The Punch and Judy Man *** (1963, Tony Hancock, Sylvia Syms, Ronald Fraser, John le Mesurier, Hugh Lloyd, Barbara Murray) – Classic Movie Review 2106

Director Jeremy Summers’s 1963 British black and white comedy The Punch and Judy Man finds Tony Hancock leaving his comfort zone safety of East Cheam, the location of his mega-hit radio and TV show Hancock’s Half Hour, and abandoning his usual writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson in favour of his own writing with Phillip Oakes. The result is that he received another roasting from the critics on his work on the big screen after his 1960 big star vehicle The Rebel.

This is unfair, for great TV clown Hancock, however, is absolutely fine as Wally, the English seaside Punch and Judy puppeteer battling against the local bigwigs, though admittedly Sylvia Syms is too demure to play his social-climbing gorgon of a wife, Delia. And, yes, it is not at all a great comedy, but it is still a film that Hancock’s legions of fans, if there are still any left, can take to their hearts. When the comedy seems to stall, you can still count upon some very reliable comic playing among the notable character support, particularly from Ronald Fraser as the Mayor, John le Mesurier as Sandman and Hugh Lloyd as Edward.

There is a lovely, extended scene where Hancock faces a small boy, Peter (Nicholas Webb, aged 8, the real-life nephew of Syms, who got him the job), eating huge ice creams.

An unhappy, difficult, self-tormented Hancock lost heart half way through filming and blamed all his difficulties with it on the Punch figure, which he believed unlucky, and on the fact that both the Punch and Judy Man in the film and the much-loved character actor Mario Fabrizi (who plays Nevil) died.

The Associated British Picture Corporation studio lost heart too and did not give it a London West End premiere, the film flopped big time and the three other movies supposed to be made under Hancock’s contract never materialised. It was shot in the studio at The Elstree Studios of Associated British Picture Corporation at Elstree, Hertfordshire, England, and on location at Bognor Regis, West Sussex, on England’s south coast.

Syms recalls: ‘He would discuss an idea with you that was so funny he’d have you rolling on the floor and the first time he did it, it would be marvellous. But he’d do it again and again until he killed it.’

It also features Barbara Murray, George Fairweather, Pauline Jameson, Norman Bird, Peter Vaughan, John Dunbar, Walter Hudd, Brian Bedford, Peter Myers, Eddie Byrne, Gerald Harper, Michael Ripper, Carole Ann Ford, Norman Chappell, Russell Waters and Hattie Jacques (uncredited) as Dolly Zarathusa, the Fortune Teller.

Hattie Jacques and John le Mesurier were married from 10 November 1949 to 31 August 1965) (divorced, with two children). Jacques left le Mesurier for a relationship with her driver John Schofield from 1962 to 1966, but Jacques and le Mesurier remained friends after they divorced. Le Mesurier’s’s third wife Joan left him soon after their marriage in 1966 for his best friend, Tony Hancock. But, a year later, having found the alcoholic Hancock impossible to live with, Joan returned to le Mesurier. Hancock committed suicide in Australia in 1968.

It was Nicholas Webb’s only film. He died on 5 February 1998 of pancreatic cancer, aged 43.

The film’s cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, whose work also included Star Wars, The Omen, Dr Strangelove, Ice Cold in Alex, A Hard Day’s Night and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, died at his home on the Isle of Wight on August 23 2013, aged 99.

The Punch and Judy Man is directed by Jeremy Summers, runs 96 minutes, is made by Associated British Picture Corporation and, MacConkey Productions [A Macconkey Production], is released by Warner-Pathé Distributors (1963) (UK), is written by Phillip Oakes and Tony Hancock, based on an original idea by Tony Hancock, is shot in black and white by Gilbert Taylor, is produced by Gordon L T Scott and is scored by Don Banks and Derek Scott, with Art Direction by Robert Jones.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2106

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John le Mesurier is fondly remembered as Sgt Wilson in TV’s Dad’s Army