In this live television broadcast, excerpts from Jack Popplewell’s West End stage comedy are presented.
Sally Seymour (Margaret Lockwood) is the successful proprietor of a fashionable Bond Street boutique. Upon turning thirty-five, she concludes her life is lacking in excitement and resolves to throw caution to the wind. Aided by her friend Joy Lucas (Yolande Donlan), Sally soon finds herself pursued by two very different suitors: a button salesman with an outrageous moustache, Harry Markham (Frank Lawton), and a gangling, awkward American naval lieutenant, Ford Baxter (John Stone).
This broadcast was not a full-scale television production, but a 45-minute selection of scenes televised live from the Duke of York’s Theatre in London. This format, a common practice for the BBC in the 1950s, served a dual purpose. It offered viewers outside the capital a taste of a current West End hit, while also providing the Corporation with prestigious, pre-rehearsed content to fill its schedules. Jack Popplewell’s light comedy was a suitable vehicle for this treatment; its structure allowed for a self-contained excerpt built around the star performance of Margaret Lockwood, then a major box-office name in British cinema.
Broadcast: BBC, 1 Episode, 1 December 1959
Written by: Jack Popplewell
Television Producer: John Vernon
Television Director: Charles Hickman
Main Cast: Margaret Lockwood (Sally Seymour), Yolande Donlan (Joy Lucas), Frank Lawton (Harry Markham), John Stone (Ford Baxter), Pat Pleasance (Peggy Jones), Graham Payne (Brian Lawson), John McCarthy (Spike Muldoon)
