Frederick Ashton

The Royal Ballet Company brings Squirrel Nutkin, Tom Thumb, Hunca Munca, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Jeremy Fisher, Pigling Bland, and Pigwig to the screen doing pirouettes and pas de deux in this filmed ballet production directed by Reginald Mills. The film more properly belongs, however, to choreographer Frederick Ashmore, composer John Lanchbery, and costume designer Rostislav Douboujinsky. This literal adaptation concerns the shy Beatrix Potter and how, when all of the toy animals in her room come to life, she emerges from her shell and begins to enjoy life. Sequences include a rowdy dance with Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca destroying a collection of plaster food, a midnight pas de deux between Pigling Bland and Pigwig, and a corps de ballet of dancing mice.

Cinderella is helped to the ball by her fairy godmother in The Royal Ballet's version of the classic fairy tale, using Sergei Prokofiev's music and Frederick Ashton's choreography in a comic ballet.

A melancholy poet reflects on three women he loved and lost in the past: a mechanical performing doll, a Venetian courtesan, and the consumptive daughter of a celebrated composer.

Publicity film for manufacturers and retailers of television equipment. A survey of the programmes transmitted by the British Broadcasting Corporation during the first six months of operation, November 1936 - May 1937, intended for manufacturers and retailers to show sample types of programmes transmitted.