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The plot may sound somewhat familiar: a mild-mannered archeology professor struggles against the growing might of pre-war Nazi Germany in a thrilling adventure with the fate of many on the line. He's got a very common last name, and is known for his daring bravado. But this isn't a blockbuster from Lucas and Spielberg - in fact, while it may have been partial inspiration for the first Indiana Jones movie in 1981, this movie came out in 1941!

In 1941, English actor Leslie Howard released a movie he had directed and produced with his own money, earned from his appearance in the Hollywood blockbuster Gone With The Wind(1939), in which he portrayed the character that will always be associated with him: honor-bound intellectual Southern gentleman Ashley Wilkes. Howard was passionate about the war effort, and especially wanted to alert a wider audience to the growing threat of Nazi Germany. Howard also wanted to create a movie that would update his famous role as Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) from Revolutionary France to pre-World War II Europe. The result was an amazing feature film entitled Pimpernel Smith (1941), known as Mister V in the United States of America.

Howard portrayed the title role of Professor Horatio Smith, who uses his cover as an absent-minded professor of archeology to smuggle victims of persecution out of the Third Reich. During one such daring rescue, he is wounded, which discloses his secret to his admiring students, who enthusiastically join him in his struggle. But things are complicated when one of his students brings a mysterious woman into their inner circle. Smith engages in a game of cat-and-mouse with his ruthless Gestapo adversary who has been assigned to hunt him down.

This movie is even credited with inspiring Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish humanitarian, who in 1942 attended a private screening of Howard's latest film with his sister Nina. "On the way home," his sister recalled, "he told me this was the kind of thing he would like to do." Wallenberg went on to mount a rescue operation in Budapest that, conservatively estimated, saved 15,000 Hungarian Jews from Hitler's concentration camps. It is doubtful whether any other movie has ever inspired an act of heroism on quite this scale.