The Scarlet Pimpernel

Parodies and media references

The novel has been parodied or used as source material in a variety of media, such as films, TV, stage works, literature, and games:

  • It was parodied as a 1950 Warner Bros. cartoon short featuring Daffy Duck, The Scarlet Pumpernickel.[34] An action figure of the Scarlet Pumpernickel was released by DC Direct in 2006, making it one of the few—if not the only—toys produced based on the Pimpernel.
  • In 1953, following Jack Kyle's performance for the Ireland national rugby union team against France in that year's Five Nations Championship, sportswriter Paul MacWeeney adapted lines from the work to salute Kyle.[35]
  • The Scarlet Pimpernel was parodied extensively in the Carry On film Don't Lose Your Head, which featured Sid James as the Black Fingernail, who helps French aristocrats escape the guillotine while hiding behind the foppish exterior of British aristocrat Sir Rodney Ffing. It also features Jim Dale as his assistant, Lord Darcy. They must rescue preposterously effete aristocrat Charles Hawtrey from the clutches of Kenneth Williams' fiendish Citizen Camembert and his sidekick Citizen Bidet (Peter Butterworth).[36]
  • The Kinks 1966 song "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" contain two lines from the book; "they seek him here, they seek him there"; these lyrics also appear in the 1993 film In the Name of the Father when Gerry Conlon (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) returns home to Belfast in hippie-style clothing that he got from London's Carnaby Street.[37]
  • In the third series of Blackadder, Blackadder the Third, the episode "Nob and Nobility" revolves around Blackadder's disgust with the English nobility's fascination for the Pimpernel. Tim McInnerny reprises a version of his "Sir Percy" character from the previous two series, who is the alter ego of the Pimpernel, who acts a bit like James Bond.
  • In The Desert Song, the heroic "Red Shadow" has a milquetoast alter ego modelled after Sir Percy.[38]
  • The character was parodied in a lengthy comedy sketch on The Benny Hill Show (series 11, episode 1, 1980). Portrayed by Hill himself, the "Scarlet Pimple" spends just as much of his time unsuccessfully pursuing women as he does rescuing people. When one woman repeatedly shuns his advances, he leaves in a huff and refuses to rescue the next woman being sent to the guillotine.
  • The Canadian comedy team of Wayne and Shuster created a comedy sketch in 1957 based on the Scarlet Pimpernel called "The Brown Pumpernickel", in which, instead of a red flower as his calling card, the hero would leave behind a loaf of pumpernickel.[39][40]
  • In 1972, Burt Reynolds portrayed the "Lavender Pimpernel" in a season 5 episode of The Carol Burnett Show.
  • Sir Percy and Marguerite are mentioned as members of an 18th-century incarnation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in the graphic novels of that title by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill and make a more significant appearance in The Black Dossier, in the accounts of both Orlando and Fanny Hill, with whom Percy and Marguerite are revealed to have been romantically involved.
  • A series of novels by Lauren Willig, beginning with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (2005), chronicle the adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel's associates, including the Purple Gentian (alias of Lord Richard Selwick), spies in the Napoleonic era.[41]
  • Steve Jackson Games published GURPS Scarlet Pimpernel, by Robert Traynor and Lisa Evans in 1991, a supplement for playing the milieu using the GURPS roleplaying game system.[42]
  • The 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is set in 1805 and features a boy named Blakeney, whose father is named Sir Percy Blakeney, suggesting he is the son of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
  • Writer Geoffrey Trease wrote his adventure novel Thunder of Valmy (1960; US title Victory at Valmy) partly as a response to Orczy's Pimpernel novels, which he argued were giving children a misleading image of the French Revolution.[43] Thunder of Valmy revolves around the adventures of a peasant boy, Pierre Mercier, during the start of the Revolution, and his persecution by a tyrannical Marquis.[43]
  • Famed British barrister Sir Desmond Lorenz de Silva, QC, is often referred to by Fleet Street papers as "the Scarlet Pimpernel", because of his uncanny penchant for getting off clients facing the death penalty outside the UK.[44]
  • Writer Diana Peterfreund took inspiration from the Scarlet Pimpernel for her book Across the Star Swept Sea. The main character, Persis Blake, pretends to be a shallow aristocrat while actually being the notorious spy "The Wild Poppy".
  • In the 2014 videogame Assassin's Creed: Unity, protagonist Arno Dorian may encounter a man known as the "Crimson Rose", the leader of the "Crimson League", a royalist organization which saves aristocrats from the guillotine. However, it is later discovered that Crimson Rose is a Templar, and he and the League are wiped out by Arno.
  • Dewey Lambdin includes an homage to the Scarlet Pimpernel in his book King, Ship, and Sword, in the character of a foppish Sir Pulteney Plumb who was known as "The Yellow Tansy".
  • Philip José Farmer's Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke includes the Scarlet Pimpernel as a member of the Wold Newton family. Farmer suggests that Sir Percy was present when the Wold Cottage meteorite fell near Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England, on 13 December 1795. Win Scott Eckert wrote two Wold Newton short stories featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, both taking place in 1795: "Is He in Hell?" and "The Wild Huntsman." Eckert also constructed a "fictional genealogy" for the Pimpernel in his essay "The Blakeney Family Tree."
  • In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Druselsteinoween", multiple characters dress as the Scarlet Pimpernel for a Halloween party in a castle. This is used for comedic effect as one of the Pimpernels uses the others as decoys to avoid his father, who disapproves of his son's girlfriend because she is the daughter of his sworn enemy.
  • In the Ducktales episode "Friendship Hates Magic," the Scarlet Pimpernel is parodied as the Scarlet Pimperbill, whom Launchpad McQuack mistakes for Darkwing Duck due to the very similar design of the two characters.
  • In the comic strip Doonesbury, the character called "the Red Rascal" has a story line which parodies the original.
  • In the Babar episode "The Scarlet Pachyderm", the title character is a parody of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
  • In The Huckleberry Hound Show episode "The Unmasked Avenger", Huckleberry Hound dons an avenger called the "Purple Pumpernickel", an obvious spoof of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

This content is from Wikipedia. GradeSaver is providing this content as a courtesy until we can offer a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors. We do not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your discretion when relying on it.