This was big budget colour, lavish production for its time, but sadly not a success. My own view is that David Niven was woefully mis-cast as Bonnie Prince Charlie and he admitted afterwards that from the start this had the whiff of disaster all over it.
A great pity really in view of the care, not to mention money, put into it.
The ABOVE ‘Front of House Stills’ from the film show just how colourful it was and give an indication of the scale of the film
To add to the Highland Film scenes which were impressive there were some clever Matte Paintings used to add to the beautiful colour photography – AS BELOW :
One very tragic event that affected the film – Will Fyffe died on December 14 1947, after falling from a hotel bedroom window in St Andrews, Fife. He was 62 and his death happened during the filming of Bonnie Prince Charlie in which he had an important part.
His character was taken over by Morland Graham – and this meant that they had to re shoot all of Will Fyffe’s scenes.
The very next year in April 1949, Morland Graham died after an overdose of aspirin
As well as location work in Scotland, BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE was made at Shepperton Studios on an adjacent sound stage to another film being made there at the same time, THE FALLEN IDOL, which was then being filmed under its working title THE LOST ILLUSION. Jack Hawkins was in both films and would be working on them on alternate days. When Bobby Henrey wasn’t needed on set on that film, he would go over to watch BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE being filmed and became friends with David Niven. As Michael Caine may have said: “Notta lotta people know dat”.