After 25 years of unblemished service in the British Army, ex-Lieutenant Colonel John George Norman Hyde (Jack Hawkins) is forced to retire. Resenting his country’s attitude and ingratitude, he decides to even the score and masterminds a long-term plan.
After consulting Army records, the colonel sends out to seven men an identical copy of a cheap American crime novel called The Golden Fleece, the halves of ten £5 notes and an invitation to lunch.
Each of the men has been an Army officer if not quite “gentlemen” (they had all been cashiered for misdemeanours), and each was a specialist in his own field in the Army and now the colonel – and ‘Operation Golden Fleece’ needs them.
Nigel Patrick plays Major Peter Graham Race, the second-in-command. Richard Attenborough costars as Lieutenant Edward Lexy, a radio mechanic with an expensive taste for girlfriends.
Roger Livesey is Captain Mycroft, who poses as a parson and has a penchant for pornography, and Bryan Forbes plays Captain Martin Porthill, a sly little playboy who earns a seedy living playing the piano in cheap nightclubs.
The fine supporting cast includes Terence Alexander, Kieron Moore, and Norman Bird.
The specialist military knowledge of this “League of Gentlemen” is put to peacetime use.
The “battlefield”(a City of London bank) is carefully explored; the transport is organised; and each man in the team is drilled to perfection.
Through a combination of skill, daring and clever disguise, the objective is taken according to plan, and the League of Gentlemen retire in an orderly fashion – one million pounds in treasury notes richer.
Despite the movie’s adult humour, subtle antiwar message, and unsentimental perspective on postwar Britain, this iconic caper can simply be enjoyed as a lighthearted farce with well-defined characters and a twisty plot full of unexpected surprises.
John George Norman Hyde
Jack Hawkins Peter Graham Race
Nigel Patrick Mycroft
Roger Livesey Edward Lexy
Richard Attenborough Martin Porthill
Bryan Forbes Stevens
Kieron Moore Rupert
Terence Alexander Weaver
Norman Bird Bunny Warren
Robert Coote Peggy
Melissa Stribling Elizabeth
Nanette Newman Hilda
Lydia Sherwood Molly Weaver
Doris Hare C.S.M
David Lodge Wylie
Patrick Wymark Captain Saunders
Gerald Harper Grogan
Brian Murray
Director
Basil Dearden
Video
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The specialist military knowledge of this “League of Gentlemen” is put to peacetime use.
