The Ladykillers (1955) on Netflix
Mrs. Wilberforce, an elderly widow in London, rents rooms to five men posing as an amateur string quintet. Their leader, Professor Marcus, is assembling a gang for a robbery.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Mrs. Wilberforce is an eccentric widow living alone in a Kings Cross house that is slowly subsiding above a railway tunnel entrance. She fills her days visiting the local police station, where officers listen to her fanciful suspicions and dismiss them. Into this routine comes Professor Marcus, who rents her rooms for himself and four companions, among them Major Courtney, Harry Robinson, 'One-Round' Lawson and Louis Harvey. She believes the men are an amateur string quintet rehearsing Boccherini and Haydn records. In truth Marcus has gathered them to rob a security van serving the nearby railway station, using her house as their base.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Ladykillers (1955)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
To film Professor Marcus's death by a falling railway signal, the crew put a metal pin half an inch above Alec Guinness's head. In the take the signal sheared the pin and tore his jacket; Guinness stood in front of his chalk mark, a mistake that saved his life.- Screenwriter William Rose claimed to have dreamt the entire film and merely had to remember the details when he awoke.
- William Rose left The Ladykillers midway through production after arguments with director Alexander Mackendrick and associate producer Seth Holt, who had to finish the script from his notes.
- The Ladykillers was the last Technicolor three-strip movie filmed in the UK, though The Feminine Touch was the last feature shot in the process and was released three months later, in 1956.
- The Cockney spiv Harry Robinson was Peter Sellers's first major film role; Sellers would later appear with Herbert Lom in five of The Pink Panther films.
- According to the National Film Finance Corporation the film made a comfortable profit, and it was the last financially successful Ealing film made under its association with Rank.
