Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter
Directed by Saul Swimmer
Written by Thaddeus Vane
Produced by Allen Klein
Starring:
Peter Noone as Herman Tulley
Keith Hopwood as Keith
Derek Leckenby as Derek
Karl Green as Karl
Barry Whitwam as Barry
Stanley Holloway as G.G. Brown
Mona Washbourne as Mrs. Brown
Marjorie Rhodes as Grandma Gloria
Lance Percival as Percy the Tramp
Cinematography Jack Hildyard
Edited by Tristam Cones
Music by
Mickie Most
Ron Goodwin
John Paul Jones
Production
company
Ivorygate Films
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
January 22, 1968 (US)
I grabbed a copy of this 1967 movie on a whim. I figured that with that title, it had to be a movie by Herman’s Hermits, in the same vein as “Help!” or “A Hard Day’s Night” by the Beatles. I figured it might be good for a laugh before I got bored and switched off. Herman’s Hermits, while a likable band with reasonable talent, weren’t exactly going to make anyone forget John, Paul, George and Ringo, aka the Four Testaments of the Wholly Bible. The Hermits were responsible for two of the most infamous earworms in pop history: I’m Henry VIII I Am (and I’ll get death threats for reminding people of that song’s existence) and “Mrs. Brown.”
The promo poster for the movie wasn’t promising: Noone holding a Mary Quaint clone with the legend, “London is for the ‘birds’” Yes, ‘birds’ was in quotes for anyone too thick to get the allusion. (“Is your wife into photography? You know, photographs, he asked him knowingly…”).
The group was part of “the Mersey Sound” and represented a glib and superficial view of England of go-go girls, Beatles vs. the Stones, minidresses and pageboy hair that lasted about five years before the whole thing imploded in a blast of cocaine and VD. It was fun, but it had the heft and depth and longevity of a soap bubble. England, in fact, do not swing like a pendulum do.
Five minutes in and I knew this wasn’t a Bridget Riley op-art wet dream. It starts out in Manchester in the 1960s, not exactly an idyllic garden spot.
I have two theories about Manchester: one is that Hitler should have bombed the place during the war in order to help win the war for the allies, and a second theory that he actually did bomb Manchester, but nobody noticed.
The movie begins in this ruined urban moonscape of 1960s Manchester, utterly unadorned and not glossed over in any way. The main character, Herman (because of course Herman) is riding about on a motorcycle through this blasted and desolate cityscape. In the side car is a racing dog, inexplicably named “Mrs. Brown” which is an odd name for a white dog.
Is this some sort of Harlen Ellison hellscape in which Herman and Mrs. Brown end up eating Mary Quaint? Nah, this is just Manchester. Mancunians be us!
Herman wants to be rich and famous, and he has four chums (the rest of the Hermits, but then, you knew that) who can knock out some tunes on a variety of instruments, and he’s hoping they can scrape together enough quid to enter Mrs. Brown in the dog racing tournament, thus making them all rich and famous. They practice in a junkyard, or perhaps the local art museum, in a very strange-looking derelict bus.
At the first dog race meet, Herman meets GG, a London fruit-and-vegetable monger who for some reason is a millionaire and has a Rolls-Royce he could get away with selling used to Buckingham Palace. GG, of course, has a daughter, miniskirt and bangs and all that, and she’s a super model. Because of course.
From there, the plot is just a sort of a thin excuse to change the scenery and introduce a variety of truly interesting characters. The movie has two of England’s most outstanding comics and character actors, Stanley Holloway (GG) and Lance Percival as Percy the Tramp. Percy gets the best lines. He is standing on the south bank of The Thames and a woman is trying to take a snap of the Houses of Parliament. He’s in the way. She snaps, “Move! You’re ruining Parliament!” and he replies, “I’m not the only one, love.” At one point Herman wonders if he can submit his vet’s bills to the National Health.
The movie is both a silly Roger Miller romp and a totally unadorned look at England in the 1960s. There is an utterly refreshing honesty about the whole thing, and a lot of satire, both intentional and not. There’s an outstanding scene in a pub where a fight breaks out (what the late Queen would have called “a pissup”) which is brought to a jarring halt when the boys start playing the National Anthem. This is only 20 years post war, and when someone waved the bloody flag, you had better stand to or there would be hell to pay. But the expressions amongst the former combatants suggest patriotism has lost a bit of its charm. Very 1967, that.
It’s one of the rare silly movies from that era that has aged well, and is well worth watching 55 years later.