‘A Difficult Film to Sell and a Difficult Film to Appreciate’: MGM’s <i>Alfred the Great</i> (1969) and the Challenges of Promoting Historical Epic in the Late-1960s

MGM’s 1969 epic royal biopic Alfred the Great presents an illuminating case study for investigating film promotion, especially how to promote historical film, during the intense industrial and cultural changes of ‘New Hollywood’. Through an examination of documentation related to the film’s promotion, held in director Clive Donner’s special collection (BFI National Archive), this article explores deep divisions between the promotional strategies envisaged and implemented by different factions within MGM for Alfred the Great, driven by different beliefs about how best to bring a historical film about an ancient English king before its potential audience(s) in 1969, as long-standing assumptions about audience preferences were being rapidly overturned and the Hollywood studio system was entering what appeared to be a state of terminal crisis. Alfred the Great proved a ‘difficult film to sell’, with its difficulties illuminating the challenges of doing film promotion at this watershed moment, within a genre whose marketing scripts proved difficult to update, and undertaken by an industry increasingly insecure about who it was speaking to and how best to do it.