The Constant Husband (1955)

Aka Marriage a la Mode. What are you? Who the devil are you? When William Egerton (Rex Harrison) aka Charles Hathaway Peter, Pietro and Bill, emerges from a lengthy period of amnesia to find himself in a hotel in Wales. He retrieves a trunk of his belongings from a station and finds evidence that he was a conman and a serial bigamist. A professor of psychological medicine Llewellyn (Cecil Parker) helps him to start piecing his life back together but William discovers he has been married to seven women all over the country – at the same time. He is pleased to find that he is married to a lovely fashion photographer Monica Hendricks (Kay Kendall) in London, but when he goes to his office at the Munitions Ministry to ask his boss for sick leave, he is thrown out as a stranger. He is also persona non grata in his club, since he pushed a waiter over a balcony. He is kidnapped by the injured waiter (George Cole) and learns that he was also married to the waiter’s relative Lola ( ) who is now a circus acrobat, and whose Italian family run a restaurant. He is arrested and tried, and, ignoring his female barrister Miss Chesterman’s (Margaret Leighton) case for the defence, admits his guilt and asks to go to prison for a quiet life away from all his wives, who all want him back. On leaving prison he is still sought by his wives as well as by his barrister … I am beginning to be seriously concerned about my character. Director Sidney Gilliat and Val Valentine’s screenplay is an exercise in caddish charm, capitalising on the persona (on- and offscreen) of Harrison who had successfully essayed the type in Gilliat’s A Rake’s Progress, a decade earlier. As the women pile up, his dilemma worsens and the potential for criminal charges exponentially increases.  The lesson if there is one in this farcical narrative is a kind of redemption but the ironic outcome has our hero simply running away from the imprisonment of marriage into a real prison: all the while these women cannot control their attraction to him. Male wishful thinking? Hmm! The witty, literate script comes to a head in an hilarious courtroom scene in which Harrison agrees with the prosecution’s characterisation of the dingy exploits of a shopworn cavalier; while Leighton bemoans sexism in the court yet falls for her hopeless client; and a lawyer wonders at the supportive wives, The same again is every woman’s ideal  –they’re gluttons for punishment. This skates between a wry play on Harrison’s lifestyle and outright misogyny.  Zesty, funny and played to the hilt by a fabulous cast of familiar British faces. The meta-irony is that Harrison commenced an adulterous affair with the fabulous Kendall, whom he married. Think of all your morbid fancies of yesterday – then look at this!

Simon and Laura (1955)

I have acted with octogenarians, dipsomaniacs, dope-fiends, amnesiacs, and veteran cars. When television producers select warring married actors Simon Foster (Peter Finch) and his wife Laura (Kay Kendall), to be the subjects of a live television series documenting a completely happy marriage, they appear to be the perfect choice by chirpy producer David Prentice (Ian Carmichael) but they’re only chosen because the Oliviers aren’t available. On camera, the couple is caring and supportive of each other in the daily one-hour long show. In reality their relationship is rocky but because the show is a hit, Simon and Laura try to keep up the facade until cracks start to surface and romantic complications with the production staff threaten to upset the publicity machine and finally they go off-script on live TV … Do you know what happens when you allow yourself to be regularly exhibited in that glass rectangle? As a response to the incoming threat of TV which was more than existential but factual with the introduction of a new independent channel in addition to BBC, this adaptation of Alan Melville’s stage play by Peter Blackmore elides the situation into a marital farce in which the battling opposites learn to live with one another. The running joke about scripted reality shows is surprisingly pertinent today. See that the script stresses the solidarity of the home. Even what once was called a public intellectual, in the shape of journalist and commentator Gilbert Harding, makes an appearance, describing the dangers inherent in appearing on television:  the  reflexive ironies proliferate.  I find the rapier thrust of Madam’s conversation highly stimulating! The inimitably elegant Kendall is perfectly cast and gets a few barbs that recall her real-life (as it were) career as well as having some opportunities for slapstick antics; while Muriel Pavlow is terrific as the show’s scriptwriter Janet Honeyman, in an engaging cast filled with familiar faces like Richard Wattis, Thora Hird and Alan Wheatley. Finch is good in his first leading role in a British film as the put-upon middle-aged hubby who thinks it’s all rather beneath him but he’s almost upstaged by the obnoxious know it all kid (Clive Parritt) playing his TV son. Television? You call that a wonderful job? Three weeks’ rehearsal, not enough money to cover your bus fares out to Lime Grove, technical breakdown in your one big scene, and no repeat performance? No, thank you. (The line about the Oliviers must have been a little odd for him to hear after his affair with Vivien Leigh). A terrific satirical premise that blends Taming of the Shrew with the growing pains of TV, played at a rate of knots. Great fun. Directed by Muriel Box with beautiful production design by Carmen Dillon and costumes by Julie Harris. We’ll mirror the lives of an ordinary, happily married husband and wife!

