Fascinating trivia (and any goofs) connected with the film
Mainly from the Bruce Eder laserdisk commentary
- Despite the title, no scene in the movie is set at the 49th parallel of
north latitude, which forms the US/Canadian border from Lake of the Woods
to the Pacific coast. The only border scene is at Niagara Falls, where the
border is the Niagara River.
- All the opening 'travelogue' footage was shot by
Freddie Young on a hand held camera out of the windows
of various planes, trains and automobiles on an initial trip
across Canada.
- The voice of the director, Michael Powell can
be heard faintly in some of the submarine scenes.
When the camera boat almost collided with the submarine
Powell says "Keep rolling".
- The men in the lifeboat at the start are mainly local
merchant seamen, many of whom had already been torpedoed.
- Raymond Massey, Laurence Olivier and
Leslie Howard all agreed to work at half their normal
fee as it was such an important propaganda film.
- The U37 was equipped with 2 one thousand pound bombs
supplied by the Canadian Air Force. Powell didn't tell the
actors that they were there, he thought they might have worried.
The actors were replaced by dummies before the bombs were
detonated.
- Raymond Lovell nearly drowned in the scene where the
seaplane crashes. Even those who could swim (Lovell couldn't)
became flustered when the seaplane sank faster then expected.
The stink bomb that was that was thrown in to "heighten the
turmoil" added greatly to the chaos. A member of the camera
crew jumped in and saved Lovell.
- Raymond Lovell trained as a Doctor at Cambridge University but gave
up medicine for the stage in the 1920's.
- Hutterites are Christian Fundamentalists from Germany, they
arrived in Canada in the early 1900's to escape religious
persecution. Most viewers will regard them as similar to the Amish.
They live in simple, self-sufficient communities, leading quite
an austere, strict lifestyle.
The Hutterites allowed the film company into their community
near Winnipeg. They worked together quite happily until one day
a Hutterite woman saw Elisabeth Bergner painting her
nails and smoking. The Hutterite woman was so incensed she
rushed up, knocked the cigarette from her mouth and slapped
her face.
Powell had to make peace with the community and with the
outraged star. Bergner later deserted the film, refusing to
come back to England for the studio scenes. It is believed
that as an ex-German national she feared for her life if the
Nazi's had invaded. Glynis Johns stepped in to replace
Bergner to much acclaim. The initial long shots of Anna are
those of Bergner. A rare case of an established star acting
as a stand-in for a newcomer.
- The U-Boat was built by Harry Roper of Halifax and towed to
Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where it was "shot down" by the
Royal Canadian Air Force as the film opens in the Strait of Belle Isle.
- Powell forgot that Newfoundland was a Crown Colony and not a
part of Canada and when they moved the full-sized submarine
model there it was impounded by Customs & Excise who
demanded that import duty be paid. The matter was finally
resolved when Powell appealed to the Governor of
Newfoundland, citing their work for the war effort. Newfoundland
became a Canadian province in 1949.
- The original choice to play Lieutenant Hirth was Archer's
stalwart Esmond Knight. But he had decided to join the
Royal Navy at the outbreak of war.
- For the scene with the Hutterites listening to Eric Portman's
impassioned pro-Nazi speech, the actors were all "hand picked
faces". Over half were refugees from Hitler. [Powell auto-biog]
- Anton Walbrook donated half his fee to the International
Red Cross.
- One of the deleted scenes was of the Nazis flying across Canada. This included Carla Lehmann & Tamara Desni as Air hostesses. I also have a studio still of Andy Brock (Ray Massey) in the passenger compartment of the train. Presumably he taes to the baggage car to avoid the attentions of the railway guard of some other official.
- Jean Haynes tells us:
A bit of trivia. When I was seven, in war-time London ,a girl in my class had a mother who was a theatrical agent. She used to take us children as extras when required, and I spent three days at Denham as a Hutterite child in the camp where Eric Portman made his dramatic speech in 49th Parallell. It took three days to get it in the can. We had to be in 'makeup' by 6am and, apart from a break for lunch when we could go down to the river, back on the set till 6 pm or later. We sat at long tables where bowls of what looked like dripping and black bread were set before us, and, apart from filing out of the hut, that was all we did. Needless to say we couldn't locate ourselves when we saw the film, but, as a long-term admirer of The Archers (and Marius Goring in particular) I am proud of my link with this film.
The BBC Radio 4 series "Great Lives" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/greatlives/index.shtml) about Peter Cushing had Cushing's biographer David Miller talking about Cushing's early life and he said how Cushing had gone to Hollywood before the war, but apparently things hadn't worked out too well, and he ended up doing a variety of odd jobs. Which is how he came to be making props (not acting) on 49th Parallel. One day he had the job of making flags for model boats to be pushed around a map, and he made all these swastikas and laid them out in his digs. They were found by his landlady who promptly called the police.
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