Love on the Dole | |
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Directed by | John Baxter |
Written by | Walter Greenwood (novel and adaptation) Ronald Gow (play) Barbara K. Emary Rollo Gamble |
Produced by | John Baxter |
Starring | Deborah Kerr Clifford Evans |
Cinematography | James Wilson |
Edited by | Michael C. Chorlton |
Music by | Richard Addinsell Orchestrated, Roy Douglas Direction, Muir Mathieson |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Anglo-American Film Corporation (UK) United Artists (USA) |
Release dates |
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Running time | 94 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Love on the Dole is a 1941 British drama film starring Deborah Kerr and Clifford Evans. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Walter Greenwood. [1] It was the first English-made feature film to show English police wielding batons against a crowd. [2]
It is 1930, at the height of the Great Depression. The Hardcastle family live in Hankey Park, part of Salford. Mr Hardcastle is a coalminer; his son, Harry, is an apprentice at a local engineering firm and Sally, his daughter, works at a cotton mill.
Mr Hardcastle's mine is put on a three-day week.
Harry wins £22 on his winning thruppence treble bet. Bookmaker Sam Grundy pays up without any trouble. At his father's suggestion, he takes his girlfriend Helen to the seaside resort of Blackpool on a holiday.
Harry becomes unemployed when his apprenticeship ends. The family’s plight is made worse by reductions in means tested unemployment benefits (the dole), whilst Helen's unexpected pregnancy causes further tensions.
Sally is courted by factory worker and Labour Party activist Larry Meath but their marriage plans are put in doubt when Larry loses his job. Larry is fatally injured when he tries to restore calm in a clash with the police during an unemployment march. Sally reluctantly becomes Grundy's mistress to help keep her unemployed family.
Although the book was successful, a proposed film version was rejected by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) in 1936 as it was a "very sordid story in very sordid surroundings". [3] However, in 1940 the BBFC approved a similar proposal, with the film finally released in June 1941. [4]
In a contemporary review, The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "Here is a film that ranks with the best we have ever produced. The direction is excellent, the photography admirable, and the casting particularly good." [5]
Love on the Dole is a novel by Walter Greenwood, about working-class poverty in 1930s Northern England. It has been made into both a play and a film.
Phyllis Hannah Murray-Hill, known professionally as Phyllis Calvert, was an English film, stage and television actress. She was one of the leading stars of the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s such as The Man in Grey (1943) and was one of the most popular movie stars in Britain in the 1940s. She continued her acting career for another 50 years.
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