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There Was a Crooked Man (film)
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Wikipedia article
'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. 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". 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in 1960 on the Rank circuit (supported by the documentary 'Jungle Hell') to less than spectacular business before being withdrawn, allegedly after American objections to Wisdom masquerading as an arrogant US general requisitioning British land for the US Air Force.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
* Norman Wisdom as Davy Cooper
* Alfred Marks as Adolf Carter
* Andrew Cruickshank as McKillup
* Reginald Beckwith as Station Master
* Susannah York as Ellen
* Jean Clarke as Freda
* Timothy Bateson as Flash Dan
* Paul Whitsun-Jones as Restaurant Gentleman
* Fred Griffiths as Taxi Driver
* Ann Hefferman as Hospital Sister
* Rosalind Knight as Nurse
* Reed De Rouen as Dutchman
* Brian Oulton as Ashton
* Glyn Houston as Smoking Machinist
* Percy Herbert as Prison Warden
* Edna Petrie as Woman at Assembly Hall
* Jack May as Police Sergeant
* Ronald Fraser as General Cummins
* Ed Devereaux as American Colonel
* Sam Kydd as Foreman
* Redmond Phillips as Padre
* George Murcell as Receptionist at 'The McKillup Arms'
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. (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.
References
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