Meet Me Tonight

Meet Me Tonight (1952)

Meet Me Tonight was the American title for the British-filmed Tonight at 8:30, adapted from the Noel Coward stage production of the same name.

Date of release
1952-09-09
TMDB
7.1 / 10 (7)
Runtime
1h 21m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Anthony Pelissier

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Pinewood Studios

Meet Me Tonight is a 1952 omnibus British comedy film directed by Anthony Pelissier and starring Valerie Hobson, Nigel Patrick, Stanley Holloway, Ted Ray and Jack Warner. It was written by Noël Coward, adapted from three of his one act plays: Red Peppers, Fumed Oak and Ways and Means, part of his Tonight at 8.30 play cycle.

Production

A very successful film, Brief Encounter (1945), had been made from Still Life, one of the plays that made up Tonight at 8:30. In July 1948, Sydney Box, head of Gainsborough Studios bought the rights to film The Astonished Heart from Tonight at 8:30 which resulted in a 1950 film.

This film was not made. In June 1951 Coward discussed the project with Sydney Box again. Rights to the plays passed to the Rank Organisation which had made several successful anthology movies, notably Quartet, Encore and Trio. Producer Tony Havelock Allen later recalled the project as "just to have something to do, more or less."

The movie was financed through the British Film-Makers scheme where Rank provided 70% of the budget and the balance coming from the National Film Finance Corporation.

Filming took place in March 1952 at Pinewood Studios. Producer Anthony Havelock-Allen said director Anthony Pelissier "had many different talents but none of them big enough to make a real impact. Look at The Rocking Horse Winner — he certainly had talent but he never got enough chances. He was a difficult man but, then, so was the man who made Kind Hearts and Coronets, yet that didn’t stop him from being a great director.

Havelock-Allen said, "Noél was rather unkind about" the film "but he made what I think was a valid point: he said that the point of the ‘Red Peppers’ segment was to spend an evening seeing Noél Coward and Gertie Lawrence not playing Noél Coward and Gertie Lawrence, that is the fun; that the moment you do one of these little plays for real, they don’t exist."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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