Rent The Comedy Man (1964)

Press Button B - The Comedy Man review by CH

"Don't expose yourself – you'll make the neighbours randy!” So Billie Whitelaw is instructed after climbing naked from bed and looking through the lamplit basement window of her Paddington bedsit. Moments before, her breasts had been lolling upon the chest of none other than Kenneth More (whose character has the unlikely, doubly female name of Chick Byrd). This is a setting in which one hardly expects to find that upright hero of such dramas as Reach for the Sky; he himself, though, esteemed The Comedy Man (1964) as his best work – and rightly so.

The film opens with him in his accustomed declamatory manner, upon the stage of a provincial theatre where he tells an audience, during a curtain call, that their applause is meat and drink to an actor, “and thank you for the dinner”.

Food is to become exiguous, for he goes on to reveal to them that it is his last performance there: he has been sacked after a fling with the producer's wife. We would have heard more, but the curtain is rapidly brought down. And the scene rises upon his arrival at a London railway station which is a short taxi-ride from “darkest Camden Town” where he has arranged to take a room in a lodging house full of self-styled “thespians”. This is run by Norman Rossington, who had recently played am ever-cajoling roadie in A Hard Day's Night, and he is here accustomed to being an ad hoc pawnbroker when residents cannot scrape together the rent. Such is the place that another arrival asks, “does the ceiling always leak?” and by way of a reply is told, “only when it's raining”.

Here is all the badinage of actors seeing their way through tough times, every public-telephone offer of a cameo being something to seize upon as a harbinger: even a stint as Santa is surely but a stepping stone to Lear. Based upon a novel by Douglas Hayes, who should be better known, this was adapted by Peter Yeldham and directed by Alvin Rakoff (both of whom were born in 1927 – and alive).

Rak(e)off could be an apt surname for an agent played wonderfully by Dennis Price, who gets More the part of what was then known as a Red Indian, which is a sight to behold – and compounded by its leading a shop steward to tell the extras to down their tomahawks. This experience prompts More to inform Price that he could take on another ethnic rôle but finds that the agent had met the genuine article “the other night in a lavatory at Leicester Square”.

All of which is to describe but a few of the surprises which leap from so brilliantly paced and photographed film whose array of familiar faces in challenging, sofa-surfing settings includes the likes of Cecil Parker.

Here is the most engaging encapsulation of that era between - yes, one need not quote Larkin's lines about sexual intercourse. Suffice to add, though, that it features a party scene, with Chubby Checker on the soundtrack, that would be hard to match: the camera moves to and fro in a way that should have it made an obligatory study for a tracking shot (and, what's more, as the drink flows, one finds two men dancing together).

One can well imagine that anybody who saw this at the time would have sat round for the next showing. There is so much to enjoy here that one cannot but deem it a masterpiece.

Comedy Drama. - The Comedy Man review by Steve

Sweet and sour comedy about a struggling actor which gave Kenneth More one of the best roles of his career. He plays a wry, dogged survivor who is now middle aged and has failed to make good on his career ambitions and ideals, while watching his romantic last chances slide by.

The film portrays the circumstances of a jobbing actor as  being pretty grim; mainly due to the insecurity which undermines every aspect of life. More's leaky bedsit in a shared slum building is particularly dismal. He gets by on brittle optimism and booze and a support network of other failing thespians. And if one of them gets a break, it's worse.

The film creates a detailed impression of the physical world of the sixties precariat. There's a funny/sad script full of wise, witty lines which More punches home with uncharacteristic melancholy.  A cameo from Cecil Parker as an elderly, homeless washout is especially poignant.

More finds brief success in a series of popular tv adverts, but hates himself for selling out. His pal (Edmund Purdom) hits the big time in a blockbuster, but there is still an impression this isn't fulfilment. It's not Cyrano. These are people for whom dreams almost never come true, but who achieve an obscure heroism in their endurance.