Prince Valiant (1954)

Sir Gawain: The truth hurts sometimes, but it's the only thing to build happiness on.

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Sir Brack: Traitor is a word that winners give to losers.

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Sir Gawain: You were a young fool. But I was an old fool, which is worse.

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Since Prince Valiant's storyline in the comics was so sprawling and complex, the property is said to have languished at MGM where no one could get a handle on it. When MGM eventually passed, Fox picked it up. There, Oscar-winning screenwriter, Dudley Nichols, devised a script by selecting panels from the comic strip to create a much more concise storyboard from which to work.
None of the locations were "stock footage" since this was one of the first CinemaScope movies. The locations were shot by a second unit in Britain during the spring and summer of 1953 specifically for this film. Stand-ins doubled for the principal cast in long shots which were then matched at 20th Century-Fox studios and ranch in California during the autumn of 1953. The English stand-in for Janet Leigh's Aleta character was a teenage Shirley Eaton (later to become the James Bond Goldfinger girl).
The average shot length of this film is about 7 seconds. This is fast for an early CinemaScope film, and is low given the 8 - 11 second average of most Hollywood films made between 1930 and 1960.
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