''The Fast Lady'' is a 1962 British

comedy film The comedy film is a film genre that emphasizes humor. These films are designed to amuse audiences and make them laugh. Films in this genre typically have a happy ending, with dark comedy being an exception to this rule. Comedy is one of the o ...

, directed by

Ken Annakin Kenneth Cooper Annakin, OBE (10 August 1914 – 22 April 2009) was an English film director. His career spanned half a century, beginning in the early 1940s and ending in 1992, and in the 1960s he was noticed by critics with large-scale advent ...

and starring

James Robertson Justice James Robertson Justice (15 June 1907 – 2 July 1975) was a British actor. He often portrayed pompous authority figures in comedies, including each of the seven films in the ''Doctor'' series. He also co-starred with Gregory Peck in seve ...

Leslie Phillips Leslie Samuel Phillips (20 April 1924 – 7 November 2022) was an English actor. He achieved prominence in the 1950s, playing smooth, upper-class comic roles utilising his "Ding dong" and "Hello" catchphrases. He appeared in the '' Carry On'' ...

Stanley Baxter Stanley Livingstone Baxter (born 24 May 1926) is a retired Scottish actor, comedian, impressionist and author. Baxter began his career as a child actor on BBC Scotland and later became known for his British television comedy shows '' The Stanley ...

, Kathleen Harrison, and

Julie Christie Julie Frances Christie (born 14 April 1940) is a British actress. Christie's accolades include an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has appeared in six films ranked in the British Film Institu ...

. The screenplay was by Henry Blyth and Jack Davies, based on the 1925 novel ''The Fast Lady'' by Keble Howard. It was the third in a trilogy of comedies written by Jack Davies that Annakin made for Independent Artists.

Don Sharp Donald Herman Sharp (19 April 192114 December 2011) was an Australian film director. His best known films were made for Hammer Film Productions, Hammer in the 1960s, and included ''Kiss of the Vampire (film), Kiss of the Vampire'' (1963) and ' ...

directed second unit. "The Fast Lady" is the name of a

vintage In winemaking, vintage is the process of picking grapes to create wine. A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality, as in Port wine ...

Bentley Bentley Motors Limited is a British designer, manufacturer and marketer of Luxury vehicle, luxury cars and Sport utility vehicle, SUVs. Headquartered in Crewe, England, the company was founded by W. O. Bentley (1888–1971) in 1919 in Crickle ...

. A loose sequel, '' Father Came Too!'', was released in February 1964.

Plot

Murdoch Troon is a proud Scot living and working for a local government authority somewhere in south London. A shy young man, his main excitement comes from cycling. After he is forced off the road by an impatient car driver, he tracks down the owner, only to find that he is Commander Chingford, the domineering and acerbic owner of a sports car distributorship. Chingford reluctantly pays for the damage to Murdoch's cycle, but more significantly, Murdoch meets Claire, Chingford's beautiful blonde daughter, and is smitten with her. She tells him she loves sports cars and would love to have one but "her great dictator" (meaning her father) won't allow it. Despite not being able to drive, Murdoch is talked into buying a car to impress her by his friend and fellow lodger, Freddie Fox, a used car salesman and serial cad. Freddie sees a chance to ingratiate himself with Chingford and also to sell Murdoch a car. The car is a 1927 vintage

Bentley 4½ Litre The Bentley 4½ Litre is a British car based on a rolling chassis built by Bentley Motors. Walter Owen Bentley replaced the Bentley 3 Litre with a more powerful car by increasing its engine displacement to . A racing variant was known as the ...

Red Label Speed model, painted in British Racing Green and named ''The Fast Lady''. Murdoch has his first driving lesson in a less exciting car, an Austin A40 Farina, which proves to be a comedy of disasters with a nervous instructor. Freddie then makes a deal with Murdoch and offers to teach him, but the results are equally disastrous. Unwilling to give up, and determined to prove his love for Claire, Murdoch bets her father that he can drive the car. An experienced racing driver, Chingford is convinced that Murdoch has no hope of achieving this — and bets him that he cannot. Murdoch takes Chingford for a drive in the Bentley and loses the bet. But the tables are turned when Chingford loses Murdoch's counter-bet that Chingford cannot drive back home in less than 30 minutes. He then reluctantly allows Claire to go out with Murdoch in the car. The day comes for Murdoch's driving test. Freddie has set him up with a 'bent' examiner, but Murdoch draws the 'wrong' examiner. As the test comes to an end (and the examiner is almost certainly going to fail Murdoch), the car is commandeered by police to chase a

Jaguar The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large felidae, cat species and the only extant taxon, living member of the genus ''Panthera'' that is native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the biggest cat spe ...

car driven by escaping bank robbers. The high speed chase takes them through town and country, across a golf course (leaving in its wake a trail of disasters) and eventually the robbers are caught. The now furious examiner says that Murdoch not only fails but is "banned for life", but Chingford pooh-poohs this. Rather, he so admires Murdoch's driving skill that he will allow the couple to get engaged.

