Rooney is back, and Muriel has got him ...

After all that serious drama - see posts below - time for a spot of whimsical Irish comedy, courtesy of the Rank Organisation in 1958. I saw this as a kid and it never turned up again, but is now a cheap dvd. Worth every penny for me!

ROONEY. Another 50s treat now as we join Dublin dustman John Gregson as the Rooney of the title, a happy go lucky chap, with his adorable dog, who keeps having to change his lodgings as his landladies get too amorous – the current one being Pauline Delany (right). He is also a talented hurley player (an Irish sport) so local businessman Liam Redmond gets him into the house of snooty Marie Kean (a delight as ever) with her pushy daughter June Thorburn and spinster relation Muriel Pavlow, and grand-father Barry Fitzgerald. 

Rooney’s dustman pals include Noel Purcell, Jack McGowran and Eddie Byrne (right) – so its quite an Irish contingent here. It moves along amiably to the predictable final kiss on Dublin’s halfpenny bridge, and even has a delirious theme tune warbled by Michael Holliday. Directed by George Pollock from a Catherine Cookson story. We loved it!  

John Gregson was another stalwart of British movies of the '50s - like Stanley Baker, Stephen Boyd, Laurence Harvey, he died too young in 1975 aged 55. He of course was the driver of GENEVIEVE in 1953, and in popular hits of the time like THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE, SEA OF SAND, THE CAPTAIN'S TABLE, he was the Padre in THE LONGEST DAY and played Inspector Gideon on TV. MIRACLE IN SOHO features him with our favourite, Belinda Lee, see label..

Muriel Pavlow, another Rank Organisation stalwart, is still going strong in her 90s, and was often cast against Dirk Bogarde (DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE), Kenneth More (REACH FOR THE SKY), Guinness (MALTA STORY), Finch, Sinden, Gregson etc. 

Barry Fitzgerald, Marie Kean, Muriel Pavlow, John Gregson, June Thurburn

Forgotten '50s British movies: Miracle in Soho

Plus a selection of Belinda Lee posters ...

MIRACLE IN SOHO, 1957, another colourful Rank Organisation drama is so rare now there is only one comment on it at IMDb. Produced by veteran Emeric Pressburger and directed by one Julian Amyes (later a prolific tv director), it also had a perfect theme song sung by '50s star Ronnie Hilton.

In London's colourful Soho Michael Morgan is working mending the road. Morgan operates a pneumatic drill with a road resurfacing crew. He also operates on the girls in whatever street he happens to be working on. When a job takes him to London's Soho he is soon up to his usual games, but starts to realise there is something special about Julie, who is preparing with her Italian family to emigrate to Canada

This is a very interesting look at mid-50s London. The clever set, if it is one, covers the street for 'St Anthony's Way', a regular Soho street with shops, restaurant, a church even, where our heroine fetchingly prays. She is Belinda Lee is one of her last movies for Rank before becoming that Peplum star in Italy, before her untimely death in 1961, aged 25 .... as per other posts on her here, Belinda Lee label. 
If one was casting the lothario who loves them and leaves them (young Billie Whitelaw was his last girl, at Moorgate - she accepts her fate, as he now moves on to Soho) then regular chap John Gregson would hardly top the list, but here he is, after romancing Diana Dors in VALUE FOR MONEY, and those hits like GENEVIEVE .... 

The colourful cast includes Rosalie Crutchley as Belinda's pragmatic sister, Cyril Cusack as the all-knowing postman, Brian Bedford, John Cairney, and Ian Bannen as the volatile brother. Like those other London dramas like IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, POOL OF LONDON, A KID FOR TWO FARTHINGS it shows the city in its '50s mode, and Soho in all its diversity, a post-war melting pot of races and religions, and which incorporates a great many minor characters and subplots and is all the more amusing for it. Belinda looks lovely here and has some nice moments. Here are some of her others we have reviewed here ...

I will have to get back to re-seeing her comedy THE BIG MONEY and that torrid romance NOR THE MOON BY NIGHT again soon too .... 

