Trailer
Plot summary
In Cornwall, a gang of wreckers puts out the warning beacons along the coast so that ships run aground on the rocks, kills the sailors who survive and takes their cargo. The gang gathers at the Jamaica Inn, a house on the edge of Bodmin Moor kept by Joss Merlyn. His wife Patience is the aunt of Mary Yellan, a young Irishwoman who comes to the inn to live with them. The coachman refuses to stop at such a place, so Mary asks for help at the house of Sir Humphrey Pengallan, the local squire, who warns her against the inn and rides with her to the door. Mary's letter never arrived, but Patience still gives her a room.
Cast
- Edwin Greenwoodas Dandy
Show all 20 cast
- William Devlinas Sir Humphrey's Tenant
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Jamaica Inn (1939)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Laughton was initially cast as Joss, but he cast himself in the role of Pengallan instead, a character originally written as a hypocritical preacher and rewritten as a squire because unsympathetic portrayals of the clergy were forbidden by the Production Code in Hollywood. Sidney Gilliat did those rewrites as a favour to Hitchcock.
SPOILER
Laughton demanded that Hitchcock give his character greater screen time, and that forced Hitchcock to reveal that Pengallan was a villain in league with the smugglers earlier in the film than he had initially planned.- Laughton demanded that Maureen O'Hara be given the lead after watching her screen test: her acting in it was sub par, but he could not forget her eyes. After filming finished he brought her to Hollywood to play Esmeralda opposite his Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, after which she became an international star.
- Jamaica Inn was the last of Hitchcock's "British period" films: in April 1939 he moved to Hollywood to begin his contract with David O. Selznick. He still returned to Britain over the years to shoot pictures there, among them Under Capricorn, Stage Fright, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Frenzy.
- Daphne du Maurier was not pleased with the finished production, and for a while she considered withholding the film rights to her novel Rebecca.
