This Is My Street **½ (1964, Ian Hendry, June Ritchie, Avice Landone, Meredith Edwards, Madge Ryan, John Hurt, Mike Pratt) – Classic Movie Review 10,906

Director Sidney Hayers’s 1964 British black and white social realism drama This Is My Street is a fascinating if low-powered slice of South London life starring Ian Hendry as Harry King, a randy, shiftless lodger having an affair with bored, unhappily married housewife, Margery Graham (June Ritchie) after seducing her.

Harry is a flashy salesman and nightclub owner, virtually on the doorstep as Margery’s mother’s lodger, who lives next door to Margery’s run-down inner city London terraced house on Jubilee Place in Battersea, where she has a life of drudgery with her unambitious husband Sid (Mike Pratt) and her small daughter Cindy (Sheraton Blount).

In the next house Kitty (Madge Ryan) and Steve (Meredith Edwards) live with their good-time girl daughter, Maureen (Philippa Gail), who works in a café with young Charlie (John Hurt).

Margery works in a department store’s handbags department, where her boss Mr Fingus (Derek Francis) is also trying to have an affair with her. After being repeatedly seduced by Harry, Margery gives in and then becomes infatuated with him, but she attempts suicide when he dumps her for her sister Jinny (Annette Andre).

Though This Is My Street is a serious-minded drama, it comes from Peter Rogers, the producer of the Carry On series.

Bill MacIlwraith’s kitchen-sink screenplay, based on a novel by Nan Maynard, is on the stolid and unconvincing side, not perhaps sparking up enough emotion or interest, though Hendry and Ritchie are effective in tricky-to-play, none-too-appealing characters, especially Hendry, and the 24-year-old John Hurt makes an impression in his second film in a small role as Charlie.

The underrated Hendry and Ritchie, who both do what they can to make the film as credible and compelling as possible despite the rather languid script, had appeared together more memorably two years previously in Live Now Pay Later.

It is made at Pinewood Studios, London, England, but it is the outside filming in and around London that gives it much of its allure. Interestingly, the then grim street of the title is in early Sixties working-class Battersea before it was trendy and gentrified. It is a shame that the story and screenplay are lacking in vigour and vitality, and the handling is slack and slow, because, with Hendry and Ritchie, something special is going on.

Also in the cast are Avice Landone, Meredith Edwards, Madge Ryan, John Hurt, Mike Pratt, Tom Adams, Annette Andre, John Bluthal, Patrick Cargill, Derek Francis, Philippa Gail, Hilda Fenemore, Susan Burnet, Robert Bruce, and Carl Bernard.

John Hurt made his debut in The Wild and the Willing (1962).

This Is My Street is directed by Sidney Hayers, runs 94 minutes, is made by Peter Rogers Productions (as Adder Productions) and Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors, is released by Warner-Pathé Distributors (1963) (UK), is written by Bill MacIlwraith, is shot in black and white by Alan Hume, is produced by Peter Rogers and Jack Hanbury and is scored by Eric Rogers.

It premiered in London on 30 January 1964.

Most of Bill MacIlwraith’s other work was for TV, but he also wrote the stage play that became the Bette Davis film The Anniversary.

Eric Rogers re-uses a number of music cues from his scores for the Carry On series.

Mike Pratt and Annette Andre later starred together in TV’s Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969). Here their characters are related through marriage but five years later they would play business partners in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,906

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