Not Now, Darling ** (1973, Leslie Phillips, Ray Cooney, Moira Lister, Julie Ege, Joan Sims, Derren Nesbitt, Barbara Windsor, Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, Bill Fraser, Jackie Pallo, Trudi Van Doorn) – Classic Movie Review 13,197

The 1973 British farcical comedy film Not Now, Darling stars the lovely cast of Leslie Phillips, Ray Cooney, Moira Lister, Julie Ege, Joan Sims, Derren Nesbitt, Barbara Windsor, Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, Bill Fraser, Jackie Pallo, and Trudi Van Doorn.

The old-fashioned, stagey 1973 British farcical comedy film Not Now, Darling, directed by Ray Cooney and David Croft, stars the lovely cast of Leslie Phillips, Ray Cooney, Moira Lister, Julie Ege, Joan Sims, Derren Nesbitt, Barbara Windsor, Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, Bill Fraser, Jackie Pallo, and Trudi Van Doorn. It is adapted from the popular 1967 play by John Chapman and Ray Cooney, a farce set in London fur coat salon of Bodley, Bodley and Crouch.

The amusing players enliven this creaky, vintage-style Seventies farce, based on the long-running London West End stage play by John Chapman and Ray Cooney. The comedy is sparked by a silly plot about a furrier, Gilbert Bodley (Leslie Phillips), who suffers a series of comedy catastrophes when he plans to sell an expensive mink to mobster Harry McMichaell (Derren Nesbitt) for his wife Janie, who is Gilbert’s mistress. Bodley gets his reluctant partner Arnold Crouch (the playwright Ray Cooney) to close the deal. But Harry plans to buy the same coat for his own mistress, Sue Lawson (Barbara Windsor).

Leslie Phillips, Derren Nesbitt, Ray Cooney and Bill Fraser are just the men for some silly fun, but more welcome are Joan Sims and Barbara Windsor of Carry On fame, and a couple of delightful stragglers from an even earlier era, Cicely Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert, for the last time on screen together.

Peter Butterworth and Graham Stark pop in as painters (uncredited).

A loosely related sequel called Not Now, Comrade was released in 1976, also with Leslie Phillips.

The cast are Trudi Van Doorn as Miss Whittington, Leslie Phillips as Gilbert Bodley, Julie Ege as Janie McMichael, Joan Sims as Miss Ambrosine Tipdale, Derren Nesbitt as Harry McMichael, Ray Cooney as Arnold Crouch, Bill Fraser as commissionaire, Jack Hulbert as Commander George Frencham, Cicely Courtneidge as Mrs Harriet Frencham, Barbara Windsor as Sue Lawson, Moira Lister as Maude Bodley, Jackie Pallo as Mr Lawson, Peter Butterworth as painter, and Graham Stark as painter.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,197

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