''The Lavender Hill Mob'' is a 1951

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...

from

Ealing Studios Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in West London. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on the site ever s ...

, written by

T. E. B. Clarke Thomas Ernest Bennett "Tibby" Clarke, OBE (7 June 1907 – 11 February 1989) was a film screenwriter who wrote several of the Ealing Studios comedies. Clarke's scripts always feature careful logical development from a slightly absurd premise ...

, directed by

Charles Crichton Charles Ainslie Crichton (6 August 1910 – 14 September 1999) was an English film director and editor. Born in Wallasey, Cheshire, he became best known for directing many comedies produced at Ealing Studios and had a 40-year career ...

, starring

Alec Guinness Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including ''Kind Hearts and Coronets'' (194 ...

and

Stanley Holloway Stanley Augustus Holloway (1 October 1890 – 30 January 1982) was an English actor, comedian, singer and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles Stanley Holloway on stage and screen, on stage and screen, especially t ...

and featuring

Sid James Sidney James (born Solomon Joel Cohen; 8 May 1913 – 26 April 1976) was a British actor and comedian whose career encompassed radio, television, stage and screen. He was best known for numerous roles in the Carry On film series. Born to a mid ...

and

Alfie Bass Alfie Bass (born Abraham Basalinsky, 10 April 1916 – 16 July 1987) was an English actor. He was born in Bethnal Green, London, the youngest in a Jewish family with ten children; his parents had left Russia many years before he was born. He a ...

. The title refers to

Lavender Hill The A3036 is an A roads in Great Britain, A road in London, England, running from Waterloo, London, Waterloo to Wandsworth. Route It starts at the southern tip of the County Hall roundabout where the A302 road, A302 Westminster Bridge, York ...

, a street in

Battersea Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park. History Batter ...

, a district in

London SW11 The SW (South Western) postcode area, also known as the London SW postcode area, is a group of 20 postcode districts within the London post town in England. The area comprises the South Western operational district (covering the subdivisions of ...

, near to Clapham Junction railway station. The

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

ranked ''The Lavender Hill Mob'' the 17th greatest British film of all time. The original film was digitally restored and re-released to UK cinemas on 29 July 2011 to celebrate its 60th anniversary. It is one of fifteen films listed in the category "Art" on the Vatican film list.

Plot

Henry Holland lives the life of luxury in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

, and spends an evening dining out with a British visitor. During their meal, he narrates a story concerning how he changed his life by instigating an intricate gold bullion robbery. One year ago, Holland served as an unambitious London bank clerk, who for twenty years was in charge of gold bullion deliveries. Although dedicated to his job due to his reputation for fussing over details, he had begun to devise a scheme to steal a consignment of gold bullion. However, his plan had a flaw - selling it on the

black market A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the se ...

in Britain was too risky, and he was at a loss as to how to smuggle it abroad. One evening at his boarding house in

, he meets with artist Alfred Pendlebury, who has taken up lodgings in the building. A conversation with him leads him to discover that Pendlebury owns a

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

that makes presents and souvenirs that are sold in holiday destinations, one of which is

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. Realizing that Pendlebury is the key to his plan's success, Holland explains his scheme to the artist who agrees to help. When the clerk discovers he is due to be transferred to another bank department, the pair quickly move their plan into action, recruiting the aid of petty thieves, Lackery Wood and Shorty Fisher. On the day of the robbery, Wood and Fisher hijack the bullion van and switch the gold to one of Pendlebury's works van. Holland then assumes the role of an unfortunate victim who is hailed as a hero for raising the alarm, after nearly drowning by accident. As his associates melt down the gold bullion and recast it as

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "'' ...

paperweights to be exported abroad, Holland gives false statements and misleading clues to the police, led by Inspector Farrow. The group soon toast to their success, despite Wood and Fisher being unable to travel to Paris to collect their share in person, entrusting the other two to provide it. The day after their last consignment of stolen gold is sent to Paris, Holland and Pendlebury head to France to retrieve them from a souvenir kiosk atop the Eiffel Tower supplied by Pendlebury's firm. However, the pair are horrified when they find one of the boxes containing the golden paperweights has been opened by mistake due to a language mix-up. Discovering six have been sold to a group of English schoolgirls, the pair make a wild chase to pursue after them back to Britain. Both manage to track down the schoolgirls, but only manage to get back five of the paperweights. The girl holding the sixth one refuses, intending to deliver it to a policeman she is friends with. Holland and Pendlebury pursue after the girl, and watch in horror as it is brought to an exhibition of police history and methods at

Hendon Police College Hendon Police College is the principal training centre for London's Metropolitan Police. Founded with the official name of the Metropolitan Police College, the college has officially been known as the Peel Centre since 1974, although its origi ...

