Lost Horizon (1937)

Chang: Age is a limit we impose upon ourselves. You know, each time you Westerners celebrate your birthday, you build another fence around your minds.

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High Lama: It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. It came to me in a vision, long, long ago. I saw all the nations strengthening, not in wisdom, but in the vulgar passions and the will to destroy. I saw the machine power multiplying, until a single weaponed man might match a whole army. I foresaw a time when man, exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure, would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving, that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and of culture that I could, and preserve them here, against the doom toward which the world is rushing. Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! What unintelligent leadership! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity, crashing headlong against each other, propelled by an orgy of greed and brutality. A time must come my friend, when this orgy will spend itself. When brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. Against that time, is why I avoided death, and am here. And why you were brought here. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. For here, we shall be with their books and their music, and a way of life based on one simple rule: Be Kind! When that day comes, it is our hope that the brotherly love of Shangri-La will spread throughout the world. Yes, my son; When the strong have devoured each other, the Christian ethic may at last be fulfilled and the meek shall inherit the earth.
Robert Conway: I understand you father.

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Robert Conway: It is very common here to live to a very ripe old age. Climate, diet - the mountain water you might say. But we like to believe it's the absence of struggle in the way we live. In your countries, on the over hand, how often do you hear the expression, "He worried himself to death", or "This thing or that thing on that killed him".
Chang: Oh, very often.
Robert Conway: And very true. Your lives are, as a rule, shorter. Not so much by natural death, as by indirect suicide.

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Frank Capra hated screen tests; scripts were developed with specific actors in mind. Ronald Colman was first choice to play Conway from the very beginning. It was only over who should play the High Lama that he had problems and had to resort to screen tests.
Despite the persistent rumor that Walter Connolly was tested for the role of the High Llama was vehemently denied by Capra. Only two actors were considered for the role before Jaffe. English actor A. E. Anson was actually tested but died two days after the it was made. Henry B. Walthall was scheduled to be tested but died before one could be made. The third test was of Jaffe, and he got the part. Capra has been quoted as saying that Connolly was considered for the Thomas Mitchell role, but was committed to another project. Capra added that Connolly and Charles Laughton, who was also rumored for the part, were both too fat to play a two-hundred-year-old ascetic.
The parts played by Margo and Jane Wyatt were one character in James Hilton's original novel.
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