''Room at the Top'' is a 1959

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

film based on the 1957 novel of the same name by

John Braine John Gerard Braine (13 April 1922 – 28 October 1986) was an English novelist. Braine is usually listed among the angry young men, a loosely defined group of English writers who emerged on the literary scene in the 1950s. Biography John Brain ...

. It was adapted by Neil Paterson (with uncredited work by

Mordecai Richler Mordecai Richler (January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer. His best known works are '' The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz'' (1959) and '' Barney's Version'' (1997). His 1970 novel '' St. Urbain's Horseman'' and 1989 novel ...

), directed by

Jack Clayton Jack Isaac Clayton (1 March 1921 – 26 February 1995) was a British film director and producer who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen. Overview Starting out as a teenage studio "tea boy" in 1935, Clayton worked his way up ...

(his feature-length debut), and produced by

John and James Woolf Sir John Woolf (15 March 1913, London – 28 June 1999, London) and his brother James Woolf (2 March 1920, London – 30 May 1966, Beverly Hills, California) were British film producers. John and James founded the production companies Romulus Fil ...

. The film stars

Laurence Harvey Laurence Harvey (born Zvi Mosheh Skikne; 1 October 192825 November 1973) was a Lithuanian-born British actor and film director. He was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents and emigrated to South Africa at an early age, before later settling in th ...

, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears,

Donald Wolfit Sir Donald Wolfit, KBE (born Donald Woolfitt; Harwood, Ronald"Wolfit, Sir Donald (1902–1968)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, January 2008; accessed 14 July 2009 20 April 1902 ...

Donald Houston Donald Daniel Houston (6 November 1923 – 13 October 1991) was a Welsh actor whose first two films—'' The Blue Lagoon'' (1949) with Jean Simmons, and '' A Run for Your Money'' (1949) with Alec Guinness—were highly successful. Later in ...

, and

Hermione Baddeley Hermione Youlanda Ruby Clinton-Baddeley (13 November 1906 – 19 August 1986) was an English actress of theatre, film and television. She typically played brash, vulgar characters, often referred to as "brassy" or "blowsy".Folkart, Burt, "Noted ...

. The film was widely lauded, and it was nominated for six

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

, winning two:

Best Actress Best Actress is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organisations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actresses in a film, television series, television film or play. The first Best Actress aw ...

(Signoret) and

Best Adapted Screenplay This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...

(Paterson). Its other nominations at the 32nd Academy Awards were for

Best Picture This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...

, Best Director (Clayton),

Best Actor Best Actor is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actors in a film, television series, television film or play. The term most often refers to the ...

(Harvey), and Best Supporting Actress (Baddeley). Baddeley's performance, consisting of 2 minutes and 19 seconds of screen time, is the shortest ever to be nominated for an acting Oscar.

Plot

In 1947, in

West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...

