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Philip Stainton
Philip Stainton (9 April 1908 – 1 August 1961) was an English actor. Stainton appeared in several Ealing comedies and major international movies. He specialized in playing friendly or exasperated uniformed policemen, but also appeared in other comic and straight roles in British and Australian productions. After beginning in repertory, in the postwar years he worked steadily in bit and featured parts in theatrical films; twice being directed by John Ford and once by John Huston when they shot on European or overseas locations. He first visited Australia as part of a touring company presenting Agatha Christie’s play '' Witness for the Prosecution''. Stainton and his actress wife immigrated to Australia in the late 1950s to appear in a series of live television plays as the medium was beginning in that country. From 1957 to 1959 he had the distinction to headline the first Australian sitcom ''Take That'' which was broadcast in Melbourne by HSV-7. He also adapted and pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ladykillers (1955 Film)
''The Ladykillers'' is a 1955 British black comedy crime film directed by Alexander Mackendrick for Ealing Studios. It stars Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Danny Green (actor), Danny Green, Jack Warner (actor), Jack Warner, and Katie Johnson (English actress), Katie Johnson as the old lady, Mrs. Wilberforce. William Rose (screenwriter), William Rose wrote the screenplay, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and won the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay. He claimed to have dreamt the entire film and merely had to remember the details when he awoke. Plot Mrs Wilberforce is a sweet and eccentric old widow who lives alone with her raucous parrots in a gradually subsiding lopsided house, built over the entrance to a railway tunnel in Kings Cross, London. With nothing to occupy her time and an active imagination, she is a frequent visitor to the local police station where she reports fanciful suspicions regardi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls Rebranding, rebranded their entertainment as Variety show, variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous ''Music Hall'' and subsequent, more respectable ''Variety show, Variety'' differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, #Speciality acts, speciality acts, and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall, featuring rousing songs and comic acts. Originating in Bar (establishment), saloon bars within public houses during the 1830s, music hall entertainment became increasingly popular with audiences. So much so, that during the 1850s some public houses were demolished, and specialised music hall theatres developed in their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Elusive Pimpernel (1950 Film)
''The Elusive Pimpernel'' is a 1950 British period adventure film by the British-based director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' (1905) by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. It was released in the United States under the title ''The Fighting Pimpernel''. The picture stars David Niven as Sir Percy Blakeney (a.k.a. The Scarlet Pimpernel), Margaret Leighton as Marguerite Blakeney and features Jack Hawkins, Cyril Cusack and Robert Coote. Originally intended to be a musical, the film was re-worked as a light-hearted drama. Plot During the French Revolution, the Scarlet Pimpernel, who is really Sir Percy Blakeney in disguise, risks his life to rescue French aristocrats from the guillotine and take them across the English Channel to safety. As cover, Sir Percy poses as a fop at Court, and curries favour with the Prince of Wales by providing advice about fashion, but secretly he leads The League, a group of noblemen with similar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boys In Brown
''Boys in Brown'' is a 1949 black and white British drama film directed by Montgomery Tully, which depicts life in a borstal for young offenders. It stars Jack Warner, Richard Attenborough, Dirk Bogarde and Jimmy Hanley. It is based on a 1940 play by the actor Reginald Beckwith. The title comes from the borstal uniform: brown shirt and shorts and a short brown tie. Plot Teenager Jackie Knowles (Richard Attenborough) drives a getaway car in a robbery. He is captured and sentenced to serve three years in a borstal institution run by a sympathetic governor (Jack Warner). He befriends Alfie (Dirk Bogarde) and Bill (Jimmy Hanley). During an in-house concert party Jackie sneaks into one of the staff rooms. He removes the light-bulb s when a man enters he is unseen. But he is spotted and a fight ensues in which Jackie knocks the man out with a lamp. He thinks he has killed him. He escapes with half a dozen others including Alfie. When caught the injured man awaits a critical operati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Spider And The Fly (1949 Film)
''The Spider and the Fly'' is a 1949 British crime film directed by Robert Hamer and starring Eric Portman, Guy Rolfe and Nadia Gray. The screenplay concerns an unusual love triangle that develops between two criminals and a policeman on the eve of the First World War. Hamer made it immediately after '' Kind Hearts and Coronets''. Plot In 1913, Fernand Maubert, the dedicated chief of police of Paris, is pursuing Philippe Lodocq, a suave bank robber suspected of a series of thefts, but the criminal always has an alibi. After the latest robbery, Maubert does capture Lodocq's accomplice, Madeleine Saincaise. When she is released from prison, Maubert warns her to stay away from Lodocq (though he has a certain admiration for the man). Impressed by her intelligence, beauty and courage, he begins to court her himself. When Lodocq visits her, she professes her love for him, but he tells her that it is too dangerous for them to be seen together and that they would eventually tire o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trottie True
''Trottie True'' is a 1949 British musical comedy film directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and starring Jean Kent, James Donald and Hugh Sinclair. It was known as ''The Gay Lady'' in the US, and is an infrequent British Technicolor film of the period. According to BFI Screenonline, "British 1940s Technicolor films offer an abundance of visual pleasures, especially when lovingly restored by the National Film Archive. ''Trottie True'' is not among the best known, but comes beautifully packaged, gift wrapped with all the trimmings." The film is based on a novel by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon, published in 1946. ''The New York Times'' called it "a typical Gay nineties success story" that "amuses but never convulses the reader." Premise Trottie True is a Gaiety Girl of the 1890s who, after a brief romance with a balloonist, marries Lord Digby Landon, becoming Duchess of Wellwater when he succeeds to the dukedom. Her music hall background delights the staff, but does not, at first, deli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don't Ever Leave Me
