Away from art-house movies and cult and trash items, and some interesting new releases, we also like those old-fashioned, genteel British movies of the 1950s - as reviewed at British, London labels. We grew up on these back in Ireland in the Fifties and feel an affection for them. The 1940s and the 1960s may have been the great decades for British films (with Lean, Powell, Losey, Schlesinger, Lester, Dearden etc) but the 1950s were a lot of fun too with those Rank Organisation and Ealing items. Here is another round-up:
OUT OF THE CLOUDS, 1955. A busy day at London
Airport – follow the lives and
loves of the crew and passengers.
This 1955 concoction from Ealing Studios is a delight for
anyone wanting to see what flying and airports were like back in the ‘50s.
Basil Dearden directs and keeps several storylines in the air (get it?) – as we
follow dependable Robert Beatty, James Robertson Justice and Bernard Lee as
airport types, young pilot Anthony Steel tempted to smuggle stuff past customs,
and stewardesses like Eunice Gayson, Melissa Stribling and Isabel Dean as they
give individual attention to the passengers, who include Esma Cannon, Marie
Lohr, Abraham Sofaer and gambler Sid James. This is one airport one would
happily spend all day lounging in. David Knight and Margo Lorenz are two
passengers on different planes who meet and suddenly fall in love, but the
airport staff play fairy godmother so they finally get to be on the same flight
…. Can’t see it happening at Heathrow ! A great airport movie of that era like JET STORM, SOS PACIFIC or THE CROWDED SKY (see Airlines label).
MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER, 1956. Magazine editor Valerie Carr
lives in London (a perfectly 50s home in posh
Highgate Village) with her two daughters –Jan, aged 17, and Poppet, 13. When Jan
is invited to a party at The Savoy she meets dashing young Tony Ward Black (“the
Debs’ Delight”) who is mad about jive, owner of a Bentley, and supposedly
running through a legacy. Attracted to the daring young man, she rejects Mark,
a young farmer who is in love with her. But it soon beomes apparent to everyone
but Jan that neither Tony’s fortune, nor even his name, may be his own and her
association with him will lead her into delinquency and danger.
America
may have had REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK and THE BLACKBOARD
JUNGLE on those problem teenagers and their new music, but it was MY TEENAGE
DAUGHTER here in the UK
– they have now called it TEENAGE BAD GIRL perhaps to make its sound more
alluring, but this kitsch delight delivers in spades. Dear Dame Anna Neagle, a
war widow, frowns as teenage Jan starts going to basement dives and learns to jive –
this sinful dance drives teenagers wild! as they dance to the same number (“Get
With It”) over and over.
Jan’s young man is not all he seems and she is soon in
prison and before the judge, as the rich old aunt Tony goes to borrow money
from drops dead and he is accused of murder. Will Jan get off and be reconciled
with her mother? And her young sister Poppet and her adorable dog? This is all
perfectly enjoyable, another Herbert Wilcox production starring his wife. There
is something likeable about Dame Anna and she excels here, with Wilfred
Hyde-White as her magazine boss, Norman Woodland and Kenneth Haigh. (This opus was also fondly called MY STONE AGE MOTHER by those witty Sunday Times critics.)
NO TIME FOR TEARS, 1957. Doctors and nurses at a children’s
hospital confront the challenges of their profession.
A pleasant tear-jerker directed by Cyril Frankel (no, not
Herbert Wilcox this time) this features Anna Neagle as the understanding matron
and this time Sylvia Syms is the young nurse. Flora Robson is the older wiser
nurse, and Anthony Quayle is the surgeon and George Baker, Michael Hordern,
Joan Hickson, Rosalie Crutchley, Angela Baddeley and Joan Sims as another young
nurse also feature. It is in widescreen and colour and shows us the hospital
staff getting involved with a pair of unruly children whom they save from an
abusive mother who cannot cope with them. Various dramas ensue but all ends
happily for Christmas. Maybe the success of this led to the television series
(and subsequent film) LIFE IN EMERGENCY WARD 10 ?
