Green Grow the Rushes | |
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Directed by | Derek N. Twist |
Written by |
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Based on | Green Grow the Rushes by Howard Clewes |
Produced by | John W. Gossage |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Harry Waxman |
Edited by | Hazel Wilkinson |
Music by | Lambert Williamson |
Production company | |
Distributed by | British Lion Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 77 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | $250,000 [1] |
Green Grow the Rushes is a 1951 British comedy film directed by Derek N. Twist and starring Roger Livesey, Richard Burton and Honor Blackman. It was the first film to be released by ACT Films, an entity formed by a trade union for filmmakers. [2] [3] The film was produced by John Gossage and funded by the National Film Finance Corporation and the Co-Operative Wholesale Society Bank. [4] It is an adaptation of the 1949 novel of the same title by Howard Clewes.
It was made at Elstree Studios near London with sets the designed by the art director Frederick Pusey. Location shooting took place on the coastal Romney Marsh around the town of New Romney. [5]
Three British government bureaucrats arrive in Kent to inquire as to why the coastal Anderida marsh is not being cultivated. The reason is that most of the local people know about or are involved in the liquor smuggling scheme operated by Captain Biddle and his accomplice Robert (Richard Burton), who is posing as a fisherman when he is seen by the newspaper editor and his journalist daughter Meg.
Robert persuades them not to report it in the newspaper, and tells Biddle about his encounter with them. Biddle does not like the idea of any local "Lily White" (woman) knowing about their illegal activity; he was once married to a Lily White. The smugglers’ next cargo gets caught in a violent storm, and their boat washes inland, settling in the meadow of a farmer whose wife Polly happens to be Biddle's ex-wife.
Based on the 1949 novel Green Grow the Rushes by Howard Clewes. The title, at least, is inspired by the 18th-century folk song "Green Grow the Rushes, O", in which each of the 12 verses after the first has the penultimate line, "Two, two, the lily-white boys, clothed all in green O."
The film recouped its cost. However the NFFC rejected ACT's next two proposed projects, films about Sir William Hastings and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. So the company made less politically active films from then on. [6] The film was re-released in 1954 under the alternative title Brandy Ashore. [2]
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New Romney is a market town in Kent, England, on the edge of Romney Marsh, an area of flat, rich agricultural land reclaimed from the sea after the harbour began to silt up. New Romney, one of the original Cinque Ports, was once a sea port, with the harbour adjacent to the church, but is now more than a mile from the sea. It is the headquarters of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.
Rye is a town and civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex, England, two miles from the sea at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede. An important member of the mediaeval Cinque Ports confederation, it was at the head of an embayment of the English Channel, and almost entirely surrounded by the sea.
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Green Grow the Rushes is a 1949 comedy novel by the British writer Howard Clewes. The title refers to the traditional folk song "Green Grow the Rushes, O". It revolves around a group of officials from a Whitehall government department who travel to the Kent coast for an investigation, only to find themselves encountering a community entirely committed to smuggling.