Directed by Muriel Box
Written by Charles Dyer
Based on the stage play by Charles Dyer
Music by Stanley Black
Released: September 1964
New StudioCanal DVD / Blue Ray transfer 2023
CAST:
Harry H. Corbett – Percy
Diane Cilento – Cyrenne
Thora Hird – Mrs Winthram, Percy’s mum
Michael Medwin – Ginger
Charles Dyer- Chalky
Hugh Furcher- Ozzie
Brian Wilde – Fred
Alexander Davion – Ricardo
David Saire- Mario
Babra Archer- Iris
George Roderick- Papa
Marie Burke- Mama
Michael Robbins- Bus organize
Carole Gray- nurse
John Ronane- Willie
August 2023. London. I’d been listening to Paul Simon’s song from Hearts & Bones:
It was the year of The Beatles
It was the year of the Stones
It was 1964
I was living in London
With the girl from the summer before
The Late Great Johnny Ace: Paul Simon
That was playing in my head when I saw the DVD and Blu-ray in New Releases in Fopp in Covent Garden. I was curious. Rattle of A Simple Man was a successful stage play in London then New York in 1963, and as they did with gritty realistic plays about naïve Northeners in the big city, it went to film with no time wasted in 1964. The original play had a cast of just three, so it is greatly expanded for the film.
The cast list grabbed me. Harry H. Corbett and Michael Medwin. In 1962, Harry had found himself propelled to reluctant prominence in Galton & Simpson’s Steptoe & Son. Harry had studied Stanislavski, worked in Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and was playing Macbeth in Macbeth at the Bristol Old Vic when he was cast. So he was a serious actor who found his skills had made him into one of the great comedy actors ever on TV. His co-star Wilfred Brambell who played his dad, was not that much older, but in his early 40s was known for playing old men. In 1964 both tried to escape the TV series into film. Brambell was in Hard Day’s Night as Ringo’s dad. Corbett did Rattle of A Simple Man. He was drawn to a successful stage play by Charles Dyer, though in my never-humble opinion, Galton & Simpson were far better writers than Dyer. According to IMDB Peter Sellars rejected the offered role of Percy in the film because the money wasn’t good enough.
Then they cast Michael Medwin as Ginger, the cocky, alpha male in the group of pals. He was another sitcom graduate, this time from The Army Game (TV series 1957-1961). That was the first Granada TV sitcom, and massively popular, with its National Service setting, Medwin was the Sgt Bilko character, Corporal Springer. The dodgy fixer. Both Corbett and Medwin were known for cheerful lovable Cockney roles, and must have both liked the idea of going for a completely different accent, Mancunian. Well, that’s what it says, and I’m not an expert on Lancashire accents, but Corbett sounds more East Lancs mill towns to me. A friend from Accrington has a similar accent and told me that Manchester was its own accent, which is not ‘Lancashire.’
The DVD cover proudly lists Thora Hird as a star, but she is a blink and you’ll miss it cameo.
The co-lead role as Cyrenne is Diane Cilento. That may be where they went wrong. The stage play had featured Edward Woodward and Sheila Hancock as Percy and Cyrenne. Sheila Hancock was a renowned character actor with comedy a speciality. Diane Cilento looks super-model in appearance. I think she’s too glamorous for the role of the tart with a heart of gold. You can imagine her as an escort girl, but hardly turning tricks for a fiver. She was married to Sean Connery at the time. She had just been nominated for an Oscar in 1963 for Best Supporting Actress as Mollie in Tom Jones, and would go on to co-star with Charlton Heston, then with Paul Newman.
The DVD is in the ‘Vintage Classics’ series. That’s overstating it. Let’s just point out that the lead characters are Percy (as in ‘point percy at the porcelain’ meaning urinating in the Barry McKenzie cartoons in Private Eye )and Cyrenne is transparently ‘siren.’
The story is based on Percy, a 39-year old virgin. Add a year and that’d be a good film title. Percy and his mates are ‘Up for the cup,’ having travelled on a fleet of coaches for the cup final. They’re from Manchester and support ‘United’ but no football team is mentioned. Fifteen English teams have ‘united’ in their names, though only one in Lancashire. A little in-joke in the film is when Cyrenne mistakes his town as Scunthorpe (who are a much less famous ‘united’).
Soho was such a popular location for black and white 60s films, that Elstree Studios had a permanent and over-used Soho set. For years, Saturday nights saw Soho thronged with drunken blokes in football scarves, waving their football rattles (what happened to them?) and staggering about to be lured into clip joints with strippers and ludicrously priced drinks. In the film, the coaches back to Manchester leave at midnight, allowing around six hours for getting royally pissed and royally ripped off.
So they all lurch into a club with tired strippers. Ginger (Medwin) decides he’ll chat up a girl (Cilento) at the bar but is instantly rebuffed. Amid the joking around, they note Percy staring wistfully at her. This develops into a bet, £50 versus Percy’s motorbike, that Percy can’t get off with her.
To their shock, she invites Percy back to her flat, which is in a building full of girls in scanty dress, and the obligatory bloke having a permanent party with people snogging to the sound of ‘cool jazz’ which in 1964 was believed to elicit such behaviour among a generation older than mine.
