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
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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.
Norma’s ex-boyfriend, Jordie Bennett (Laurence Harvey), although handsome and flashy, is little more than a vicious thug.