, England, Joseph (Joe) Lampton, an ambitious young man, moves from his hometown, the dreary factory town of Dufton, to the somewhat larger town of Warnley to assume a secure, but poorly paid and dead-end, post in the Borough Treasurer's Department. Determined to get ahead, and ignoring the warnings of his colleague and roommate Charlie Soames, he pursues Susan Brown, the daughter of a local industrial magnate. She has been dating wealthy Jack Wales, but Joe is able to charm her. Mr and Mrs Brown attempt to deal with Joe's social climbing by having Joe's boss encourage him to pursue a woman of his own class; getting him a job offer back in Dufton, which he refuses when he discovers the machination; and sending Susan on a trip abroad, but Susan remains smitten. While he is wooing Susan, Joe also begins to see Alice Aisgill, an unhappily married Frenchwoman ten years his senior who came to England as a teacher a decade earlier and married George Aisgill, a haughty and abusive upper-class Englishman who is now having an affair with his secretary. Joe thinks he is just killing time with Alice and Alice says they can just be "loving friends". Their feelings for each other begin to turn into something more and Joe starts to lose interest in his pursuit of Susan. The relationship is passionate, tempestuous and after a particularly heated argument, Joe switches his focus back to Susan. He manages to take her virginity but is unsatisfied and finds himself drawn back to Alice. Joe and Alice go away for a vacation and Alice is overjoyed that Joe seems to have decided to end his quest for wealth and social status in favour of simply being happy with himself and with her. They decide she will ask for a divorce when she gets home but when she does, George refuses and declares he will ruin Joe and Alice, both socially and financially, if their relationship continues. While Joe is brooding over this, Mr Brown delivers the news that Susan is pregnant and that he expects Joe to stop seeing Alice and marry Susan, in which case Joe can come work for him for a large salary. Seeing no way around his obstacles to a relationship with Alice, Joe tells her that he is going marry Susan. The heartbroken Alice gets drunk in a pub and the next morning, while his co-workers are celebrating his engagement, Joe hears that she drove her car off a cliff to which she and he used to go together and died slowly over the course of several hours. Devastated, Joe leaves the office and wanders to the flat where he and Alice had their trysts but Alice's friend Elspeth, who owns the flat, drives him away by screaming at him and blaming him for Alice's death. Joe goes to a pub on the waterfront, where a woman named Mavis comes on to him because he is well-dressed. Although he is very drunk and does not seem very interested in her (he calls her Alice), Joe keeps a man from taking Mavis away against her will. When Joe is alone, the man and some of his friends beat Joe unconscious. In the morning, Charlie finds Joe lying in the street with a battered face but Joe's only concern is his guilt over what he feels he led Alice to do. A short time later, Joe and Susan get married. With a rich wife and high-paying job, he has got everything he thought he wanted. As they are driven away after the wedding, Susan's effusive praise of the ceremony halts when she notices there are tears in Joe's eyes, which she interprets as him being "really sentimental, after all".

Main cast

* Simone Signoret as Alice Aisgill *

as Joe Lampton * Heather Sears as Susan Brown *

as Mr Brown *

as Charlie Soames *

as Elspeth *

Allan Cuthbertson Allan Darling Cuthbertson (7 April 1920 – 8 February 1988) was an Australian-born British actor. He was best known for playing stern-faced military officers in British films of the 1950s and 1960s. Early life Cuthbertson was born in Perth, ...

as George Aisgill *

Raymond Huntley Horace Raymond Huntley (23 April 1904 – 15 June 1990) was an English actor who appeared in dozens of British films from the 1930s to the 1970s. He also appeared in the ITV period drama '' Upstairs, Downstairs'' as the pragmatic family s ...

as Mr Hoylake * John Westbrook as Jack Wales *

Ambrosine Phillpotts Ambrosine Phillpotts (13 September 1912 – 12 October 1980) was a British actress of theatre, TV, radio and film. '' The Times'' wrote, "She was one of the last great stage aristocrats, a stylish comedienne best known for playing on stage a ...

as Mrs Brown * Richard Pasco as Teddy Merrick *

Beatrice Varley Beatrice Evelyn Varley (11 July 1896 – 4 July 1964) was an English actress who appeared in television and film roles between 1936 and 1964. She made her screen debut in the 1936 film ''Tomorrow We Live'' and began to portray a variety of ch ...

as Joe's Aunt * Delena Kidd as Eva *

Ian Hendry Ian Mackendrick Hendry (13 January 1931 – 24 December 1984) was a British actor. He worked on several British TV series of the 1960s and 1970s, including the lead in the first series of '' The Avengers'' and '' The Lotus Eaters'', and played ...

as Cyril *

April Olrich April Olrich (17 July 1931 – 15 April 2014), born Edith April Oelrichs, was an English ballerina and actress, born in Zanzibar, now part of Tanzania. Early life Edith April Oelrichs was born in Zanzibar in 1931 (some sources give 1933), where h ...