 

Curtain Up (1952)

One should never do a play written by a woman, they always hold you up. In an English provincial town a second-rate repertory company assembles at the Theatre Royal  to rehearse the following week’s play, a melodrama titled Tarnished Gold. Harry (Robert Morley) the hot-tempered Producer, is highly critical of the play, which has been foisted on him and is unenthusiastic about its prospects. The cast includes Jerry (Michael Medwin) a young and sometimes keen actor, Maud (Olive Sloan) a widowed actress who was once famous on the West End stage, Sandra (Kay Kendall) who is waiting for (and receives) a call from a London producer who calls her instead of her philandering and semi-alcoholic husband (Liam Gaffney), and Avis (Joan Rice) a timid young girl who is quickly realising that acting is not for her. The cast is equally unenthusiastic about the play. Little progress is made. ‘Jacko’ (Lloyd Lamble) the director, is at his wits end and threatens to resign, his regular habit when things go wrong. Things can’t get any worse but then the author of the play, Jeremy St Claire turns up and she turns out to be  a woman – Catherine Beckwith (Margaret Rutherford).  She insists on ‘sitting at the feet’ of the Director. She and Harry are quickly at each other’s throats. Harry tears up most of Act 1 and tells her to do what Edgar Wallace did – disappear into a phone kiosk for a couple of hours and come back with forty new pages. He storms angrily off stage, falling into the pit and injuring himself, literally losing the run of things as his fantastical ramblings take hold. Despite the forebodings of the cast, Miss Beckwith insists on taking over the rehearsal according to her own ideas. She recasts the play as a period piece and introduces new stage techniques. How will it work out? … I think I see the beginning of a plot on page twenty-seven. And we are on page one. Oh joy! Three of my favourite British actors in one film! Morley, Rutherford and Kendall, who don’t have a huge amount to work with in this adaptation of Philip King’s play On Monday Next by Jack Davies and Michael Pertwee (brother of the greatest Doctor Who!) but who do have some sly repartee and physical comedy to play.  Morley/Harry refers to a production of Rebecca – in reality he and Rutherford were in the original London stage production, with Rutherford playing Mrs Danvers. Imagine that! Their clash here is very amusing. Stringer Davis, Rutherford’s offscreen husband, turns up as Avis’ dad just in time to see Jerry kiss his daughter. Kendall has some mini-drama over her husband’s infidelity but it’s her career that’s in the ascendant while he thinks real acting is for cinema – which makes this even more of a mockery of popular theatre. It’s pretty thin stuff, only of interest for the sparky players. The impact is elevated with a Malcolm Arnold score and it’s directed by Ralph Smart.

Genevieve (1953)

When that car gets stuck you will be rejoicing in the exuberance of your velocity! chortles Kenneth More to girlfriend Kay Kendall as they laugh about their race from London to Brighton (and back) and the bet against his chum John Gregson and Dinah Sheridan about who’ll win. How do you quantify charm? This oozes with it whilst simultaneously sweetly mocking Englishness and the world of B-roads and the obsessions of vintage car owners. Distinguished by Larry Adler’s score, this also boasts the delightful Kendall taking drunkenly to the stage to play the trumpet. Henry Cornelius turned William Rose’s screenplay into a smash hit. Lovely.