The Making of a Great Motion Picture

The great motion picture in question is the feature film, Anthony Adverse (1936), for which this short film acted as an advertisement. Anthony Adverse was originally a best-selling novel written by Hervey Allen. After much interest from several movie studios, Warner Bros. Pictures received the rights to adapt the novel into a movie and Sheridan Gibney started to work on the screenplay. Over 400 screen tests were done to select the cast, which eventually included such stars as Fredric March, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Woods, Anita Louise, Edmund Gwenn, Claude Rains, Louis Hayward, Gale Sondergaard, Steffi Duna, Akim Tamiroff, Ralph Morgan and Henry O'Neill. Due to the enormous scope of the story, over 5,000 extras were hired and new bigger sound stages were built. Helmed by acclaimed director Mervyn LeRoy, the studio expected the movie to be more popular than the novel.