Word: footman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...plot brings a nobleman, who thinks he is broke, into service as a footman in the household of connoisseur Joshua Howard. Inevitably he falls in love with the old man's niece and amanuensis, and gets into numerous complications before the final dribbling denouement...
...lines and the acting are what raises the picture above the level of all this tripe. Except for two or three lapses into straight slapstick and a somewhat corny climax, the dialogue is consistently sharp, unexpected, and often brilliant. Michael Wilding, as lord and footman, gets just the right blend of cynicism and playfulness, though his eyes do twinkle a bit too much on occasion, Anna Neagle is pleasantly attractive and eager in the female lead, and she also demonstrates that infuriating twinkle. Joshua, portrayed by Tom Walls is a marvelous English-gentleman type, both in word and deed...
Gold Veins. Belowstairs, Albert, the 'prentice footman, is sick with love for-Housemaid Edie, who is herself pining for First Footman Charley Raunce. "I love 'im, I love 'im," she cries to Housemaid Kate (who is obsessed by the mere idea of being in love). "I could open the veins of my right arm for that man." But Footman Charley is momentarily too busy to take Edie seriously. He is hovering outside the dying butler's bedroom, waiting for the brief coma between life and death when he can safely order young Albert...
...limousine after limousine slid up to the canopied portico of Derby House in London's Stratford Place, a red-coated footman intoned the names of the visitors -two dukes, seven earls, eight lords, three ambassadors, the Prime Minister. Within, the host, a book publisher who calls himself "the world's largest," stood graciously receiving his guests...
...There was Vittoria Caetani, Dowager Duchess of Sermoneta, ex-lady in waiting to the ex-Queen of Italy. Her latest book, Sparkle Distant Worlds, is quite sad: "Now we began hearing of the first horrors of war, Poland invaded . . . a British passenger steamer sunk off the Hebrides . . . My last footman was called up and left to join the army." Writing of the day when the Germans took Rome in 1943: ". . . I looked into the courtyard of my old home [Palazzo Colonna]; a shell had struck the wall just over the window of what had been my bedroom as a girl...