MISS ROBIN HOOD
UK, 1952, 76 minutes, Black and white.
Margaret Rutherford, Richard Hearne, James Robertson Justice, Michael Medwin, Eunice Jayson, Sidney James, Dora Bryan, Reg Varney.
Directed by John Guillermin.
Miss Robin Hood is a supporting feature from the early 1950s, a vehicle for Margaret Rutherford who had already emerged as a staple of British comedy, Blithe Spirit, Happiest Days of Our Lives, and Richard Hearne who was to have more success on television over 20 years with Mr Pastry. James Robertson Justice was also emerging as a significant presence as was South African, Sidney James, here as a taxi driver who knitted and Dora Bryan as a sympathetic barmaid. Michael Medwin is an awkward suitor.
The film is directed by John Guillermin, at the beginning of his career, small budget features which eventually led him to the United States, to big budget films like Shaft in Africa, King Kong as well as The Towering Inferno.
The film has some resonances with later decades, comment being made that comic strips are important because people didn’t read any more! There is an emphasis on stories and comic magazines which later became “Graphic Novels�. And, the fans of the comics are the equivalent of young people enthusiastic about communicating on social media.
Richard Hearne plays the writer of comics, especially Miss Robin Hood, which is very popular with youngsters. He literally dreams of the stories. He has a patient wife, two daughters, one who is courted by Michael Medwin, the other who is enthusiastic about the comics.
There are difficulties in publishing, the desire to be modern, introduce colour, eliminate the comics. However, Margaret Rutherford, sometimes over the top in her dottiness, is a woman who looks after children, supports their enthusiasm for Miss Robin Hood, visits the writer just as he has offered his resignation and involves him in a plot of her own, material for his comic strips. She wants to rob the safe of an industrialist, James Robertson Justice, who has a secret formula allegedly stolen from her family in the 19th century. She gets the number of the safe, opens it, takes the formula as well as a bag full of money.
The police pursue, there is a car crash, the police come to the home, the writer becoming more jittery hides the money in his cellar, the two plotters thinking that money was merely paper. They spend money on the children but eventually decide to put it back. They are caught, do a deal with the industrialist to get money from him and having the hold over him that they could sell the formula to a rival.
The children, becoming more like St Trinians, have a demonstration at the publishers, the owner not liking the substitute story about stealing a Salvador Dali painting, reinstating the writer – and happy ever after.
11 years later Margaret Rutherford would win an Oscar for her performance in The VIPs.
