Heavens Above.

Some critics believe that the last of the Boulting Brothers social satires Heavens Above (1963) deserves to be remembered because of Peter Sellers lead performance as the sincere Church of England clergyman who gets sent due to a clerical (no pun intended) error to the wrong parish and I would not disagree, but there is far more to the film than just Sellers award winning performance. It’s a clever and humorous satire on religion, the establishment and the working class and was called the Boulting Brothers most ‘human picture’ [1].

 

Sellers at his best.

The film is set in a small country town called Orbiston Parva that is over lorded by the Despard family, rich local landowners and proprietors of a factory that provides local employment. When we first meet the Rev. John Smallwood (Sellers) he is in a prison cell having been trussed up by a convict he has recommended to be made a trustee. The prison authorities are not unhappy to see their prison chaplain moved to another parish. But we soon discover that there are two John Smallwood’s and the wrong one gets sent to Orbiston Parva where chaos ensues.  Firstly he appoints a West Indian dustman as his churchwarden and then to make matters worse he moves the very large and unruly Smith family into the Manse.  Following these two actions things can only get worse and believe me they do.

 

Eric Skyes with a young future Small Faces star - Steve Marriott.

This British movie has an exceptional cast that’s far to long to list here but I would give special mention to Eric Skyes as head of the Smith family, Cecil Parker as the Archdeacon who recommends Smallwood for the Orbiston Parva parish and lives to regret it, Brock Peters as the churchwarden and Ian Carmichael in a guest appearance as the other Smallwood.  The films script was written by Frank Harvey, who was also responsible for writing the scripts for I’m All Right Jack (1959) and Privates Progress (1956), and based on an idea by Malcolm Muggeridge who also has a cameo role in the film.  

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[1] Cecil Wilson Daily Mail 22 May 1963

Orders are Orders.

Lieutenant Wilfred Cartroad.

Tony Hancock's debut feature film was a movie that could easily have been a feature length episode of an upcoming British sitcom The Army Game which ran on ITV - on a Friday night if I remember correctly - from 1957 until 1961 the movie even had one the Game headliners Bill Fraser starring, but in the film he was not coupled with Alfie Bass but Peter Sellers.

In David Paltenghi’s British comedy film Orders are Orders (1954), which was a remake of the 1933 film Orders is Orders, Hancock played Lieutenant Wilfred Cartroad the harassed leader of the regimental band. The 1954 version also starred Sid James who teamed up with Hancock in what is still one of the Britain's finest comedy programmes. Broadcast as Hancock’s Half Hour from1954 on the radio and concurrently on BBC television for a period of seven years. It was Hancock that carried the series virtually playing himself in this hilarious situation comedy, Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock lived at   "23 Railway Cuttings" in East Cheam, and the humour was generated from the characters and the circumstances in which they found themselves.

Paltenghi was a British ballet dancer, choreographer, director and film director who directed two other films in the mid fifties. Orders are Orders is about an American film production company led by Ed Waggermeyer - James with an American accent - who take over a British Army Camp to make a science fiction movie using the camps soldiers as extras. Obviously the encampments commanding officer (Raymond Huntley) is none to keen on the arrangement and attempts to make life as difficult as possible, that is until Wanda Sinclair (Margot Grahame), Waggermeyer assistant, woes our commanding officer.

 

Bill Fraser, Sid James and Peter Sellers.

The film also gives early roles to Sellers, Eric Sykes and Donald Pleasance and is at best amusing but certainly worth a look to see 'the lad himself' in his debut movie. We had to wait another seven years to see him in his second feature film The Rebel (1961). It was between these two movies that Hancock was at the peak of his career but only a further seven years before his suicide on the 25th June 1968 in Australia – a massive loss to British comedy.

The Lad Himself, one of Britain's best comedians. 

I'm All Right Jack.

