Sidney James Movies

A novel by Audrey Erskine Lindop was the source for the grim British drama Tall Headlines. The son of a middle-class family is executed for murder. The family does its best to kick over all the traces, moving to a different community under an assumed name and never speaking of their son. All of these preventative measures seem futile when the dead man's younger brother begins evincing the same antisocial traits that eventually destroyed his sibling. All suspicions seem to be confirmed when the brother's wife turns up dead. There are several plot twists that would lose their value if they were repeated in this space. An excellent all-character-actor cast includes Flora Robson and Andre Morrell as the grieving parents, Michael Denison as the brother and Mai Zetterling as the initial murder victim. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this comedy, an off-center widow and her eccentric daughters must deal with a series of comic mishaps while they wait for one of the daughters to have a baby. The nervous father-to-be complicates matters. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The Magic Box was the English film industry's contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Its all-star cast generously forsook their usual salaries for the privilege of paying tribute to that unsung pioneer of cinema, William Friese-Greene, here played by Robert Donat. Adapted by Eric Ambler from the controversial biography by Ray Allister, Magic Box contends that Friese-Greene was the true father of motion pictures, and not such upstarts as W. K. L. Dickson and Thomas Edison. Told in flashback, the film details Friese-Greene's tireless experiments with the "moving image," leading inexorably to a series of failures and disappoints, as others hog the credit for the protagonist's discoveries. The huge cast includes such British film luminaries as Joyce Grenfell, Miles Malleson, Michael Redgrave, Eric Portman, Emlyn Williams, Richard Attenborough, Peter Ustinov, Cecil Parker, Kay Walsh, and, best of all, Laurence Olivier as the confused bobby who witnesses Friese-Greene's first motion picture demonstration. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Despite its lighthearted title, Lady Godiva Rides Again is a fairly potent indictment of the darker side of beauty contests. Waitress Marjorie (Pauline Stroud) enters one competition after another, hoping for fame and fortune. She manages to make the finals of a "Lady Godiva" contest, never suspecting that the outcome has been rigged. By accident, Marjorie wins First Prize, a huge sum of money and a movie contract. Alas, she hasn't the talent to parlay her win into a lasting career, and soon Marjorie is scrounging around for any "girlie show" job she can find. Only when reduced to performing nude in a French cabaret review is Marjorie rescued by her Australian boyfriend Larry Burns (John McCallum), who makes her promise to stop all this nonsense and settle down to domesticity. The well-chosen cast includes Dennis Price as a lascivious movie star and Stanley Holloway and Gladys Henson as the girl's nonplused parents. Featured in smaller roles are such future leading ladies as Kay Kendall, Diana Dors, Dagmar (later Dana) Wynter and, in an uncredited bit, Joan Collins. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Basil Radford is cast superbly to type as The Galloping Major. The story concerns the efforts by retired Major Arthur Hill (Radford) to purchase a valuable race horse. He manages to attain financial backing from 300 fellow racing enthusiasts--and then messes things up for all concerned by buying the wrong horse. Persevering, Major Hill enters the steed in the Grand National, whereupon the horse disappears on the eve of the big event. The comic frustrations faced by the Major and his creditors are played effectively for light chuckles rather than belly laughs. The cast includes such polished farceurs as Hugh Griffith, Joyce Grenfell (a favorite of director Henry Cornelius, as witness Genevieve), Sydney Tafler and Alfie Bass. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A bored cabaret chanteuse decides to descend into the world of crime for some much needed excitement in this outing. Along the way she and her partner learn about a conspiracy to steal valuable art and sell it outside the country. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The brooding British romantic drama Gone to Earth is better known by its American title The Wild Heart. Filmed in England and cofinanced by David O. Selznick and Alexander Korda, the film stars Jennifer Jones (Mrs. Selznick) as Hazel Woodus, a tempestuous Welsh gypsy maid who can't seem to stay out of trouble. Feeling more of a kinship with woodland animals than with human beings, the Hazel enters into a loveless marriage with minister Edward Marston (Cyril Cusack). Believing she's been born under a curse which will punish her if she ever truly falls in love, Hazel does her best to suppress her carnal desires, but gives up the struggle when she begins an affair with rakish landowner Jack Reddin (David Farrar). Her inability to be mistress of her own fate leads to a spectacularly tragic denouement. Based on a novel by Mary Webb, Gone to Earth was cut from 110 minutes to 82 for its American release; the latter version included a narration by Joseph Cotten and several new scenes directed by Rouben Mamoulien. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A heated rivalry between two newspapers provides the basis for this mystery. The trouble begins when a corpse is discovered in the gossip columnist's apartment. It is a puzzling mystery until a rival reporter confesses that he killed the fellow in a drunken rage and hid the body in the columnist's apartment. The despairing killer then throws himself beneath a speeding train. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

James Hadley Chase's 1939 bestseller reached the screen for the first time -- which a lot of critics of the book would have said was one time too many -- in 1948, in somewhat bowdlerized form, under the aegis of Renown Pictures and screenwriter St. John Legh Clowes, making his sole bow as director. Filmed in England but set in New York, No Orchids For Miss Blandish tells of a sheltered heiress (Linden Travers) who is abducted on her wedding night by a trio of cheap hoods, in what starts out as a jewel robbery and turns into a kidnapping/murder when one of them (Richard Nielson) kills the bridegroom. More mayhem ensues as the three kidnappers soon end up dead, and Miss Blandish falls into the hands of the Grisson mob, led by Slim Grisson (Jack LaRue), who are pros at what they do, throwing their weight around the underworld at will and not too afraid of the police, either. Slim Grisson isn't really better than any of those around him, but he's smart enough to restrain his worst impulses, which makes him start to look very good to Miss Blandish, who finds herself strangely attracted to him, as the first real man she's ever seen, and also a way out of the sheltered existence she's known all of her life. He's as amazed as anyone around him -- including his own mother (Lili Molnar), who runs the gang in tandem with him -- that he doesn't want to ransom Miss Blandish, or plan on killing her because she knows too much; or that she'll testify on his behalf, if necessary, that the one killing she did see by him was, in fact, a matter of self-defense. They plan to run off together, but neither Grisson's mother nor the rest of the gang can see parting with a potential million dollar ransom, or leaving a witness alive -- even if it means killing Slim Grisson to get to her. And when a nosy reporter named Fenner (Hugh McDermott) starts putting the police on the trail of the gang, Slim himself isn't above committing a few more murders to bury any witnesses. The movie was so violent and amoral, that it appalled critics and social observers on both sides of the Atlantic, whose agonizing over its content actually helped turn the picture into a bigger hit than it might otherwise have been. This was especially true in America, where the movie enjoyed a five week run in one of New York's bigger movie palaces to sell-out business, though it was edited considerably and re-cut twice for US release (the second time, a couple of years later, as Black Dice). Robert Aldrich filmed the same story as The Grissom Gang (1971), with Kim Darby, Scott Wilson, and Irene Dailey. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Once a Jolly Swagman is the story of Bill Fox (Dirk Bogarde), a factory worker who dreams of fame and fortune as motorbike racer. After the standard romantic complications with "right" and "wrong" girl, the film arrives at its central crisis: Fox's attempts to organize a driver's union, and the repercussions he suffers because of this activity. The dedicated-but-dour Dirk Bogarde is complemented by Bonar Colleano, essaying another of his "wise guy Yank" characterizations as driver Tommy Possey. The speedway sequences are excellent. Though only his second film, Once a Jolly Swagman was Dirk Bogarde's first starring assignment. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi