The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938

Event information

Come and join us for an afternoon in the company of the dashing Errol Flynn as the definitive Robin Hood in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, the most gloriously swashbuckling version of the legendary story. Warner Brothers reunited Michael Curtiz, their top-action director, with the winning team of Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (Maid Marian) and perennial villain Basil Rathbone as the aristocratic Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and pulled out all stops for the production. It became their costliest film to date, a grandly handsome, glowing technicolour adventure set to a stirring, Oscar-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold--music that became a template for countless later movies, notably John Williams' Star Wars and Indiana Jones scores.

James Cagney was originally cast as Robin Hood but walked out on his Warner Bros. contract, paving the way for the role to go to Errol Flynn. The filming was postponed three years as a result. Though Olivia de Havilland was an early frontrunner for the role of Maid Marian, for a time the studio vacillated between Anita Louise and her for the part. Olivia De Havilland was ultimately chosen because the success of Captain Blood established the pairing of Flynn and de Havilland as a safe bet to help ensure box-office success.

At the 11th Academy Awards, it received four nominations, winning three—Best Art Direction (Carl Jules Weyl), Best Film Editing (Ralph Dawson) and Best Original Score (Erich Wolfgang Korngold). In 1995, The Adventures of Robin Hood was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.