''The Adding Machine'' is a 1969 British

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

comedy drama film Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

produced, written, and directed by

Jerome Epstein Jerome M. Epstein (born March 15, 1937) is an American politician who served in the New Jersey Senate as a Republican from 1972 to 1974 and later went to federal prison for pirating millions of dollars worth of fuel oil. Born in New Brunswick, Eps ...

and starring

Milo O'Shea Milo Donal O'Shea (2 June 1926 – 2 April 2013) was an Irish actor. He was twice nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performances in '' Staircase'' (1968) and '' Mass Appeal'' (1982). Early life O'Shea was born and ...

Phyllis Diller Phyllis Ada Diller (née Driver; July 17, 1917 – August 20, 2012) was an American stand-up comedian, actress, author, musician, and visual artist, best known for her eccentric stage persona, self-deprecating humor, wild hair and clothes, and ...

, Billie Whitelaw,

Sydney Chaplin Sydney John Chaplin (; 16 March 1885 – 16 April 1965) was an English actor. Chaplin was the elder half-brother of actor and director Charlie Chaplin and served as his business manager in later life. Through their mother Hannah, they were o ...

, and

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 ...

. It is based on a stage production of the 1923

Elmer Rice Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays ''The Adding Machine'' (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, '' Street Sce ...

play ''

The Adding Machine ''The Adding Machine'' is a 1923 play by Elmer Rice; it has been called "... a landmark of American Expressionism, reflecting the growing interest in this highly subjective and nonrealistic form of modern drama." Plot The author of this play t ...

'' directed by Epstein in Los Angeles in the 1940s. The setting of ''The Adding Machine'' takes place on both Earth and in Heaven. For the film, Epstein set the earthly action in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

in the 1930s during the Great Depression. The movie was shot 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 ...

outside

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. The film's sets were designed by the art director Jack Shampan. It was distributed in the United Kingdom by

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...

Plot

An accountant whose job is about to be taken over by a

comptometer The Comptometer was the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator, patented in the United States by Dorr Felt in 1887. A key-driven calculator is extremely fast because each key adds or subtracts its value to the accumulato ...

(a primitive adding machine) starts to re-examine his life and his priorities.

Cast

as Mr. Zero *

as Mrs. Zero * Billie Whitelaw as Daisy Devore *

as Lieutenant Charles *

Julian Glover Julian Wyatt Glover (born 27 March 1935) is an English classical actor with many stage, television, and film roles since commencing his career in the 1950s. He is a recipient of the Laurence Olivier Award and has performed many times for the ...

Shrdlu SHRDLU was an early natural-language understanding computer program, developed by Terry Winograd at MIT in 1968–1970. In the program, the user carries on a conversation with the computer, moving objects, naming collections and querying the ...

as Smithers * Phil Brown as Don * Paddie O'Neil as Mabel *

Libby Morris Libby Morris (born 1930) is a Canadian clown and actress. She appeared in several BBC radio shows of the 1950s and moved into TV and film from the 1960s onwards. She then moved on to London, England, where she starred in her own show doing imperso ...

as Ethel * Hugh McDermott as Harry * Bill Nagy as Lawyer *

Carol Cleveland Carol Cleveland (born 13 January 1942) is a British-American actress and comedian, particularly known for her work with Monty Python. Early life Born in East Sheen, London, she moved to the United States with her mother and U.S. Air Force step ...

as Judy *

Bruce Boa Andrew Bruce Boa (10 July 1930 – 17 April 2004) was a Canadian actor, who found success playing the token American in British films and television, usually playing military types. Boa's most recognizable film role is in ''The Empire St ...

as Detective

Reception

The film (and the play) received a critical 1969 review from

Roger Greenspun Roger Greenspun (December 16, 1929 – June 18, 2017) was an American journalist and film critic, best known for his work with ''The New York Times'' in which he reviewed near 400 films, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and for '' ...

References

External links

* 1969 films 1960s fantasy comedy-drama films 1960s English-language films British fantasy comedy-drama films American fantasy comedy-drama films British films based on plays American films based on plays Universal Pictures films Films shot at Shepperton Studios 1960s American films 1960s British films {{fantasy-film-stub

Plot

Cast

Reception

See also

References

External links