The Wrong Box *** (1966, John Mills, Michael Caine, Nanette Newman, Ralph Richardson, Peter Sellers) – Classic Movie Review 1903

Julia Finsbury (Nanette Newman): ‘My father was a missionary. He was eaten by his Bible class.’

Producer-director Bryan Forbes’s unusual and likeable, delightfully daft 1966 British period screwball dark comedy is ‘suggested by’ Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne’s endearing Victorian fantasy novel about a family’s madcap scramble for an immense inheritance. The interesting plot is about a ‘tontine’ that is established for the dozen children of a family, the Finsburys. A sum of money is put in for each child and it grows with interest over the years and the last survivor will get the whole pot of gold.

The years go by and, finally, only two brothers are left alive. Joseph Finsbury (Ralph Richardson) is watched over by his nephews to keep him alive at all cost – they even keep taking away his tobacco for his health, even though it was not actually known then that smoking is harmful. The other brother lives in ill health and poverty as the only support of his dim grandson.

When you open the box, it contains a mixed bag of goodies. Forbes directs extravagantly rather than truthfully, with an eye for showy effect and capturing outrageous performances rather than building cumulative impact or developing the comedy out of playing fair by the setup and plot. However, there are delicious moments throughout and three show-stopping comedy turns – from Wilfrid Lawson as the decrepit butler Peacock, Peter Sellers as the disreputable Doctor Pratt covered in cats and Ralph Richardson as the gloriously pedantic Joseph Finsbury (‘Do you know how many times the word whip occurs in the Old Testament?’).

And there are several other fun appearances too from the essential Sixties luminaries. Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Nanette Newman (the director’s wife) are among the delightful Finsbury family guests at the mourning party. The Temperance Seven trad jazz band appear as themselves. John Mills, who plays Masterman Finsbury, recalled: ‘Bryan assembled a really great cast. In one hilarious scene I had to garrotte, poison and stab Ralph Richardson. I remember feeling embarrassed, but he didn’t hold it against me.’

That really great cast also includes Michael Caine (as Michael Finsbury), Tony Hancock (detective), John le Mesurier (as Doctor Slattery), Irene Handl (as Mrs Hackett), Thorley Walters (as lawyer Patience), Cicely Courtneidge (as Major Martha), Gerald Sim, Norman Bird, Peter Graves, Norman Rossington, Diana Clare, Tutte Lemkow, Nicholas Parsons, Avis Bunnage (as Queen Victoria), Valentine Dyall, André Morell, Graham Stark, Leonard Rossiter, Willoughby Goddard, Jeremy Lloyd, James Villiers, Timothy Bateson, John Junkin, Vanda Godsell, Marianne Stone and Lionel Gamlin.

With just a little bit more wit in Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove’s screenplay, this movie could have been a real classic in the Kind Hearts and Coronets mould, but we’ll definitely settle for delightfully daft.

Julie Harris won the 1967 Bafta for Best British Costume (Colour).

The prolific and versatile Bryan Forbes died on May 8 2013, aged 86.

American-born Lloyd Osbourne (1868-1947) was the son of Fanny Osbourne Stevenson and stepson of author Robert Louis Stevenson, with whom he collaborated on three novels: The Wrong Box (1889), The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb-Tide (1894), the last two both filmed, Ebb-Tide in 1937 and 1998. Treasure Island, Stevenson’s most famous work, started as an effort to entertain young Lloyd on a rainy day in 1881.

Richardson wore the same jacket he had worn as Alexander in his previous film, Dr Zhivago.

Julie Harris died on May 30 2015, aged 94. She won the 1966 Best Black-and-White Costume Design Oscar for Darling. She designed for James Bond films Casino Royale and Live and Let Die, as well as the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and Help, Goodbye Mr Chips and 1975’s Rollerball. She said: ‘I must be one of the few people who can claim they have seen John, Paul, George and Ringo naked.’

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1903

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