A Nice Girl Like Me | |
---|---|
Directed by | Desmond Davis |
Written by | Millard Lampell |
Based on | Marry at Leisure by Anne Piper |
Produced by | Roy Millichip |
Starring | Barbara Ferris Harry Andrews |
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor Manny Wynn |
Edited by | Ralph Sheldon |
Music by | Patrick Williams |
Production company | Partisan Productions |
Distributed by | AVCO Embassy Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 90 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
A Nice Girl Like Me is a 1969 British comedy film directed by Desmond Davis and starring Barbara Ferris and Harry Andrews. [1] [2] It was written by Millard Lampell, based on the 1959 novel Marry at Leisure by Anne Piper.
The plot revolves around a girl who lives with her shrewd aunts, goes on a trip, gets pregnant, and must lie to her aunts that the baby is not hers. [3]
In May 1967 Stanley Baker said he was going to produce and star in the movie alongside Hayley Mills. Filming was to begin in August. [4]
By May 1968 the film was going to star Barbara Ferris and be directed by Desmond Davis. [5] Ferris had enjoyed a hit on Broadway in There's a Girl in My Soup.Filming began July 1968. [6]
It was shot on location in Paris, Venice and London around Chiswick and Hammersmith riverside. The film was originally meant to star Stanley Baker. [4]
In July 1968 it was going to star Michael J Pollard and Barbara Ferris. [7]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "A saccharine story about an insufferable suburban miss with an embarrassing propensity for becoming pregnant after even the shortest trip to the Continent, cynically photographed in the softest of focus by Manny Wynn and Gil Taylor and decked out with pretty picture postcard views of London, Paris and Venice. Gladys Cooper and Joyce Carey as a pair of mildly dotty aunts and Fabia Drake as a culture-conscious schoolteacher battle gamely in the face of a cloying script and uninspired direction. And indeed it is only their playing and that of James Villiers ... and above all of the always reliable Harry Andrews as the father figure who very predictably becomes the lover of the last few minutes, which save this piece of high-toned woman's magazine nostalgia from complete, unrelieved disaster." [8]
The Spinning Image wrote, "it was regarded at the time as a glossy exercise in marrying cinema advert visuals to a would-be daring plot about unmarried motherhood, some way away from the nineteen-sixties "issue" films and TV plays that offered audiences and commentators alike something to get their teeth into. Cathy Come Home or Up the Junction this was not. All that said, and those naysayers did have a point, funnily enough this has aged rather better than might have been expected since it conforms to the Swinging Sixties stereotype fairly comfortably; though it remained a shade artificial as an experience as a nostalgia piece it came across very well, and much of that was down to the central relationship." [9]
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James Michael Hyde Villiers was an English character actor. He was particularly known for his plummy voice and ripe articulation.
The Carey Treatment is a 1972 American crime thriller film directed by Blake Edwards and starring James Coburn, Jennifer O'Neill, Dan O'Herlihy and Pat Hingle. The film was based on the 1968 novel A Case of Need credited to Jeffery Hudson, a pseudonym for Michael Crichton. Like Darling Lili and Wild Rovers before this, The Carey Treatment was heavily edited without help from Edwards by the studio into a running time of one hour and 41 minutes; these edits were later satirized in his 1981 black comedy S.O.B..
London Belongs to Me is a British film released in 1948, directed by Sidney Gilliat, and starring Richard Attenborough and Alastair Sim. It was based on the novel London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins, which was also the basis for a seven-part series made by Thames Television shown in 1977.
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Norma Varden Shackleton, known professionally as Norma Varden, was an English-American actress with a long film career.
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Desmond Stanley Tracey Davis was a British film and television director, best known for his 1981 version of Clash of the Titans.
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