Some of Britain’s most skillful actors appear in Basil Dearden’s League of Gentlemen a heist action comedy, starring Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey and Richard Attenborough.
Based on John Boland’s 1958 novel of the same name, the screenplay is written by Bryan Forbes, who also co-stars in the film.
Premise:
Some former officers of the British Army plan a bank robbery in London,
Raiding an army training camp in Dorset to get the weapons they need, they frame the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Though he has no criminal record himself, Norman Hyde (Jack Hawkins) holds grudges for being made redundant by the army after decades of service.
As a result, he intends to rob a bank using the skills of half a dozen gathered men, each of whom is promised £100,000 if the pan succeeds.
The gang meet to discuss the plan in detail under the guise of amateur dramatic society rehearsing “Journey’s End.” They then move into Hyde’s house, where they live like a military unit, with a regimen of duties and discipline in fines to be deducted from the robbery.
Hyde reveals that he has spent the past year collecting details about the regular delivery of one million pounds in used banknotes to a London bank.
Cast
Jack Hawkins as Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Hyde
Nigel Patrick as Major Peter Race
Roger Livesey as Captain “Padre” Mycroft
Richard Attenborough as Lieutenant Edward Lexy
Bryan Forbes as Captain Martin Porthill
Kieron Moore as Captain Stevens
Terence Alexander as Major Rupert Rutland-Smith
Norman Bird as Captain Frank Weaver
Robert Coote as Brigadier “Bunny” Warren
Melissa Stribling as Peggy, who ran a gambling parlour with Race
Nanette Newman as Elizabeth Rutland-Smith
Lydia Sherwood as Hilda, Porthill’s wealthy, older girlfriend
Doris Hare as Molly Weaver
David Lodge as Company Sergeant Major Barnard
Patrick Wymark as Wylie, the customer at Lexy’s repair shop
Gerald Harper as Captain Saunders, the adjutant of the army base
Brian Murray as Private “Chunky” Grogan
Uncredited
Marie Burke as Mrs. Boyle, Mycroft’s landlady
Dinsdale Landen as the boxer in Stevens’ gym
Michael Corcoran as Stevens’s blackmailer
Oliver Reed as a Babes in the Woods chorus boy
Anthony Wager as the switchboard operator at the army base
Patrick Jordan as an army sergeant
Norman Rossington as Staff Sergeant Hall
Bruce Seton as the AA patrolman
Terence Edmond as the young police constable at the warehouse
Ronald Leigh-Hunt as Superintendent Wheatlock
