4 British classics ....

As mentioned we moved house back in May, downsizing to an apartment 10 floors up, with great views. So we have been re-sorting and getting settled ok. A box of dvds though seems to have gone astray, maybe thrown out by mistake ..... I have had to re-buy several I had to have, but at least they are very cheap now. 

There were 4 essential British classics I had to have back:

THE BLUE LAMP - the 1949 thriller with a young Dirk Bogarde in his break-out role as the spiv with a gun in grim postwar London - its still terrific now, with great location filming. This is the one where PC Dixon of Dock Green (Jack Warner) gets shot by Dirk, but was later resurrected for that long-running TV series, which I remember seeing when new in London in the '60s.

POOL OF LONDON - a museum piece from 1951 showing the busy docks of London around London Bridge and surrounding bombsites after the war - its all different now of course with the new City Hall by London Bridge, ships can't moor there any more. A sterling British cast of the time headed by Bonar Colleano and Earl Cameron  as sailors on leave getting involved with crime and robbery, and there's that early inter-racial romance ....

SAPPHIRE - a fascinating re-view now from 1959, with the murder of that girl whose body is found on Hampstead Heath, as we follow detectives Nigel Patrick and Michael Craig as they discover that the girl, Sapphire, was passing for white - we follow the investigation through the London night clubs and to that ordindary suburban family. Yvonne Mitchell is marvellous as ever here. Those gals passing for white just can't resist those bongo drums, as detective Michael Craig realises in that seedy Notting Hill clip-joint ....

VICTIM - London in 1961 with those homosexuals being blackmailed, as we see all sections of society from titled toffs to grubby bedsits, taking in the famous Salisbury (gay then) pub, and the bookshops around Charing Cross Road, as barrister Melville Farr (Bogarde again) determines to find the blackmailers who have caused the death of the young man (Peter McEnery) he had been seeing, to the consteration of his wife Sylvia Syms, who does not understand ....

It was only after ordering them I realised all four are of course directed by Basil Dearden (killed in a car crash in 1971 aged 60) - one of the great directors of British films, but not as lauded as the Schlesingers, Loseys or Richardsons were. 

Other British classics of that post-war era, which I like a lot, and are reviewed here, at British/London  labels include IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, HOLIDAY CAMP (both 1947), and  DANCE HALL from 1950. The early '50s also provided those enjoyable entertainments like TURN THE KEY SOFTLY, THE WEAK AND THE WICKED, THE GOOD DIE YOUNG, IT STARTED IN PARADISE (with Kay Kendall in a small role before hits like SIMON AND LAURA). Then there's those enjoyable Rank romps like AN ALLIGATOR NAMED DAISY, THE SPANISH GARDENER, CAMPBELL'S KINGDOM, DANGEROUS EXILE, PASSPORT TO SHAME and more, keeping the likes of Dirk Bogarde, Glynis Johns, Joan Collns, Yvonne Mitchell, Stanley Baker Michael Craig, Laurence Harvey, Diana Dors, Belinda Lee busy ...
So British cinema in the 1950s was very productive too, the Forties may have been the golden era of David Lean, Michael Powell, Carol Reed, Anthony Asquith, and the Sixties to early Seventies saw the new crowd of Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger, Joseph Losey, Richard Lester, Clive Donner etc. before the Trash merchants took over. 
The Fifties also saw that British War Era as they re-fought World War II keeping Dirk in uniform, along with Richard Todd, Kenneth More, John Mills, Jack Hawkins, Peter Finch, Stanley Baker, Michael Redgrave etc: THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM, THE CRUEL SEA, SEA OF SAND, DUNKIRK, THE DAM BUSTERS, REACH FOR THE SKY, THE MALTA STORY, APPOINTMENT IN LONDON, THEY WHO DARE, ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT, BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE, YANGSTE INCIDENT etc. 

1957 Royal Film Perf.

Another Royal Film Performance - this time the 1957 one. We covered the 1966 one recently (Showpeople label). This is another of those Pathe Newsreels now on YouTube ..... lots of happy browsing there!

This time the film is that 1957 favourite of mine, Cukor's LES GIRLS, but none of the stars are featured in the newsreel or in the Royal line-up. Surely Kay Kendall was there with maybe Mitzi and Taina and surely Gene Kelly would be there? Kay was delayed in America doing some TV shows ...

But we do have Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield (very demure here - unlike, also that year when Sophia arrived in Hollywood and there was reception for her at Romanoffs when Jayne who was not invited gatecrashed and bent over Sophia showing her very low cut dress .... which caused a sensation at the time, but did not do Jayne much good, as her studio (whom Sophia was doing BOY ON A DOLPHIN for) took a dim view of her antics and it really spelled the end of Mansfield's era in American films, as the rest of her films were made in Europe ...).

