Mister Ten Per Cent ** (1967, Charlie Drake, George Baker, Annette Andre, John Le Mesurier, Una Stubbs, Derek Nimmo, Wanda Ventham) – Classic Movie Review 11,478

Director Peter Graham Scott’s strained, largely unfunny 1967 British comedy film Mister Ten Per Cent stars Charlie Drake, George Baker, Annette Andre, John Le Mesurier, Una Stubbs, Derek Nimmo and Wanda Ventham.

Drake plays construction worker and amateur playwright Percy Pointer, who writes a drama play called Oh My Lord and a dishonest producer agrees to back it, hoping it will be a disaster so he can claim insurance on its failure. The opening night audience sees the play as a slapstick comedy, and the play is a hit, but Percy is furious and tries to ruin the production.

It is shot at Elstree Studios and on location in London.

Mister Ten Per Cent predates Mel Brooks’s similarly plotted film The Producers (1968) by a year. Its backstage chaos climax owes much to the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera (1935).

It is the last in a series of four films produced by Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) featuring Drake. Television fame with The Charlie Drake Show (with its opening catchphrase ‘Hello, my darlings!’) led to four films featuring Drake, none of them successful: Sands of the Desert (1960), Petticoat Pirates (1961), The Cracksman (1963) and Mister Ten Per Cent (1967).

Mister Ten Per Cent opened at the London ABCs Fulham Road and Edgware Road on 18 May 1967 but performed so badly that its general release was cancelled and it was replaced by revivals of older films or shown as the bottom half of a double bill.

The cast are Charlie Drake as Percy Pointer, Derek Nimmo as Tony, Wanda Ventham as Kathy, John Le Mesurier as Jocelyn Macauley, Anthony Nicholls as Casey, Noel Dyson as Mrs Gorman, John Hewer as Townsend, Anthony Gardner as Claude Crepe, Ronald Radd as Publicist, John Laurie as Scotsman, Colin Douglas as Policeman, Annette Andre as Muriel, Justine Lord as Lady Dorothea, George Baker as Lord Edward, Joyce Blair as 1st Lady Dorothea, Una Stubbs as 2nd Lady Dorothea, Lynn Ashby as The Maid, Nicole Shelby as Fiona, Gina Warwick as Ellen, and Percy Herbert as Inspector Great.

Una Stubbs (1 May 1937 – 12 August 2021) appeared as Sherlock Holmes’s landlady Mrs Hudson in the TV series Sherlock (2010–2017). She had known her Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch since he was four, having worked with his mother, Wanda Ventham.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,478

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