''Don't Ever Leave Me'' is a 1949 British comedy film directed by Arthur Crabtree and starring Petula Clark, Jimmy Hanley, Hugh Sinclair, Edward Rigby, and Anthony Newley. Produced by Betty Box during her stint at Gainsborough Pictures, it was written by Robert Westerby. Plot The plot, a variation on '' The Ransom of Red Chief'', revolves around Sheila Farlaine (Clark), the teenaged daughter of Shakespearean tragedian Michael Farlaine (Sinclair), who is kidnapped by elderly crook Harry Denton (Rigby) when it's suggested he no longer has what it takes to be a master criminal. When Harry starts having second thoughts about the caper, Sheila - tired of playing second fiddle to her egotistical father's career - becomes the mastermind of the plot and resists every effort made by Harry's grandson Jack (Hanley) to return her home before things get serious. However, in this strange scenario Sheila wants to be kidnapped, as it gives her the opportunity to act grown up and she thinks her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poet's Pub
''Poet's Pub'' is a 1949 British comedy film directed by Frederick Wilson and starring Derek Bond, Rona Anderson and James Robertson Justice. It is based on the 1929 novel of the same title by Eric Linklater. The film was one of four of David Rawnsley's Aquila Films that used his proposed "independent frame" technique. It was made at Pinewood Studios. Premise An Oxford poet is persuaded to become manager of the Pelican Pub, after complaining about the food and service. Cast Production The film features actors viewing a combined radiogram television receiver made by Alba ''Alba'' ( , ) is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. It is also, in English language historiography, used to refer to the polity of Picts and Scots united in the ninth century as the Kingdom of Alba, until it developed into the Kingdom ... in 1948. External links * * 1949 films 1949 comedy films Films shot at Pinewood Studios Films based on British novels British comedy films British ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passport To Pimlico
''Passport to Pimlico'' is a 1949 British comedy film made by Ealing Studios and starring Stanley Holloway, Margaret Rutherford and Hermione Baddeley. It was directed by Henry Cornelius and written by T. E. B. Clarke. The story concerns the unearthing of treasure and documents that lead to a small part of Pimlico to be declared a legal part of the House of Burgundy, and therefore exempt from the post-war rationing or other bureaucratic restrictions active in Britain at the time. ''Passport to Pimlico'' explores the spirit and unity of wartime London in a post-war context and offers an examination of the English character. Like other Ealing comedies, the film pits a small group of British against a series of changes to the ''status quo'' from an external agent. The story was an original concept by the screenwriter T. E. B. Clarke. He was inspired by an incident during the Second World War, when the maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital was temporarily declared extraterritori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Blue Lagoon (1949 Film)
''The Blue Lagoon'' is a 1949 British coming-of-age romance and adventure film directed and co-produced by Frank Launder (with Sidney Gilliat) and starring Jean Simmons and Donald Houston. The screenplay was adapted by John Baines, Michael Hogan, and Frank Launder from the 1908 novel '' The Blue Lagoon'' by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The original music score was composed by Clifton Parker and the cinematography was by Geoffrey Unsworth. The film tells the story of two young children shipwrecked on a tropical island paradise in the South Pacific. Emotional feelings and physical changes arise as they grow to maturity and fall in love. The film has major thematic similarities to the Biblical account about Adam and Eve. Plot In 1841, 8-year-old Emmeline Foster and 10-year-old Michael Reynolds, two British children, are the survivors of a shipwreck in the South Pacific. After days afloat, they are marooned on a lush tropical island in the company of kindly old sailor Paddy Butt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scott Of The Antarctic (film)
''Scott of the Antarctic'' is a 1948 British adventure film starring John Mills as Robert Falcon Scott in his ill-fated attempt to reach the South Pole. The film more or less faithfully recreates the events that befell the ''Terra Nova'' Expedition in 1912. The film was directed by Charles Frend from screenplay by Ivor Montagu and Walter Meade with "additional dialogue" by the novelist Mary Hayley Bell (Mills' wife). The film score was by Ralph Vaughan Williams, who reworked elements of it into his 1952 '' Sinfonia antartica''. The supporting cast included James Robertson Justice, Derek Bond, Kenneth More, John Gregson, Barry Letts and Christopher Lee. Much of the film was shot in Technicolor at Ealing Studios in London. Landscape and glacier exteriors from the Swiss Alps, Norway, and pre-war stock footage of Graham Land were used but no actual scenes were done in Antarctica. Plot Captain Scott is given the men, but not the funds, to go on a second expedition to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Night Beat (1947 Film)
''Night Beat'' is a 1947 British Brit-noir, crime thriller drama film directed by Harold Huth and starring Anne Crawford, Maxwell Reed, Ronald Howard, Hector Ross, Christine Norden and Sid James. Following the Second World War, the two comrades go their separate ways; one joins the Metropolitan Police while the other begins a police career but becomes a racketeer in post-war London. ''Sky Movies'' described the film as a "British thriller that examines a challenging issue of its times: the problems encountered by servicemen when trying to adjust to civilian life." Cast *Anne Crawford as Julie Kendall * Maxwell Reed as Felix Fenton * Ronald Howard as Andy Kendall * Christine Norden as Jackie *Hector Ross as Don Brady * Fred Groves as PC Kendall *Sid James as Nixon (as Sidney James) *Nicholas Stuart as Rocky *Frederick Leister as Magistrate *Michael Medwin as Spider * Robert Cawdron as Police recruit *Robert Raglan as Detective Sergeant (uncredited) Critical reception ''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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