Details

Release year: 1937

Storyline

When a revered diplomat's plane is diverted and crashes in the peaks of Tibet, he and the other survivors are guided to an isolated monastery at Shangri-La, where they wrestle with the invitation to stay.

Top credits

Directors

Frank Capra

Writers

Cast

Ronald Colman — Robert Conway
Jane Wyatt — Sondra
Edward Everett Horton — Lovett
John Howard — George Conway

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Awards

2 wins & 5 nominations

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Did you know

• The year after this film was released the owner of a prosperous theater chain hired an architect who designed a mansion that was inspired by the Shangri-La lamasery in this film. Located in Denver, Colorado, it still exists today.

• In 1937, at a test screening of the 210-minute version, Frank Capra experienced inappropriate laughter and mass walkouts from the audience. In an interview on The Dick Cavett Show (1968) (available on DVD), Capra explained he was so perturbed by the screening that he spent two days walking around Lake Arrowhead, trying to figure out why the film hadn't worked. He finally decided to remove the first two reels' worth of footage (about 20 minutes), changing nothing else, and showed it again. This time the test audience loved it. He was so happy to have discovered the problem with the film that he took the excised original footage and threw it onto a fire. (His account is disputed by editor Gene Milford, who notes that burning the nitrate film would have caused a large explosion.)

• Decades ago, when the film was shortened for viewing on television, some 25 minutes of footage was deleted, reducing the length to 107 minutes. In the years following UCLA tried to reconstruct the film, using the complete 123-minute soundtrack. Most of the missing film was badly degraded and useless, so the restorers used stills to fill in the missing minutes. Later, one minute of the missing footage was found and restored, resulting in some 24 minutes of stills supported by the soundtrack. The one minute of restored footage depicts Conway's meeting with the High Lama.

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