Peter Viney's Blog

The Family Way
1966 / 1967

Directed by John Boulting & Roy Boulting
Screenplay by Bill Naughton
Based on  the radio play, then stage play by Bill Naughton
Adapted by Roy Boulting and Jeffrey Dell

Music composed by Paul McCartney and George Martin (uncredited)

CAST

Liz Piper (Avril Angers), mother of the bride, and Uncle Fred (Wilfred Pickles) – Leslie Piper is giving the bride away/

The Pipers:
Hayley Mills- Jenny Piper
Avril Angers – Liz Piper
John Comer- Leslie Piper
Wilfred Pickles Uncle Fred

Ezra Fitton (John Mills) and Lucy Fitton (MarjorieRhodes)

The Fittons:
John Mills – Ezra Fitton
Marjorie Rhodes – Lucy Fitton
Hywel Bennett – Arthur Fitton
Murray Head – Geoffrey Fitton

Barry Foster – Joe Thompson
Liz Fraser- Molly Thompson
Andy Bradford- Eddie
Thorley Walters- The Vicar

(Windsor Davies and Lynn Redgrave both have fleeting uncredited appearances)

The Happy Couple: Arthur Fitton (Hywel Bennett) and Jenny Piper (Hayley Mills)

It was premiered in the UK on 18 December 1966, in cinemas from 6 January 1967. It was released in the USA in June 1967. Like so many of those pre-Christmas premieres to squeeze into the Academy Award season, it’s really a 1967 film.

I’ve heard the soundtrack much more than I’ve seen the film. They really pushed the PAUL McCARTNEY on all publicity. It was a McCartney-George Martin collaboration, recorded in December 1966. McCartney dashed off a 15 second piano piece, which George Martin expanded into twenty four variations. The second piece McCartney wrote Love In The Open Air was forced out of him by George Martin, and composed in minutes on the spot. George Martin used a brass band to give a North Western feel, which is said inspired Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

 

The Bill Naughton play was like his Alfie, first a radio play, Honeymoon Postponed, then a stage play, All In Good Time. John Mills saw it and asked to buy the rights, seeing it as a Father-Daughter, or rather Father-in-law / Daughter-in-law vehicle, only to find the Boulting Brothers had already bought them. Still, they cast them both. The Boulting Brothers were British cinema’s comedy specialist producers … Private’s Progress, Lucky Jim, I’m Alright, Jack.

I always liked Hayley Mills from Whistle Down The Wind. I even have a 45 of Let’s Get Together from The Parent Trap. This was her chance to play an adult role. John Mills had rightly worked out what a great role the boy’s father is. The John Mills / Marjorie Rhodes marriage is what turns out in the end to be the central story, rather than the kids, whose role is on the damp side of wet. It takes a long time to realize that, which is one of the best aspects of the script. The quality of the character actors is the film’s secret.

The story has considerable charm, but perhaps its domestic setting is undermined by fifty years of subsequent TV quite capable of reproducing its scope … though it’s set in Yorkshire instead of Lancashire and posher, A Bit of A Do TV series springs to mind.

It is a classic of the Sixties in its ambience, but it’s not London for a change. Much of it was filmed around Rochdale and Bolton. Is it regional or is it class? We have two young people, Jenny (Hayley Mills) and Arthur (Hywel Bennett) who are getting married, both are virgins, and they are going to live with his parents. They are young … I think they mention he’s twenty and she’s nineteen. The issue is that the honeymoon, the chance to establish their physical relationship in privacy, is cancelled. They are faced with the embarrassment of having a bedroom next to the parents in a small house with thin walls. That situation wasn’t my experience of the sixties – couples would have moved into a grotty one room flat for independence, as they tend to in the film’s London-based contemporaries. They probably wouldn’t have got married.  It was also true of everyone I knew around Bournemouth. I only knew one lad, in the sixth form, who ended up getting married instantly when he got his girlfriend pregnant. He was seventeen, both were immediately expelled from their respective schools, and he ended up living with her parents and working for her dad. A happy ending? I don’t know. I never saw them again. I hope so. It was definitely an event that had an impact on the whole class at the time. The oddity for me in The Family Way was that they were getting married so young without ‘having to.’ The title has a double meaning … in the family way also means ‘pregnant.’ Which she’s not, and unlikely to be so.

Of course it’s all coming back … the concept of kids and their partners living with their parents. It’s partly housing crisis, high rents, impossible deposits on purchasing. It may be that people are simply much less embarrassed about their sex lives than they were in the sixties. I couldn’t imagine living with my parents at that age.

I noticed that both Jenny and Arthur have peripheral media related jobs … Arthur works as a cinema projectionist, and Jenny works in the record department of a store. Later in the story we see Arthur at work … they’re projecting Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment (of course it’s a bed scene to rub into Arthur’s woes).

