In Victorian England, a young orphan, Arthur Kipps ("Artie"), finds a sixpence as he walks along a river with his young friend, Ann. Artie is then sent to a nearby town, where he is to serve as apprentice to a draper.
Several years later he meets up with Ann once again, and with the coin cut into two he gives one half to Ann as a symbol of their love.
Artie grows up into a young man. Work at the draper's store is difficult. He becomes friends with Harry Chitterlow, an actor-playwright, who discovers that Artie is heir to a fortune left him by his grandfather. Artie becomes wealthy as a result of the inheritance, and invests in one of Chitterlow's shows. He breaks up with Ann, who has become a maid, and becomes engaged to the wealthy upper class Helen Walsingham. Kipps gets Helen's brother Hubert to invest his money.
Artie sees Ann mistreated by the upper class at a dinner and ends his relationship with Helen. He marries Ann and plans to build a mansion. Ann becomes unhappy with Artie's grandiose ambitions. Hubert absconds with Artie's money leaving him broke.
Artie and Ann reunite and prepare happily to live in a modest cottage. Then Chitterlow reappears with news that his play is a success and that Artie will earn some of the profits.
The musical was seen by producer Charles H. Schneer who loved it and acquired the rights. He sold these to Paramount. In November 1965, Paramount bought the screen rights for $250,000 plus a percentage of the profits. They also hired Steele to repeat his stage performance.[2]
In June 1966, George Sidney signed to direct.[3] Steele signed a three picture deal with Paramount.[4]
Steele said: "if this hits I'll carry on the burden of starring in musicals in widescreen and in colour. If not I'll retreat to the backwoods and do what I'd as soon do, just quietly act."[5]
Schneer said: "Unfortunately, just as we began to shoot, Paramount was sold to Gulf & Western. Half a Sixpence should have been a small and intimate picture. It turned out to be anything but that. The director and the star ran away with it, and I was virtually out of the picture. I was very unhappy about the whole situation."[6]
Production
Filming started 13 September 1966 in England. It was meant to take four months but went over schedule.[7]
Sidney later recalled making the film was "quite an experience because they'd never made a musical film in England" for a number of years. "They'd never worked with playback in England, and when I went there they didn't have a music cutter. So I had to bring some people in... It wasn't fast working in England, not by a long shot. But I must say that I enjoyed it."[9]
According to one report, the budget was originally $2.5 million, then increased to $3.3 million.[10]
Songs
"All in the Cause of Economy," performed by Artie, Pearce, and Apprentices
"Half a Sixpence," performed by Artie and Ann
"Money to Burn," performed by Artie, Harry, Helen, and Chorus
"I Don't Believe A Word of It"/"I'm Not Talking to You," performed by Ann and Friends, Artie, Pearce, and Apprentices
"A Proper Gentleman," performed by Chorus
"She's Too Far Above Me," performed by Artie
"If the Rain's Got to Fall," performed by Artie, Children, and Chorus
"Lady Botting's Boating Regatta Cup Racing Song" (by David Heneker and Irwin Kostal), performed by Artie and Chorus
"Flash, Bang, Wallop!," performed by Artie, Pearce, and Chorus
"I Know What I Am," performed by Ann
"This Is My World" (by Heneker and Kostal), performed by Artie
Finale: "Half a Sixpence" (reprise)/"Flash, Bang, Wallop" (reprise), performed by Artie, Ann and Chorus
Julia Foster's vocal double was Marti Webb, who played Ann in the original 1963 London production (and who appears on the London Cast album).