. Holland's worst fears come true when Farrow, having begun to realize the truth, spots the paperweight and orders a chemical test on it. Left with no choice, Holland snatches it, and he and Pendlebury make their escape in a stolen police car. A confusing pursuit begins across London, as Holland uses the car's radio to feed false, misleading information to the officers pursuing the pair. However, both find themselves forced to offer a passing police officer a lift on the car's footplate, causing them to be eventually discovered. As Pendlebury becomes trapped, Holland escapes with the six golden paperweights, which leave him with a tidy sum to enjoy a new life. After finishing his tale to his visitor back in the present day, Holland admits that the money is now all gone. As the pair prepare to leave, the visitor is revealed as a police officer, and that Holland has been finally arrested for his crime as the story concludes.

Cast

;Cast notes *

Audrey Hepburn Audrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Recognised as both a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars, t ...

makes an early film appearance in a small role as Chiquita near the start of the film. Robert Shaw also made his first film appearance, playing a police laboratory technician towards the end of the film. English actress

Patricia Garwood Patricia Garwood (28 January 1941 – 24 February 2019) was an English television, film and stage actress who first appeared on film aged 9 in ''The Lavender Hill Mob'' and is best known as playing Beryl Crabtree in five series of the BBC situat ...

made her first film appearance in this movie at the age of nine.

Production

Screenwriter Clarke is said to have come up with the idea of a clerk robbing his own bank while doing research for the film '' Pool of London'' (1951), a crime thriller surrounding a jewel theft. He consulted the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...

on the project and it set up a special committee to advise on how best the robbery could take place.''

The Aurum Film Encyclopedia ''The Aurum Film Encyclopedia'' is a multi-volume reference work on cinema, published in the UK by Aurum Press and edited by Phil Hardy. The first volume, devoted to western films, appeared in 1983, with eight subsequent volumes announced at tha ...

– The Gangster Film'', edited by

Phil Hardy Philip Hardy (born 9 April 1973) is an English-born former Ireland under-21 footballer who played as a left-back. With Welsh club Wrexham from 1990 to 2001, he played more than 450 games under manager Brian Flynn. He was named on the PFA ...

, Aurum Press, 1998''

Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

'' – ''Special Collectors' Edition – The Greatest Crime Movies Ever'', published in 2001 Extensive location filming was made in both London and Paris. The scenes show a London still marked by bomb sites from the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. ;London, England, UK * Bank Underground Station *

Threadneedle Street Threadneedle Street is a street in the City of London, England, between Bishopsgate at its northeast end and Bank junction in the southwest. It is one of nine streets that converge at Bank. It lies in the ward of Cornhill. History The stree ...

*Bramley Arms Pub, Bramley Road,

Notting Hill Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road M ...

(finale: end of the chase) *

Cheapside Cheapside is a street in the City of London, the historic and modern financial centre of London, which forms part of the A40 London to Fishguard road. It links St. Martin's Le Grand with Poultry. Near its eastern end at Bank junction, where ...

*Carlton Road,

Ealing Ealing () is a district in West London, England, west of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Ealing. Ealing is the administrative centre of the borough and is identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Ealing was histor ...

(zebra crossing on way to police exhibition) *

Gunnersbury Park Gunnersbury Park is a park in the London Borough of Hounslow between Acton, Brentford, Chiswick and Ealing, West London, England. Purchased for the nation from the Rothschild family, it was opened to the public by Neville Chamberlain, then ...

(police exhibition) * Queen Victoria Street,

Blackfriars Blackfriars, derived from Black Friars, a common name for the Dominican Order of friars, may refer to: England * Blackfriars, Bristol, a former priory in Bristol * Blackfriars, Canterbury, a former monastery in Kent * Blackfriars, Gloucester, a f ...

