There Was a Crooked Man (film)

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There Was a Crooked Man
There Was a Crooked Man.jpg
Directed byStuart Burge
Screenplay byReuben Ship
Based onThe Golden Legend of Shults
1939 play
by James Bridie[1]
Produced byJohn Bryan
Albert Fennell
StarringNorman Wisdom
Alfred Marks
Andrew Cruickshank
CinematographyArthur Ibbetson
Edited byPeter R. Hunt
Music byKenneth V. Jones
Production
company
Knightsbridge Films
Distributed byUnited Artists Corporation
Release date
1960
Running time
107 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

There Was a Crooked Man is a 1960 British comedy film directed by Stuart Burge and starring Norman Wisdom, Alfred Marks, Andrew Cruickshank, Reginald Beckwith, and Susannah York.[2] It is based on the James Bridie play The Golden Legend of Schults, and was one of two films Wisdom made independently to extend his range, (the other being The Girl on the Boat); although according to the BFI Screenonline website, "the cinema public craved only the Gump".[3] The film was on general release in 1960 on the Rank circuit (supported by the documentary Jungle Hell) to less than spectacular business before being withdrawn, allegedly after American objections to Wisdom masquerading as an arrogant US general requisitioning British land for the US Air Force. The subject of US forces on British soil was deemed too sensitive even for comic treatment.

Premise

A naive explosives expert is tricked into working for a criminal gang. The title is taken from the poem "There Was a Crooked Man".

Cast

Production

Hugh Stewart, who made several of Wisdom's films for Rank, said the film was financed by UA off the back of the success of The Square Peg.[4]

Box Office

Kine Weekly called it a "money maker" at the British box office in 1960.[5]

Release and home media

The film was commercially unavailable for many years. It had one television screening on ITV, on Boxing Day 1965. Author and Wisdom biographer Richard Dacre wrote in the booklet notes that accompanied the DVD release that he, Wisdom, and Director Stuart Burge were present when the Barbican Centre Cinema, London, presented its next known public screening at a 'Wisdom Weekend', in 1998. Ten years later, 2008, it was shown in Darwen, Lancashire, where location shots had been filmed in 1960.[6] (However, the 'First Day at Work' scenes were filmed at the "Early's of Witney" blanket factory, in Witney, Oxfordshire.

The film was released on DVD on 8 May 2017.[7]

References

  1. ^ Goble, Alan (8 September 2011). The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film. ISBN 9783110951943.
  2. ^ "There Was a Crooked Man (1960) | BFI". Explore.bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2012-07-12. Retrieved 2014-06-10.
  3. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Wisdom, Norman (1915-2010) Biography". Screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 2014-06-10.
  4. ^ "Hugh Stewart". British Entertainment History Project. 22 Nov 1968.
  5. ^ Billings, Josh (15 December 1960). "It's Britain 1, 2, 3 again in the 1960 box office stakes". Kine Weekly. p. 9.
  6. ^ Pye, Catherine (20 January 2008). "'Lost' Norman Wisdom film to be shown again". Lancashire Telegraph. Retrieved 27 September 2014.
  7. ^ "Network ON AIR > There Was a Crooked Man". networkonair.com. Archived from the original on 2017-04-11.

External links

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