as Mavis *

Mary Peach Mary Peach (born 20 October 1934) is a South African-born British film and television actress, who was married to the screenwriter and director Jimmy Sangster until his death in 2011. Biography Peach was born in Durban. After being nominated ...

as June Samson *

Anthony Newlands Anthony Newlands (31 January 1925, London – 6 October 1995), was a British actor, born Raymond Gordon Newland. His parents were Lilian Elizabeth (née Manning) and Frederick Stanley. Newland had two sisters: Jean Lillian Newland (born 24 J ...

as Bernard *

Avril Elgar Avril Elgar Williams (1 April 1932 – 17 September 2021) was an English stage, radio and television actress. Early life and career Elgar was born in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. She trained at the London Old Vic Theatre School ...

as Miss Gilchrist * Thelma Ruby as Miss Breith *

Paul Whitsun-Jones Paul Whitsun-Jones (25 April 1923 – 14 January 1974) was a Welsh character actor. Born in Newport in Monmouthshire, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School in Northwood in Middlesex. He started his acting career in 1948 with two years a ...

as Laughing Man at Bar (who tells Joe a joke at the dance) * Derren Nesbitt as Thug in Fight on Tow Path (Mavis' possessive boyfriend) *

Derek Benfield Derek Benfield (11 March 1926 – 10 March 2009) was a British playwright and actor. He was born in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, and educated at Bingley Grammar School. He was the author of the stage farce ''Running Riot'' and playe ...

as Man in Bar (uncredited) *

Richard Caldicot Richard Caldicot (7 October 1908 – 16 October 1995) was an English actor famed for his role of Commander (later Captain) Povey in the BBC radio series ''The Navy Lark''. He also appeared often on television, memorably as the obstetrician de ...

as Taxi Driver (uncredited) *

Wendy Craig Anne Gwendolyn "Wendy" Craig (born 20 June 1934) is an English actress who is best known for her appearances in the sitcoms '' Not in Front of the Children'', '' ...And Mother Makes Three'', '' ...And Mother Makes Five'' and ''Butterflies''. ...

as Joan (uncredited) *

Basil Dignam Basil Dignam (24 October 1905 – 31 January 1979) was an English character actor. Basil Dignam was born in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire. Before the acting, he tried many jobs, from a company clerk to a journalist. He acted on film and ...

as Priest (uncredited) *

Everley Gregg Everley Gregg (26 October 1903, in Bishopstoke, Hampshire – 9 June 1959, in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire) was an English actress. Early in her career, she became associated especially with plays of Noël Coward. She began making films in the ...

as Mayoress (uncredited) * Jack Hedley as Architect (uncredited) * Miriam Karlin as Gertrude (uncredited) * Wilfrid Lawson as Joe's Uncle Nat (uncredited) *

Prunella Scales Prunella Margaret Rumney West Scales (''née'' Illingworth; born 22 June 1932) is an English former actress, best known for playing Sybil Fawlty, wife of Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), in the BBC comedy '' Fawlty Towers'', her nomination for a ...

as Council Office Worker (uncredited) *

Julian Somers John Julian Somers (12 November 1903 – 11 November 1976), known as Julian Somers, was a prolific English stage and screen actor. Career By 1934, Somers was appearing in rep at Croydon. In 1937, he was on stage in Jeffrey Dell's play ''Night Al ...

at St Clair (uncredited) * John Welsh as Mayor (uncredited)

Adaptation

There are some differences between Braine's novel and the film. For one, Joe's friend Charlie Soames is a friend from his hometown of Dufton in the novel, whereas, in the film, he meets Charlie in Warnley (which is called Warley in the book). Also, in the book, more is made of Joe's lodging at the Thompsons', which, in the novel, he arranged before his arrival in Warley (in the film, Charlie arranges it soon after they meet): it is through his association with the Thompsons that Joe is able to gain entry to a higher social circle than that to which he had previously had access, and Mrs Thompson's room is noted as being at "the top" of Warley geographically, which serves as a metaphor for Joe's social-climbing.

