In which film can you find a real-life world heavyweight boxing champion and a real-life world heavyweight wrestling champion, plus a future quantum physicist, a future mainstay of the Carry-On movies, and Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe, not to mention the female star of one of the silver screen's most celebrated romantic 'weepies'? As I'll now explain in the following review, the answer is none other than a delightful British movie from the mid-1950s entitled A Kid For Two Farthings, which I watched earlier tonight.
Directed and co-produced by the legendary Carol Read, with the equally legendary Alexander Korda as co-producer, plus a screenplay adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from his own 1953 novel of the same title, and released in 1955 by Romulus Films, A Kid For Two Farthings centres upon a little boy named Joe (played by Jonathan Ashmore – more about him later) living in Petticoat Lane, the wholesale/retail area of London's bustling East End, with his mother Joanna (Celia Johnson, she of the afore-mentioned weepie, which was of course Brief Encounter). Also present are their adult friends Sonia (Britain's very own blonde bombshell Diana Dors) and bodybuilder Sam (Joe Robinson, who in real life was the 1951 world heavyweight wrestling champion). Joe's father is working in South Africa as a prospector, but whether he will ever return to him and Joanna remains unanswered. In his absence, their elderly tailor neighbor and landlord Avrom Kandinsky (David Kossoff) keeps a friendly watchful eye over them, especially Joe, with whom he has a touching avuncular/grandfatherly relationship, telling him stories that more often than not the young impressionable Joe assumes to be true.
One of these is that there are still unicorns in this world but that they have all migrated to Africa, to escape persecution here in England that had been caused by the immense value of their single spiraled horns, which can grant all wishes. Sonia has been engaged to Sam for the past four years, but because he earns very little he has still not been able to buy her a ring, let alone give serious consideration to their getting married. Meanwhile, Joanna lives in unfulfilled hope that her husband, Joe's father, will one day come back home, and Mr Kandinsky is in sore need of an automatic steam press to enable him to take on more work. In short, everyone has wishes that they fervently hope will come true but have no realistic means of making them do so – until the unicorn arrives, or something rather like one.
While walking through the animal section of the local outdoor market one day, Joe spots a man walking a remarkable-looking animal on a lead in the hope of selling it someone. It resembles a small white kid (young goat – the movie's titular kid), but instead of possessing a pair of small lateral horns like normal kids, it bears a single small centrally-located one like unicorns are said to possess. Although in reality it is nothing more than a freak goat specimen (such creatures do occur occasionally in real life), infused with Mr Kandinsky's stories Joe fervently believes it to be a bona fide unicorn, and after a little haggling concerning its price he purchases the quaint little creature from its owner.
Re its price: allow me to explain the intriguing title of this movie (and originating novel). Joe offered the uni-goat's owner all the money that he had in his pockets – a grand total of three shillings and nine pence (roughly equivalent in today's UK decimal currency to 18p), which the creature's owner refused, stating that he'd rather kill it, eat its meat, and sell its hide. Desperate for that dreadful fate not to occur, Joe searched his pockets again, and found a single coin that he'd overlooked earlier – a ha'penny (the colloquial name commonly given to the halfpenny coin). So Joe offered that too, on top of his previous three shillings and nine pence – and this time the owner accepted and gave the uni-goat to Joe. Bearing in mind that the ha'penny had made all the difference between Joe not being able and then being able to buy the animal, you could say that in reality he'd bought it for a ha'penny. But that is not all: back in the 1950s, the decade in which this film was set (and released in reality), there was a very small, low-value coin still in British circulation that was known as a farthing, four of which were equal to one penny. Consequently, as two farthings were therefore equal to one ha'penny, two farthings had made all the difference as to whether the owner had sold the uni-goat to Joe. So, quite literally, Joe had successfully purchased it for two farthings – mystery solved!
From then on, beginning with small wishes, Joe implores his new pet to make them come true, and whether by coincidence or by cosmic indulgence, somehow they do. Sam, meanwhile, is coerced into taking up wrestling bouts as a means of earning money to buy Sonia her much-longed-for ring, climaxing in a grudge match against the villainous former wrestling champion Python Macklin (Primo Carnera, the real-life Italian world heavyweight boxing champion), but will Joe's 'unicorn' grant his wish that Sam will win? Or will the reality that it is merely a sickly malformed kid prove too much?
Speaking of Joe: Jonathan Ashmore, who played him when just 7 years old, comes from a serious thespian background, with his father being theatre director-actor Peter Ashmore and his mother actress Rosalie Crutchley. But this did not stop him from undergoing a dramatic career move, from acting (A Kid For Two Farthings was his only film appearance) to academia, qualifying as a quantum physicist after obtaining a PhD in this subject, and after many major contributions to physics and also physiology becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is currently Bernard Katz Professor of Biophysics at University College London.
As for the future Carry On mainstay – this is none other than Sid James, who plays Ice Berg, the comic-relief spiv who spends much of the movie trying to tempt Sam into purchasing one of his decidedly dodgy engagement rings for Sonia. Moreover, another future Carry On stalwart makes a very brief appearance – Barbara Windsor.
Carol Reed's first colour movie (and which earned him a Palme d'Or nomination at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival), with its exteriors shot in and around the genuine Petticoat Lane (which I visited back in the early 1970s and bought a small modern-day reproduction of an antiquarian globe of the world that I still have today ), and packed with notable British actors and actresses who all performed their parts well (with Kossoff being absolutely sensational), A Kid For Two Farthings is one of those whimsical, nostalgic, quintessentially British films from that particular time period that deftly mixes comedy, drama, fantasy, and gentle but unashamed wholesomeness to excellent effect throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and anyone seeking to recapture a setting and an entire way of life long gone now will do so too – of that I have no doubt.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
