Anthony Adverse
Anthony Adverse is a 1936 American epic costume drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland. Based on the novel Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen, with a screenplay by Sheridan Gibney, the film is about an orphan whose debt to the man who raised him threatens to separate him forever from the woman he loves. The film received four Academy Awards.
In 1773, Maria Bonnyfeather Anita Louise is the new bride of the cruel and devious middleaged nobleman Marquis Don Luis Claude Rains. However, she is pregnant by Denis Moore Louis Hayward, the man she loved before being forced to marry Don Luis. After the marquis learns of his wifes affair, Don Luis takes her away but Denis tracks them down at an inn, where Don Luis treacherously kills him in a sword fight.Months later Maria dies giving birth to her son at a chalet in the Alps in northern Italy. Don Luis leaves the infant at a convent near Livorno, Italy, where the nuns christen him Anthony, it being June 13, St Anthonys feast day. Don Luis lies to Marias father, wealthy merchant John Bonnyfeather Edmund Gwenn, telling him that the infant is also dead. Ten years later, completely by coincidence, Anthony Billy Mauch is apprenticed to Bonnyfeather, his real grandfather, who discovers his relationship to the boy but keeps it a secret from him. He gives the boy the surname Adverse in acknowledgement of the difficult life he has led. ........
Source: Wikipedia