 
'50s glamour girl Belinda also starred in the French New Wave LES DRAGUEURS in 1959, and showed what an actress she was in the Loren/Mangano role in the Italian drama THE LONG NIGHT OF '43, as per my rave at Italian, Belinda labels, as well as her APHRODITE, MESSALINA and others, you could say she was the British Anita Ekberg ... ? She was amusing too with Marcello Mastroianni in the delightful GHOSTS OF ROME.

Next Forgotten '50s British movies: PASSPORT TO SHAME, another British "classic" with Diana Dors ... and the 1950 DANCE HALL with Di Dors, Petula Clark, Kay Kendall and more ... its delirious ! 

Next gay interest: The 1991 BBC production THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES.

3 very British treats

THE ASTONISHED HEART, 1950, written by Noel Coward who also scored the music and he stars too as the psychiatrist contentedly married to Barbara (Celia Johnson). Barbara meets her old school friend Leonora (Margaret Leighton) by chance and they become friends again. There is an initial coolness between the husband and Leonora but soon passions are raging beneath those stiff upper lip exteriors as they embark on an affair. The wife though does not seem to mind too much and even encourages the lovers to go away together. Is she waiting for it to run out of steam and he will return to her? I knew nothing about this 1950 rarity so the ending is a surprise. It is all redolent of that older age of film-making, easy to spoof now, with the upper-class accents, the high life in Mayfair (complete with butler and cook) as Coward and Leighton do the rounds of nightclubs and restaurants, ordering their stingers and trying the samba. The two ladies are of course splendid as ever (with Leighton, as gowned by Molyneux, the height of late 40s chic), but it is odd seeing Coward with his clipped vocal delivery and mandarin appearance as the clever man torn between two women [he was perfect though with Johnson in IN WHICH WE SERVE] … it seems Michael Redgrave was set to star initially. Coward’s pals Graham Payn and Joyce Carey are in support, and co-director is Terence Fisher who helmed those Hammer classics. A very intriguing oddity then - essential though not to know how it is going to end....

Much more conventional is THE HOLLY AND THE IVY from 1952. Adapted from a play and directed by George More O’Ferrell it is a “heartwarming tale of an English minister and his family reunited at Christmas time” so why isn’t it a Christmas perennial? Ralph Richardson is the rather bumbling minister but he hardly seems old enough to be the father of daughters Celia Johnson and Margaret Leighton (again) or son Denholm Elliott. Celia is the dutiful daughter who stays at home to look after him but she longs to leave and marry reliable John Gregson who has an offer of work abroad. Also returning home is Leighton as the wayward daughter in London whose life has gone wrong – she has taken to drink after the loss of her wartime lover and the death of her child. As son Denholm rails to the minister, he cannot be told the truth about them, but he turns out to be very human and understands perfectly as solutions are found to suit everyone. Add in two maiden aunts (one very bitter about losing her own chances of marriage by having to look after aged parents) and suave Hugh Williams and the stage is set for a nice drama played out with the snow falling on that perfectly quaint English village. I loved it.



Back to 1945 (the year I was born!) for THE SEVENTH VEIL, an enormous hit at the time and one can see why. It's a delirious melodrama, classily done, which pushes all the right buttons: lots of music, heightened emotions and great roles for James Mason and Ann Todd. Todd starts as a convincing 14 year old in pigtails, in thrall to her ward Nicholas (Mason with that cane…). She becomes a famous pianist but is always under the Svengali-like spell of her lame cousin/guardian and mentor until she attempts suicide by jumping off a bridge. Enter the doctor (Herbert Lom) who tries to unlock her secrets and her phobia about playing again. Lom discovers the severely shy young woman's repressed need for love, and her guardian's overbearing need to live his life's dream through her and her talent as a pianist. By the end her three suitors (the band-leader she wanted to elope with, before Nicholas whisked her off to Paris, and the painter who fell for her as he painted her, as well as the brooding Nicholas) are all waiting to see which she will choose – but it is not really a surprise. Lom, in a long and varied career, went on to play the psychiatrist in a successful tv series THE HUMAN JUNGLE.



Todd, with her odd Garbo quality, is fascinating as ever here, and no wonder Mason was soon on his way to Hollywood. Todd though remains virtually unknown of all the major British actresses of the ‘40s – was she too patrician or aloof for the moviegoers to take to their collective bosoms? Directed by Compton Bennett, with an Oscar-winning script by Muriel and Sydney Box.