Production

Producer James Woolf bought the film rights to Braine's novel, originally intending to cast

Stewart Granger Stewart Granger (born James Lablache Stewart; 6 May 1913 – 16 August 1993) was a British film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame thr ...

as Joe and

Jean Simmons Jean Merilyn Simmons, (31 January 1929 – 22 January 2010) was a British actress and singer. One of J. Arthur Rank's "well-spoken young starlets", she appeared predominantly in films, beginning with those made in Great Britain during and aft ...

as Susan.

Vivien Leigh Vivien Leigh ( ; 5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967; born Vivian Mary Hartley), styled as Lady Olivier after 1947, was a British actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her definitive performances as Scarlett O'Hara in '' Go ...

was originally offered the part of Alice. Woolf hired Clayton as director after seeing ''

The Bespoke Overcoat ''The Bespoke Overcoat'' is a 1956 British black and white short film directed by Jack Clayton, based on a 1953 play of the same name by Wolf Mankowitz. The story is an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's short story ''The Overcoat'' with the action ...

'', an Academy-Award-winning short film that was produced and distributed by companies founded by the

Woolf brothers Sir John Woolf (15 March 1913, London – 28 June 1999, London) and his brother James Woolf (2 March 1920, London – 30 May 1966, Beverly Hills, California) were British film producers. John and James founded the production companies Romulus Fil ...

Shooting

For the production, in addition to filming on sets at

Shepperton Studios Shepperton Studios is a film studio located in Shepperton, Surrey, England, with a history dating back to 1931. It is now part of the Pinewood Studios Group. During its early existence, the studio was branded as Sound City (not to be confused ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant ur ...

, there was extensive

location In geography, location or place are used to denote a region (point, line, or area) on Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term ''location'' generally implies a higher degree of certainty than ''place'', the latter often indicating an entity with an ...

-shooting in Halifax,

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...

, which stood in for the fictional towns of Warnley and Dufton. Greystones, a large mansion in the Savile Park area of Halifax, was used as the location for exterior scenes of the Brown family mansion; Halifax railway station doubled as Warnley Station in the film; and Halifax Town Hall was used as the Warnley Town Hall. The wedding was filmed at All Souls church, Boothtown, Halifax. Some scenes were also filmed in

Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...

, notably the one in which Joe travels on a bus and spots Susan in a lingerie shop and those outside the amateur dramatics theatre.

Reception

The film was critically acclaimed and marked the beginning of Jack Clayton's career as an important director. It was the third most popular film at the British box office in 1959 (after ''

Carry On Nurse ''Carry On Nurse'' is a 1959 British comedy film, the second in the series of 31 ''Carry On'' films (1958–1992). Of the regular team, it featured Joan Sims (in her ''Carry On'' film debut), Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawt ...

'' and ''

Inn of the Sixth Happiness ''The Inn of the Sixth Happiness'' is a 1958 20th Century Fox film based on the true story of Gladys Aylward, a tenacious British woman, who became a missionary in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Directed by Mark Robson, who receiv ...

''), grossing $700,000. ''Room at the Top'' is seen as the first of the

British New Wave The British New Wave is a style of films released in Great Britain between 1959 and 1963. The label is a translation of '' Nouvelle Vague'', the French term first applied to the films of François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard among others. Styli ...

of kitchen-sink-realism film dramas. It was followed by a sequel in 1965 titled '' Life at the Top''.

Awards and nominations

References

External links

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Room At The Top 1959 films British drama films Films featuring a Best Actress Academy Award-winning performance Films directed by Jack Clayton British black-and-white films Films set in Yorkshire Films based on British novels Films based on works by John Braine Films scored by Mario Nascimbene Films whose writer won the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award Films set in the 1940s Adultery in films Best Film BAFTA Award winners Best British Film BAFTA Award winners Social realism in film 1959 directorial debut films 1950s English-language films 1950s British films