(scene of bullion robbery) *

RAF Northolt ("Ready to carry or to fight") , pushpin_map = Greater London , pushpin_label = RAF Northolt , pushpin_map_caption = Shown within Greater London , coordinates = , type = Royal Air Force station , code = , site_area = , height = , owners ...

Ruislip Ruislip ( ) is an area in the London Borough of Hillingdon in West London, and in the historic county of Middlesex. Ruislip lies west-north-west of Charing Cross, London. The manor of Ruislip appears in the Domesday Book, and some of the ear ...

(airport) ;Paris, France *

River Seine ) , mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur , mouth_coordinates = , mouth_elevation = , progression = , river_system = Seine basin , basin_size = , tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle , tributarie ...

The scene where Holland and Pendlebury run down the Eiffel Tower's spiral staircase and become increasingly dizzy and erratic, as does the camera work, presages

James Stewart James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American actor and military pilot. Known for his distinctive drawl and everyman screen persona, Stewart's film career spanned 80 films from 1935 to 1991. With the strong morality h ...

's condition in

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...

's ''

Vertigo Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties w ...

'', made seven years later. A film montage of sensational newspaper headlines marks the crime as taking place in August 1950, whilst posters for the Hendon exhibition state that it marks the centenary of the death of

Sir Robert Peel Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835 and 1841–1846) simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer ...

, which occurred on 2 July 1850. In the car chase scene at the end of the film, an officer uses a

police box A police box is a public telephone kiosk or callbox for the use of members of the police, or for members of the public to contact the police. It was used in the United Kingdom throughout the 20th century from the early 1920s. Unlike an ordinar ...

to report seeing a police car being driven by a man in a top hat. In fact, the driver is a modern-day police officer from the exhibition wearing the uniform of the police as originally set up in 1829 by Peel, known as "Bobbies" or "Peelers" after him.

Reception

''The Lavender Hill Mob'' had its charity world premiere at the Marble Arch Odeon cinema in London on 28 June 1951. The film was popular at the British box office. It had rentals of $580,000 at the U.S. box office.

Awards and honours

The film won the

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay. Guinness was nominated for the award of Best Actor in a Leading Role. The film also won the

BAFTA Award for Best British Film The BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film is given annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts presented at the British Academy Film Awards. The award was first given at the 1st British Academy Film Awards, first recognising the ...

Stage adaptation

A stage adaptation of the film written by

Phil Porter Phil Porter (born 1977) is a British playwright, librettist and television writer. He is a graduate of the University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery18 ...

and directed by

Jeremy Sams Jeremy Sams (born 12 January 1957) is a British theatre director, writer, translator, orchestrator, musical director, film composer, and lyricist. Early life and education Sams is the son of the late Shakespearean scholar and musicologist Eri ...

opened in October 2022 at the

Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham Everyman Theatre is a theatre based in Regent Street, Cheltenham. There are two auditoria in the building - the 675 seat main auditorium and the 60 seat Studio Theatre, originally named The Ralph Richardson Studio after Ralph Richardson. History ...

before touring the UK, starring

Miles Jupp Miles Hugh Barrett Jupp (born 8 September 1979) is an English actor, singer, and comedian. He began his career as a stand-up comedian before playing the role of the inventor Archie in the children's television series ''Balamory''. He also played ...

as Henry Holland and Justin Edwards as Alfred Pendlebury.

References

;Notes ;Bibliography *Vermilye, Jerry. ''The Great British Films''. Citadel Press, 1978. pp. 147–149

External links

* * *
''The Lavender Hill Mob'' review at Old Movies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lavender Hill Mob, The 1951 films 1950s heist films Cultural depictions of Metropolitan Police officers Best British Film BAFTA Award winners British black-and-white films British crime comedy films British heist films Ealing Studios films Films scored by Georges Auric Films about bank robbery Films directed by Charles Crichton Films produced by Michael Balcon Films set in London Films set in Paris Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award 1950s French-language films Portuguese-language films Films with screenplays by T. E. B. Clarke 1950s crime comedy films 1951 comedy films Eiffel Tower in fiction 1950s English-language films 1950s British films