The Ladykillers (1955)
Like most Gen Xers, I grew up associating Sir Alec Guinness with his role as Obi Wan-Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy. Only as an adult did I discover his earlier work and his tremendous talent for comedy as showcased by his series of films in the 1950s with Ealing Studios, the first of which, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), started the collaboration by having Guinness play eight different members of the same family. Guinness and Ealing continued from there with A Run for Your Money (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951), and The Captain’s Paradise (1953) before coming to the delightfully nutty caper comedy, The Ladykillers (1955). Unlike Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers casts Guinness as just one character, but it’s still one of his funniest roles, and more laughs roll in thanks to supporting performances from Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker, Danny Green, and the absolutely fantastic Katie Johnson as the endangered elderly lady of the title.
Guinness leads as the weirdly toothy Professor Marcus, who has planned an elaborate robbery that his gang will execute with the unwitting assistance of his newly acquired landlady, Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson). The criminals present themselves to Mrs. Wilberforce as amateur musicians, which causes problems when the music loving landlady frequently interrupts or comments on their “rehearsals.” The ruse fools her until after the heist, when their instrument cases are revealed to be stuffed with stolen cash. The indignant Mrs. Wilberforce demands that the money be returned, but the gang decides to murder her instead, even though none of them is keen to commit the act himself.
With his oversized teeth, limp hair, and sly expressions, Guinness’ felonious Professor is such an odd duck that it’s a wonder Mrs. Wilberforce lets him in the door at all, but the plot cleverly pits her geriatric Victorian innocence against the machinations of a devious modern age as embodied by Marcus’ ragtag gang of criminals. There’s never much doubt about which team is likely to carry the day; the thieves don’t stand a chance against the chaos that sweet, oblivious Mrs. Wilberforce throws into their schemes. Guinness and his costars suffer cartoonish misery thanks to the dear old lady, with runaway parrots, forgotten umbrellas, tea parties, and an unrelenting gaggle of elderly women all working to thwart them at every turn. The familiar heist montage – a staple of the genre – goes off the rails as Mrs. Wilberforce upsets Marcus’ precisely set plans, and riotous comedy ensues as she accosts strangers, starts fights, and eventually enlists the aid of the police to carry a large trunk full of stolen money right to the door of her house.
Most of the best scenes feature Guinness and/or Johnson, but each of the supporting actors is perfect in his own way. A baby-faced Peter Sellers makes an important early appearance as Harry, one of the younger and less experienced members of the gang, while Herbert Lom radiates noirish menace as Louis. This first pairing would eventually lead to the two actors appearing together in A Shot in the Dark (1964) and many of the ensuing Pink Panther films, which Lom continued to appear in even after Sellers’ death in 1980. Cecil Parker makes for a delightfully stuffy and fastidious Major Courtney, while Danny Green plays the surprisingly kind-hearted muscle, One-Round. With the exception of Green, whose lumbering boxer exhibits a protective fondness for Mrs. Wilberforce that is perhaps too touching, the gang actors manage to be funny, inept, and human enough to flinch at murdering an innocent woman without being so likable that we grieve when karma comes calling. The third act of the picture dishes out just deserts left and right, but the scenes in which Mrs. Wilberforce adopts the criminal jargon of her new associates are really just as funny as the physical comedy of the gang’s fatal mishaps.
After The Ladykillers, Guinness made a final bow with Ealing in All at Sea (1957), but 1957 also brought him dramatic success with The Bridge on the River Kwai, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. If you want to see him in more serious films, try Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965), all of which helped to establish his gravitas as an actor before he donned the Jedi robes of Obi Wan-Kenobi. Katie Johnson, who died in 1957, only appeared in two more films after The Ladykillers, and many of her earlier roles were small, uncredited parts, so it’s especially wonderful that we have her performance as Mrs. Wilberforce to showcase her talent. In 2004, the Coen brothers remade The Ladykillers with Tom Hanks in Guinness’ role, but it just can’t compare with the brilliance of the original Ealing version.
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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub
Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.
Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.
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