Private’s Progress (1956)

Upper-class innocent Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) has to interrupt his university education when he is called up in 1942 and falls in with a gang of spivs in the Army – including crafty Private Cox (Richard Attenborough).

Stanley gets a posting to train as a Japanese interpreter but is contacted by his uncle, a Brigadier (Dennis Price) to join a secret operation which is, in fact, a scam to steal looted artworks from the Germans and sell them on to crooked art dealers.

Terry-Thomas is terrific as the pompous Major who despairs that his men are “an absolute shower”.

Narrator
E.V.H. Emmett
Private Stanley Windrush
Ian Carmichael
Private Percival Henry Cox
Richard Attenborough
Brigadier Bertram Tracepurcel
Dennis Price
Major Hitchcock
Terry-Thomas
Arthur Egan
Peter Jones
Sergeant Sutton
William Hartnell
Captain Henry Bootle
Thorley Walters
Prudence Greenslade
Jill Adams
Private Horrocks
Ian Bannen
Private George Blake
Victor Maddern
Private Dai Jones
Kenneth Griffith
Sergeant-Major Gradwick
John Warren
Pat
Derrick de Marney
Mr Spottiswood
Henry Longhurst
Mr Windrush Sr
Miles Malleson
Catherine
Sally Miles
Gerald
David King-Wood
Colonel Fanshawe
Michael Trubshawe
Psychiatrist
John Le Mesurier
General Tomlinson
Robert Raglan
Major Schultz
Christopher Lee
Colonel Argent
Basil Dignam
Lance Corporal Parsons
David Lodge
Sidney
Michael Ward
General Von Lembeck
Ludwig Lawinsky
Miss Sugden
Marianne Stone
Colonel Lench
Peter Stephens
Face Ache
Gerald Fox

Director
John Boulting