Myra and Roy meet and fall in love on Waterloo Bridge during an air raid. Their love will be one of the war's unspoken casualties.
On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front. Myra stayed with him past curfew and was thrown out of the corps de ballet. She survived on the streets of London, falling even lower after she hears that her true love has been killed in action. But he wasn't killed. That those terrible years were nothing more than a bad dream is Myra's hope after Roy finds her and takes her to his family's country estate.—Dale O'Connor <[email protected]>
At the start of WWII, General Roy Cronin, standing mid-span of Waterloo Bridge in London as he is set to go off to war in France, recalls that exact place in a time during WWI when he met by chance the love of his life, Myra Lester. Then, he was an Army Captain, she a member of a ballet troupe and school, their meeting during an air raid. He was set to return to the trenches in France the following day, by which time they knew that they were the ones for each other and they wanted to marry before his departure so that she could stay with his supportive upper-crust mother, Lady Margaret Cronin. But issues in their respective lives threatened a happily-ever-after for them. For him, it is the hazards of battle and the possibility that he would never make it back alive. For her, it was the ballet troupe's strict and uncompromising head, Madame Olga Kirowa, who expected all her ballerinas to focus solely on ballet, which meant no personal life. In Myra possibly needing to choose between the troupe or Roy and something else, that something else was never a certainty.—Huggo
Myra and Roy meet and fall in love on Waterloo Bridge during an air raid. Their love will be one of the wars unspoken casualties. Heartbroken after Roy is reportedly killed in action, Myra turns to prostitution to make her way. The report, however, is false. Roy later returns from a POW camp, eager to begin life anew with his beloved. But Myra s shattered spirit may no longer hold any room for happiness. Vivien Leigh plays Myra, at once winning and breaking viewers hearts in this exquisite melodrama. In a compassionate performance that was his all-time favorite, Robert Taylor is gallant Roy. Under Mervyn LeRoy's astute direction, they make Waterloo Bridge a meeting place for lovers.
On his way to France to fight in World War II, Colonel Roy Cronin stops his cab on London's Waterloo Bridge and reflects on the past: It is 1914 and air raid sirens screech as a group of young girls hurry past, seeking shelter. One drops her purse and Roy helps its owner, Myra Lester, a beautiful ballet dancer, to retrieve it. They seek shelter together and a whirlwind wartime courtship follows, resulting in Roy asking Myra to marry him. Before the ceremony can be performed, however, Roy is called to the front and Myra is fired for her impetuousness by Madame Olga Kirowa, the troupe's tyrannical ballet mistress. When Myra's friend Kitty sticks up for her, Madame Kirowa also fires her. Unable to find work in another ballet or show, the two dancers soon find themselves broke and hungry. One afternoon, Myra is supposed to meet Roy's aristocratic mother for the first time. While waiting, Myra sees a notice about Roy's death in the newspaper and faints. When Lady Margaret arrives, Myra cannot tell her the terrible news, and her erratic behavior shocks and angers Roy's mother, who leaves in disgust. Myra then falls ill and lies close to death from grief. To earn money to cover her friend's medical expenses, Kitty drifts into street walking. When Myra recovers, she is touched by her friend's sacrifice, and with no desire to live, she, too, becomes a prostitute. One year later, Roy returns to London, and the first sight that he sees upon getting off the train is Myra, who has come to pick up soldiers. He believes that she has come to meet him, and knowing nothing of her life in the past year, takes her home to his family estate in Scotland. Although Myra tries to convince herself that they can be happy, she soon realizes that her past will ruin Roy's life and, after confessing all to his mother, she runs away. Roy follows, despite Kitty's revelations about Myra, but she eludes him and kills herself by throwing herself in front of an onrushing truck on Waterloo Bridge. Clutching the good luck charm that he had once given Myra, Roy leaves for the front.