She spins him tales of encounters with the sons of earls, tells him her parents are dead, but she had a posh upbringing. Percy is enthralled (by a siren, he would be) and claims he’s 33, and ‘knew lots of girls’ which is untrue. Percy has never kissed a girl properly.
Meanwhile the lads have gone to an ordinary pub. A now inebriated Ginger is spotted by a different girl, and invited back to her flat.
This is a plan to rob him. He will get into an embrace, she’ll lift his wallet, and at that moment her accomplice will burst in as the outraged husband. He’ll run for it, not noticing his wallet has gone. That rings bells. In the 70s I was teaching a group of high-level Chinese translators from Beijing. I was tasked with teaching British Life & Institutions. I took them to a girls grammar school for the day, to a supermarket and to a law court. That started badly as I had explained everything EXCEPT that the judge would be wearing a wig as would the leading counsel. They were in tears of laughter. ‘The person in charge of these people’ (me) was asked to stand up and be told by the judge that I would be held in contempt of court if they made any more noise. Fortunately, the Chinese understood that. So the case concerned the Royal Ballrooms in Boscombe. A girl and two men were charged. She lured men into the alley, got their trousers around their knees, then ‘her husband and brother’ arrived and beat the punter up and took his wallet. Through careful choice of older married victims, they had got away with it for some time before one brought in the police. To my equal horror, one of those in the dock, staring at me, was the son of a neighbour, and his brother had bought my car the year before.
All in all, it’s a credible event then.
Back at Cyrenne’s flat, two Italians in black shirts arrive and drag her away. Are they the Mafia! They’ve been watching the flat. It looks exciting, and Percy leaves. But no, it turns out that they’re her brothers, dragging her back to Mom and dad’s caff. She has disgraced the family by being a prostitute. In the early 60s with the Profumo case there seem to have been fine lines between ‘easy lays,’ escorts, girls in clip joints, ‘good time girls’ and prostitutes. Cyrenne seemed to hover between categories, though she declined Medwin’s Ginger as a customer, so discriminates.
Anyway it was all her dad’s fault for abusing her as a child. So that’s a family matter. Mama doesn’t seem terribly surprised at the revelation nor judgemental. Cyrenne leaves.
Percy has gone back to the bar to boast to his mates (not that he managed to overcome his shyness and ineptness). Ginger gets back to fight for his money (not too pissed to recall the address).
Percy returns and finds Cyrenne. Cyrenne lets slip that her parents are not dead. He is appalled and she admits they are Italian and run a caff in Soho. She calls Papa her stepfather. They chat over a cup of tea.
She invites him into bed, but in best News of The World reporter mode, he makes his excuses and leaves. He nips back to get his precious wooden football rattle. He just manages to catch the bus as it leaves.
Football rattles are a bigger version of baby rattles. Cups rattle on a tray when carried, car engines rattle before dying, things rattle when nearly empty with something loose inside, People get rattled when they’re frightened. People rattle on in conversation. Charity collectors rattle their collecting boxes. There’s a death rattle. A rattlesnake has a rattle on its tail. Politicians and generals rattle sabres at each other. You choose.
The critics are harsh:
Charles Dyer’s golden-hearted-whore meets impotent yob duologue was played for laughs in the theatre and just about worked, due to the super performances of Sheila Hancock and Edward Woodward. Transferred to the screen in 1964 it sank like lead under Muriel Box’s heavy-handed direction and feckless playing of Harry H. Corbett and Diane Cilento. **
Movies on Television: Angela & Elkan Allen
A Northern football fan comes to London and spends the night with a woman of easy virtue. A mildly pleasing farce that outstays its welcome.
Elliots Guide To Films on Video, John Elliot 1990
A shy football supporter in London spends the night with a tart for a bet. Archetypal farce situation with sentiment added to string it out to twice its proper length. Production values modest but adequate.
Halliwell’s Film Guide, 6th Edition, Leslie Halliwell, 1987
There you go. Whore. Woman of easy virtue. Tart. Not definite on her role. ‘Tart’ has a wide usage.
Faults? Percy is pretty much Harold Steptoe with a different accent. The idea that Cyrenne may be a prostitute because she enjoys picking up men for sex is one that would be hard to present in an era aware of the horrors of people trafficking, especially young women for the sex industry. Papa is a paedo and so daughter is a prossie is hardly a subject for comedy.
THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …
The Six Five Special (1958)
Our Man in Havana (1959)
A Taste of Honey (1961)
The Frightened City (1961)
The Young Ones (1962
Some People (1962)
Play It Cool (1962)
Summer Holiday (1963)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
Live It Up! (1963)
Just For You (1964)
The Chalk Garden (1964)
The Carpetbaggers (1964)
Wonderful Life (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Rattle of A Simple Man (1964)
The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
The Party’s Over (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Be My Guest (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Catch Us If You Can (1965)
Help! (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Ten Little Indians (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)
Custer of The West (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)
Take A Girl Like You (1970)
Performance (1970)
Oh, Lucky Man! (1973)
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