Also on hand here, are favourites like Michael Craig and Yvonne Mitchell, our recent re-discovery Anne Heywood, and Royal show regulars Kenneth More and Jack Hawkins, plus William Holden and Cecil B De Mille.

There are plenty other Royal Performances available on YouTube.

Coming up here: a Euro-feast, with about 10 Romy Schneider titles (LA CALIFFA, A SIMPLE STORY, VIEUX FUSIL, FANTASMA D'AMORE from 1981 with Marcello Mastroianni (finally a sub-titled print), and MONPTI from 1957 with Horst Buchholz, along with MADO, A WOMAN AT HER WINDOW, THE LADY BANKER, LOVE IN THE RAIN and more, 
plus a few Catherine Deneuve: APRES LUI, LE VOLEURS, MY FAVOURITE SEASON, HOTEL AMERICA. Then there's Jayne Mansfield's TOO HOT TO HANDLE ! 
plus more Jean Sorel, Belinda Lee, and finally a sub-titled print of Delon & Belmondo's BORSALINO from 1970, and Gabin and Signoret in LE CHAT ! Then there's 2 Tati's: PLAYTIME and TRAFFIC, and all those HAMLETs of stage and screen. How I spoil you.

A British early '50s double-feature ...

Turn The Key Softly (1953) + The Weak And The Wicked (1954).

After Italian and American early '50s dramas, as below, here's a couple of British ones:

TURN THE KEY SOFTLY: Three women of very different backgrounds leave Holloway prison on the same morning in this 1950s drama. Monica Marsden (Yvonne Mitchell) is a well bred young woman who served time for a crime that her treacherous boyfriend (Terence Morgan) had committed,. Stella Jarvis (Joan Collins) is a beautiful working class girl whose easy virtue led to her incarceration while Mrs Quilliam (Kathleen Harrison) is a shoplifter who is old enough to know better. Over the course of the next 24 hours, each faces a struggle with herself to avoid a quick return to her criminal ways. David still exerts a powerful hold over Monica, Stella is drawn back to her old haunts and their promise of maximum financial gain for least endeavour, Mrs Quilliam has no money but somehow has to provide for herself and her Johnny. Will the women succeed in resisting temptation or will they find themselves back behind bars?

 
TURN THE KEY SOFTLY, 1953, a treat for devotees of British cinema of the ‘50s, and somehow one that eluded me - well I was too young to see it initially. Coming in at a neat 76 minutes, this is a fascinating social document now as we look at early ‘50s London – there is extensive shooting around Piccadilly Circus as well as more working class locations, like that area where Thora Hird has that boarding house where Mrs Quilliam (Kathleen Harrison, downtrodden as usual) returns after her stint in prison for shoplifting. The film is a mix of humour and pathos as it follows 3 women on their first day out of prison. Well bred society girl Yvonne Mitchell took the rap for her no-good heel boyfriend Terence Morgan, who has new plans for her now. 
Young Joan Collins is the glamorous Stella, easily swayed by money and bright shiny objects like jewellery – can she stay on the straight and narrow with her bus conductor boyfriend in Canonbury (an outer suburb of London) or will she be like those wised-up party girls she meets? Jack Lee’s film follows the predictable pattern, but it is all perfectly done, as the trio meet that evening for dinner at a good restaurant, a treat by Mitchell. Fascinating too seeing them smoking on those old underground carriages. Yvonne Mitchell – that delicate, intelligent actress who could convey so much with just a look, and is marvellous as ever here, and Joan Collins was obviously going places - and we just know what is going to happen with Kathleen Harrison and her beloved Johnny, yes he is a dog ….. Another fascinating London film too.

THE WEAK AND THE WICKED. Frank "women in prison" story that sympathetically tracks several inmates through their imprisonment and subsequent return to society. Some are successfully rehabilitated; some are not.

TURN THE KEY SOFTLY starts with women leaving prison, J. Lee Thompson’s 1954 drama starts with another society dame, Glynis Johns, being sent to prison – framed for not paying her gambling debts. Again we follow the procedure of life inside. Glynis makes pals with Diana Dors, playing Betty Brown, another good-time girl, who really is a good girl.
Amusement is provided by the teaming of Sybil Thorndike and Athene Seyler as a pair of battling old dears, and a young Rachel Roberts in traditional feisty mode. Dependable John Gregson is the guy outside … and humorous subplots involve Sid James and his shoplifting family. It is all rather genteel and polite but none the less entertaining. Thompson’s 1955 YIELD TO THE NIGHT (with Dors and Yvonne Mitchell again) would be a more hard-hitting look at prison and punishment. Ill-fated Simone Silva (who committed suicide) is in both films, uncredited in TURN THE KEY SOFTLY though she has several scenes with Joan Collins, as the West End girl luring Joan back ....

