Derby Day (1952 film)

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Derby Day
Derby Day FilmPoster.jpeg
Directed by Herbert Wilcox
Written byArthur Austen
John Baines
Monckton Hoffe
Alan Melville
Produced by Maurice Cowan
Hebert Wilcox
Starring Anna Neagle
Michael Wilding
Googie Withers
John McCallum
Peter Graves
Suzanne Cloutier
Gordon Harker
Narrated by Raymond Glendenning
Cinematography Mutz Greenbaum
Edited by Bill Lewthwaite
Music by Anthony Collins
Production
company
Distributed by British Lion Film Corporation
Release date
9 May 1952 (1952-05-09)
Running time
84 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Box office£150,010 (UK) [1]

Derby Day (U.S. title: Four Against Fate) is a 1952 British drama film directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding, Googie Withers, John McCallum, Peter Graves, Suzanne Cloutier and Gordon Harker. [2] An ensemble piece, it portrays several characters on their way to the Derby Day races at Epsom Downs Racecourse. It was an attempt to revive the success that Neagle and Wilding had previously enjoyed on screen together. [3] To promote the film, Wilcox arranged for Neagle to launch the film at the 1952 Epsom Derby. [4]

Contents

While making the film, Wilding began dating Elizabeth Taylor, who was in London filming Ivanhoe , and later became her second husband. [5]

Plot

On the morning of the Epsom Derby, a disparate group of people prepare to go to the races. Lady Helen Forbes, a recently widowed aristocrat, is planning to make the journey in spite of the disapproval of her social set who consider it unseemly to go while still in mourning. David Scott, a newspaper cartoonist, is ordered to go by his editor against his wishes. As part of a charity raffle, dissolute film star Gerald Berkeley must reluctantly escort a wealthy grand dame to Epsom, although when the woman falls and injures her leg, her crafty housekeeper arranges for one of the young French maids to go in her place. In Hackney, a lodger kills a man whose wife he has been having an affair with. The lodger and the wife plan to flee the country, so they travel to Epsom, where he knows a tipster who may be able to smuggle them out. A young couple, Helen and David, meet and find themselves sharing confidences, as they were both bereaved in the same air crash, and it seems likely that they will meet again.

The lodger and the wife are spotted and arrested. A taxi driver's wife fulfils her life ambition to see the races.

Cast

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The film involves a stereotyped collection of characters in some equally familiar situations, For the lower orders there is crime (John McCallum, unshaven, breathing heavily and on the run) and artificial Cockney comedy (Gladys Henson and Gordon Harker) with only one joke – the hypothetical superiority of television to the real thing. The film star (Peter Graves) makes tiresomely coy intramural jokes about the British film industry; the maid (Suzanne Cloutier) is stage French. The upper classes, represented by Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding – who contrive to look as though they were posing for an advertisement in a glossy magazine – suffer bravely but woodenly over their champagne. A script sadly deficient in wit, originality or probability shows up the pedestrian nature of Herbert Wilcox's technique. Usually he presents similar ingredients with a certain showmanship, but here excessive loyalty to a formula has produced far from happy results." [6]

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "This is an engaging, absorbing look at the various flotsam and jetsam that pit themselves against the Fates at Epsom Downs on Derby Day. The British class system was firmly rooted and unassailable in the early 1950s, and director Herbert Wilcox nicely milks its rituals and nuances at a great cultural event. The portmanteau cast effortlessly goes through its paces with aplomb and confidence. We have been here many times before, but it's still fun." [7]

Leslie Halliwell said: "Intercut comic and melodramatic stories of four people who go to the Derby. Quietly efficient, class-conscious entertainment on the lines of Friday the 13th and The Bridge of San Luis Rey. No surprises, but plenty of familiar faces." [8]

See also

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References

  1. Vincent Porter, 'The Robert Clark Account', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 20 No 4, 2000 p498
  2. "Derby Day". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  3. Mayer p.385
  4. Harper & Porter p.156
  5. Walker p.131-133
  6. "Derby Day". The Monthly Film Bulletin . 19 (216): 89. 1 January 1952 via ProQuest.
  7. Radio Times Guide to Films (18th ed.). London: Immediate Media Company. 2017. p. 243. ISBN   9780992936440.
  8. Halliwell, Leslie (1989). Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed.). London: Paladin. p. 264. ISBN   0586088946.

Bibliography