“… the secret was simple. Sid James became everybody’s
ideal next-door neighbour, drinking partner, stationery salesman, husband and
father.” William G. Stewart*
Here I usually write about silent film and find a sense
of association through my grandparents’ and great-grand parents’ generation;
cinema as time travel with the ever-presence of some buildings and landscapes
providing a more concrete connection. With this film, however, I’ve a direct
connection having seen Sid James perform not once but twice in Blackpool,
probably in His Favourite Family at the Grand Theatre and then in The
Mating Game at the Winter Gardens in 1975. These were my father’s choices
as he loved Sid just as much as his father Jim loved Laurel and Hardy; “watch
these lad, they’re hilarious!”
Both of the plays were written by Northern Irish playwright, Sam Cree who had also contributed to the Carry on series featuring Sidney, as well as writing for the likes of George Formby and a certain Arthur Askey. All good northern fun but the humour wasn’t just of regional appeal and by this stage of his career James was a national treasure to match the two Lancastrians even though, famously, he was South African born and never quite lost his Johannesburg twang moving to the UK in his early twenties after the war.
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| Programme from Blackpool's Grand Theatre |
Bless This House may or may not have been
influenced by the success of His Favourite Family but Sid’s stock in
trade was almost always being the bored husband, slightly put upon, rebellious,
cheeky and constantly on the lookout for some boyish fun, fifty going on fifteen.
The TV series ran for six seasons and 65 episodes from 1971 to 1976 as noted by
film historian Jade Evans in her excellent essay accompanying this new Network Blu-ray.
Evans quotes James’ biographer William G. Stewart in saying that this success
was in providing as many “pegs” as possible to hang the actor’s beloved
characteristics from. People knew what to expect and they were never
disappointed, Sid had honest humour, charm and generosity of spirit and was
loved in return. As Evans says, in so many of his parts he was simply called
Sid, he was playing a version of himself even as King ‘Enery VIII.
The jokes in the series and this film adaptation, come
from Sid’s father figure as he contends with his family and their neighbours.
There’s generational conflict as his feminist daughter, Sally (Sally Geeson) is
obsessed with saving the planet, a member of The Junior Anti-Pollution League,
and concerned about their neighbour’s contribution to global warming: "In
fifty years' time the Earth will be finished!" This is seen as earnest
youthfulness as she tells Dad that he’s not bothered as he won’t be around to
see it. Now fifty years’ later some of the older generation still stick their
fingers in their ears and Sally wasn’t far off her doomsday schedule.
Director Gerald Thomas and writer Dave Freeman, both Carry
on alumni, handle things with warmth and largely without the sauce those
films were famed for. Yes, Sally spends a lot of time being gazed at in her
turquoise bikini but the vibe is sexist not crude.
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| Diana Coupland and Sid James |
Sid’s son Mike (Robin Askwith, Anthony Quayle’s only
serious rival as Southport’s greatest actor), is a recently graduated
engineering student who’s get up and go has seemingly got up and gone. Mike is
doomed to disappoint his Dad with nearly every decision he makes and his
purchase of a flower-under-powered Morris Minor, dated in all ways by this
point, is an emblem of estranged confusion. Sid doesn’t understand Mike’s
motivations and his son is still analysing them himself for comic effect.
One of my fondest memories of the TV series is the
impressive chemistry between Sid and his on-screen wife Jean played by Diana
Coupland who manages to be frustrated with her husband’s intransigence without
ever losing her cool. She chides her grumpy partner and gently persuades and
directs in ways which he can never really object; Sid’s a softie and we can
feel the love. Here she’s determined to start an antique stall with their
neighbour Betty (Patsy Rowlands) and you just know she’ll get her way despite
Sid’s complaints about “women’s lib”.
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| Robin Askwith and Sally Geeson |
Betty is married to Trevor who is played by Peter
Butterworth whose actual wife, Janet Brown, plays Anne Hobbs, the wife of Tom
as played by Julian Orchard, neighbours on the other side. Trevor is Sid’s
perfect partner in crime as they decide to convert his shed into a distillery
with inevitably comic consequences.
There’s a huge amount of slapstick and gags that were
already predictable in Laurel and Hardy’s time. Sally, reading a book about the
end of the world, in her bikini, transistor radio by the side of her deckchair,
decides to put an end to Tom’s bonfire by squirting their hosepipe over the
fence. The pipe gets stuck and everyone gets soaked including the couple who
are about to buy the Hobbs’ house, Ronald and Vera Baines aka Terry Scott and
June Whitfield.
Terry and June would go on to their own TV success as a
couple trapped in suburbia**, the roots of so much domestic comedy from then
till now with Not Going Out a tribute to mainstream sitcoms past. Here
Terry is an officious customs and excise man who is bound to rub Sid’s sales
executive the wrong way. From Mike’s choice of car to finding the Abbot’s
trying to fix a hole in their new wall just as they arrive… everything is
against the two men bonding and comic mistrust is there from the start.
Terry and June
When the Baines’ daughter Kate (Carol Hawkins, famous for
farce and as Fenn Street’s femme fatale) starts seeing Mike, the stage is set for
a grand finale involving food fights (more Laurel, more Hardy…) a fire and a familial
truce that may of may not last. You can, after all, pick your friends but you’re
lumbered with neighbours and family for ever.
Bless This House was the opposite of cutting edge but it
was perfect popular entertainment at a time when the country was more resigned
to its faults than we are now. The performers all captured this and the host of
familiar faces in supporting roles reinforces the “consensual comedy” of the
time; George A. Cooper, Bill Maynard, Molly Wier, Frank Thornton and Wendy
Richard all popping up to play their assigned roles. Riving character players fitting
in perfectly whenever an angry café manager, pompous businessman or chippy “dolly
bird” was needed.
This was "comfort comedy" of the unsurprised and, actually,
endlessly forgiving. These people might fall out over their fences but they
were always able to find a way forward.
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| Terry, Carol Hawkins and Sidney |
The Blu-ray is out now and features a crisp transfer from
a 35mm inter-positive along with a couple of trailers and the 12-page booklet
with publicity material accompanying Jade’s essay. You can order it direct from
Network along with other very fine releases.
Bless This House took me back, but it’s also
viewable as much as cinematic history as the silent comedies of just fifty
years before it being exactly halfway from now to Hardy, Laurel, Chaplin and
Keaton. The neighbours may have been joking more in 1972 than in 2021 but then
they probably had a lot more in common…
*William G Stewart writing in The Complete Sid James by Robert Ross (Reynolds and Hearn: Richmond)
**The TV series was precisely located in Howard Street New Malden, but here the exterior shots of the houses were filmed at numbers 7 and 9, Bolton Avenue, Windsor with other locations in Buckinghamshire. A testament to how little England varied in the southeast…
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| White bread for the Abbots... |
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| Brown bread for the Baines. |
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| and the clock is still ticking... |
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