Record collector aside …

Jenny at work

Jenny is putting on a single in a Verve sleeve … it set me wondering what it was (an affliction). Verve was a jazzy label mainly … but its biggest 1966 hit was The Righteous Brothers (You’re My) Soul and Inspiration, though I would have chosen Laura Nyro’s Wedding Bell Blues as appropriate. I also noticed that the rack of LPs contained Kismet, The Rolling Stones #2, a Tom Jones LP and Rugby Songs. I rewatched … it’s jazzy or at least the sounds are. Jimmy Smith was on Verve, but all in all, it would have been cheaper to put something new in. The background LPs on the wall are classy, someone’s curated them – Mose Allison, Otis Redding, James Brown and Boots by Nancy Sinatra. The other assistant has a sound effects EP. Sorry!

THE PLOT

The film opens with Arthur and Jenny picking up their travel tickets to Majorca (Madge-Orca) for their honeymoon. That was the new thing then … my sister was married in October 1966, and they went to Majorca . Then we see the bride getting ready with her mum which is a scene that can’t go wrong!  That’s before the credits, which run over the wedding itself.

The reception is in the pub, then it’s all back to mine … the Fitton’s house where the couple will spend their first night before flying off to Majorca. (That was one where I thought, surely they could run to just one night in a hotel? That would have been normal.) Ezra (John Mills) is singing drunkenly. He works at the gas works and is clearly macho (a word no one knew in 1966).

Ezra (John Mills sings), Geoffrey (Murray Head) plays guitar

Uncle Fred (Wilfred Pickles) and Jenny’s mum, Liz (Avril Angers) look on …

The underlying tensions between families at weddings is a perennial comedy film theme,  rarely done better than here. Just look at the reactions to Ezra’s singing. The yobs, led by Arthur’s boss, Joe, set out on a prank – unscrewing the legs of the marital bed.

Down in the parlour, Ezra wants to do a bit of arm wrestling, and has disparaged his son’s reading and interest in music. First he tries Uncle Fred.

L to R: Ezra, Uncle Fred, Geoffrey, Arthur, Liz Piper, Jenny

We realize how desperate Ezra is to win against Arthur … and Arthur lets him. The couple retire to bed, and it collapses. Jenny laughs which puts Arthur off … er, his stroke, imagining she’s laughing at him, and he sleeps in the chair. He promises it’ll be fine once they get on holiday. The next day they find the travel agent has gone off with the money (or collapsed) and they’re not going. Back to the Fitton house. The couple go to apply for a council house, but are told to come back in five years time, when they have five kids and a severe disability.

Applying for a council flat and they haven’t filled out the forms

The situation doesn’t help Arthur’s inability to consummate the marriage. It’s all made worse because Arthur works every evening at the cinema. Jenny starts going out and about with his brother, Geoffrey (Murray Head, who doesn’t get to sing).  Geoffrey comes home and finds her in the copper (bath) having a bath in the kitchen as one did in houses without bathrooms, which this must be even in 1966.

Jenny take a bath … the naked shot is from the rear, but let’s spare her blushes by sticking with the front shot

This is the famed naked Hayley scene that nearly got the film banned. They have fun going out in the evenings, he fancies her, but she fends him off.

Arthur goes to a marriage guidance counsellor. The cleaner at the offices is a nosy neighbour and listens at the door. Soon everyone knows.

Liz visits Jenny in the record store and Jenny says casually she’s been putting on weight. Liz is alerted:

Liz: You haven’t started something already?

Jenny tells her mum the whole problem.

Lucy (Marjorie Rhodes), Liz (Avril Angers) Leslie (John Comer)

Liz and Leslie Piper (John Comer) go to visit the Fittons. This brings out what we suspected at the wedding. Ezra and Lucy look a little older than Liz and Leslie. More to the point, Lucy has a pinny, Liz is smartly dressed with a hat. Leslie is wearing a suit and tie with a pocket hankie. Ezra has the collarless shirt and wide support belt of a physical labouring man. The Pipers are Lower Middle Class. The Fittons are Working Class. That was clear as crystal to a 1967 British viewer.

This is the best scene in the film for me. Ezra is into “No son of mine …” but Lucy starts to tell the story of her own honeymoon. The joy is that The Pipers begin to work out the subtext in her tale, while Ezra is totally oblivious.

Ezra (John Mills) and Lucy (Marjorie Rhodes)

Ezra insisted that his best friend, Billy, come on their honeymoon. Ezra waxes lyrical, and adds that yes, the best moments of the honeymoon were walking on the beach with Billy early in the morning.

From IMDB quotes:

Lucy: Every blessed morning, off they’d go, happy as sandboys, without as much as a goodbye kiss.
Ezra:  I was never one to take liberties.
Liz Piper: But she was your wife, Mr Fitton.
Ezra: I know, but you can still show respect, can’t you? I mean, kissing a nineteen year old girl while she’s still asleep.
Liz Piper: But she slept beside you all night …
Ezra: I slept beside my brother Tom for years, but I never bloody kissed him!

At this point, we’re beginning to think that Arthur’s lack of ability in the bedroom is hereditary. Notice how, in spite of their kids being married, and having been through the wedding, they’re not on first name terms. My mum, in 1966, always talked about her neighbours and work colleagues as Mrs (this) and Mrs (that).

