With a film as prone to inaccurate hearsay as The Third Man, I find myself these days increasingly looking for the incontrovertible proof that can dispel the mist of false whispers that have gathered around the film over seventy-five years. But sometimes it’s still fun to speculate.
When I wrote my book In Search of The Third Man back in 1999, I stated that “The Third Man opened at the Plaza, Piccadilly on Friday 2 September 1949”. Well, it did open at the Plaza on 2 September 1949, but it received its first public showing somewhere else. By “public showing”, I mean exhibition to an audience that was not part of the film industry. So I exclude the trade show of The Third Man, which took place at 2.30 p.m. at the Palace Theatre, Cambridge Circus, on Thursday 25 August 1949. I mean when was the first time that The Third Man was shown to an ordinary, non-professional audience?
Although the London opening of The Third Man took place at the Plaza on 2 September, the film had its “grand gala premier” the night before at 8.30 p.m. in the much more unlikely venue of the Ritz cinema in the seaside town of Hastings, East Sussex. The Ritz was a big theatre with 1,200 seats in the stalls, nearly 700 in the circle, and a café restaurant.
It was part of a trial by the film’s distributor British-Lion to hold pre-release showings in provincial towns. Within the two weeks that followed, the film opened at several other seaside towns around the country – Dover, Eastbourne, Penzance, Worthing, Whitstable, Morecambe ...
But was this grand gala premier at the Ritz really the first public showing? As the show didn’t begin until 8.30 p.m., it’s possible that actually the first public showing took place earlier that day in the even more glamorous setting of the Ile de France ocean liner. That was where Alexander Korda’s American co-producer of the film, David Selznick, happened to be, travelling to New York after having spent the summer in Europe.
Korda had given Selznick a print of the film to take on board the ship. As Selznick owned only the Western Hemisphere rights to the film, and the ship was French, he would not have been allowed to exhibit the film during the crossing without Korda’s permission, but on that day, Thursday 1 September, Selznick’s London office sent this message to Selznick: “Korda says okay for you [to] screen THIRD MAN publicly.”
When Selznick saw the film only a week before, at the Palace Theatre trade showing, he was astounded by how good it was – especially since he had long been angry over the refusal of the film’s director, Carol Reed, to follow the extensive notes that he, Selznick, had prepared for the shooting of the film. He suspected – probably correctly – that Reed and Korda were plotting against him. But now all was forgiven. It was as if Gone With The Wind 2 had suddenly fallen into his lap.
Being as madly competitive as he was, I’m sure that Selznick would have raced to show the film off the very same day that he got the go-ahead – he would have wanted to beat his rival Korda if he possibly could. So – especially with the Ile de France steaming westwards back through the time zones – it must be a fair bet that he did manage to steal a march on the Ritz.
It is finally only idle speculation – I’m not sure how to provide hard proof unless some elderly survivor of the screening can be found – but it amuses me, on this 75th anniversary of The Third Man, to imagine, lying in a naval museum somewhere, the log of the SS Ile de France, in which – under 1 September 1949 – the captain has scribbled a note about that night’s show: On a vu le Troisième homme. Formidable!
It would certainly have been a magnificent setting. The Ile de France had only just resumed transatlantic service after a two-year overhaul. The ship had been completely rebuilt. The middle of its three funnels had been removed, which allowed space for a purpose-built, 350-seat luxury cinema. It might not have been the Ritz, but it was still a pretty good way to show off to the public one of the best British films of all time for the first time.
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