The Ladykillers (1955 film)

Mrs Wilberforce is a sweet and eccentric old widow who lives alone with her raucous parrots in a gradually subsiding lopsided house, built over the entrance to a railway tunnel in Kings Cross, London. With nothing to occupy her time and an active imagination, she is a frequent visitor to the local police station where she reports fanciful suspicions regarding neighbourhood activities. The officers there humour her but give her reports no credence whatsoever.

She is approached by an archly sinister character, "Professor" Marcus, who wants to rent rooms in her house. The scene was shot in Argyle Street with St Pancras railway station framed behind the Professor. Mrs Wilberforce is not aware that he has assembled a gang of hardened criminals for a sophisticated security van robbery at the close by London King's Cross railway station: the gentlemanly and easily fooled con-man Major Claude Courtney; the comedic Cockney spiv Harry Robinson; the slow-witted and punch drunk ex-boxer 'One-Round' Lawson; and the murderous, cruel and vicious continental gangster Louis Harvey. As a cover, the "Professor" convinces the naive Mrs. Wilberforce that the group is an amateur string quintet using the rooms for rehearsal space. To maintain the deception, the gang members carry musical instruments and play recordings of Boccherini's Minuet (3rd movement) from String Quintet in E, Op. 11 No. 5 and Haydn's Serenade for Strings Op. 3 No. 5 (the "Serenade" was actually composed by Roman Hoffstetter) during their planning sessions.

As part of the heist, "Mrs. W" is deceived into retrieving the disguised money from the railway station herself. This she successfully manages to do, but not without serious complications owing to her tendency to righteous meddling. As the gang departs her house with the loot, 'One-Round' accidentally gets his cello case full of banknotes trapped in the front door. As he pulls the case free, banknotes spill forth while Mrs. Wilberforce looks on. After some conversation and the tea-party of her best friends and the thieves, finally, smelling a rat, she informs Marcus that she is going to the police.

Stalling, the gangsters half convince Mrs. W that she will surely be considered an accomplice for holding the cash. In any case, they assert, it is a victimless crime as insurance will cover all the losses and the police will probably not even accept the money back. She wavers, but when she rallies, the criminals finally decide they must kill her. No one wants to do it, so they draw lots using matchsticks. The Major loses but tries to make a run for it with the cash.

The criminals cross, double-cross while Mrs Wilberforce dozes; Eventually they manage to kill one another in rapid succession. The Major falls off the roof of the house after being chased by Louis; Harry is killed by One-Round who, after having had a change of heart about the killing of Mrs. W, wrongly thinks that Harry has killed her; One-Round tries to shoot Louis and Marcus when he overhears a plan to double-cross him, but leaves the gun's safety catch on and is himself killed by Louis; Marcus kills Louis by dislodging his ladder under the tunnel behind the house, causing Louis to fall into a passing railway wagon. Before falling into the carriage, Louis fires a last shot at Marcus which nearly hits him. Within moments, Marcus himself is struck on the head by a changing railway signal, and his body drops into another wagon. All the other bodies have been dumped into railway wagons passing behind the house and are now far away.

Mrs. Wilberforce is now left alone with the plunder. She goes to the police to return it, but they do not believe her story. They humour her, telling her to keep the money. She is puzzled but finally relents and returns home. Along the way, she leaves a banknote of large denomination with a startled starving artist.

• Alec Guinness as Professor Marcus
• Cecil Parker as Major Claude Courtney
• Herbert Lom as Louis Harvey
• Peter Sellers as Harry Robinson
• Danny Green as 'One-Round' Lawson
• Jack Warner as the Superintendent
• Katie Johnson as Mrs Louisa Wilberforce
• Philip Stainton as the Station Sergeant
• Frankie Howerd as the barrow boy
• Kenneth Connor as the taxi driver (uncredited)
• Lucy Griffiths as Miss Pringle (uncredited)
• Harold Goodwin as the parcels clerk (uncredited)
• Stratford Johns as a security guard (uncredited)

Alec Guinness is thought to have based his performance of Professor Marcus on the actor Alastair Sim, for whom the part was originally intended; although critic Philip French wrote in 2015 that "there’s another possible source for the appearance of Marcus, with his prominent teeth and pale, cadaverous features, and that is the self-publicising critic and man of the theatre Kenneth Tynan, who had written a monograph on Guinness and been an assistant on the disastrous 1951 Festival of Britain production of Hamlet starring Guinness."^[3]

Robinson was the first major film role for Peter Sellers; he would later appear with Lom in five of The Pink Panther films.

Sellers and Guinness would appear together again in Murder By Death (1976).^[4]

The Ladykillers was the last Technicolor three-strip movie filmed in the UK.^[5]

"When Alec, as the Professor, is killed by a railway signal falling onto his head, the production crew made sure that this would not in fact happen by placing a metal pin half an inch above the level of Alec's head. Lines were drawn in chalk to mark where he should stand for the shot. When it came to the take, however, the signal sheared the metal pin and tore the back of Alec's jacket. He had been standing an inch or two in front of the chalk mark — a mistake that saved his life."^[6][7] - Piers Paul Read

William Rose left the production midway, following arguments with director Alexander Mackendrick and associate producer Seth Holt, leaving them to complete the script from his notes.^[8]

According to the National Film Finance Corporation, the film made a comfortable profit.^[9]

The film received critical acclaim from critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rare approval rating of 100% based on 31 reviews, with an average score of 8.7/10. The website's consensus reads, "The Ladykillers is a macabre slow-burn with quirky performances of even quirkier characters."^[10] On Metacritic, the film received a score of 91 based on 7 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".^[11]

The British Film Institute ranked The Ladykillers the 13th greatest British film of all time. In 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine saw it ranked the 29th best British film ever.^[12]

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted The Ladykillers the 36th greatest comedy film of all time, and The Guardian labelled it the 5th greatest comedy of all time in 2010.

• In 1966, the film was adapted into an opera by the Czech composer Ilja Hurník under the name The Lady and the Robbers (Dáma a lupiči), which was premiered in Brno in October 1973.^[13]
• In 1969, the film was adapted into Egyptian film "Thieves But Funny" (original name: لصوص ولكن ظرفاء) starring Ahmed Mazhar and Adel Emam.^[14]
• On 13 January 1996, an adaptation for radio of the film, by Bruce Bedford, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 starring Edward Petherbridge and Margot Boyd.^[15]
• In 2004, the Coen Brothers directed an American remake of the film, starring Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, J. K. Simmons, Tzi Ma and Ryan Hurst. The setting of the film is moved from London to Saucier, Mississippi, home of a riverboat casino.^[16]
• In 2011, the film was adapted as the play The Ladykillers by Graham Linehan. It premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in November that year before transferring to the Gielgud Theatre in London with Peter Capaldi as Professor Marcus.^[17][18]
• In 2013, the play was revived at the London Vaudeville Theatre^[19] and subsequently toured the UK and Ireland.^[20] This revived production featured a new cast.^[21]
• In June 2019, the play had its North American premiere at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada with Damien Atkins as Professor Marcus and Chick Reid as Mrs. Wilberforce.^[22]

• BFI Top 100 British films
• The Pardoner's Tale

• "The Ladykillers: watch the opening eight minutes". The Guardian. - video
• The Ladykillers at the TCM Movie Database
• The Ladykillers at AllMovie
• The Ladykillers at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Ladykillers at IMDb
• Then and now photographs of locations Martin Underwood, January 2014
• 'The Ladykillers' Locations at Reelstreets.com
• 'The Ladykillers' locations documentary at YouTube