The Happy Family ** (1952, Stanley Holloway, Kathleen Harrison, Naunton Wayne, George Cole) – Classic Movie Review 11,763

Director Muriel Box’s 1952 British comedy The Happy Family [Mr Lord Says No] Stanley Holloway, Kathleen Harrison, Naunton Wayne and George Cole, and a glorious old Brit cast.

Producer-writer Sydney Box left Rank to go independent with this amiable but fairly feeble production about a cockney grocer’s shop keeper called Mr Lord (Holloway), his wife (Harrison) and family who refuse to be dispossessed from their grocery shop (‘The House of Lords’) and apartment above to provide space for a road to London’s South Bank Festival of Britain area then under construction. Box’s wife Muriel directs and co-writes.

The Boxes’ rather obvious screenplay (based on a play The Happy Family by Michael Clayton Hutton) does little to develop its static situation comedically or dramatically, but the happy family of British character actors helps a lot, providing laughs even when the script doesn’t. It is nice enough but it clearly wanted to be Passport to Pimlico, a part of London which is, after all, near by, but it doesn’t come within a mile of it.

Also in the cast are Dandy Nichols, Miles Malleson, Eileen Moore, John Stratton, Marjorie Barton, Tom Gill, Geoffrey Sumner, Shirley Mitchell, Laurence Naismith, Edward Lexy, Cameron Hall, Hal Osmond, John Salew, Ernest Butcher, Lyn Evans, Michael Ward, Richard Wattis, David Keir, Anthony Oliver, Campbell Singer, Arthur Hambling, and Eileen Way.

The film was released in the year after the Festival of Britain.

Mr Lord Says No is the US alternative title.

British film production company London Independent Producers was founded in 1951 by Sydney Box and William MacQuitty. Box was head of production of Gainsborough Pictures, part of the Rank Organisation, bur Gainsborough was closed down and Box left Rank to produce independently, with Muriel Box as a third partner.

Notable London Independent Producers include The Happy Family (1952), Street Corner (1953), The Beachcomber (1954), Forbidden Cargo (1954), Above Us the Waves (1955), The Prisoner (1955), Accident (1967), The Man Outside (1967), Theatre of Death (1967), The Long Duel (1967), The Limbo Line (1968), Amsterdam Affair (1968) and Taste of Excitement (1970).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,763

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