Great Day *** (1945, Eric Portman, Flora Robson, Sheila Sim) – Classic Movie Review 8506

Director Lance Comfort’s 1945 Great Day stars Flora Robson, who gives an authoritative turn as Mrs Liz Ellis, the leading light of  the Women’s Institute in the English village of Denley getting ready for the wartime visit of America’s First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt (we only see the great lady’s handbag).

Other acting attractions include the incisive Eric Portman as Robson’s boozy and angry World War One survivor husband Captain John Ellis and Sheila Sim’s warmth as their grown-up daughter Margaret desperately seeking marriage as a way out of the troubled family.

The film’s other pluses are the thoughtful script, the talented support cast, the wartime time-capsule attitudes and the English country views.

Wolfgang Wilhelm, Lesley Storm and John Davenport adapt the play by Lesley Storm.

Also in the cast are Isabel Jeans, Walter Fitzgerald, Philip Friend, Marjorie Rhodes, Maire O’Neill, Beatrice Varley, John Laurie, Patricia Hayes, Margaret Withers, Jacqueline Clarke, Norman Pierce, Pauline Tennant, John McLaren, Joan Maude, Ivor Barnard, Valentine Dunn, O B Clarence, Jean Shepeard, Irene Handl (as Lady serving Tea in Tea Stall) and Leslie Dwyer and Kathleen Harrison (as Pub Customers).

It was made in black and white by RKO Radio Pictures, Victor Hanbury Productions and RKO Radio British Productions at D&P Studios, Denham Studios, Denham, Buckinghamshire, England.

It is Sheila Sim’s second film following her debut in A Canterbury Tale (1944),

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8506

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