18-year-old Joan Collins had her most important role to date in this brilliantly-acted Ealing film. She played Norma, a petulant youngster who finds herself in trouble with the police, placed on probation, and falling in love with another probationer, Charlie Hooker (Harry Fowler).
Cecil Parker plays Henry Phipps, the 40-year-old bachelor who has retired from his job as a diplomat with the Colonial Service and does not know what to do with his new-found leisure.
To him, Norma is just like any other unfortunate girl, cheap and provocative, but through her, he meets the probation officer, Matty (Celia Johnson). Driven by the boredom of an aimless existence, he decides to have a go at it himself.
His methods in dealing with young Hooker – who has got into trouble with a gang of corner boys and lives in Lewisham with a cruel stepfather – may be unorthodox, but they prove remarkably successful.
Norma’s ex-boyfriend, Jordie Bennett (Laurence Harvey), although handsome and flashy, is little more than a vicious thug.
Watch out for the beleaguered court sergeant, played by the legendary Sid James, making one of his first film appearances two years before he became a household name on Hancock’s Half Hour.
There’s also a terrific cameo by Ursula Howell, playing the drunken, shoplifting society girl, “The Hon. Ursula”.
Henry Phipps
Cecil Parker
Matty (Mrs Matheson)
Celia Johnson
Charlie Hooker
Harry Fowler
Mrs Hooker
Brenda de Banzie
Norma Hart
Joan Collins
Mr Dove
George Relph
Mr Pyke
Godfrey Tearle
Mr Quayle
Ernest Jay
Jordie Bennett
Laurence Harvey
Buck
Stanley Escane
Dai
Cyril Waites
The Hon. Ursula
Ursula Howells
Sergeant Body
Sidney James
Miss Macklin
Katie Johnson
Mrs Crockett
Ada Reeve
Mr Haines
Alex McCrindle
Sergeant Braxton
Laurence Naismith
Albert Braxton
John Orchard
Braxton Child
David Hannaford
Frost
Herbert C. Walton
Policewoman Andrews
Gwynne Whitby
Crump
Fred Griffiths
Eric Stevens
Richard Hart
Mrs Stevens
Gladys Henson
Mrs Tyson
Peggy Ann Clifford
Director
Basil Dearden
Michael Relph