The Man Who Never Was **** (1956, Clifton Webb, Gloria Grahame, Robert Flemyng, Stephen Boyd, Laurence Naismith, Michael Hordern, André Morell, Geoffrey Keen, William Russell) – Classic Movie Review 3,773

The engaging 1956 British wartime espionage thriller film The Man Who Never Was finds British intelligence officers planting phony papers about the Allied invasion of Europe on a drowned man they call Major Martin to fool the Germans.

Director Ronald Neame’s engaging 1956 British wartime espionage thriller film The Man Who Never Was precedes the similar-minded I Was Monty’s Double (1958) as a popular Fifties movie about a British World War Two attempt to fool the Germans, this time by British intelligence officers planting on a drowned man they call Major Martin phony papers about the Allied invasion of Europe.

The Brits are desperate to trick the enemy into weakening Sicily’s defences before the 1943 attack by trying to create the illusion that the UK is planning to invade Greece. So they arrange to find a body that looks drowned and for the Spanish authorities to find it to send the fake papers on to the Germans.

Neame painstakingly directs Nigel Balcon’s engrossing screenplay, based on Ewen Montagu’s 1953 book, which provides a high measure of entertainment as well as information and uplift. Balcon’s screenplay won the 1956 BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay, following William Rose’s win for The Ladykillers the previous year. It is based on the book The Man Who Never Was by Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu and chronicles Operation Mincemeat, the 1943 British intelligence plan to deceive the Axis powers into thinking the Allied invasion in the Mediterranean would take place in Greece not Sicily.

America’s Gloria Grahame is out of place as Martin’s ‘fiancée’ Lucy Sherwood, but Clifton Webb as the real-life British intelligence officer Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu who conceives the plan, Robert Flemyng, Stephen Boyd, Laurence Naismith, Michael Hordern, André Morell, Geoffrey Keen and the other British Fifties acting stalwarts are all in their element.

How much is exactly true we don’t really know, so it is best to just sit back and enjoy an entertaining rather than trying to sort fact from fiction. Balchin’s script stays close to the truth but provides dramatisation, with the episode of the pro-German IRA Irish spy Patrick O’Reilly (Stephen Boyd) an invention. In this film plotline, when Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, is sceptical about the planted documents, the Nazis dispatch O’Reilly to London to investigate, turning up at Lucy’s flat. Ewen Montagu said he was happy with the fictitious incidents, which might have happened even if they did not happen.

Also in the cast are Josephine Griffin, Cyril Cusack, Joan Hickson, William Russell, Richard Wattis, Allan Cuthberston, Terence Longdon, Brian Oulten, William Squire, Ronald Adam, Miles Malleson, Gibb McLaughlin, Moultrie Kelsall and Robert Brown.

Ewen Montagu is the Honorable Ewen Montagu C.B.E. D.L. Q.C. Montagu appears in the film an uncredited cameo role as a Royal Air Force air vice-marshal who has doubts about the feasibility of the proposed plan, prompting a surreal scene when the real Montagu addresses his movie persona Clifton Webb, playing the man who conceives the plan.

The British Security Service controlled the German spy network in the UK with its Double-Cross System but this was still secret when the film was made.

The film has a 1955 copyright but was released on 15 March 1956 in the UK.

Peter Sellers (one of the Goons) provides the voice of Winston Churchill in the film. The BBC’s radio comedy The Goon Show spoofed the book of The Man Who Never Was on 31 March 1953 and a full-length version was broadcast on 20 March 1956 following release of the film.

The cast are Clifton Webb as Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu, Gloria Grahame as Lucy Sherwood, Robert Flemyng as Lt. George Acres, Josephine Griffin as Pam, Stephen Boyd as Patrick O’Reilly, Laurence Naismith as Admiral Cross, William Russell as Lucy’s fiancé Joe, Geoffrey Keen as General Archibald Nye, Moultrie Kelsall as the Father, Cyril Cusack as taxi driver, André Morell as Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Michael Hordern as General Coburn, William Squire as submarine commander Bill Jewell, Allan Cuthbertson as Vice-Admiral, Miles Malleson as scientist, Joan Hickson as landlady, Terence Longdon as Larry, Gibb McLaughlin as club porter, Gordon Bell as Customs Officer, Wolf Frees as Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Ewen Montagu as an Air Vice Marshal, and Peter Williams as Admiral Mountbatten.

English actor William Russell (19 November 1924 – 3 June 2024), whose career on stage and screen spanned more than seven decades.

William Russell was born on 19 November 1924. He acted in They Who Dare (1954), One Good Turn (1955), The Man Who Never Was (1956), The Great Escape (1963), Terror (1978), Superman (1978) and Death Watch (1979). On TV he starred in ITV’s The Adventures of Sir Lancelot and was one of the original lead cast of BBC’s Doctor Who, playing Ian Chesterton from the show’s first episode in 1963 to 1965. He died on 3 June 2024, aged 99.

The story is retold in the 2021 British war drama film Operation Mincemeat, directed by John Madden.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3,773

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