You know (in fact I wrote this on my blog in 2010, I was looking yesterday for no particular reason) I am permanently besotted by Make Mine Mink, the 1960 film starring Hattie Jacques, Terry Thomas, Athene Seyler, Elspeth Duxbury, Billie Whitelaw, and some excellent cameos from Kenneth Williams, Irene Handl,* Penny Morrell, Freddie Frinton and others. Well... this is the play that Make Mine Mink was based on.
I haven't read it yet. But I'm already intrigued and a few pages in it's a very different kettle of fish but also a lot of the same lines but in slightly different contexts. The character Terry Thomas plays, Major Albert Rayne, is a Brigadier in the play, he was originally played by Michael Shepley. Duxbury and Seyler reprised their roles; Seyler is 'Dame Beatrice' but Duxbury's character was Elizabeth Hatfield in the play and referred to as 'Hattie' which wouldn't have done in the film as a real Hattie, Hattie Jacques, was playing the part of 'Nan' Parry in the film. So Duxbury became 'Pinkerton'. Hazel Hughes had played Nan in the play, 'a gaunt, enthusiastic lady who dresses peculiarly and has a deep booming voice'. Of course HJ was not gaunt, and didn't everybody always say so, but she is one of the gems of the film, and clearly plays Nan as a very mannish lesbian. One of my absolutely favourite moments in the film is when Major Rayne asks Nan, as Lily leaves the room, 'why does she walk like that?' and Nan says something like, 'can't imagine'. That she's eating an apple makes it all the more glorious. I will laugh if I have either misremembered or misunderstood that exchange, but I will still enjoy my interpretation.
More on this if/when/as I actually read it.
* Update 10/8 Handl not Handle you fucking idiot autocorrect
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