Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945)

Drama, Thriller /
6.7/10
false% – Audience

Pink String and Sealing Wax Storyline

In Victorian Brighton a scheming pub landlady befriends an innocent chemist’s assistant in order to get hold of poison to do away with her boozy husband.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}

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Pink String and Sealing Wax Movie Reviews

Blame It On The Googie

Don’t be fooled by the silly title, this is no flimsy, lightweight piece but rather a lurid, moralistic tale taking in adultery, murder, blackmail and suicide within its tightly-wrapped 90 minutes.

The action is set in late Victorian-era Brighton and framed by the local newspaper editor dictating recent town events to his copy-writer. It’s fair to say this was a heavy-news day as we are flash-backed and introduced to the two town background settings for the story, the first being the local pub, run by a boozy landlord who drinks himself to a stupor to overlook his tarty wife’s extra-marital affairs, particularly her current one with the appropriately-named dapper Dan, a handsome but married dandy of the insincere type. When the barman knocks her about once too many times for her perceived indiscretions the feisty wife hatches a plan to clear a better path for her and Dan which naturally doesn’t bode well for her old man.

The other background setting is the family of the town coroner, the unforgiving, Puritanical Mr Sutton who rules his loveless house with a rod of iron in his bible-punching zeal, squashing the singing ambitions of his daughter, the romantic dreams of his impressionable young son and worst of all, the swine, the guinea-pig pets of his youngest daughter, which he instead plans to dissect for scientific research. There’s only so much such a put-upon family can take however and they all proceed to quietly rebel in their own way against papa’s iron-will authority, his seemingly docile wife quietly but tellingly informing her husband of her resistance over breakfast, the daughters secretly attend the concert of a famous singer who is visiting the town, with the intention of catching her ear by giving an impromptu public audition after the show and most significantly, the young son, his hopes of marrying his sweetheart dashed by dad, who wanders into the pub one night and sets his puppy-dog eyes on the figure of the landlord’s alluring wife.

The two elements are nicely bound up together, no doubt with the pink string and sealing wax of the title and by the end the murdering widow has run her race, though not before a game attempt to shift the blame elsewhere and in an even bigger turnabout, the flinty old patriarch has changed his outlook towards his family, serving up a nice bow with which to tie up all the loose ends, in the process neatly reintroducing the newspaper article device introduced at the beginning.

Featuring in its cast two future doyens of British TV, Googie “Within These Walls” Withers as the scheming wife, her bosom heaving as she imperiously cuts a swathe through the menfolk in her wake until she takes it too far and the young Gordon “Upstairs Downstairs” / “The Professionals” Jackson as the simpering, lovelorn youth who falls under her spell. There are other good performances too, notably Mervyn Johns as the unyielding father, Mary Merrall as his long-suffering wife and John Carol who plays the heartless Dan, he and Withers possible fore-runners to the warring Dirty Den and Angie characters in the 80’s BBC soap-opera “Eastenders”.

I enjoyed Robert Hamer’s direction, besides the tidy ending, I liked the way he used the pub lush, always asking for her penn’orth of gin, to comment on and indeed at times move along the action.

All in all, a highly enjoyable period melodrama well worth discovering and unwrapping.

Dastardly Doings At The Dolphin.

Pink String and Sealing Wax is directed by Robert Hamer and adapted to screen by Diana Morgan from the play written by Roland Pertweee. It stars Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers, Gordon Jackson, Jean Ireland and Sally Ann Howes. Music is by Norman Demuth and cinematography by Stanley Pavey.

The wife of a pub landlord plots to rid herself of her abusive husband – roping in the innocent son of a chemist to achieve her aims.

One can sometimes forget that Ealing Studios was not solely about crafty comedies, it was a production house of many genre splinters. Here they dabble in the realm of the dark period piece, setting it in Victorian England down on the South Coast in Brighton. Essentially it’s a straight forward plot line of a potential murderess and the big questions of if she does it and if so will she get away with it – more pertinently, will someone else be taking the fall?

Within this simple plotting though, there’s a fascinating group of characters operating out of this part of Brighton – chiefly out of The Dolphin Public House and the local Pharmacy. There’s class distinctions which grab the eyes and ears, but mostly it’s the everyday actions of the main protagonists that hold court.

Johns (excellent) is the pharmacist and an almost tyrannical husband and father, his treatment of his family in the name of tough love is irritatingly troubling. It’s no wonder his kin want to fly the nest in search of happiness. Pub landlord Joe Bond (Gary Marsh) is an abusive drunk, while his wife Pearl (Withers top draw) is a man chaser and as we know, a murderess in waiting.

The support characters are a mixed bunch of barfly gin guzzlers, jack the lads or wannabe singers who fill the air with a shrill din. All of which is cloaked roughly with a melodramatic bleakness that’s initially slow to get off the ground, but comes to the fore for dramatic worth come the second period of the story.

This is far from being Hamer on his best form, he would be saving that for Kind Hearts and Coronets 4 years later, but with Withers good value, the period flavours strong and the photography suitably set at moody, this is well worth a peak for genre enthusiasts. 6.5/10

Googie Sizzles in her 1870s bustle and black choker

London Live TV station are currently running a season of Ealing Films and the subject was one produced in 1945, a year from which several notable films were produced.I am a fan of beautiful raven haired film star actresses of the 1940s and in her Victorian tight fitting dress and bustle with black velvet choker. Googie certainly sizzled.Although not a conventional beauty like Jennifer Jones, Hedy Lamarr, Vivien Leigh, Ava Gardner etc, she certainly sizzled as the alluring wife of the drunk pub owner (Garry Marsh).Gordon Jackson had to suppress his natural Scottish accent for a film set in Brighton playing a rather naive role, a bit like he did in “Millions Like Us” (1943).I endorse the sentiments of user comments above and see no point in explaining the plot again.

Mervyn Johns was to step up a few gears when he played Dr.Forrester the Butcher of Ravensbruck, a Nazi Scientist in “Counterblast”(1948).Here he just plays on overbearing, rather tyrannical Victorian father who reminds his wife that under the law at the time, her money and property devolves to him.This was to change by the Married Womens Property Act of 1884.For a connoisseur of 1940s films it was a pleasant surprise that London Live transmitted this film on TV and I awarded it 7/10.

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