Leslie Howard (3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943) Celebrates Edward de Vere in his 1941 Pimpernel Smith.

The authorship question has a long and colorful history. This excerpt from Leslie Howard’s 1941 anti-Nazi propaganda film Pimpernel Smith introduced John Thomas Looney’s 1920 Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford to the silver screen.

In the film, Howard’s character “Horatio Smith” plays a Cambridge Archaeologist who pretends to be searching for proof of an “Aryan Civilization” in Germany. Actually, he is secretly assisting escapees from Nazi death camps.

Shakespeare is mentioned several times in the movie. In this excerpt, Howard debates the Nazi general’s claim that Shakespeare was German. He points out, instead, that “the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare.”

The book is available today in a modern reprint edited by James Warren.