Cast

as Charles Chingford *

as Freddie Fox *

as Murdoch Troon * Kathleen Harrison as Mrs Staggers *

as Claire Chingford *

Eric Barker Eric Leslie Barker (12 February 1912 – 1 June 1990) was an English comedy actor. He is most remembered for his roles in the popular British '' Carry On'' films, although he appeared only in the early films in the series, apart from returning ...

as Wentworth, driving instructor * Oliver Johnston as Bulmer * Allan Cuthbertson as Bodley, driving examiner * Heidi Erich as Grunhilde, one of Freddie's girlfriends (at the beach) *

Esma Cannon Esma Ellen Charlotte Littmann (''née'' Cannon; 27 December 1905 – 18 October 1972), credited as Esme or Esma Cannon, was an Australian-born character actress who moved to Britain in the early 1930s. Although she frequently appeared on televis ...

as lady on zebra crossing * Dick Emery as Shingler, Freddie's boss *

Deryck Guyler Deryck Bower Guyler (29 April 1914 – 7 October 1999) was an English actor, best remembered for appearances in sitcoms such as ''Please Sir!'' and ''Sykes (TV series), Sykes''. Early life Guyler was born in Wallasey on the Wirral Peninsula, C ...

as Doctor Blake the police doctor * Victor Brooks as Policeman * Terence Alexander as policeman on motorcycle * Trevor Reid as examiner *

Frankie Howerd Francis Alick Howard (6 March 1917 – 19 April 1992), better known by his stage-name Frankie Howerd, was an English actor and comedian. Early life Howerd was born the son of a soldier Francis Alfred William (1887–1934)England & Wales, Deat ...

as road workman in hole * Bernard Cribbins as man on stretcher * Clive Dunn as old man in burning house * Fred Emney as first golfer * Bill Fraser as second golfer Graham Hill, John Surtees, Raymond Baxter and Dickie Davies have cameos in the race scene in Murdoch's dream.

Production

''The Fast Lady'' is a 1927

Red Label Speed model with Vanden Plas short chassis fabric body, registration number TU5987. It was sold by a specialist dealer in 2010. In the film, Claire Chingford says ''The Fast Lady'' is a 3-litre. A scene involving a striptease by Julie Christie was heavily censored.

Release

The film opened at the Odeon Marble Arch in London in December 1962.

Reception

Box office

It was one of the 12 most popular films at the British box office in 1963.

Critical

The Monthly Film Bulletin The ''Monthly Film Bulletin'' was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 until April 1991, when it merged with '' Sight & Sound''. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those wi ...

'' wrote: "An attempt to please an affluent society through a brash portrayal of its current fads and fancies. Everything is here: the Twist, sentimental Scottish songs, vintage cars, the driving test, and an assortment of fashionable popsies. James Robertson Justice looks uncomfortable as a vacillating and over-fond father, knowing that his attempts to separate his daughter from a *haggis-headed halfwit" are sure to fail. Precedent demands that the boy from the wrong side of town marry the daughter of the local tycoon, and so does the banal script. Relief arrives momentarily in the shape of a chase reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, punctuated by the untimely ascent of Frankie Howerd from a manhole." '' Variety'' wrote "A thin idea is pumped up into a reasonably brisk, amusing situation comedy, which is helped by a cast of experienced farceurs. In dialog, the pic is short on wit but there is enough slapstick fun." ''The

Radio Times ''Radio Times'' is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in September 1923 by John Reith, then general manage ...

Guide to Films'' gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "Despite driving up too many B roads, this story of a civil servant (Stanley Baxter), his car (a Bentley) and the girl on whom he dotes (Julie Christie) has such a degree of fresh-faced innocence that you appreciate the film's charm rather than notice the rambling plot. This Rank movie is tackled with relish by the cast: Christie is simpering and decent, Baxter is spot-on with his "gormless comic" style and James Robertson-Justice booms throughout."

Home media

''The Fast Lady'' was issued on Region 2

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

in the UK on 2 February 2004. A high definition restoration from the original film elements was released on DVD and

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

by Network on 24 February 2020.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fast Lady, The 1962 films British comedy films 1962 comedy films Films directed by Ken Annakin 1960s English-language films 1960s British films English-language comedy films