Themes: Crime Gone Awry, Cons and Scams, Nothing Goes Right
Main Cast: Roger Livesey, Honor Blackman, Richard Burton, Frederick Leister, John Salew
Release Year: 1951
Country: UK
Run Time: 77 minutes
Plot
Though Green Grow the Rushes has the look and feel of an Ealing comedy, the film was actually produced through the auspices of British Lion. The story takes place on the southern coast of England, where through a bureaucratic oversight a small patch of land in Kent is protected from outside legal intervention by an ancient charter. It is here that a group of liquor smugglers, headed by Captain Biddie (Roger Livesey), carries on its activities with impunity and with full cooperation of the regional politicians. The fun begins when a cargo of precious potables ends up in a duck pond owned by a local farmer, sparking an onslaught of governmental foolishness. Two future stars carry the slim romantic subplot in Green Grow the Rushes: Honor Blackman plays a well-meaning newspaper columnist, while Richard Burton shows up as a slovenly smuggler (this was Burton's final British film before his move to Hollywood). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Colin Gordon - Roderick Fisherwick; Geoffrey Keen - Spencer Prudhoe; Cyril Smith - Hubert Hewitt; Eliot Makeham - James Urquhart; Jack McNaughton - Rigby; Vida Hope - Polly; Russell Waters - Joseph Bainbridge, Farmer; Gilbert Davis; Archie Duncan - Constable Pettigrew; Harold Goodwin; Harcourt Williams - Judge; Bryan Forbes - Fred, Biddle Crew Member; Arnold Ridley; Betty Shale; Henrik Jacobsen; John Stamp
Credit
Fred Pusey - Art Director, Derek N. Twist - Director, Hazel Wilkinson - Editor, Lambert Williamson - Composer (Music Score), Lambert Williamson - Musical Direction/Supervision, Ken MacKay - Makeup, Harry Waxman - Cinematographer, John Gossage - Producer, Bryan Langley - Special Effects, Derek N. Twist - Screenwriter, Howard Clewes - Screenwriter, Howard Clewes - Book Author
Three British government bureaucrats arrive in Kent to inquire as to why the costal marsh is not being cultivated. The reason is that most of the local people know about or are involved in the liquor smuggling scheme operated by Captain Biddle and his accomplice Robert (Richard Burton), who is posing as a fisherman when he is seen by the newspaper editor and his journalist daughter Meg. Robert persuades them not to report it in the newspaper, and tells Biddle about his encounter with them. Biddle does not like the idea of any local “Lily White” knowing about their illegal activity; he was once married to a Lily White. The smugglers’ next cargo gets caught in a violent storm, and their boat washes inland, settling in the meadow of a farmer whose wife Polly happens to be Biddle’s ex-wife.
Background
Based on the 1949 novel Green Grow the Rushes by Howard Clewes. The title, at least, is inspired by the 18th-century folk song "Green Grow the Rushes, O", in which each of the 12 verses after the first has the penultimate line, “Two, two, the lily-white boys, clothed all in green O.” The song is not heard in the movie, nor is there any hint as to how the Lily White people Biddle talks about are different from anyone else.