Critical reception
Half a Sixpence (Soundtrack LP)
In her review in The New York Times, Renata Adler said the film "should be visually fascinating to anyone in a state that I think is best described as stoned. The movie is flamboyantly colourful [and] wildly active: hardly anyone holds still for a single line, and the characters – in the ancient tradition of musicals – live on the verge of bursting into improbable song. The songs themselves, trite, gay, and thoroughly meaningless, make absolutely no concession to anything that was happened in popular music in the last 10 years ... some of it is quite beautiful to watch.... it is nice to have a musical photographed not on a sound stage, but in outdoor England ... but most of the time one wonders where anyone found the energy to put on this long, empty, frenetic extravaganza ... I cannot imagine that there will be many more musicals that are so lavishly, exuberantly out of touch with the world of rock and the music of our time."[11]
Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News that "for all Gillian Lynne's high-stepping choreography, the film is about as light and as graceful on its feet as an elephant. Only one sequence moves at a rate approximating speed. It is the gay Henley regatta, with Kipps crewing for the Ascot set, slicing the Thames in a racing shell. One longs for the simplicity of the original, when the story, although hardly novel, at least held its own, and when the music, although hardly memorable, was not drummed up into interminable, brassy music hall routines."[12]
Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times remarked that "Half a Sixpence at Grauman's Chinese Theatre is, almost uniquely these days, a picture of innocence (or, if you will, simple-mindedness) and for all its flaws there are those who will respond gratefully to this excursion into the primer-story past. My regret is that the machineries of film-making have rendered the lighter-than-air as heavy as lead and have surrendered innocence to technical sophistication. Tommy Steele is a wonder and he gives a dazzling, perfected performance. Yet even his ingratiating charm cannot quite conceal the hard, slow work the film was. Half a Sixpence is better than none, but it has been devalued."[13]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times felt that "Tommy Steele is just the performer for this sort of schmaltz. He is, in fact, a very good song-and-dance man, the only member of his generation who bears comparison with Gene Kelly and Dan Dailey ... [George Sidney's] timing tends to lag, his sight gags telegraph ahead, and his songs drag."[14]
American audiences are beginning to get the idea that if you've seen one Tommy Steele movie, you've seen them both. Britishers have been afforded chances to view such products as "The Tommy Steele Story" and "Tommy the Toreador," but we colonists had to restrain ourselves until "The Happiest Millionaire" and, now, Half a Sixpence, an agonizing experience which shows the latest impact of devaluation. Perhaps the proceedings weren't so bankrupt of charm and originality when Steele played the Arthur Kipps role on the London and Broadway stage for four years, safely out of range of the cinematic close-ups which put into Panavision perspective that personified-balloon face and set of teeth that would make Cass Daley completely Crestfallen. Of course he can't control his physiognomy, but he could do something about his general deportment, in which he matches Sandy Dennis in the mannerisms department by strutting and prancing, rolling his eyes, tossing his head, and twitching around so much he looks like a third base coach with a bad case of the shingles. Whereas the play was based on H. G. Wells' novel, "Kipps," its successor engenders excitement more in keeping with a screen adaptation of the Keynesian theory. The cornerstone of any good musical, one would assume, is the score, but David Heneker's songs are so incredibly and unanimously nondescript that the wedding reception sequence could be interchanged with the "Happiest Millionaire" barroom number with no one the wiser.[15]
Pauline Kael described the film as "appalling" and "technically astonishing."[16]
Variety said, "The cohesive force is certainly that of Tommy Steele, who takes hold of his part like a terrier and never lets go. His assurance is overwhelming, and he leads the terping with splendid vigor and elan."[17]
Channel 4 calls it "undeniably colourful and annoyingly energetic" and adds, "there is plenty of flash, bang and wallop, but very little warmth or soul, the hapless star attempting to carry the film by grinning goonishly throughout. He exudes as much charm as the deckchair he disguises himself as."[18]
Time Out London says, "the film lays on the period charm rather exhaustingly, and the songs ... don't exactly sweep you along."[19]
Box office
The movie was the 13th most popular at the UK box office in 1969.[20] Sidney says the film was "a real smash" in England but "did less than nothing" in the US "because it was an English picture. The film didn't have anyone in it that anyone in this country knew. Unfortunately Tommy Steele had just made two very bad pictures in this country. We followed those and had nothing to build on with him." Sidney also felt the film's financial prospects were hurt by the popularity of Beatlemania. "That brought in a whole new sound," he said. "Maybe if we had been two or three years earlier with the picture, it might have been more successful with American audiences."[9]
Sir Thomas Hicks, known professionally as Tommy Steele, is an English entertainer, regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star.
The Happiest Millionaire is a 1967 American musical film starring Fred MacMurray, based upon the true story of Philadelphia millionaire Anthony Drexel Biddle. The film, featuring music by the Sherman Brothers, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design by Bill Thomas. The screenplay by A. J. Carothers was adapted from the play, based on the book My Philadelphia Father by Cordelia Drexel Biddle. Walt Disney acquired the rights to the play in the early 1960s. The film was the last live-action musical film to be produced by Disney before his death on December 15, 1966.
Cyril Joseph Trimnell-Ritchard, known professionally as Cyril Ritchard, was an Australian stage, screen and television actor, and director. He is best remembered today for his performance as Captain Hook in the Mary Martin musical production of Peter Pan. In 1945, he played Gabriele Eisenstein in Gay Rosalinda at the Palace theatre in London, a version of Strauss's Die Fledermaus by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in which he appeared with Peter Graves. The show was conducted by Richard Tauber and ran for almost a year.
Half a Sixpence is a 1963 musical comedy based on the 1905 novel Kipps by H. G. Wells, with music and lyrics by David Heneker and a book by Beverley Cross. It was written as a vehicle for British pop star Tommy Steele.