John Boulting and his twin brother were an inseparable director-producer team throughout their careers. Inseparable and interchangeable, to the extent whereby they would alternate on films, one taking on production, the other direction and then swapping for their next feature. Their films became known as simply those of ‘the Boulting Brothers’ thinking of them as a whole rather than two separate talents. Together the Boultings brought biting and hysterical satire to the screen. Their comedies of the late 1950’s are renowned for their casting of some of the great comedy acting talents of a generation: Ian Carmichael, Richard Attenborough, Terry Thomas, Irene Handl, Peter Sellers and others. The films took swipes at this country’s ‘great’ institutions, mocking the Church, the Army, and Civil Service and in the widely acclaimed and still highly regarded, I’m All Right Jack (1959) the unions and the upper classes.[1]

It's a lock-out!!!

The film opens with a voice over that tells us that ‘Industry, with tremendous opportunities for the young man, industry, spurred by the march of science in all directions, was working at high pressure to supply those vital needs for which people had hungered for so long’ Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) believes the propaganda so after leaving the army and finishing his university education he decides to go for a middle management job in ‘industry’. At first he attends an interview at a factory that produces ‘Detto the new black whitener’ washing powder and then at another that makes ‘Num Yum the chewy chocolate bar’ both without a great deal of success. Stanley’s uncle, Bertram Tracepurcel (Dennis Price) and ex army comrade Sidney DeVere Cox (Richard Attenborough) persuade him to except a blue-collar position at uncles missile factory that has a rush order for a corrupt foreign power. Unbeknown to the naive Stanley his uncle is using him to stir industrial unrest in order to trigger a strike. When this happens Bertram will use it as an excuse to pass the lucrative order to his shady partner Cox at an increased cost to be split between them and their Arab partner. Poor Stanley finds himself up against the might of the union in the form of shop steward Fred Kite!

Stanley gives it all away.

Peter Sellers made the character of Fred Kite his very own, giving it depth and originality and making him seem a real person, admittedly a little over the top, but absolutely real. It is alleged that Kite was based on a real shop steward based at Shepperton Studios where the film was made. It was this memorable performance that changed Sellers from a great comedic actor into a great character actor and won him the British Academy Award for Best British Actor of 1959.

Fred has a quick chat with the management.

Late 1950’s saw much in the way of industrial strife in Britain because of management’s, and the Tory government’s, uncaring attitude towards the ‘workers’ (Another example of some things never changing.) It’s was against this background that the Boultings produced a film, set in the prosperous South East of England, about work ethics and taking sideswipes at both the Unions and the establishment, the film was one of the most popular releases of 1959. Looking back at this film today confirms that it was one of the great British satire’s and still provokes a degree of left-wing hostility for showing the working class as being lazy, greedy, not prepared to carry out a decent days work for a decent days pay. But equally it highlights the corrupt and unscrupulous shenanigans of management and their lapdogs.

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[1] Shepperton Studios History.

Dr Strangelove or How I Learned To Love The Bomb.

The threat of the Cold War.

 I know I’ve probable brought this up before, but it’s quite odd how you can get through life without seeing certain very famous movies, Dr Strangelove (1964) is another case in point. The films basic premise is very well known in that a US General Jack D Ripper (Sterling Hayden) who while holding RAF officer Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) captive, launches a nuclear attack on the USSR leaving the President of the United States Merkin Muffley (Sellers) with his hands full attempting to recall the B-52’s and calming his Russian opposite number. All this while contending with his madcap advisers and a twisted ex-Nazi scientist, the Dr Strangelove (that man Sellers again) of the title. 

Peter Sellers to the power of three!

Based on a serious novel by Peter George called Red Alert, which deals with an impending holocaust caused by inflexible military and political policy, Dr Strangelove is much more of a political satire than a comedy. Stanley Kubrick’s film brings the best out in both Sellers and George C Scott as General Buck Turgidson, who after this role swore he would never work for the director again. To be truthful I don’t think the films dated particularly well, it does seem a little tedious maybe because, thank the Lord, unlike the period when the film was made, just before the Kennedy assassination (which delayed the films release), the concept of Cold War tension is no longer with us (although we do has plenty of other things to worry about, including the isolationist politics recently preached by our gallant leader!!)  The movie earned Kubrick three Oscar nominations, for writing, directing and producing but as a political satire I think my favorite Kubrick movie A Clockwork Orange (1971) holds up much better.