Libel is a 1959 British drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

. It stars Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland

Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...

, Dirk Bogarde

Dirk Bogarde

Sir Dirk Bogarde was an English actor and novelist. Initially a matinee idol in such films as Doctor in the House and other Rank Organisation pictures, Bogarde later acted in art-house films such as Death in Venice...

, Paul Massie

Paul Massie

Paul Massie was a Canadian actor and academic. He later became a theater professor at the University of South Florida in the 1970s...

, Wilfrid Hyde-White

Wilfrid Hyde-White

Wilfrid Hyde-White was an English character actor.-Early life and career:Wilfrid Hyde White was born at the rectory in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, the son of William Edward White, canon of Gloucester Cathedral, and his wife, Ethel Adelaide Drought...

 and Robert Morley

Robert Morley

Robert Adolph Wilton Morley, CBE was an English actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment...

. The film's screenplay was written by Anatole de Grunwald

Anatole de Grunwald

Anatole "Tolly" de Grunwald was a British film producer and screenwriter.Anatole de Grunwald was born in Petrograd , Russia, the son of a diplomat in the service of Tsar Nicholas II. He was seven years old when his father was forced to flee with his family to England during the 1917 Bolshevik...

 and Karl Tunberg

Karl Tunberg

Karl Tunberg was an American screenwriter and occasional film producer.Born in Spokane, Washington, Tunberg's earliest writings included short stories, and a novel entitled While the Crowd Cheers, which was published in 1935 by the Macaulay Company...

 from a 1935 play of the same name by Edward Wooll, and it was directed by Anthony Asquith

Anthony Asquith

Anthony Asquith was a leading English film director. He collaborated successfully with playwright Terence Rattigan on The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version , among other adaptations...

.

The Broadway play, which had starred Colin Clive

Colin Clive

Colin Clive was an English stage and screen actor best remembered for his portrayal of Dr...

, was adapted for radio in 1941 using the original references to World War I. Ronald Colman

Ronald Colman

Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...

 played the leading role in the Jan. 13, 1941, CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 network Lux Radio Theater

Lux Radio Theater

Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...

 broadcast, with Otto Kruger

Otto Kruger

Otto Kruger was an American actor who began his career in 1915. His career was most prolific during the 1930s and 1940s.-Career:...

 and Frances Robinson. The role of an amnesiac World War I veteran had similarities to Colman's 1942 hit Random Harvest.
A 1938 BBC television production , featured actor Wyndham Goldie, husband of eventual BBC television producer Grace Wyndham Goldie

Grace Wyndham Goldie

Grace Wyndham Goldie was an important innovatory producer in British television for twenty years, particularly in the fields of politics and current affairs. During her career at the BBC, she held her own as one of the few senior women in an establishment dominated by men...

.

Plot

While traveling in London, Jeffrey Buckenham (Massie), a Canadian Second World War veteran, sees Sir Mark Sebastian Loddon (Bogarde) on television leading a tour of his grand family home. Buckenham was held in a German POW

Prisoner of war

A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...

camp with Loddon, and while watching him, becomes convinced that he is in fact another former POW, Frank Wellney, an actor (also played by Bogarde). Buckenham publicly announces his suspicion that Wellney murdered Loddon during an escape from the POW camp, and has taken the young nobleman's place. Loddon sues Buckenham for libel, but his mind is still battered by some terrible incident that occurred during his escape fifteen years before, and in time even his loyal wife (de Havilland) begins to doubt him.