30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia *** (1968, Dudley Moore, Eddie Foy Jr, Suzy Kendall) – Classic Movie Review 9166

The 1968 comedy film 30 is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia is a pretty funny vehicle for star Dudley Moore. Can Dud score a hit with the women and get on the stage before he’s 30? 

Can Dud score a hit with the women and get on the stage before he’s 30?

Co-writer/ director Joe McGrath’s 1968 comedy 30 is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia is a pretty funny vehicle for star Dudley Moore, which he also co-writes and scores.

He plays the nervous club piano-player and composer Rupert Street, who has six weeks left to sort out his career and his women trouble before he reaches his thirtieth birthday. He wants to write a musical and marry! The depressing message is, if you haven’t made by the time you are 30, you never will.

Co-author John Wells appears too, as the Honorable Gavin Hopton.

Also in the cast are Eddie Foy Jr, Suzy Kendall, John Bird, Duncan Macrae, Patricia Routledge, Peter Bayliss, Harry Towb, Jonathan Routh, Ted Dicks Jr, Nicky Henson as Paul, Clive Dunn, Frank Thornton, Derek Farr and Micheál Mac Liammóir.

In real life, Moore and Kendall immediately hit it off and soon became a couple, marrying on 14 June 1968. Though they divorced in 1972, they remained friends until Moore’s death in 2002. She remarried to musician Sandy Harper, and Moore was godfather to her daughter Elodie. In 2012, Kendall made her first film appearance in 35 years in Berberian Sound Studio, credited as Special Guest Screamer.

It is the last film of Duncan Macrae, who died before its release.

Micheál Mac Liammóir (born Alfred Willmore; 25 October 1899 – 6 March 1978) was born in London to an English family with no Irish connections. He emigrated to Ireland as a young adult, changed his name, invented an Irish ancestry, and stayed based in Ireland for the rest of his life, keeping up a fabricated identity as a native Irishman born in Cork.

Mac Liammóir founded the Gate Theatre in Dublin with his partner, Hilton Edwards, and two others. Edwards’ and Mac Liammóir’s relationship gained wide acceptance as probably Ireland’s only publicly acknowledged homosexuals, despite Ireland’s anti-gay laws, not repealed in their lifetimes. They were jointly created freemen of the city of Dublin in 1973, the first theatre folk so honoured.

30 is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia is directed by Joe McGrath, runs 95 minutes, is made by Walter Shenson Productions, is released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Dudley Moore, Joe McGrath and John Wells, is shot in Technicolor by Billy Williams, is produced by Walter Shenson, is scored by Dudley Moore, and is designed by Brian Eatwell.

RIP Nicky Henson, who died of cancer on 15 December 2019, aged 74.

John Wells died of cancer in London in 1998, aged 61.

John Bird (born 22 November 1936 – 24 December 2022) died from complications of a stroke on 24 December 2022, aged 86. He performed in the TV satire boom of the 1960s, notably appearing in That Was the Week That Was.

The cast are Dudley Moore as Rupert Street, Eddie Foy Jr as Oscar, Suzy Kendall as Louise Hammond, John Bird as Herbert Greenslade, Duncan Macrae as Jock McCue, Patricia Routledge as Mrs Woolley, Peter Bayliss as Victor, John Wells as Honorable Gavin Hopton, Harry Towb as M. Woolley, Jonathan Routh as Captain Gore-Taylor, Ted Dicks Jr as Horst Cohen, Nicky Henson as Paul, Clive Dunn as Doctor, Frank Thornton as Registrar, Derek Farr as TV Announcer, and Micheál Mac Liammóir as Irish Storyteller.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9166

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com