Sylvia Syms - a great British dependable, like Muriel Pavlow or Yvonne Mitchell, is 80 this year (like Dames Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins, and still keeps working (as in the recent series REV). She was also terrific as Bogarde's puzled wife in VICTIM in 1961 and FLAME IN THE STREETS, ICE COLD IN ALEX, WOMAN IN A DRESSING GOWN etc. We barely recognised her as the Queen Mother to Helen Mirren as THE QUEEN in 2006).
WONDERFUL THINGS, 1958 – Another of those ‘The British Film’
reissues (in slim case dvd boxes) re-issuing long unseen rarities from the
British ‘50s and ‘60s. This is another of those Anna Neagle-Herbert Wilcox
productions, featuring their singing star Frankie Vaughan, who was popular at
the time (he made 4 films for the Wilcox’s before heading to Hollywood
and Marilyn Monroe in LET’S MAKE LOVE, as per Frankie Vaughan label). This 1958
piece of nonsense finds him and Jeremy Spenser as fishermen brothers in Gibraltar,
who are not too successful at making money from the fishing or the tourists.
Pretty Jackie (later Jocelyn) Lane (who went on to star with Elvis in TICKLE
ME) pouts as Pepita, the local beauty who loves Carmello (Vaughan) but while he
tries to be successful in London,
she and his brother Mario (Spenser) get entangled … Spencer, that forgotten
actor (he was the young prince in THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL, as well as in
SUMMERTIME, ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE, FERRY TO HONG KONG and others) comes
across like a British Sal Mineo here.
Frankie finds it tough in London
as he tries being a waiter, and busks to cinema queues before working in a
fairground. Enter rich girl Jean Dawney with her society friends and wealthy
father, Wilfrid Hyde Whyte …. Jean promptly falls for Carmello but will he
choose her or go back to Pepita and where does Mario fit in? This is amusing
tosh, like a woman’s magazine story of the
time, but the ending is surprisingly nice. It’s a lot of fun, like Wilcox’s
previous with Vaughan: THESE
DANGEROUS YEARS. Frankie went on to star with Dame Anna in the 1959 THE LADY IS
A SQUARE.
ALIVE AND KICKING, 1958. Why does IMDB persist in listing
this as a 1964 title? – it was released
in 1958, I knew I saw it then when a kid, and now the new dvd cover confirms it
was released in December 1958 (when Richard Harris was doing small parts in
Irish-based movies like this – by 1964 he was A Star working with Antonioni in
Italy and Peckinpah in USA, and being difficult with both). Well, whatever,
this remains a blissful British comedy full of great players.
Dora, Rosie and Mabel, room mates at a home for elderly
ladies, discover they are to be split up and placed in other homes. Dismayed by
the prospect of separation, they decide to run away together. Heading for a
remote island off the Irish coast where it seems they can live without the fear
of being parted, the three fugitives quickly turn the situation to their
advantage.
Dame Sybil Thorndike is in her element here, ably assisted
by Kathleen Harrison and Estelle Winwood. It is hilarious how they make their
escape and end up running things at that Irish island, where they create a
cottage industry of knitting Aran sweaters which are sold in London.
They also have three ideal little cottages side by side, which are actally
owned by visiting American Stanley Holloway, who conveniently vanishes, and the
locals include Marjorie Rhodes and Liam Redmond as well as Harris. Good to see
it on a proper dvd at last – a treat for anyone who loves British comedies of
the ‘50s with all those eccentric players. Also directed by Cyril Frankel.
I now see Tommy Steele’s 1958 THE DUKE WORE JEANS and TOMMY THE
TOREADOR are on dvd, along with Max Bygraves' CHARLIE MOON, BOBBIKINS and SPARE THE ROD, but maybe that’s a step too far, despite my affection of
50s British movies