Penny and the Pownall Case

The Rank Company of Youth (the Charm School) was not based at the Highbury Studios. It was located in a rather grubby church hall a few hundred yards away. In a 1982 BBC-tv documentary presented by Barry Norman the likes of Diana Dors and Barbara Murray spoke of how unglamorous it was. It was alleged that male and female changing was behind curtains at either end of the hall, and that the toilet facilities were at the Highbury Studios! This first manifestation of the Charm School closed around 1949 when Rank was making economies. The Highbury Studios were closed at that time too.

The premise for the film is rather cute, a beautiful bimbo getting herself in the center of an international espionage adventure. The movie is quite quick with a surprising amount of sexual innuendo and lingering shots of the striking and well lit Peggy Evans in high fashion and states of undress verging on gratuitous. Evans' acting for such a litterally comic roll is commendable, but cannot be said for the male lead, even his reaction shots are remarkably poor.

An interesting curiousity is that Penny is seen in a bikini with briefs that cover her sacred belly button, however, in the comics drawn for her in the film, she wears a relatively modern bikini (tight fit and cut).

Possibly worth looking at if no other movie is running just to see what a gratuitous film looked like post-war era. Not worth going out of your way to see or even wasting the time to program your VCR.

A curiosity rather than a must see. A mousy Diana Dors, a jittery Christopher Lee and a not very engaging Olaf Pooley. It's the director's one and only, and has the feel of early work. Not much else to say.

Although 'The Blue Lamp' was a much better film, Peggy Evans has the title role and is far more glamorous in this jolly shoestring trifle as Penny - obviously based on The Daily Mirror's Jane - wearing (when dressed) a succession of knock-'em-dead forties outfits and hairstyles and giving an energetic and engaging performance while tangling with a gaggle of Nazi war criminals.

Both Christopher Lee and a brunette Diana Dors further add to the fun in substantial supporting roles (while the square chin of Shaun Noble as Pownall may be familiar from his role in flashback as Deborah Kerr's lover in 'Black Narcissus').

Peggy Evans is a model for Christopher Lee; he draws a comic strip for a newspaper which seems to specialize in showing Miss Evans in sunsuits, raising her skirts, and so forth. She a fiend for mysteries, and when Detective Inspector Ralph Michael drops by to ask Lee some questions about a kidnapping that has turned into a murder, she's so fascinated she agrees to go with Lee to sunny Spain for modelling. Soon, however, she finds herself involved with much more dangerous people, smuggling Nazis out of Europe.

The racy comic strip is based on Norman Pett's strip about Jane, a young woman who found herself on the pages of the Mirror in states of undress. Pett's wife was the original model, but she developed an interest in golf and was replaced by Chrystabel Leighton-Porter. Pett gave up the strip in 1948, and it continued for another eleven years.

This is the only directorial effort of Slim Hand. Far less revealing than the comic strip, and utterly conventional, it's a fairly wan second feature at 47 minutes.