Lucy tells Liz that Billy helped them decorate while Ezra was at work. A puzzled Ezra says that after that Billy left town right away and was never heard from again.

Lucy (Marjories Rhodes) and Liz (Avril Angers)

Watch Avril Angers and John Comer’s priceless reactive listening through all this. Marjorie Rhodes is outstandingly good.

Meanwhile Jenny asks her uncle (Wilfred Pickles) who advises her to get out into a home of their own. At work, Joe (the prankster boss) has heard the tale and offers to do Arthur’s job for him.

Joe (Bob Foster)

Arthur beats the shit out of him, gets the sack, and strides home to tell Jenny off for talking. The quarrel leads to physical contact, a struggle, kissing and SEX! The neighbours are all looking up from their gardens. We hear the opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, aka The Victory March because the opening bars spell out V in Morse Code.

The neighbours listen to the sound of creaking bed through a conveniently open window

PLOT SPOILER!!!

The happy ending is a rush … ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents)’s holiday bond has re-paid their honeymoon money. They can go to Blackpool for a honeymoon and put a deposit on a cottage IF Ezra will stump up the £200 needed. He agrees.

Geoffrey, Ezra and Lucy – the end. We realize it was really all about them …

The last moment is when Ezra ruminates on Arthur and how much he looked like his friend Billy as he left the house so cheerfully.

It’s a very good comedy-drama. The young couple are sweet. The angst of the elders is funny. Marjorie Rhodes won several (minor) Best Supporting Actress awards.  It was noted that the Northern setting employed Southern actors in all the major roles, and even Wilfred Pickles was Yorkshire, not Lancashire (that is an important difference). I don’t think it hindered a bit. Generic Northern sufficed.

AVRIL ANGERS- A NOTE

A Weekend Away: the cast, L to R: Debbie Arnold, Sandra Payne, Christian Salari, David Jansen (kneeling), Matt Zimmerman, Avril Angers. In the story, David had dropped the crisps on the floor, to Debbie’s fury.

Avril Angers plays Hayley’s mum. Avril was in our first ELT video for OUP, A Weekend Away filmed twenty years after The Family Way and I remember her fondly. I told her I remembered her pin ups from the 1950s. The story was about a diverse group of people on a mini-bus trip to Oxford. One scene had the bus run out of petrol, and fortuitously it snowed heavily while we were filming. I was always with the cast checking script (lying on the floor of the bus often). As we sat and shivered, Avril produced miniatures of sherry from the hotel mini-bar and passed them round.  That and a dance exercise class from Matt Zimmerman to warm us up on the snowy road kept us going. My enduring memory was her working with our 16 year old actor. He was at a full-time drama school in London, acted well, but mumbled and muttered. Avril was appalled that he’d done no breathing exercises, projection or elocution in his course and set out to teach him. He was worried that she was trying to eradicate his Estuary accent. Not at all, she said, but you’ll get nowhere unless people can hear you, and if you can’t complete a sentence without having to inhale noisily in the middle. She had him working really hard between takes and he really saw the point.

SOUNDTRACK:

UK sleeve

US sleeve

It is a collection of beautifully arranged fragments, showing the genius of Geoge Martin’s orchestration and arrangements around McCartney’s albeit short but magical creative spark. It was recorded between Strawberry Fields Forever and When I’m Sixty-Four.

Paul McCartney: It was most unglamorous really. I rang our NEMS office and said I would like to write a film theme, not a score, just a theme. John was away filming How I Won The war, so I had time to do it.
sleeve notes to CD release 2011

On the Love Theme which was requested later:

George Martin: I told Paul and he said he’d compose something. I waited but nothing materialized, and finally I had to go round to Paul’s house and literally stand there until he’d composed something. John was visiting and advised a bit, but Paul created the tune and played it to me on guitar.
sleeve notes to CD release 2011

Love In The Open Air / Theme From The Family Way was released as a single, credited to ‘The Tudor Minstrels.’ That caused a fuss. Decca had purchased the music rights to the film, and put out the single. But George Martin already had plans to issue it on EMI’s affiliate, United Artists. Both versions were issued.  Then United Artists requested a beatier remake for American release, which George Martin recorded in February 1967. Bizarrely, Rare Record Guide 2020 rates the George Martin single on UA as £20, but The Tudor Minstrels on Decca at £22. The LP is rated at £90. Phew! I’ve got an original, and the CD.

Look at those great titles:

Cue 2M1 / 2M4
5M1 / 11M3
6M4 / 7M2
6M2 / 1M2
10M1 / 6M3 / 4M1 / 1M3 / 1M4
Love in the Open Air (7M3)
2M5
1M1
7M1
11M1 / 11M2 / 10M3 / 8M1
12M1
13M1
13M2
Theme from The Family Way

There was other material they could have included but didn’t … the rock group in the pub, John Mills singing after the wedding, the Beethoven  “Victory March” piece.

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (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)
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)
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)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Performance (1970)