Another good one is THE GOOD DIE YOUNG, Lewis Gilbert's thriller from 1954 importing Americans John Ireland, Richard Basehart and Gloria Graham to this tale of a robbery gone wrong, as led by Laurence Harvey with Stanley Baker and Margaret Leighton and Joan Collins again, before she left for Hollywood. 
Later British '50s thrillers include VIOLENT PLAYGROUND, NO TREES IN THE STREET, HELL DRIVERS, HELL IS A CITY, Losey's BLIND DATE and THE CRIMINAL (Stanley Baker label), PAYROLL and others yet to be reviewed.

Well, I think thats enough early '50s social realism for now, lets head off to the '70s rock scene in California next ....

Wilde at heart

• Oscar goes touring: As per the report below, the Wilde play is now going on tour after its sell-out run in London. It should prove popular in Oscar's hometown Dublin, at the Gaiety Theatre for a week in October, followed by a week each at Bath, Brighton, Cambridge, Richmond - pity its not heading north - a friend in Liverpool would have liked to have caught it.... 

To the perfectly situated and sized Hampstead Theatre at Swiss Cottage, in London, for the new production of David Hare's play about Oscar Wilde THE JUDAS KISS - a matinee performance for this sold-out revival. Going to the theatre in the afternoon is rather nice, particularly when the modern theatre has cafe and bar facilities and pleasant outdoor seating areas, and is not so big that one is way back in the stalls - plus one is home by teatime without having to give up an evening and getting back late! Ideal. 

I was intrigued to see this production as I also saw the original 1998 one with Liam Neeson as Oscar and Tom Hollander as Lord Alfred Douglas, or Bosie - ably played here by Freddie Fox, actor son of Edward. Rupert Everett commands the stage as Oscar and captures that florid quality perfectly from the moment he sweeps in in Act One to spending most of Act Two sitting in a chair. The rest of the cast are perfect too, and are kept quite busy on stage as well as dressing and undressing - in fact Tom Colley (below, left) as Bosie's Italian friend is naked practically throughout.

Ben Hardy, that other young actor (now in EASTENDERS) is also naked at the start, as the young waiter, which certainly makes the audience sit up! Rupert, so amusing the other week in a re-run of MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING captures Wilde at these 2 key moments dealt with in the play. We first see him holed up at the Cadogan Hotel in 1895 before being arrested, as everyone tries to persuase him to flee to Europe, and the thoroughly unpleasant Bosie goes into drama queen mode.  Act 2 is 2 years later in Italy in 1897 as the ruined - both his health and financially, after 2 years hard labour in jail - Wilde contemplates his downfall and realises how Bosie has betrayed him, as he will not give up his family allowance and prepares to leave Wilde once again. Oscar achieves pure pathos here. Below: Freddie as Bosie with Tom Colley as the Italian.

Wilde of course lived on to November 1900 when he died aged 46 - his major works (apart from "De Profundis" were completed by the time he was 40). Bosie lived on to be 74 and died in 1945 - a bitter Narcissus indeed. If only Oscar too could have lived to his seventies, he would have been a star of radio and film and been rehabilitated as the wit and commentator he was and he would have been earning royalties again. His great tomb with its "Modernist Angel” sculpture (right) by Jacob Epstein has been cleaned and restored to its former glory at Pere Lechaise cemetry in Paris (I have been to it twice) and is that famous cemetry's most visited resting place, along with Jim Morrison's... 

Liam & Tom in 1998

The roles of Wilde and Douglas here are hugh with lots of dialogue - I felt for the actors having to do it all again that evening ... it is an engrossing thought-provoking play. Oscar was so much more than the grandiloquent poseur he is often remembered as. His ideas and philosophy resonate today as strongly as they ever did and his work has stood the test of time, living on as so much more than mere entertainment. Over a century after his death he remains one of the great Irish writers, a playwright of genius as well as a thinker and proponent of ideas who transformed his age. Hare's play shows him as a man in the grip of a passion he could not resist, who could not see the amoral and unworthy wastrel that was his nemesis, and so he brings disaster on himself. One can see too that Oscar could not be discreet as others (Robbie, the hotel staff here including that enterprising young waiter played by Ben Hardy) but had to immolate himself on the alter of his grand passion. Hare's rounded portrait of Wilde captures all this expertly.

