Find the Lady * (1956, Donald Houston, Beverley Brooks, Mervyn Johns, Maurice Kaufmann, Edwin Richfield) – Classic Movie Review 9751

Director Charles Saunders’s 1956 tepid, short British B-movie comedy thriller Find the Lady is based on the story by Paul Erickson and Dermot Palmer about a gang of bank robbers (Mervyn Johns, Maurice Kaufmann, and Edwin Richfield) who take refuge in an elderly woman’s home and abduct her niece.

Her god-daughter, young model girl June Weston (Beverley Brooks), turns up to discover her missing and persuades doctor Bill (Donald Houston) to help her find the lady during New Year’s Eve.

Kay Callard (10 November 1923 – 7 March 2008).

Though the crime plot is not too bad, the film is mostly unamusing, but it is enlivened with sprightly performances from Donald Houston, Mervyn Johns, Beverley Brooks, Kay Callard, Maurice Kaufmann, Edwin Richfield, Moray Watson, Ferdy Mayne, and Anne Heywood, plus Enid Lorimer, Nigel Green, John Drake, Edgar Driver, and Sandra Colville.

Needless to say, it is hardly in the 1938 The Lady Vanishes class! But it is an interesting relic of the days of the production of hour-long second features.

Shortly after her first marriage to Christopher Brooks, and the birth of her first child, Beverley Brooks enrolled at the Rank Charm School to become a starlet. This led to her role in the 1956 Reach for the Sky. She married Vere Harmsworth in 1957 and became Viscountess Rothermere. She led a colourful socialite life, nicknamed Bubbles from her love of champagne.

Find the Lady is directed by Charles Saunders, runs 56 minutes, is made by Major Productions and Act Productions, is released by J Arthur Rank Film Distributors (UK), is written by Kenneth R Hayles, based on the story by Paul Erickson and Dermot Palmer, is shot in black and white by Brendan J Stafford, is produced by John Temple-Smith and Francis Edge, is scored by Ray Terry, and designed by Norman G Arnold.

It is shot at Shepperton Studios, Middlesex.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9751

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Beverley Brooks and Donald Houston in Find the Lady (1956).