Bunny Lake Is Missing **** (1965, Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Noël Coward, Martita Hunt, Finlay Currie, Clive Revill, Anna Massey) – Classic Movie Review 5001

You don’t get many films billed as ‘ A conspiracy of madness’ but here it is. Producer-director Otto Preminger’s 1965 crafty and engrossing mystery crime thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing comes from the pens of screen-writing married couple John Mortimer and Penelope Mortimer, based on a novel by Evelyn Piper (aka Marryam Modell).

Laurence Olivier relishes his big fat role as Superintendent Newhouse, a Scotland Yard detective investigating the disappearance of Bunny, the four-year-old daughter of a young American woman Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) in London.

Ann says that she went to collect Bunny from her first day at school, only to find that she has vanished into thin air, but, after a while, it seems that the child may never have existed in the first place and even Ann’s brother Stephen (Keir Dullea) agrees.

The alluring, first-class Sixties cast – particularly Noël Coward as a camp landlord called Horacio Wilson – is an undeniable attraction. And, with its clever mystery, the piece is utterly intriguing. It is compellingly shot (by Denys N Coop) on various London locations in black and white, in a return to the noirish style of Preminger movies like Laura and Where the Sidewalk Ends.

Also in the cast are Martita Hunt as Ada Ford, Finlay Currie as Doll Maker, Clive Revill as Police Sgt. Andrews, Anna Massey as Elvira Smollett, Lucie Mannheim as Cook, Adrienne Corri, Megs Jenkins, Richard Wattis, Delphi Lawrence, Jill Melford, Victor Maddern, Damaris Hayman, Suzanne Neve, Kika Markham, Jane Evers, John Sharp, Geoffrey Frederick, Percy Herbert, Patrick Jordan, Fred Emney, Michael Wynne, Finlay Currie, Bill Maxim, Tim Brinton, Richard Wattis, David Oxley, John Forbes-Robertson, Megs Jenkins and Suky Appleby.

Iconic British pop band The Zombies are seen playing three numbers on the TV in the pub – Just Out of Reach, Nothing’s Changed and Remember You.

On 20 February 2019, it was announced that a remake of Otto Preminger’s crime thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing is in the works at Screen Gems.

John Mortimer and Penelope Mortimer were married from 1949 till their divorce in 1972. Formerly Mrs Penelope Dimont, Penelope Mortimer was a well-known novelist and film critic and was five years his senior.

Years later, Dullea was starring in a London West End stage production. On opening night, Coward went backstage after the show, but Dullea refused to meet him, and then Coward said: ‘Keir today and gone tomorrow.’ However, in December 2004, for their annual birthday celebration, the Noël Coward Society invited Dullea as the guest celebrity to lay flowers in front of Coward’s statue at New York’s Gershwin Theatre, commemorating his 105th birthday.

Dullea won the 1963 Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Male for David and Lisa (1962). And Coward was wrong: in 2020, Dullea is 84 and still working.

Carol Lynley retired from the screen in 2006 and died from a heart attack on 3 September 2019, at the age of 77. She also appeared in Preminger’s The Cardinal.

In 2005, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released Bunny Lake Is Missing for the first time on DVD.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5001

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