Long lost Robert Burns Film set to run on The Drum's website
Happy Burns days readers, and to celebrate, The Drum has unearthed a long lost Hollywood short film on the Ayrshire poet; ‘The Romance of Robert Burns’.
Later today, The Drum will run a recently rediscovered short 16-minute Hollywood movie about Scotland’s Bard, although it has been described as being closer to Braveheart and Brigadoon that being a faithful depiction of Burns.
Lost since its release in 1939, the film sees Burns propose to his wife Jean Armour, before he sets off on a journey to Edinburgh – spelled ‘Edinborough’ by the Hollywood producers.
Former film historian Tony Jonaitis discovered the film in the archive of America’s Library of Congress, with the film thought to have never been seen outside of America’s cinemas, having been created to accompany a bigger budget film of the time.
After arriving in the city, Burns attends a fox hunt and gets into a fight in a stately home before being challenged to a duel.
Many of the props are thoughts to have been featured in other Hollywood productions including a stagecoach, which appears to be straight out of an old Western.
See the Romance of Robert Burns here.