Peter Viney's Blog

Sparrows Can’t Sing

Directed by Joan Littlewood
Written by Stephen Lewis

1963, B & W

James Booth- Charlie
Barbara Windsor – Maggie, his wife
Roy Kinnear – Fred, Charlie’s brother
Avis Bunnage – Bridgie
Brian Murphy- Jack
George Sewell – Bert, living with Maggie
Barbara erris – Nellie
Griffith Davies- Chunky
Murray Melvin – George
Arthur Mullard – Ted
Stephen Lewis – caretaker
Victor Spinetti-Arnold
Jenny Sontag- Momma
Yootha Joyce- Yootha
Harry H. Corbett- greengrocer
John Junkin- bridge operator
Joan Littlewood- customer
Queenie Watts – herself

The 60s Retrospective series is mainly intended to be late 60s. This is reviewed for its theatre history connection, but best placed in the 60s retrospectives.

This was the first British film to be issued with subtitles in the USA. Rightly so. The cheerful lovable Cockney accents were found to be incomprehensible. It is very broad comedy.

Basic plot: Charlie (James Booth)  returns from two years in the Merchant Navy (screwing his way through Lagos and Venezuela). He finds his house has been demolished, and he sets off to find his wife. Everyone knows where she is but are terrified of Charlie’s temper. In fact his wife, Maggie (Barbara Windsor) has shacked up in a new block of high-rise flats with Bert (George Sewell), a bus driver. She has a suspiciously young child. Everyone can do the maths. The main poster has a question mark over the little girl in the pram and these lines:

Sailor, sailor, home from the sea
Whose little stranger
can this one be?

Maggie (Barbara Windsor) and Bert (George Sewell) in the pub near the end,

Charlie tries to lure Maggie back. It ends 90 minutes later with a pub brawl and a punch up between Charlie and Maggie and the final title “And so on …”

Brian Murphy taking his budgie for a walk

The title? We talk about “cheerful Cockney sparrows” such as Barbara Windsor. Barbara Windsor sings the song over the opening. Then Jack (Brian Murphy) wanders around with a budgie in a cage. He sits on a bench with an old lady watching sparrows, and points out that sparrows can’t sing, which is why it doesn’t work to catch them, paint them yellow and sell them as canaries. I guess there’s a deeper reference there.

Charlie (James Booth) and Maggie (Barbara Windsor) go for a walk in the woods

Barbara Windsor was nominated for best leading actress awards. Its extra marital sex was a touch controversial for 1963 (filmed in 1962). Lord Snowdon attended the premiere in February 1963, then went with the cast to a Kray Brothers club opposite the cinema which had appeared in the film. Joan Littlewood did a “Hitchcock” cameo in the film. It’s rumoured that the Kray Brothers did too.

It’s not of much interest as film history (it’s not that good), but it is for its relation to Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. Just about every actor in the film came through her theatre in Stratford East, London. My interest was aroused by the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Miss Littlewood in 2018. Several of the real characters portrayed in the play are actors in the film … Barbara Windsor, Avis Bunnage, Victor Spinnetti, Murray Melvin.

It shows Joan Littlewood’s ability to spot potential actors outside the RADA / LAMDA drama school or Oxbridge areas, and the cast list reads like a list of successful sitcom / comedy actors of the next two decades. It’s a case of spot the face. Part of the fascination is their youth and freshness, where we might think of many of them a couple of decades later looking significantly more lined and leathery-faced. Their future TV careers tend rather to 7.30 p.m. on ITV rather than 9 p.m. on BBC, if you see what I mean. That is a tribute to her desire to widen theatre out. Given her famed Brecht productions, I was surprised that she was so good at seeing sitcom ability.

Some of the actors veered more to film comedy (Carry On films especially) … Barbara Windsor, Victor Spinetti, Arthur Mullard. Then we have Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce (paired in Man About The House and George & Mildred), Harry H. Corbett (Steptoe & Son). Roy Kinnear races around gurning and displaying his inner Benny Hill. George Sewell was Superintendent Cottam in The Detectives, though also graduated to straight tough roles. John Junkin is equally known as a scriptwriter

Stephen Lewis wrote the film, and was also a Theatre Workshop graduate. He was Blakey, the bus inspector in On The Buses, as well as appearing in Oh, Doctor Beeching and Last of The Summer Wine re-united again with Brian Murphy. Stephen Lewis appears in this as the Caretaker at the new block of flats.

