The Boys from Syracuse

Light-hearted 1940s burlesque musical set in ancient Greece, based on Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, with irresistible evergreen songs by Rodgers and Hart.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.


Image gallery

  • Director A Edward Sutherland
  • Producer Jules Levey
  • Screenwriter Charles Grayson, Paul Gerard Smith, Leonard Spigelgass
  • With Allan Jones, Joe Penner, Martha Raye
  • USA 1940
  • 73 mins

Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation. Preservation funded by The Film Foundation

A surprise hit on Broadway for the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, this daft musical burlesque was modestly adapted by Universal, and it is funny, disarming and tuneful enough for the Library of Congress’s Motion Picture Department to have produced this pretty new print. Loosely – very loosely – based on Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, the action takes place in ancient Ephesus where two sets of twins, both by coincidence called Antipholus and Dromio, cause havoc and marital confusion by trying to find each other. Most of the fun is in the form of anachronistic gags, from a checkered chariot with meter to stone newspapers and picketing gladiators. And, of course, there are great songs, with Allan Jones’ attractive tenor tones doing Rodgers and Hart justice, including ‘Falling in Love with Love’, ‘Who Are You?’ and ‘This Can’t Be Love’. Sit back and enjoy.
Clyde Jeavons

A Edward Sutherland filmography

1925 Coming Through; Wild, Wild Susan
1926 A Regular Fellow; Behind the Front; It’s the Old Army Game; We’re In the Navy Now
1927 Love’s Greatest Mistake; Fireman, Save My Child; Figures Don’t Lie
1928 Tillie’s Punctured Romance; The Baby Cyclone; What a Night!
1929 Close Harmony; The Dance of Life; Fast Company; The Saturday Night Kid; Pointed Heels
1930 Burning Up; Paramount on Parade [one ep only]; The Social Lion; The Sap from Syracuse
1931 The Gang Buster; Palmy Days; Up Pops the Devil; June Moon
1932 Secrets of the French Police; Mr Robinson Crusoe; Sky Devils
1933 Too Much Harmony; International House; Murders in the Zoo
1935 Diamond Jim; Mississippi
1936 Poppy
1937 Every Day’s a Holiday; Champagne Waltz
1939 The Flying Deuces
1940 The Invisible Woman; One Night in the Tropics; The Boys from Syracuse; Beyond Tomorrow
1941 Steel Against the Sky; Nine Lives Are Not Enough
1942 Star-Spangled Rhythm [uncredited]; The Navy Comes Through; Army Surgeon; Sing Your Worries Away
1943 Dixie
1944 Secret Command; Follow the Boys
1945 Having Wonderful Crime
1946 Abbie’s Irish Rose
1956 Bermuda Affair