Mary Had a Little… | |
---|---|
Directed by | Edward Buzzell |
Written by | Robert E. Kent Jameson Brewer Peter Miller James Kelly |
Produced by | George Fowler Edward Small (executive) |
Starring | Agnes Laurent |
Cinematography | Desmond Dickinson |
Edited by | Bernard Gribble |
Music by | Bruce Campbell |
Production company | Caralan Productions Ltd. |
Distributed by | Lopert Pictures United Artists |
Release dates |
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Running time | 82 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Mary Had a Little... is a 1961 British comedy film directed by Edward Buzzell and starring Agnès Laurent, Hazel Court and Jack Watling. [2] It takes its title from the nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb and is about a slick impresario who tries unsuccessfully to win a bet with a psychiatrist over the production of a perfect baby via hypnotism. [3]
It has been described by film historian David McGillivray as "the first full-fledged British sex comedy." [4]
The film was the first of a three-picture deal between director Edward Buzzell and producer Edward Small; the other two films were never shot. [5] The screenplay was based on the play of the same name by Arthur Herzog Jr., Muriel Herman and Al Rosen, which had its West End opening at the Strand Theatre on 27 November 1951 in a production directed by the famous farceur Ralph Lynn. [6]
Production took place in October 1960 at Walton Studios near London under the supervision of David Rose. [7] The theme tune, Mary Had a Little..., was written by Buzzell and sung by Dick James. The completed film turned out to be Buzzell's final directorial assignment and also the penultimate credit for its star Agnès Laurent.
Having opened in Los Angeles on 25 July 1961, the film went into general release in the UK on 3 August. [8] Variety called it a "lower case farce", adding, "Pregnant idea, miscarries." [9] "Whatever the merits of the original play", noted Britain's Monthly Film Bulletin, "the film remains, in its strenuously saucy way, on an abysmally unsubtle level." [10]
The Moon Is Blue is a 1953 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Otto Preminger and starring William Holden, David Niven, and Maggie McNamara. Written by F. Hugh Herbert and based on his 1951 play of the same title, the film is about a young woman who meets an architect on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and quickly turns his life upside down. Herbert's play had also been a huge success in Germany, and Preminger decided to simultaneously film in English and German, using the same sets but different casts. The German-language film version is Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach.
Ona Munson was an American film and stage actress. She starred in nine Broadway productions and 20 feature films in her career, which spanned over 30 years.
Jack Stanley Watling was an English actor.
Hazel Court was an English actress. She is known for her roles in British and American horror films during the 1950s and early 1960s, including Terence Fisher's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) for Hammer Film Productions, and three of Roger Corman's adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories for American International Pictures: The Premature Burial (1962), The Raven (1963) and The Masque of the Red Death (1964).
The Monthly Film Bulletin was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 to April 1991, when it merged with Sight & Sound. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those with a narrow arthouse release.
Edward Small was a film producer from the late 1920s through 1970, who was enormously prolific over a 50-year career. He is best known for the movies The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), The Corsican Brothers (1941), Brewster's Millions (1945), Raw Deal (1948), Black Magic (1949), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Solomon and Sheba (1959).
The Bobo is a 1967 British comedy film directed by Robert Parrish and starring Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland. The screenplay is based on the 1959 novel Olimpia by Burt Cole, also known as Thomas Dixon.
Norman Krasna was an American screenwriter, playwright, producer, and film director who penned screwball comedies centered on a case of mistaken identity. Krasna directed three films during a forty-year career in Hollywood. He garnered four Academy Award screenwriting nominations, winning once for 1943's Princess O'Rourke, which he also directed.
Who Was That Lady? is a 1960 black and white American comedy film directed by George Sidney and starring Tony Curtis, Dean Martin, and Janet Leigh.
Sex comedy, erotic comedy or more broadly sexual comedy is a genre in which comedy is motivated by sexual situations and love affairs. Although "sex comedy" is primarily a description of dramatic forms such as theatre and film, literary works such as those of Ovid and Chaucer may be considered sex comedies.
Edward Buzzell was an American film actor and director whose credits include Child of Manhattan (1933); Honolulu (1939); the Marx Brothers films At the Circus (1939) and Go West (1940); the musicals Best Foot Forward (1943), Song of the Thin Man (1947), and Neptune's Daughter (1949); and Easy to Wed (1946).
B.S. I Love You is a 1971 American comedy-drama film directed and written by Steven Hilliard Stern and starring Peter Kastner. The style of the film is like many others of its era, taking its cues from The Graduate and the raunchiness of the early 1970s, as Kastner plays a youthful TV commercials producer whose quest in life is to bed as many women as possible, while trying to remain faithful to his childhood sweetheart who remains in tow, awaiting the day they will marry.
La Cage aux folles is a 1978 comedy film directed by Édouard Molinaro, based on Jean Poiret's 1973 play of the same name. It stars Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault as a gay couple operating a drag nightclub in a French resort town, Rémi Laurent as the former's son, and Michel Galabru and Carmen Scarpitta as his new fiancée's ultra-conservative parents. The French-language picture was a Franco-Italian co-production by United Artists. This was the first film adaptation of Poiret's play, which was later adapted into the 1996 American film The Birdcage.
David McGillivray is an actor, producer, playwright, screenwriter and film critic.
A French Mistress is a 1960 British comedy film directed by Roy Boulting and starring Cecil Parker, James Robertson Justice, Agnès Laurent, Ian Bannen, Raymond Huntley, Irene Handl and Thorley Walters.
Three on a Spree is a 1961 British comedy film directed by Sidney J. Furie and starring Jack Watling, Carole Lesley and John Slater. It is based on the 1902 novel Brewster's Millions by George Barr McCutcheon, which became the hit 1906 play written by Winchell Smith and Byron Ongley, which had been previously filmed by Edward Small in 1945.
Agnès Laurent was a French actress. She mainly acted in France, but is perhaps known in the United Kingdom for playing the title role in the British comedy film A French Mistress.
The Wizard of Baghdad is a 1960 American comedy/fantasy film directed by George Sherman and starring Dick Shawn, Diane Baker, and Barry Coe. It was released by 20th Century Fox.
How to Succeed with Sex is an American sex comedy film written and directed by Bert I. Gordon., released on October 30, 1972.
Can You Keep It Up For A Week? is a 1974 British sex comedy film.