Cinema: Half a Sixpence

An hour and a half into Half a Sixpence, a horrifying word flashes on the screen: Intermission. Can it be that the spectator, already stupefied by an aimless plot, nameless characters and fameless songs, still has another hour or so to go? He does indeed. And what comes after the popcorn break turns out to be more of the same.

In Edwardian England, an orphan named Kipps (Tommy Steele) finds a little girl on his waif length (Julia Foster). Before their friendship can mature, he is sent to far away London as an apprentice to a scrofulous Shylock. Kipps owns nothing in life but a sixpence, which he splits with his girl; he will come back to her, he promises, as soon as he can. But when his grandfather dies and leaves him a fortune, he forgets his vow and falls for a wealthy, beautiful snob. Can Kipps really be such a cad? Of course not. In the end, he loses his loot and marries his lower-class true love, like the decent English workingman that everybody knew he always was.

Despite his limitless Cockney verve and 2,000,000-candlepower smiles, Tommy Steele’s range is small, and the movie’s relentless series of overproduction numbers serve to reveal his limits. Of the cast of thousands,only Cyril Ritchard as a pauperized playwright and Grover Dale as Kipps’s clogging boyhood colleague come off well, largely because their appearancesare confined to a few key scenes.

Based on a vapid H. G. Wells story, Half a Sixpence was a modest triumph as a Broadway musical—short on substance but long on charm. On screen it is just long.