Robert Burns as he has rarely been seen before will play to a select audience of Burns aficionados in Glasgow in the New Year.

A youthful Andrew Cruickshank, a hint of Tannochbrae about his performance, takes the part of the bard in Auld Lang Syne, a biopic made by Metro Goldwyn Mayer in 1937, but only rediscovered this year.

The film will be shown at the Burns International Conference, hosted by the Centre for Scottish Cultural Studies at the University of Strathclyde in January.

Bravura

"I was delighted when I heard the film had been discovered," said Dr Ken Simpson, the centre’s director. "Burns led a rich and complex life and any movie would have to be selective. Occasionally in this version the licence the film-makers have taken is breathtaking, but it is a bravura performance by Cruickshank."

The film is owned by Ross Roy, a distinguished Burns expert and professor emeritus of English at the University of South Carolina. He purchased the three original reels after a friend discovered them while researching on the internet.

"I was buying a pig in a poke and it wasn’t cheap," said Prof Roy, who nevertheless is delighted by the find.

Hilarious

"It’s a bow-wow of a film, I’d hate anyone to base their knowledge of Burns on it. In one scene they show Burns out flirting; then he returns home where his mother serves up a haggis while he recites ‘Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face...’ It’s hilarious."

The 72-minute film, which purports to tell the life of the poet from cradle to grave, was directed by James A Fitzpatrick. It was almost certainly marketed as a B-movie in its own day, though Prof Roy suggested "the alphabet goes beyond ‘B’".

He points out a number of factual errors, including a tavern scene in which the characters sing Auld Lang Syne, five years before the poet wrote the verse.

Passions

Among a number of spectacular omissions, the most famous of Burns’ loves, Agnes McLehose ("Clarinda") is almost entirely absent from the film. "You see her," said Prof Roy, "but the camera passes by her. Considering she was one of the great passions of his life, they short-changed her."

Prof Roy believes the film was made in Elstree, the Hertfordshire film studios, and lays such errors at the door of the Sassenachs responsible.

However, if the screenplay often plays fast and loose with historical fact, its writer, WK Williamson, may have had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.

In the film version, Mary Campbell ("Highland Mary") is employed in the household of Burns’ friend and landlord Gavin Hamilton, and in a neat bringing together of some of the disparate strands of Burns’ life, is called upon to witness the marriage of the poet to Jean Armour.

In reality, thinking himself rejected by Jean (who was carrying his twins) Burns began a passionate affair with Mary, and some scholars believe she died during the delivery of his child.

Omissions

Another notable omission from the plot is Burns’ famous bawdiness. Prof Roy said: "There is no suggestion that the poet wrote a naughty verse in his life. But at the time the film was made you really wouldn’t mention such a thing."

The poet’s eye for the ladies, however, is made plain in the movie, and Prof Roy went on: "Alison Begbie is pictured as she steps across the stones of a stream, and by the time Burns joins her on the other bank she’s in love with him. One gathers, as much as you could in 1937, that he makes out with her."

For his part, Dr Simpson is full of admiration for the British cast of the film, though he noted discrepancies in the performances, notably in the respective voices of Burns, the poor farmer’s son, and Hamilton, the liberal-minded lawyer.

Refined

"It’s curious that Hamilton is portrayed with a guid Scots voice, but Cruickshank plays the part of Burns with a rather refined accent," remarked Dr Simpson.

The film is part of Prof Roy’s 3000-item Burns collection, which began when Roy’s grandmother, Charlotte Spriggings, inscribed an edition of the works of Robert Burns to her friend, W Ormiston Roy.

The collection was inherited by the grandson in 1958 and has since grown sixfold. Among the many rare items is one of only two known first editions of The Merry Muses of Caledonia. The book was discovered by the poet Sidney Goodsir Smith, who alerted Prof Roy and the academic negotiated its purchase in Edinburgh’s Milne’s Bar

Another treasure is a 1786 first edition "Kilmarnock edition" of Burns Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.