Director – J. Lee Thompson – 1954 – UK – Cert. 12 – 88m
***1/2
A woman spends 12 months in prison after being convicted of fraud – one of two J. Lee Thompson movies out on UK Blu-ray, DVD and Digital in August, 2024
Jean (Glynis Johns) is marched from her cell and up the stairs into the courtroom to hear the judge’s verdict. She gets 12 months for fraud, and is sent to HM Prison Blackdown. Her crime is detailed in flashback – she has a gambling problem, which costs her her doctor boyfriend Michael Hale (John Gregson) who walks out on her. She pays for chips at a casino with a cheque, for which she hadn’t the funds in the bank. In this office, the owner Mr. Seymour (Edwin Styles) tells her he has his own way of dealing with debts, as she’ll shortly find out.
Her friend Pam (Ursula Howells) gets her a job in a clothing store, but it turns out Pam is actually working for Mr. Seymour and steals a family heirloom from Jean’s handbag the first chance she gets. Jean claims the insurance money only for two policemen to arrest her the day the money comes through, going into her home and finding a pawn ticket for the allegedly stolen item tucked into the back of a mirror.
She finds herself in Blackdown alongside Betty (Diana Dors), a young woman who has lied to cover up her the misdemeanours of her boyfriend Norman (who we never meet) and been given a two years sentence for her pains. Betty is worried that she may lose Norman if she can’t get out of prison and see what he’s up to, especially when he stops sending her letters. Jean, meanwhile, finds Michael visiting and trying to encourage her, at least until he gets a very good job offer in Rhodesia. At first, he says he won’t take it, but she tells him he should do so. Then he changes his mind, abandoning her. Jean comes to realise that she can make a life without him. This stands her in good stead when she talks to Betty, who looks likely to experience a similar loss in the near future.
Jean is a model prisoner, at one point intervening to grab a pair of scissors off a fellow inmate about to stab a warder. After four months, the governor has her moved to The Grange, an experimental open prison where there are no bars and the whole institution runs on the basis of trust. The is nothing to stoop the inmates absconding, but they are trusted not to do so, a system which appears to work well.
She fits in and shortly prior to her release is offered the chance to take an unaccompanied trip into the local town for the day as part of the process of rehabilitation back into normal society. She is also asked to take Betty along with her, a somewhat risky proposition since the latter has had a letter from a friend telling her Norman is now with someone else, and she knows she can get him back if she can only see him, however briefly.
During her stay in first Blackdown and then The Grange, Jean meets a number of prisoners incarcerated for their various crimes, with their individual stories told via flashback. Nellie Barton (Olive Sloane) is a professional shoplifter (as are her entire family, including husband Syd, played by Sidney James) of some thirty years standing, who got caught in a department store for nicking a radio with the ability to turn itself on, something the item does while concealed on her person. While they are at it, the police arrest the entire family, including Syd – who has just relieved an upmarket gentleman’s tailors of the waistcoat and tailed jacket on display in their window.
The pregnant Pat (Rachel Roberts) is terrified that she is going to have her baby prematurely in the prison premises rather than the hospital, while another distraught inmate has her nine-month-old baby forcibly taken from her as per regulations. Babs (Jane Hylton from Passport to Pimlico, Henry Cornelius, 1949; It Always Rains on Sunday, Robert Hamer, 1947), obsessed with men, was sentenced for causing a cot death when she went out on the town drinking and dancing with her latest boyfriend. Millie (Athene Seyler from The Queen of Spades, Thorold Dickinson, 1949) is in for plotting with her friend Mabel (Sybil Thorndike) to bump off the latter’s ageing and infirm husband Harry (A.E. Matthews) with weed killer.
The telling of all these stories to some extent gets in the way of exploring the conditions directly endured by women inmates in the prison service. On the other hand, it gives a good indication of the range of criminal types likely to have been in there at that time period. These days, it would get made as a small screen drama rather than a big screen feature.
It’s a solid, workmanlike effort, providing an invaluable glimpse into the many reasons for which people were sent to prison in the Britain of 1954.
The Weak and the Wicked is one of two J. Lee Thompson movies out on UK Blu-ray, DVD and Digital in the UK in August, 2024.
Trailer: