The BFI blu-ray for the dire 1953 comedy Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? has as a second feature, 1952’s My Wife’s Lodger. Somehow, this earlier film is even worse.
The connection between the two is Diana Dors, who was frequently heralded as the UK’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. In this, she is the daughter in a lower-working-class family and working as a dance hall girl. Some of her remarks to her mother (Olive Sloane) about boys suggest she is getting quite an education as part of that employment.
This is among the surprises awaiting family patriarch Dominic Roche when he returns home after six years of serving in the army during WWII. He’ll also be confronted by a rude jackass of a son (Vincent Dowling), who is relieved to have been fired from his job, as he can now spend more time at the dog track. At least his mother-in-law (Vi Kaley) will be the same as before, hating his guts and relying upon one of those large ear horns I suspect no hard-of-hearing person used in that era outside of pictures like this.
But the biggest shock awaiting him is the titular character played by Leslie Dwyer. His face has certain features resembling a weasel, so it is no surprise he is a career criminal. He has deceived Sloane into thinking he is an arms manufacturer. Despite the return of her husband, he is intent on wooing her.
This is a lousy comedy, one in which I failed to even smile at any point during its runtime. The only element of it which surprised me is how risqué it is overall. For example, there’s Kaley appalled by a neighbor woman who is having a baby, despite her husband having been away for more than two years. The always-dim Roche says there’s nothing wrong with that, as there are two-and-a-half years separating Dowling and Dors.
There’s also a tinge of pathos here which suggests there was the potential for a better film. Roche looks on sadly at the parade given the return of a hometown war hero, when there is no celebration of his own homecoming. Even his son is off to the party for the return of a friend’s father. Then there’s the gifts he brought back for his children, toys for children as they were six years prior.
Alas, Roche is too much of a self-pitying sad sack for us to identify with, and this is compounded by his lack of a spine. Any potential goodwill is completely jettisoned in the third act, where he meets a US soldier (Alan Sedgwick) who has accidentally arrived at his house and the two start drinking heavily and trashing the place–that place being his own home.
Sedgwick is “Tex”, so you can guess where he’s from. There is extremely little information concerning him on the internet, as he only had one other on-screen appearance. I don’t even know if he was American or not, but my money is on him not being a Yank, as his accent is overly pronounced and feels precarious.
Eventually, 76 long minutes pass and My Wife’s Lodger will have finished, never to be revisited. This is the kind of extremely broad comedy that is more like a comic strip such as The Lockhorns or Andy Capp realized on the big screen, except they seem to have forgotten to bring jokes even worthy of those series. I guess this is a snapshot of sorts of a period, as audiences of the time apparently wanted to see a hero without redeeming qualities, hear Diana Dors sing and witness a weird coda has the whole family relocated to Texas. If that is the kind of world Roche’s veteran returned to, I would have immediately reenlisted.
Dir: Maurice Elvey
Starring Dominic Roche, Olive Sloane, Diana Dors
Watched on BFI UK blu-ray (all region)