Portrait of Clare ** (1950, Margaret Johnston, Richard Todd, Robin Bailey, Ronald Howard, Jeremy Spenser, Mary Clare, Marjorie Fielding, Anthony Nicholls) – Classic Movie Review 13,654

Margaret Johnston stars as Grandma Clare Hingston, who recalls her three marriages, in the 1950 British black and white romantic drama film Portrait of Clare.

Director Lance Comfort’s 1950 British black and white romantic drama film Portrait of Clare is based on the 1927 novel by Francis Brett Young, and stars Margaret Johnston, Richard Todd and Robin Bailey, along with Ronald Howard, Jeremy Spenser, Mary Clare, Marjorie Fielding, and Anthony Nicholls.

Margaret Johnston stars as Grandma Clare Hingston, who recounts the events of her youth to her young granddaughter Sylvia (Anne Gunning) in a series of flashbacks her past loves, sad and happy, in a romancer that keeps its ambitions small and succeeds. Her three husbands are Ralph Hingston (Ronald Howard), a young man who is drowned after a fall from a weir: a priggish lawyer called Dudley Wilburn (Robin Bailey); and Wilburn’s best friend, a sympathetic barrister named Robert Hart (Richard Todd), though Hart is not seen marrying Clare.

Affecting acting, with Margaret Johnston well cast and excellent, smooths this listless, undynamic adaptation by Leslie Landau and Adrian Alington of a Francis Brett Young novel. Especially welcome in support are Jeremy Spenser as the teenage Steven Hingston, Mary Clare as Lady Hingston, Marjorie Fielding as Aunt Cathie and Molly Urquhart as Thirza the maid.

Austrian cinematographer Günther Krampf shoots in black and white when colour might be nice. The story is hardly truly gripping or fascinating in any way, but it is the sticky directing and the sluggish pacing that are the real problems.

Cast: Margaret Johnston, Richard Todd, Robin Bailey, Ronald Howard, Jeremy Spenser, Mary Clare, Marjorie Fielding, Anthony Nicholls, Lloyd Pearson, Molly Urquhart, Beckett Bould, Bruce Seton, Amy Veness, Campbell Copelin, Yvonne Andre, Hugh Morton, Hugh Cort, Griffiths Moss, Anne Gunning, Grace Arnold, Robert Adair, and Charles Paton.

Running time: 100 minutes.

Release date: 13 November 1950.

Francis Brett Young also wrote the 1928 novel My Brother Jonathan, filmed as My Brother Jonathan in 1948 with Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray and James Robertson Justice. Curiously, both films use Aston Rowant railway station in Oxfordshire as a location.

Jeremy Spenser (born Jeremy John Dornhurst de Saram on 16 July 1937) made his screen debut aged 11 in Anna Karenina (1948) and retired from acting after 1966’s Fahrenheit 451.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,654

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