Sat 26 Dec 2015
FIND THE LADY. Major Pictures/J. Arthur Rank, UK, 1956. Donald Houston, Beverley Brooks, Mervyn Johns, Kay Callard, Maurice Kaufmann, Edwin Richfield, Moray Watson, Ferdy Mayne, Anne Heywood. Director: Charles Saunders.
I’ve categorized this old obscure British movie as a crime film, but in all honesty, it’s played a lot more for comedy than it is for thrills. To summarize quickly, though: when the starring lady (Beverley Brooks, as a fashion model from London) goes to spend New Year’s Eve with her godmother out in the country, she finds that the old lady has disappeared.
But before that she has a funny (and perhaps at the time hilarious) encounter with the local doctor (Donald Houston) when their paths cross while their automobiles traverse a watersplash (a shallow ford in a stream) in opposite directions. The end result is the doctor falling face first into the water while the young lady’s car stalls and she has to walk into the local village for help.
When the missing woman’s brother-in-law (Mervyn Johns) answers the door, getting back to the kidnapping, for that is what it is from the get-go, he says that she has been taken to a nursing home for seclusion and rest. We, of course, know that something is wrong right away. The old woman’s cane is there, her dog is there, and the replacement “maid” (Kay Callard) looks more like a gangster’s moll than I imagine that any gangster’s moll in the real world ever did. (She’s the one on the far right in the photo above.)
The young woman and the doctor hit it off very well, and they decide to investigate together. Complicating matters is Miss June Weston’s other suitor (Moray Watson) who comes down from London to add some comedy relief to the proceedings.
Most of the names I have dropping are totally new to me. I’d have thought, though, that Beverley Brooks (the beautiful brunette above and up at the top crowded into the phone booth with the doctor) would have had a longer career, but she didn’t. This movie, perhaps her only starring role, was the last one of her career.
But you may noticed Anne Heywood’s name in the credits. She plays the receptionist at the inn (see the photo above) in this, only her second film. She’s very easy on the eyes as well.
December 26th, 2015 at 11:32 pm
The British were still turning out these light weight mystery comedy films fairly late in the game, and seemed to still take some pride in the genre that had done so well by Hitchcock. At the time Houston was just one of a small army of likable British leading men who sometimes seemed interchangeable in this kind of film.
You do have to wonder if little older ladies were ever quite as prized by criminals in real life as they seem to be in movies and books though.
December 26th, 2015 at 11:59 pm
It wasn’t the little old lady per se. I hope I’m not revealing too much, but it has to do with something in either the cellar or the attic. Or maybe not.
May 5th, 2018 at 11:17 pm
The reason that Beverley Brooks’ career ended with this film is that, in 1957, she was divorced from her then husband Christopher Brooks. Beverley then married Vere Harmsworth, 3rd Viscount Rothermere on March 21, 1957. They had three children and were married for 35 years, until her death on August 12, 1992 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France.