"Forever and a Day" is a wonderful human-interest story with a number of flashbacks that give a slice of English History in London from 1804 to 1941. The setting for this is during the German bombing of England early in World War II. It takes place in the basement bomb shelter of an historic house. The plot centers around the house, with the various members of two families that had intertwined, married and lived there. It began with the Admiral Eustace Trimble who built the house for his home in the country - a comfortable distance from the town of London. It ends with a descendant and current occupant, Lesley Trimble, offering to buy it from an unknown American distant relative, Gates Trimble Pomfret. He had come to England on business for his father's company, and as a last stop before his return to America, he was to sell the old Trimble house.
When the nightly German bombing raids throw the two together with many others from the neighborhood in the basement, Lesley tells Gates the story of the house and the five generations that lived there. With the roles of others in the bomb shelter, the flashbacks involve more than 100 actors, of which three dozen have significant roles. Many of these are prominent actors of the day - mostly British.
The idea for the movie came from Cedric Hardwicke, and it was based on an unpublished novel by British producer, director and writer, Robert Stevenson. It was intended as a tribute to the English people on the Homefront, during the first years of the war. It was to be a picture by British actors, writers and directors, for the British people. And, all of the cast were to donate their time for the effort without pay. Due to union restrictions, they all had to receive a minimum daily amount, but most turned it over for war relief. RKO Radio Pictures took the project on.
The film was originally planned to be released around mid-1941, but it wasn't finished until early 1943. A number of delays occurred during production, often times around schedules of actors who were working on other movies at the time. The movie was shot in six segments that covered 10 time periods. Even with that, some English actors intended for the film were never able to take part. Among those most prominent at the time who had to have replacements for intended roles were Greer Garson, Cary Grant and Ronald Colman. Some other prominent British actors who weren't in the film are Michael Wilding, Richard Attenborough, Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier, John Mills, David Niven and Leslie Howard. These were all in military service or tied to war-related efforts at the time. Niven was on the ground with the Army, and Howard would die on June 1 when the commercial plane he was a passenger in was shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay off the Atlantic Coast of France.
Of the 106 parts filmed for the movie, five were in scenes that wound up on the cutting room floor. Academy Award winner Charles Coburn was one of those who didn't make it in the final film. But six other major award-winning actors had very good parts, including Ray Milland, Edmund Gwenn, Victor McLaglen, Donald Crisp, Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester. Of the more than 100 actors with parts, 88 were from the U.K. - 73 from England, six from Ireland, thee each from Scotland and South Africa, two from Australia and one from New Zealand. The British made up 85% of the cast. The biggest rest of the cast came from the USA, with 14. Four other countries each had one actor in the picture - Argentina, France, Italy and Sweden.
The film also boasted about having 21 different writers and seven directors, including Stevenson. While the movie was released in England and the U.S. in early 1943, it was some time after the war that most other European countries were able to see the film. It did show in neutral Sweden yet that year - opening in late September; and in March 1944 it was shown in Portugal. But it wasn't shown in Italy until late August 1945, in France until late 1947, and in Belgium until early 1953. Interestingly, it was finally shown in German theaters in 1993.
All of the cast are very good for their parts. Since there are so many, it would be short shrift to name any more than the award winner for the film's lure. This is an interesting and endearing sort of film. It is a quaint look at modern English history (19th century to mid-20th). And, it is a fine picture of the Englanders who bore up under war-time horrors that few civilian populations have had to bear in war times. It was a fine morale booster at the time, not only to the British. And it remains a fine testimonial to those people who "kept the home fires burning" while fighting to extinguish the fires from the German bombings.
