The Family Way (UK 1966)

The second Bill Naughton play to get a big screen adaptation a few months after Alfie, The Family Way stands up well today as a social comedy with a real heart. When it was released at the end of 1966 the film was given an X certificate (just like Alfie) but in 1970 the classification system changed and this was reduced to the then new ‘AA’ (nobody under 14) with ‘X’ increasing its age restriction from ’16’ to ’18’. In a wonderful example of the difficulties of classifying films, the current DVD has a ’15’ certificate. Personally, I think 12A would be the most sensible.

When The Family Way was released in 1966, I ignored it for two reasons, I think. First, I mistakenly thought it would be a comedy about shotgun weddings with a young man forced to marry when he got his girlfriend pregnant. I don’t know how I got this impression. Second, the film starred John Mills and his daughter Hayley. Hayley Mills was in the process of trying to change her star image from children’s/Disney roles to adult roles and I think this put me off. In addition, I was not particularly a fan of John Mills who I associated with 1950s films. Again, I was wrong on both these counts but I think it’s interesting how strong and misleading impressions are formed. I’m less sure of whether I knew that this was a Boulting Brothers’ production at the time. The twin Boultings had been making films since the late 1930s, alternating roles as writer, producer and director. Post-1945 they had shown themselves as committed to mainstream Labour Party values and in the 1950s had begun to produce a series of satires on British institutions – Private’s Progress (1956), Brothers in Law (1957), Lucky Jim (1957) – from the Kingsley Amis novel about a university lecturer – Carlton-Browne of the FO (1959) (UK diplomats) and the brave satire on industrial relations I’m Alright Jack (1959). These were all productions by the Boultings as ‘independents’ but eventually they became involved in the machinations of the public funding agency for film in the UK, the National Film Finance Corporation, and its attempts to merge and support British Lion, the independent studio facility (Shepperton) and distributor. The Family Way is a Boultings production released in the UK through British Lion. Variety suggests that the film was successful in North America with over $2 million in rentals – equivalent to a box office gross of $3-4 million. The film was also notable as offering Paul McCartney his first chance to score a film. It was photographed (in colour) by the veteran UK cinematographer Harry Waxman.

Bill Naughton had originally written the story as an ‘Armchair Theatre’ play for ITV in 1961 titled Honeymoon Postponed. In 1963 it became a stage play All in Good Time before its film adaptation (by Naughton himself). In many ways the narrative takes the form of a traditional Lancashire social comedy (often referred to as ‘North Country comedy’ and popular as a stage comedy in theatres across the North). Arthur Fitton (Hywel Bennett) is a sensitive 20 year-old who works as a cinema projectionist (we see him projecting another British Lion hit of 1966, Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment). The film opens on the day of his wedding to Jenny Piper (20 year-old Hayley Mills). The couple are going to spend one night in Arthur’s old room in the Fitton household and then take off on their honeymoon to ‘Majorca’ (with a ‘j’). But next day they discover that the local travel agent has done a runner with all their cash and the trip is off – they are doomed to start married life in Arthur’s old bed. The first night has not gone well – a practical joke collapsed the bed beneath them and Arthur was put off his stride. One of the great things about the film is that the script avoids too many jokes about Arthur and Jenny’s predicament. Jenny is the sweetest of girls and truly loves Arthur, but she is human too and sometimes goes out with his brother when Arthur is at work.

The Lancashire comedy has several important elements. Here we have two contrasting families. The Pipers have the ‘hard’ mother (Avril Angers) and soft, doting father (John Comer). Arthur’s father is the impossible strutting working-class gamecock played to the hilt by John Mills and the understanding mother (the best role in the film) brilliantly presented by Marjorie Rhodes. Add in Arthur’s younger motorcycle-riding brother Geoffrey played by Murray Head and it isn’t difficult to see why Arthur feels under so much pressure in his old room with his young wife. In addition, his troubles with Jenny are bound to come to the notice of all the gossiping women in the neighbourhood who still discuss local events over the garden wall, in the queue at the fish and chip shop and when they are employed as cleaners at the Town Hall.

Really, the film shouldn’t work. Beautifully shot by Waxman, most of the photography is on location – in Rochdale according to Wikipedia with some scenes in Bolton and interiors at Shepperton. There is good use of night-time streets, record shops and the cinema etc. and I especially enjoyed a motorcycle ‘scrambling event’ – a genuine Pennine pursuit that Geoffrey takes Jenny to visit. But the casting is all ‘wrong’. Mills père and fille are from the UK cinema tradition of Southern actors playing Northern types. Murray Head is also a London lad and looks as if he is in a genuine 1966 film, not a 1961 comedy. (Head would later star as the young man in the middle in Sunday, Bloody Sunday with Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch in 1971.) Hywel Bennett was born in Wales but brought up in South London and Liz Fraser is another Londoner. Most of the rest of the cast are from across the North – the Ken Loach approach to local actors with a genuine identification with the characters they play seems some way away (although Kes would come out in 1969). But it does work. These are solid, professional actors and Naughton’s script is strong.

At the centre of the narrative is John Mills’ macho father, Ezra, the scourge of the local gas works and so ‘unreconstructed’ he could be a working man from the 1930s. I was amazed to realise that Mills was only 58 at the time. He leads the drinking and the singing at the wedding and berates his son for ‘book-reading’. As a balance to Mills, Wilfred Pickles plays Jenny’s uncle Fred who works as a ‘masseur’ – and is therefore deemed to know more about anything vaguely scientific/medical (and therefore ‘what’s up’ with Arthur). Pickles doesn’t have a long list of film credits but from the 1940s onwards he was a huge ‘personality’ presenter on radio and later television. A proud Yorkshireman despite settling in Lancashire, he may well have attracted older audiences to the film. A younger version of ‘macho man’ is played by Barry Foster, Arthur’s boss in the projection box. Arthur himself is a typical Lancashire comedy type. He looks so delicate. It’s only later that we learn that all did not go swimmingly on Ezra’s honeymoon and we might wonder whether Arthur is actually related to his father (on the other hand, we’ve noted that the younger son Geoffrey seems to be from another planet altogether). Arthur may well be a kind of ‘future man’.

It’s taken me a long time to realise it, but Naughton knew what he was about and his script is about a ‘real’ family – or at least a family I can recognise. It is arguably out of date for 1966, but memory is a strange device. When I attended a wedding only a few miles away from Rochdale/Bolton in 1970 it wasn’t too different from this one. I’m just grateful that DVD gives me the chance to relive it. Perhaps it will also help younger people to learn something about the Lancashire culture of the time.

I’d like to include a short extract from the film but StudioCanal (who bought the British Lion library) won’t allow it.