A Taste of Honey ***** (1961, Dora Bryan, Rita Tushingham, Murray Melvin, Robert Stephens) – Classic Movie Review 1,473

Tony Richardson’s classic 1961 British realist drama film A Taste of Honey is a splendid memorial to both Dora Bryan and Murray Melvin. 

Co-writer/ director Tony Richardson’s classic 1961 British realist drama A Taste of Honey is a splendid memorial to the late great Dora Bryan, who died on died on July 23 2014, aged 91. She won the 1962 BAFTA Film Award for Best British Actress for her role as Helen, the tarty, domineering, 40-year-old alcoholic mother of 17-year old schoolgirl Jo (Rita Tushingham) in Salford in North West England.

One of the high spots of the short but sweet flowering of British realist cinema in the early 60s, the film is an immaculate, cinematic film version of Shelagh Delaney’s still extremely potent bittersweet play. Delaney adapted the screenplay herself, aided by director Richardson, who directed the original production of the play.

Robert Stephens also stars as the selfish brute Peter Smith, the new man Helen meets and marries, straining relations between Jo and her mother. Feeling rejected, Jo starts a job in a shoe shop and rents her own flat. Geoffrey Ingham (Murray Melvin), a gay textile design student she meets, becomes her best friend, and she invites him to move in with her.

When Jo discovers she is pregnant after a one-night stand with a departed black sailor called Jimmy, Geoff offers support and even marriage, saying: ‘You need somebody to love you while you’re looking for somebody to love.’  But, at this point, Helen re-appears and moves in, after her relationship with Peter fails. She’s as domineering and insensitive as ever.

The acting has a surprising strength, resilience and cutting edge, just like the text of the play and the film. Richardson films lovingly, attentive to script, text and atmosphere. And the evocative locations at Salford, Manchester, Stockport and Blackpool are shot in glorious black and white by master cinematographer Walter Lassally, capturing the mood and feeling of the period.

One of the finest examples of the gritty British film genre known as kitchen sink realism, the film won four BAFTA awards. As well as Bryan’s Best Actress award, Delaney and Richardson won Best British Screenplay, it was Best British Film, and Tushingham was Most Promising Newcomer. Tushingham and Melvin won Best Actress and Actor at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, though Melvin wasn’t allowed time off by his theatre show employers to accept it. Tushingham won the 1963 Golden Globe for Most Promising Female Newcomer. Delaney and Richardson also won a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award.

Delaney wrote A Taste of Honey as her first play when she was only 18. Planning it as a novel, she turned it into a play to address social issues that were not being tackled on stage and help revitalise British theatre. Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop staged the play at the Theatre Royal Stratford East on 27 May 1958, transferring to Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End on 10 February 1959. Melvin is the only original stage cast member who survives to the film. Avis Bunnage played Bryan’s role in the theatre.

Murray Melvin reprises his Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop stage role of Geoffrey in the 1961 film. The play started at at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in the 1957–58 season and in February 1959, opened at the Wyndham’s Theatre and transferred to the Criterion six months later. It was the hit of the season.

Now the film is also a splendid memorial to Murray Melvin, as well as Dora Bryan.

Murray Melvin (born 10 August 1932) died on 14 April 2023, aged 90. He appeared in films by Joseph Losey, Tony Richardson, Ken Russell, Lewis Gilbert, Peter Medak, Joel Schumacher, and James Gray. He was a lifelong friend of Ken Russell. Melvin had an important role as the Reverend Samuel Runt in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975).

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,473

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