Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter

source: Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter

In the second of two films that the English band Herman's Hermits made, Herman aka Peter No one, inherits a greyhound racing dog and appropriately it's named Mrs. Brown. After their big hit what else would you call it, except maybe Henry VIII. Though the band has long broken up, Peter No one remains active today on the nostalgia circuit on both sides of the pond. The boys from this band are even joined by another generation of Music Hall performers with Stanley Holloway as the produce tycoon who has not lost his common touch. Holloway looked like he was having a great old time performing with Herman's Hermits. Holloway has a daughter in the film and his name is Brown and of course she likes Peter. No need to dwell on the plot, there isn't much of one. If you're of the generation of Herman's Hermits, just sit back and listen and watch Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter.

As bad as this silliness was it still outshone The Beatles "Help" by a wide margin. It was, however, not in the same class as "A Hard Days Night" by the Fab 4 which was a masterpiece - well, sorta. In Mrs. Brown we have the 5 cute Hermits running around England trying to become big time dog racers, making time with cute birds, grinning like blind apes, playing their abysmal songs, and proving their talents lie not in acting. I enjoyed the film very much because it showcased one of the original 'invasion' groups, not because it was an award winner; although it really wasn't all that bad either. Is it possible the Hermits popularity waned because at the time of this filming most rock groups has gone beyond the squeaky clean, suit and tie, short/mod hair Herman and the boys were sporting? These blokes looked like advertising men when compared to Big Brother or the Dead.

Much as I love Herman's Hermits' music, this has to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. plot was so weak it should have been strangled at birth and despite an attempt by Lance Percival to play Peter Noone's father, it was all pretty dire. The script writing was extremely poor too and it's not hard to see why Peter Noone kept to music (though he did get an early start as Len Fairclough's son in the long running British Soap Coronation Street)

I'd never heard of this film before TCM started screening it as a late night filler - and initially woke up in the middle of it when Holloway and co were singing the poignant and totally unexpected The World is for the Young. I actually couldn't get the song out of my head for several days. After that I kept stumbling across bits of it on different screenings and each time I said to my wife "I kinda like this movie" Tonight I finally managed to watch it from the start and although as a film it doesn't really amount to much it's such a good natured, sweet and enjoyably off kilter movie that it just makes me feel good to see it. I wanted to see what other people thought and it seems a few reviewers do get it - whereas some others seem to get strangely vindictive and offended. Yes it's completely out of jaunt with it's year and the Hermits were anachronisms by 1968 but Peter No one (I tried to make his surname come out correct) is perfectly fine in the lead, the supporting cast is great, the brightly coloured widescreen is a pleasure to the eyes. Guilty pleasure or not I've really warmed to this.

Five lads from the back streets of Manchester come to London to race a dog (Mrs Brown of the title) and earn a few quid playing music on the side. Note the order and stress. Time plays games with film. What is seen as throwaway and nothing at the time can start to have some historical value and - naturally - what was seen as having deep meaning can become meaningless to a new audience. This production has its values - to me - in showing London when I first went there and comparing it to now. Indeed it is worth viewing for that alone. (A lot of the background has been sandblasted since the time of this film and the docks are now mostly flats and offices.) Those not interested in period detail and third-rate pop history/acts are going to feel their fingers on the remote control very quickly. To save time and money let us take a list approach. 1. The main players are musicians and they have no acting ability. Indeed Peter "Herman" N-O-O-N-E (which IMDb corrects to call No One!) makes Cliff Richard or David Bowie look like Oscar winners. Seems nice, but dim, with so many teeth his mouth won't close. He has got them fixed now as a Youtube/Google search will demo. Kept his hair as well - lucky sod! 2. If you can't spot Elstree Studios (pretending to be a country pad) then you haven't watched enough Brit film. Boy am I sick of this white building. I feel like I have lived half my life there. 3. The script was knocked together on-the-quick after the title song was a surprise No.1 US hit by Metro Goldwin Meyer - as part of the trend (at that time) to try and spread Hollywood to Europe. Didn't work, nor did director Saul Swimmer from this point on. 4. Manchester is shown as being prehistoric in nature and at least ten years out of date. People had updated and improved by then. We didn't wash in the front sink anymore! 5. Unlike every other "do you lads want to be rich and famous?" the band seem little interested in music or fame. Indeed they seem little interested in girls either. When an early stoner tries to tag along they give her the elbow in no uncertain terms. Free love hadn't got past Watford in this film. 6. N-O-O-N-E misses the big gig at the hip night-club because he is out looking for a dog. Is he bothered by this? Not really - but maybe the director couldn't get emotion out of him? 7. While the group (or N-O-O-N-E and whoever!) still play today - they were going out of date already. They are squeaky clean mods about to hit the hippie scene. The party clothes were actually very accurate for the time: Couldn't be tight enough - couldn't be bright enough! 8. There is really no plot beyond the maguffin of the dog, who doesn't do much more than pant and look bored (she is not alone!) I thought she should at least get to chase a few sticks. The racing plot seems to fizzle out out to nothing. 9. Bit part actors like Stanley Holloway steal the show, although he is an old-time knees up man. 10. Unlike any other pop film this isn't a journey to anywhere or anything. Nothing has changed for the boys. Have they learnt anything or got a taste of something better or even different? The final reel goes comes up and you haven't got a clue! Derek "Leck" Leckenby (the Buddy Holly lookalike on guitar) is the only one of the group to have passed away (1995) He worked in the music biz until his death - by cancer - at the age of 51. This was his last film. RIP.

"Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter," was filmed two years too late to have any real box office success in the US. Then again, it wasn't anything like the loopy, goofy, rollicking Brit Invasion silliness associated with their 1966 MGM film, "Hold On." The people who expected "Hold On Again" are totally clueless about this film. This was a small, simple, charming decidedly very British film that probably wasn't intended for much of an American release. I never saw it until a few years ago when it was on Turner Classic Movies. The group's hits dried up here in 1967. No hits in a year was a big deal that usually meant the end of the ride. However, the group continued to hit the charts quite nicely in the UK and Europe (as the Kinks did before their American comeback in 1969). This film was for them. And if any Americans appreciate it, all the better! It is a nice quaint little film with nice little ditties.

Five lads from Manchester, England have inherited a greyhound who proves to have prowess on the dog-track; to raise the money for the racing entrance fee, they decide to form a music group. Inoffensive piffle, brightly-made against '60s London backdrops (with curious but not entirely misplaced fashion lay-out interludes and musical montages). Herman's Hermits are not an exciting nor formidable pop band--buttoned-down and squeaky-clean, they barely have personalities--but their acting is better here than in 1966's "Hold On!" and the hit "There's a Kind of Hush (All Over the World)" is prettily performed. The older folks in the cast, including Stanley Holloway, are given room to shine, and the script has some heart and appeal. ** from ****

Although this site and Maltin's book claim the film is 110 minutes, the version I just saw on TCM was 94 minutes and I would not have wished it longer. However, I have a thing for "bad" musicals of the 60s and 70s, the post-classic era of transition (or dissolution, actually) of the form, when all kinds of things were happening. Thanks to rock music, musicals were evolving towards the music-video stage when a number needn't be a stage-able event that happens to photographed. Even the old Busby Berkley numbers, though supremely cinematic and incapable of being presented on a theatrical stage, were essentially staged events (on the soundstage) with editing linking together the separate fanciful bits. But in "The Telephone Hour" sequence in "Bye Bye Birdie," for example, there is little or no choreography EXCEPT through the editing; the bits of film are being choreographed. This finally arrived as a formal idea in Richard Lester's Beatles films, where he cuts snippets of the band's performance, dropped into the film from nowhere, with other random events. So this Herman's Hermits film, as another post-Brit Invasion, post-Lester movie, should be right in that modern wave, right? Not quite. Stanley Holloway says at one point "You can't jump with one foot on the ground," and it seems that most of the movie has both feet in the old tradition of musical entertainment, both in content and form, aiming squarely at the middle class audience rather than excitable youngsters. It's a trad rags-to-riches plot (rather than being a snapshot of a famous band like the Beatles movies), and they don't even care about being rock stars, only in the supremely dull dog-racing plot. In the end (SPOILERS, if it matters), they haven't quite made it yet and Peter Noone does not get the rich girl but may settle for the poor-but-honest local girl who moons for him. It's a very unhurried film, to say the least. It's best virtue is the location filming in Manchester and London, which gives it a true sense of place. You do get the sense that these are plain lads in a real world who have to work for a living. The Mod elements are purely cosmetic; film spends more time on music-hall songs than the glimpses of wacky hairdos and Carnaby Street clothes. But we can see that it employs 3 kinds of musical number. There's what you might call the integrated or performance number, where the reason people are singing and dancing is that a professional band is performing in some venue, just as you might see in real life. Then there's what you might call the inherent or organic number that we associate with musicals; life is a world where people spontaneously sing and dance in the street. These numbers are given to other characters than the Hermits, and one of these numbers, a nostalgic song by the older characters about the younger ones, is presented in a non-stageable, creatively edited, music-video manner (using split-screen). Finally there is what you might call the internalized number (another progressive music-video idea), in which a character (or the film itself) seems merely to be thinking the song to himself/itself on the soundtrack while we view the activities of characters who go about their business without any idea that a song is going on. This is how "There's a Kind of Hush All Over the World" is presented; the reality is that Noone is in bed woolgathering, but what we see is his imagined self wandering across a bridge and through the country where couples are wooing; he is not singing but we hear him anyway.

I'm a big fan of this movie, but that's only to be expected, as I am also a big fan of Herman's Hermits. (Their faces adorn a whole wall in my room...what can I say.) I found this movie to be both entertaining and visually appealing, showing Manchester and the more hoppin' London of the time. I'm very familiar with each one of the Hermits (Herm, Lek, Keith, Barry, and Karl), and for those who also know of each one and their personalities, it's great seeing the lads and hearing their banter. Peter, especially, shines and does a quality job in the main role. (Not surprising, considering he had been an actor prior to Herman's Hermits.) In the movie, the boys buy shares in a racing greyhound, but must form a band to make money to race her. The story follows Herm and the lads as they travel from Manchester to London, meeting new people and trying to achieve musician status. I've seen all the Beatles movies, and in comparison, found this plot to be more riveting. Of course, I could've watched the movie with the sound off, and just enjoyed fangirling over how cute the boys were. I must mention that my mother is a baby-boomer and found the movie to be dull and lifeless. Though I'm 16, the Hermits are my favorite band and I love their music and each member (I'm a sucker for happy bubble-gum pop and adorable Mancunians.)I would recommend this movie highly to any fan.