The Purple Mask *** (1955, Tony Curtis, Colleen Miller, Gene Barry, Dan O’Herlihy, Angela Lansbury) – Classic Movie Review 6351

Angela Lansbury described the Tony Curtis swashbuckler The Purple Mask as ‘the worst movie I ever made’.

Director H Bruce Humberstone’s colourful 1955 costume-adventure swashbuckler The Purple Mask is set in 1803 France shortly after the French Revolution (1789 to 1799) and features the dashing young Tony Curtis playing roguish René de Traviere, a dashing do-gooding French Royalist.

It is based on a hit play. The 1913 French play Le Chevalier au masque by Paul Armont and Jean Manoussi was adapted into English as The Purple Mask by Matheson Lang, running in London in 1918 for 365 performances and in 1920 in New York for 139 performances.

René is a one-man army taking on the evils of Napoleon Bonaparte (Robert Cornthwaite), donning the purple mask of the title, becoming the notorious highwayman Purple Mask, and rescuing imprisoned aristocrats single-handedly from the guillotine. He is however aided by the spy services of a group of lovely model girls headed by Laurette de Latour (Colleen Miller), daughter of the Duc de Latour (Paul Cavanagh). Naturally, with Purple Mask harassing the Revolutionary officials, Napoleon orders his urgent capture.

Humberstone’s fast-moving, surprisingly short (82 minutes) movie for Universal International Pictures is a rip-roaring action adventure (set in 1803). Although not exactly covering new ground with its obvious similarities to The Scarlet Pimpernel, it is full of fun and packed with high spirits. Like The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Purple Mask has an alter ego identity as the foppish dancing master René, a crucial fact hidden also even from Laurette.

An infectiously appealing Curtis looks great and gives extremely zesty, athletic performance. But Angela Lansbury is wasted in the smallish star role of Madame Valentine, and was apparently unhappy with being in the movie, complaining that at this point her career had sunk so low as to appear in a Tony Curtis movie, a casual throwaway remark that Curtis took as an insult and never forgave. Indeed, she described The Purple Mask as ‘the worst movie I ever made’.

Curtis recalled: ‘My last swashbuckler, in which I had to do a lot of fencing – just like Gene Kelly told me to do. I had my own personal fencing instructor, and we practised between every take and planned every move carefully. Once I didn’t parry quite enough and took the blade right in my cheek, but we went right on working.’

Also in the cast are Dan O’Herlihy, Gene Barry, George Dolenz, John Hoyt, Donald Randolph, Stephen Bekassy, Myrna Hansen, Allison Hayes, Betty Jane Haworth, Carl Milletaire, Gene D’Arcy, Robert Hunter, Richard Avonde, Glase Lohman, Diane DuBois, Everett Glass, Eugene Borden, Adrienne D’Ambricourt, Jean De Briac, Jane Easton and Lomax Study.

The Purple Mask is directed by H Bruce Humberstone, runs 82 minutes, is made and released by Universal International Pictures, is written by Oscar Brodney and Charles Latour, based on the play Le Chevalier au Masque by Paul Armont and Jean Manoussi, is shot in Technicolor and CinemaScope by Irving Glasberg, produced by Howard Christie, scored by Charles Maxwell, Heinz Roemheld, Hans J Salter and Joseph Gershenson, and designed by Alexander Golitzen and Eric Osborn.

Curtis and Miller also starred together in The Rawhide Years (1955).

The cast are Tony Curtis as René de Traviere / The Purple Mask, Colleen Miller as Laurette de Latour, Angela Lansbury as Madame Valentine, Gene Barry as Captain Charles Laverne, Allison Hayes as Irene de Bournotte, John Hoyt as Rochet, Dan O’Herlihy as Brisquet, Robert Cornthwaite as Napoleon, Paul Cavanagh as Duc de Latour, George Dolenz, Donald Randolph, Stephen Bekassy, Myrna Hansen, Betty Jane Haworth, Carl Milletaire, Gene D’Arcy, Robert Hunter, Richard Avonde, Glase Lohman, Diane DuBois, Everett Glass, Eugene Borden, Adrienne D’Ambricourt, Jean De Briac, Jane Easton and Lomax Study.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6351

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