The surprise is James Booth in the lead role of Charlie. At the time he was seen as a future major star. He had an important role in Zulu then was a rival to his Zulu co-star Michael Caine for the lead in Alfie. His fall came with another Theatre Workshop production, the Lionel Bart musical Twang! in 1965, directed again by Joan Littlewood. It co-starred Barbara Windsor, who survived it. Poor James Booth was cast as Robin Hood and complained from the outset that his part was badly-written. The musical was said to be the biggest and most expensive flop up to that time, and it cost Lionel Bart his then fortune.

The new and the old. London 1962

The film was made on location and captures East London at a point where they were still demolishing old terraced houses as well as filling in the bombsites. Charlie having seen that his terraced hovel has been demolished goes to a large older 19^thcentury house seeking Maggie, which is full of immigrants … a helpful Sikh chap on the ground floor, a bunch of friendly Africans in traditional robes on the first floor … one lady dances provocatively with Charlie, and all then display a “natural sense of rhythm”. The top floor is crammed with friendly East Europeans. Maggie works in a fancy cake shop. Victor Spinetti plays the son, and the mum (Jenny Sontag) has an East End Jewish accent which was probably accurate enough then, but no one would do it nowadays.

Maggie is shacked up with Bert in a new gleaming high rise- one of the sort of blocks of flats being demolished now. The Littlewood socialism comes out here. I think she approves of that Moscow suburban architectural aesthetic. A very telling piece has Stephen Lewis as the caretaker telling off Murray Melvin for riding a bike on the grass, and then on the concrete slabs (they’re only sand underneath). They’re proud of these blocks. You’d think he might have told him off for mincing about excessively, but doesn’t. He does tell him to “keep his hands off the hieroglyphs” – the swirling abstract “work of art” in the lobby. The lifts and stairs gleam. I guess compared to the dank crumbling brick around them, the tower blocks may have seemed like building the new Jerusalem. We note that Charlie’s brother, Fred (Roy Kinnear) still has an outside lavatory in his old style house. There is no graffiti.

Bert (George Sewell) and Maggie (Barbara Windsor)

Given Joan Littlewood’s reputation, I’d expected it to be grittier and less … well, sexist. She had spotted Barbara Windsor’s ability to wiggle, but she also exploits it. She has her run in a tight sheath dress and heels as often as possible (known in film crew circles as “the jiggle shot” because that’s what the breasts do). She also spends a long scene attending to Bert’s colds and sniffles while attired in a short petticoat.  OK, she’s at home – so why is she wearing high heeled shoes as well? Her Carry On … to Eastenders career was secure.  She reports that Charlie used to punch her about as if it’s all perfectly normal. You also note that she is a very good actor and natural comedian. Like Dolly Parton she knew her assets and chose to exploit them.

George (Murray Melvin( sings with the pub band

Musically, I felt as I did with the play Miss Littlewood.  Joan Littlewood’s taste didn’t extend to the 60s. There’s that opening warble, then Murray Melvin does a number with the pub trad jazz band, as does Queenie, the real pub landlady. In between they have a stripper on the club floor with the men crowding around. Everyone does the twist.

Queenie sings

On the accents, the opening scene of three girls is piercing Cockney. OK, women speak at a higher pitch than men normally. That’s biological. In some cultures, both sexes exaggerate the difference … Spanish and Japanese men train themselves to speak deeper. Conversely women go for a higher pitch. I’d say these three cockney girls are an octave above normal. I don’t know if that was an early 60s things. I haven’t noticed it later.

Overall? It’s a feast of ham acting. The “Jen-you-whine” Cockney is played to the hilt and most of the cast carefully preserved the Cockney image through their careers. It’s neither incredibly funny (or perhaps the jokes are all ‘telegraphed’) nor especially well-directed. The road to Twang! was more apparent than a link to Oh, What A Lovely War. BUT it is a time capsule of London’s East End, and the young Dame Barbara proved her talent.

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Help! (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Nevada Smith (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
The Bofors Gun (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
Medium Cool (1969)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
Performance (1970)

PLAY

Miss Littlewood by Sam Kenyon, RSC 2018