Flame in the Streets (1961)

Made in the wake of the 1959 Notting Hill riots, Flame in the Streets is an early examination of tense racial prejudices within a working-class family.

Adapted by Ted Willis from his own stage play Hot Summer Night, it had already been produced for television in 1959 for Armchair Theatre.

Director Roy Ward Baker makes no allowances for liberal sensibilities and pulls few punches in delivering what he himself termed “a harsh picture”.

Baker elicits a stirring performance from Brenda De Banzie, whose transformation from typical housewife and mother to snarling racist is the centrepiece of the drama.

Jacko Palmer (John Mills), a liberal-minded trade unionist, fights racial discrimination in a London furniture factory and averts a threatened strike over the appointment of West Indian Gomez (Earl Cameron) to shop steward, but has to face up to his own deeper prejudices when his daughter (Sylvia Syms) falls in love with a Jamaican teacher.

The couple plan on marrying, which creates havoc in the Palmer household where Kathie’s racist mother Nell (De Banzie) throws a fit.

Meanwhile, the streets of London are infused with racial tension as Teddy Boys confront the West Indian immigrants on an intense Guy Fawkes night.

Jacko Palmer
John Mills
Kathie Palmer
Sylvia Syms
Nell Palmer
Brenda De Banzie
Hugh Davies
Glyn Houston
Jubilee
Dan Jackson
Gabriel Gomez
Earl Cameron
Judy Gomez
Ann Lynn
Mary Jones
Olive Milbourn
Les
Michael Wynne
Peter Lincoln
Johnny Sekka
Harry Mitchell
Meredith Edwards
Mrs. Bingham
Gretchen Franklin
Christie
Irvin Allen
Bill
Harry Baird
Visser
Newton Blick
Dowell
Cyril Chamberlain
Girlfriend
Barbara Windsor
Old man
Wilfrid Brambell

Director
Roy Ward Baker