Lee S Marcus (executive producer) and Cliff Reid and is scored by Roy Webb (musical director), with Art Direction by Van Nest Polglase and Albert S D’Agostino (associate art director).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,481

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