The story of his wife Constance too is utterly tragic (as shown in that excellent well-received recent biography on her); she died 2 years before Oscar - I remember reading in one of the Wilde books how he visited her grave (in Genoa) and pondered at the sadness and waste of it all. He was then that haunted impoverished (but hopefully happy) outcast in Paris in 1900 as the new century (which would surely have embraced him) began. Instead he, as the legend goes, turned to the wall of that Paris hotel room with the hideous wall-paper and said "one of us has to go". Of his two sons - he was a devoted father too - one of them died in the First World War. We will always though have the plays, the novel, the fairy tales, the aphorisms, the wit that so entranced his audiences and friends like Lily Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt and the rest. The story of Oscar: the talent, the rise and fall - as per the plethora of books about him and that era [the reckless "feasting with panthers", his indiscretions at London hotels and assignations with youths like Alfonso Conway in Worthing, which didn't go down well in court] will continue to fascinate - and what great actress doesn't want to have a go at Lady Bracknell or Miss Prism or Mrs Cheveley?

Other Wildes: I like Peter Finch's in the 1960 film - which I will be returning to before too long. The Robert Morley one, also 1960, was just not in the same league. The 1997 Stephen Fry one was also screened again recently and was of course more explicit than they could have been in 1960, with Fry rather lightweight I thought, but Jude Law a perfect Bosie and a great supporting cast. Peter Egan was an amusing Oscar too in the '70s series on Lily Langtry. The BBC boxset on Wilde productions is well worth discovering too with perfect 1970s productions of the plays (casts include Gielguld, Margaret Leighton, Jeremy Brett) and a documentary on the man himself. Rupert Everett is a great Oscar too and deserves to be remembered come theatre awards season..

Summer re-runs: Woman in a dressing gown

My pal Stan liked this one. I mentioned it last week when writing about BITTER HARVEST (below) as it too was written by Ted Willis, that well-known '50s writer of TV dramas, and now here it is back in selected cinemas. Well directed by J.Lee Thompson in 1957 it is a solid drama about an untidy woman, forever in that dressing gown, letting the housework getting on top of her, annoying her rising executive husband Anthony Quayle, whose modern go-getting secretary, that bitchy Sylvia Syms, wants him for herself ..... as it focuses on that emerging rising class of middle-management in those new office blocks. Can poor Yvonne Mitchell hang on to her man and get over her depression and clean up her house? Great cast of course and that downbeat '50s milieu anticipates the Kitchen Sink era to follow ... Yvonne Mitchell (who was also a writer) was wonderful in these roles (YIELD TO THE NIGHT, THE DIVIDED HEART, TIGER BAY, CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS, SAPPHIRE and her marvellous Constance opposite Peter Finch in the 1960 TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE (Finch, Mitchell labels) and a great '73 BBC series of Colette's CHERI. She died in 1979 (aged 63) after playing Glenda Jackson's maid in THE INCREDIBLE SARAH - I must dig that one out, it would be a hilarious summer treat !

More British '50s rare pleasures...

Some more eclectic British films of the ‘50s before we zoom off to the ‘60s (and lots more ‘People We Like’)!

AN ALLIGATOR NAMED DAISY, a delicious 1955 Rank comedy starring Donald Sinden and Jeannie Carson, and Stephen Boyd [the essence of '50s beefcake here] teamed with Diana Dors – both of them going places. Sinden has to look after the alligator and chaos ensues. [This was a childhood favourite of mine and I bought the Donald Sinden box set purely for this still enjoyable comedy..]. James Robertson Justice, Richard Wattis, and - wonderfully - Margaret Rutherford (in one scene as a pet shop owner who can talk to the alligator) are all blissfully funny. Another by J Lee Thompson!

HOW TO MURDER A RICH UNCLE - a long-forgotten 1957 comedy, rather like a new Ealing production, featuring a ramshackle rich family now down on its luck, trying to bump off the rich uncle of the title, but killing each other insead. Its quirky and funny, directed by and starring Nigel Patrick, with Wendy Hiller and dear Katie Johnson of THE LADYKILLERS. Charles Coburn is the wealthy uncle whose relatives are dropping like flies around him...

