The Weak and the Wicked [Young and Willing] **** (1954, Glynis Johns, John Gregson, Jane Hylton, Diana Dors, Rachel Roberts, Sidney James) – Classic Movie Review 5747

‘Confessions of an Ex-Convict Who Strips Bare the Raw Facts!’ Co-writer/ director J Lee Thompson’s 1953 British prison drama stars a formidable sextet in Glynis Johns, John Gregson, Diana Dors, Jane Hylton, Rachel Roberts and Sidney James.

Locked up in jail within these walls of this story are Johns (as Jean Raymond), Dors (as Betty Brown), Hylton (as inmate Babs Peters), Roberts (as pregnant inmate Pat), Athene Seyler (as inmate Millie Williams) and Olive Sloane (as inmate Nellie Baden), who give sterling performances in a flashback multi-drama about how the weak and the wicked women, or the young and willing women if you follow the American title, came to be locked up in the first place.

Dors, then trying hard to be both a serious actress and Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe, is particularly impressive as a young woman who takes the rap for her feller. Gregson (as Dr Michael Hale), James (as Syd Baden) and A E Matthews also make their mark as the menfolk.

Paul Carpenter plays Joe, Bab’s boyfriend. Also in the cast are Eliot Makeham (as Grandad Baden), Sybil Thorndike, Marjorie Rhodes, Mary Merrall, Ursula Howells, Anthony Nichols, Barbara Cooper, Joyce Heron (as Prison Matron Arnold), Josephine Griffin, Josephine Stuart, Edwin Styles, Cecil Trouncer (as the Presiding Judge), Sandra Dorne, Jean Taylor Smith (as Prison Governor, Grange), Joan Haythorne (as Prison Governor, Blackdown) and Bessie Love. Marianne Stone also appears unbilled as a fellow prisoner who comforts Dors’s Betty Brown character.

Thompson directs his own revealing script (written with Anne Burnaby and Joan Henry) from Joan Henry’s novel Who Lie In Gaol.

Dors went on to star in Thompson’s Yield to the Night [Blonde Sinner] (1956), based on another book by Joan Henry, who met Thompson while working on this film and married him.

Thompson directed two Apes movies: Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Glynis Johns was born on 5 October 1923. Her most recent film is Superstar (1999).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5747

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