Derby Day *** (1952, Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding, Googie Withers, Gordon Harker, John McCallum, Peter Graves, Suzanne Cloutier, Gladys Henson) – Classic Movie Review 10,611

Director Herbert Wilcox’s enjoyable 1952 British ensemble drama Derby Day [Four against Fate] stars Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding, Googie Withers, Gordon Harker, John McCallum, Peter Graves, Suzanne Cloutier and Gladys Henson in a tale of several characters on their way to the Derby Day races at Epsom Downs Racecourse.

Once again Wilcox directs his wife Neagle, as an air-crash widow comforted by Wilding, this time in a friendly portmanteau piece about the fortunes of eight people at the famous Epsom horse race.

Lady Helen Forbes (Neagle) and newspaper cartoonist David Scott (Wilding) are at the races on Derby day after the pledges they had made to their respective loved ones who died in a plane accident.

Among the other welcome players of the period here are that other movie couple, Withers and McCallum, as a pair of lovers on the run after McCallum’s character has murdered her character’s husband.

Then dissolute movie star Gerald (Graves) is out for the day with a young French maid (Cloutier), who has won him as her prize for the day, and cabbie Joe (Harker) is having a flutter despite his nagging wife (Henson).

Wilcox could certainly craft a film, and this one entertains in its useful way, especially with such a jolly and expert Fifties Brit cast. Wilcox wasn’t out to shock or challenge audiences at all, though, so expect plenty of cosy humour, homey sentiment and corny melodrama.

The screenplay by John Baines, Monckton Hoffe and Alan Melville is based on a story by Arthur Austen.

Wilcox launched the film at the actual 1952 Epsom Derby, with Anna Neagle touring the Epsom Enclosure in a carriage with four young ladies in jockey costumes.

It is shot at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England.

Also in the cast are Googie Withers, Gordon Harker, John McCallum, Peter Graves, Suzanne Cloutier, Gladys Henson, Edwin Styles, Nigel Stock, Ralph Reader, Tom Walls Jr, Josephine Fitzgerald, Alfie Bass, Arthur Hambling, Richard Wattis, Ewan Roberts, Robert Brown, Gerald Anderson, Sam Kydd, Hugh Moxey, Derek Prentice, Michael Ripper, Cyril Ray, John Chandos, Frank Webster, Raymond Glendenning and Bryan Johnstone.

During shooting, Wilding began to date Elizabeth Taylor, in the UK to film Ivanhoe, and became her second husband (married 1952, divorced 1957). He and Taylor, 20 years his junior, had two sons, Michael Howard Wilding (born 1953) and Christopher Edward Wilding (born 1955).

Derby Day was the last Neagle–Wilding collaboration, which started with Piccadilly Incident (1946). It was popular in Britain, though less so than their earlier collaborations.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,611

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