WOMAN IN A DRESSING GOWN – one of several here featuring Yvonne Mitchell, this 1957 melodrama by Ted Willis and directed by the astonishingly versatile J Lee Thompson was a hit at the time. Mitchell is the slovenly wife, forever in that dressing gown, whose middle management husband Anthony Quayle is being lured away by bright young thing Sylvia Syms. It captures the mood of the late ‘50s with those modern new offices and the rising middle class. Carole Lesley, a starlet of the time, also features. Yvonne as usual makes it very compelling.

SAPPHIRE. Hardly ever seen now, this is a vivid childhood memory. Basil Dearden’s 1959 thriller is very colourful as it depicts late ‘50s Britain and the racial tensions of the time, with the arrival of those immigrants from Jamaica and Trinidad who were encouraged to move to England and better themselves, but were usually working on buses and trains. Sapphire is the girl found murdered on Hampstead Heath as detectives Nigel Patrick (dependable as ever) and Michael Craig look for clues. Yvonne Mitchell scores as the sister of Sapphire’s boyfriend, as it is revealed that the murdered girl was a half-caste who was passing as white. As in Dearden’s following VICTIM, attitudes are revealed among the suspects and its intriguingly worked out. A vivid scene set in a nightclub shows Craig’s reaction while watching a blond girl absorbed in the music as the owner tells the police that the girls passing for white always give themselves away when they hear that funky beat…. FLAME IN THE STREETS in 1961 is another set in this era as John Mills’ daughter (Sylvia Syms again) wants to marry an ordinary black man (not a Sidney Poitier superhero, as in Kramer's 1967 film) thus testing his liberal attitudes, while his wife, splendid Brenda de Banzie, is violently opposed to the union. This is also by Ted Willis.

THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE is a fascinating and intelligent working of the Wilde story and for a movie made in 1960 about as frank as it could be. Peter Finch was a magnificent Wilde capturing the facets of the writer knowingly facing his destiny, and winning a BAFTA award. Yvonne Mitchell was the perfect Constance, and John Fraser as petulant a Bosie as Jude Law in the 90s Stephen Fry film. There was another version of the Wilde story made at the same time in 1960 by Gregory Ratoff with Robert Morley (playing Wilde as Robert Morley), but the Finch version directed by Ken Hughes won hands down, with handsome period detail and in scope and colour. James Mason and Nigel Patrick shone as opposing barristers and Lionel Jeffries was a malevolent if not insane Marquis of Queensbury. The film still holds up perfectly today. The Stephen Fry version may have been franker in 1997 but this one is just as good if not better and more nuanced.
Marketing Oscar in 1960: Click image to enlarge

The other version had the tagline: "Theirs was a relationship that the world could not, would not tolerate"!

CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS in 1960 from the Rank Organisation remains a superior tearjerker, where Lilli Palmer is the very elegant Mother Superior of a convent in Italy where the nuns save Jewish children from the Germans. Add in young Sylvia Syms, Yvonne Mitchell as the crotchety nun, David Kossoff as a rabbi and Albert Lieven and Peter Arne as dastardly Germans, plus Roland Lewis as a partisan. Experty put together by Ralph Thomas. Lilli is perfect as head nun squaring up to those Nazis.

NORTH WEST FRONTIER is a terrific adventure movie in scope and colour by J Lee Thompson in 1959 and it remains a television staple to this day as its screened at least once a year here in the UK. Thompson also made TIGER BAY that year as well as other ‘50s sterling titles like NO TREES IN THE STREET, YIELD TO THE NIGHT, THE WEAK AND WICKED, ICE COLD IN ALEX before going on to the likes of THE GUNS OF NAVARONE and CAPE FEAR. Here we are in India during the Victorian Raj era, Kenneth More has to guide a train through bandit country while protecting the young Prince whom a lot of people, including someone on the train, want to see dead. Lauren Bacall is the governess, Herbert Lom a shady character and Wilfrid Hyde White one of these decent English chaps. Its great fun to watch anytime.

UPSTAIRS AND DOWNSTAIRS – a very typical Rank Organisation comedy from 1960, with fascinating décor to see now, at the dawn of the new ’60s era. Michael Craig and Anne Heywood are the young marrieds who simply must have a domestic help to do their chores and look after their house. Their trials and tribulations make up the plot as they cope with bank robbers, a drunk Joan Hickson, Welsh girl Blodwyn (a hilarious young Joan Sims) who has never left Wales – Craig has a hilarious scene on a train with her – and Claudia Cardinale as a continental sexpot with men calling to the house at all times [5 years later Craig would be supporting Cardinale in Visconti’s SANDRA, of which more later]. French Mylene Demongeot plays the Swedish girl and its all jolly good fun and so typical of the era, also by Ralph Thomas.