Helen Forrest was an American singer of traditional pop and swing music. She served as the "girl singer" for three of the most popular big bands of the Swing Era, thereby earning a reputation as "the voice of the name bands."
Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905. It was reportedly Wells's own favourite among his works, and it has been adapted for stage, cinema and television productions, including the musical Half a Sixpence.
Second Chorus is a 1940 Hollywood musical comedy film starring Paulette Goddard and Fred Astaire and featuring Artie Shaw, Burgess Meredith and Charles Butterworth, with music by Artie Shaw, Bernie Hanighen and Hal Borne, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The film was directed by H. C. Potter and produced independently for Paramount Pictures by Boris Morros, with associate producers Robert Stillman and (uncredited) Fred Astaire. The film's copyright expired in 1968 and it is now in the public domain.
Thousands Cheer is a 1943 American musical comedy film directed by George Sidney and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Produced during the Second World War, the film was intended as a morale booster for American troops and their families.
My Fair Lady is a 1964 American musical comedy-drama film adapted from the 1956 Lerner and Loewe stage musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 stage play Pygmalion. With a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and directed by George Cukor, the film depicts a poor Cockney flower-seller named Eliza Doolittle who overhears an arrogant phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, as he casually wagers that he could teach her to speak "proper" English, thereby making her presentable in the high society of Edwardian London.
You and Me is a 1938 American crime drama/comedy/romance film directed by Fritz Lang. It stars Sylvia Sidney and George Raft as a pair of ex-convicts on parole, working in a department store whose owner, played by Harry Carey, routinely hires former criminals to give them a second chance. It was written by Norman Krasna and Virginia Van Upp.
Pal Joey is a 1957 American musical comedy film directed by George Sidney, loosely adapted from the Rodgers and Hart musical play of the same name, and starring Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, and Kim Novak.
Kipps is a 1941 British comedy-drama film adaptation of H. G. Wells's 1905 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Carol Reed and stars Michael Redgrave as a draper's assistant who inherits a large fortune. The film's costumes were designed by Cecil Beaton.
Ann Morrison is an American actress, best known for her Broadway debut as Mary Flynn in the Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical, Merrily We Roll Along directed by Harold Prince for which she won the 1982 Theatre World Award. Off-Broadway she played Lizzie in the highly acclaimed Polly Pen/Peggy Harmon musical Goblin Market which garnered her a 1986 Drama Desk Award Nomination as Best Actress in a Musical and a Best Plays Theatrical Yearbook Citation as Best Actress in a Musical.
It All Came True is a 1940 American musical comedy crime film starring Ann Sheridan as a fledgling singer and Humphrey Bogart, who was third-billed on movie posters, as a gangster who hides from the police in a boarding house. It is based on the Louis Bromfield novel Better Than Life. Sheridan introduced the hit song "Angel in Disguise". The picture was produced by Mark Hellinger and directed by Lewis Seiler. The cast also featured Jeffrey Lynn as the leading man, Zasu Pitts, and Una O'Connor.
David William Heneker was a writer and composer of British popular music and musicals, best known for creating the music and lyrics for Half a Sixpence.
Arthur Kipps is the name of the protagonist in two distinct works of fiction.
Eleanor Rigby is a statue in Stanley Street, Liverpool, England, designed and made by the entertainer Tommy Steele. It is based on the subject of the Beatles' 1966 song "Eleanor Rigby", which is credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership.
Half a Sixpence is an album pianist and bandleader Count Basie and His Orchestra featuring performances of music from the motion picture Half a Sixpence recorded in 1967 and released on the Dot label.
Half a Sixpence is a stage musical based on the 1905 novel Kipps by H. G. Wells and the original 1963 musical, with music by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, and lyrics by Anthony Drewe and Heneker, featuring several of the original songs by Heneker, and book by Julian Fellowes.
Charlie Stemp is an English actor. Stemp came to prominence for his leading role as Arthur Kipps in the West End musical Half a Sixpence, which earned him a WhatsOnStage Award for Best Actor in a Musical and nomination for a 2017 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical.
References
↑ $6 MILLION U.S. FILM HALTED BY AMATEURS Los Angeles Times 15 Nov 1966: c17.
↑ Weiler, A.H. Shooting For 'Sixpence': More On Movies. The New York Times. 14 November 1965: X9.
↑ Martin, Betty. Robson to Direct 'Detective'. Los Angeles Times 2 June 1966: d12.
↑ Thomas, Bob Rock 'n' Roller Goes Straight. The Washington Post and Times-Herald 12 June 1966: G2.
↑ Champlin, Charles. Nerves of Steele Keep Tom on Top Los Angeles Times 18 July 1966: c1
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