Ladies Who Do

source: Ladies Who Do

After accidentally acquiring details of a corporate purchase, cleaner Mount and her friends, including finance whizz Morley, decide to set up a company to use this and other information to make stocks and shares trade killings. Sweet, simple and very British, this is fun enough with Mount wonderful as the world's grumpiest bag with a heart of gold supported by an impressive array of British character actors.

Historians of sixties Britain could learn a lot from this rollicking satire of high finance and property speculation from the pen of Michael Pertwee (whose younger brother Jon is one of the truly amazing cast which includes Miriam Karlin virtually reprising her TV role in 'The Rag Trade'), produced by Ealing maestro Michael Balcon's company Bryanston, made just as the bulldozing of homes to make way for offices for profit was getting under way. Less than a year after the Cuban missile crisis (akin to the one in the Ukraine we're anxiously watching on tenterhooks right now) there comes a withering repost to America's obsession with The Commies during the Cold War when an American associate of Harry H. Corbett starts darkly to hint at the activities of "some foreign power" only for Corbett to wearily cut in "Oh gawd - not them again!!"

You can tell from the first few bars of the theme tune that Ron Goodwin has been brought on board to score this, and together with George H. Brown (think Margaret Rutherford's "Miss Marple" series) sets us up for a jolly hour and a half. A cleaning lady (Peggy Mount) stumbles upon some sensitive commercial information which she innocently passes to "The Colonel" (Robert Morley) who buys some shares and makes a killing. They discover that what better a way to capitalise on their windfall than by getting a few other ladies who also clean up carelessly discarded paperwork together, and with a bit of discerning analysis, they are soon wheeling and dealing like experts so they can save their local street from demolition. It's a charming, comedic little story that works really well for about an hour; thereafter it drops off rather - too much script - and the women seem to end up as unscrupulous as those they are trying to protect their community from. Morley and Mount are great though.

Peggy Mount is the charwoman for developer Harry H. Corbett's office. She finds a perfectly good cigar in the trash and takes it for Robert Morley, whom she also does for. He discovers the scrap of paper Miss Mount wrapped the cigar in contains a market scheme. He takes advantage and clears five thousand pounds, then proposes to go into business with four chars from the City: they will bring the scraps of paper thrown out by the Masters of The Universe, and he will speculate accordingly in the market. There's also a subplot about Corbett tossing all the people in Miss Mount's neighborhood out -- with new housing provided -- so he can develop the area. Although the details of how the market and development work are correct in substance, the script by Michael Pertwee and John Bignall has a lot of moving parts, and underdeveloped characters. There's social satire, business satire, making fun of unionized labor,...all the bugaboos you could find in a Boulting Brothers movie, but there's a soft, gooey center to the whole thing: Corbett was born in the next street over from Miss Mount's, his mother charred for ninepence a night when she could get it, and wound up in the work house. The movie hangs together well enough while you watch it, but any subtext is lost in the clamor.

Under the surface of this fascinating culture of opposing opposites of post-World War Two lies a more sinister tale of contemporary Social Cleansing in the guise of corporate greed and indifference. This is simply more than a battle of social grading where, here, the A's and E's live within their individual stratosphere but Ladies Who Do project's a culture clash between high-stakes business and proud, and to an extent, naïve, English proletariat working-class. This quaint amalgamation of English society concerns methods of progress and the struggle of a stagnation and inertia to change and adapt to better and further, to transcend, one's quality of life; the principle message within this narrative is freedom of choice. Peggy Mounts' Mrs. Cragg is a Charwoman, a cleaner by trade, an extremely strong-headed woman, and this, too, is the point of the film's essence. Throughout the film we see an all-female power-base, remember, these middle-aged housewives were the backbone of the English war effort, when, some twenty years hence were working in the munition's factories, as Land Girls and other tasks that could not be maintained by the husbands and sons; This build-up of resilience shines with a determination from inserting a script that points not to a meek, menial stratification of the lower order but a self-belief and self-determination of almost militant attributes; to take on an enemy from within their own borders; Peggy Mount portrays her Mrs. Cragg with single-minded gusto up against the symbols of capitalism, and it is here that this free-spirited woman brings this conflict of interest to the forefront of a corrupt self-serving system that tires through battling techniques of bullying, bribery and bulldozers to control and relinquish any form of self-determination and choice. Free will; pride; self-respect; camaraderie and once more, freedom of choice is the backbone that fights against a tyranny of oppression here; ironically, ladies making their luck, to help fight their cause, to legitimate money via the London Stock Exchange with the help of The Colonel, money makes money and information is wealth says he; Free will to capitalise on one's luck and to stand one's ground against those who wish to capitalise from the E's. An exceedingly high-calibre British cast as Peggy Mount OBE and Miriam Karlin OBE et al bring about a division of narrative of a social spectrum that shows a seriousness here to the funny side of the seemingly condescending attitude toward these ladies. They may warrant comments as being naïve, simpleminded and unsophisticated but to only assume these labels is ignorance in itself; the irony is loud and telling; ladies, too, who are helping to put a man on the moon.

A Really Entertaining and Funny British Old Black & White Movie, with a Great Cast. I Enjoyed Watching this Movie years ago when I saw it as a teenager in the 70s, and it brought back those funny memories of the battleaxe char woman with the hair net & curlers..😅 Watching it all these years later the storyline is as good now as it was then.! An Entertaining and Funny British Movie, with Peggy Mount At her laughable Best.! Oh, and that inc' A Funny rendition from the Oh so talented 'Ron Moody' Recommed you Watch.!!!

A host of well known British actors in a jolly good old British BW film. Highly recommended.

Peggy Mount stars in this British film. Since she isn't exactly a star and the film was relatively low budget, it's rare for anyone here in the States to get a chance to see it. I found the film on YouTube and am very glad I saw it, as the film was quite funny and very original. Mount stars as a cleaning lady. One day, by chance, she brings home a slip of paper from an office she'd been cleaning and her renter (Robert Morley) recognizes that the paper is actually inside information about a big financial deal. So, he gambles everything and soon earns a tidy return. But when he approaches his landlady about the idea of her bringing in more papers she finds in the trashcans, the story ends up going places you don't expect-- including his soon employing several cleaning ladies to bring him all the trash from their offices! Soon, they're making a fortune. What's next? The plot is quite original, there are plenty of cute and funny moments and the film is nice because the acting and writing are spot on target. It also has a strong populist bent--one that pits these simple ladies about capitalist investors. Well worth seeing.

My mother took me to see this at the cinema and I enjoyed it then and I enjoyed today when it was on the Talking Pictures channel. The premise was pinched recently for the Sheridan Smith series 'Cleaning Up' although not a comedy like this one. It's a typical 60's B&W comedy that could sit alongside the Carry On films with a wealth of British comedy talent of the day led by Robert Morley and Peggy Mount with Harry H Corbett as the villain of the piece. I really disliked Peggy Mount when she was Ada Larkin in 'The Larkins' she was so horrible to David Kossoff, as a 6 year old at the time I didn't understand she was acting. So one day on holiday on the Norfolk broads she was having lunch with Pat Combs in the hotel we were staying in. My father said go in and ask her for an autograph so I went up and said 'Please Lady Mount, can I have your autograph?' she was so sweet and obliged, I then went back and gave her mine, she laughed saying it was the first time anyone had given on back. Lovely lady, lovely film.