Ladies Who Do (1963) User Reviews

Please Lady Mount

[kris-gray · 8/10 · 14 April 2019]

My mother took me to see this at the cinema and I enjoyed it then and I enjoyed today when it was on the Talking Pictures channel. The premise was pinched recently for the Sheridan Smith series 'Cleaning Up' although not a comedy like this one. It's a typical 60's B&W comedy that could sit alongside the Carry On films with a wealth of British comedy talent of the day led by Robert Morley and Peggy Mount with Harry H Corbett as the villain of the piece.

I really disliked Peggy Mount when she was Ada Larkin in 'The Larkins' she was so horrible to David Kossoff, as a 6 year old at the time I didn't understand she was acting. So one day on holiday on the Norfolk broads she was having lunch with Pat Combs in the hotel we were staying in. My father said go in and ask her for an autograph so I went up and said 'Please Lady Mount, can I have your autograph?' she was so sweet and obliged, I then went back and gave her mine, she laughed saying it was the first time anyone had given on back.

Lovely lady, lovely film.

Classic British Comedy

[Fudge-3 · 7/10 · 29 March 2019]

Mrs. Cragg, a cleaning lady, inadvertently picks up some inside trading information that could earn a fortune. The idea to repeat the action spawns a company; 'Ladezudu.'

A nice comedy of working class makes good. Some good gags and excellent physical humour. In the end when the rags have made their riches they become the ones wanting to exploit the poor.

If you want to know what 1960s working class looked like this is a good start.

I liked Mrs Parish.

The Limits of Curtilage

[boblipton · 6/10 · 14 April 2021]

Peggy Mount is the charwoman for developer Harry H. Corbett's office. She finds a perfectly good cigar in the trash and takes it for Robert Morley, whom she also does for. He discovers the scrap of paper Miss Mount wrapped the cigar in contains a market scheme. He takes advantage and clears five thousand pounds, then proposes to go into business with four chars from the City: they will bring the scraps of paper thrown out by the Masters of The Universe, and he will speculate accordingly in the market. There's also a subplot about Corbett tossing all the people in Miss Mount's neighborhood out -- with new housing provided -- so he can develop the area.

Although the details of how the market and development work are correct in substance, the script by Michael Pertwee and John Bignall has a lot of moving parts, and underdeveloped characters. There's social satire, business satire, making fun of unionized labor...all the bugaboos you could find in a Boulting Brothers movie, but there's a soft, gooey center to the whole thing: Corbett was born in the next street over from Miss Mount's, his mother charred for ninepence a night when she could get it, and wound up in the work house. The movie hangs together well enough while you watch it, but any subtext is lost in the clamor.

The Pit Street Project

[richardchatten · 7/10 · 2 March 2022]

Historians of sixties Britain could learn a lot from this rollicking satire of high finance and property speculation from the pen of Michael Pertwee (whose younger brother Jon is one of the truly amazing cast which includes Miriam Karlin virtually reprising her TV role in 'The Rag Trade'), produced by Ealing maestro Michael Balcon's company Bryanston, made just as the bulldozing of homes to make way for offices for profit was getting under way.

Less than a year after the Cuban missile crisis (akin to the one in the Ukraine we're anxiously watching on tenterhooks right now) there comes a withering repost to America's obsession with The Commies during the Cold War when an American associate of Harry H. Corbett starts darkly to hint at the activities of "some foreign power" only for Corbett to wearily cut in "Oh gawd - not them AGAIN!!"

Peggy Mount At her Best 🤣

[carmenjulianna · 7/10 · 5 April 2020]

A Really Entertaining and Funny British Old Black & White Movie, with a Great Cast. I Enjoyed Watching this Movie years ago when I saw it as a teenager in the 70s, and it brought back those funny memories of the battleaxe char woman with the hair net & curlers..😅 Watching it all these years later the storyline is as good now as it was then.! An Entertaining and Funny British Movie, with Peggy Mount At her laughable Best.! Oh, and that inc' A Funny rendition from the Oh so talented 'Ron Moody' Recommed you Watch.!!!

Amiable working class comedy

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 8 October 2016]

LADIES WHO DO is a fun working class comedy about a put-upon cleaner, played with over-the-top relish by Peggy Mount, who comes into some money and decides to put it to good use via some decidedly illegal methods. This involves her employing an army of cleaners in a battle with a local property developer who is planning to raze their homes to the ground.

This is the kind of film which British studios used to do so well and it has a kind of cheeky, cheery, working class charm to it like the CARRY ON movies. Although Mount is an acquired taste for sure, the supporting cast is quite exemplary, headed over by Harry H. Corbett who is very convincing as the villain of the piece. Robert Morley plays the usual Robert Morley type role while Jon Pertwee is one of Corbett's aides (and Pertwee's own brother, Michael, wrote the script).

Avril Elgar and Dandy Nichols play other cleaning women and there are bit parts for Nigel Davenport, John Laurie, Ron Moody, Harry Fowler, Arthur Mullard. LADIES WHO DO packs plenty of one-liners and absurdist situations into the short running time and ends on a high with a pitched battle between the saboteurs and the workmen. It's not one of the best British comedies out there, but there's little to dislike about this film nonetheless.

Outstanding English comedy.

[betc-3 · 10/10 · 21 October 2006]

I saw this delightful movie in the late 60's. I do wish that the film industry in other countries, including the United States, could follow the English guidelines in creating a truly funny film. One of the many things that made this movie so funny and outstanding was the lack of four letter words and bedroom scenes. The producer and director of "Women Who Do" proved that four char ladies and their co-hart who play the stock market can create a delightful plot. Even though it has been so many years ago, when they took over the board room I had tears rolling down my face from laughing so hard. What do fans of English comedy,like this, do to get to see more movies like this? Or, what do we do to get to see this movie again? I truly loved every minute of this movie. Bettye Coleman

Poor Script defeats great cast

[malcolmgsw · 9 July 2012]

i didn't go to see this film when it was shown at the local Odeon in the 60s and now i can see why.There is a great cast.Ron Moody,Jon Pertwee and Graham Stark have small roles but even they cannot save the film which sinks beneath a sea of clichés.Clearly even back then the topic of insider dealing was an issue.however the message seems to be that it is OK provided everyone indulges in it.One of my biggest problems is with Peggy Mount.Her idea of being funny was to shout her lines as loudly as possible on the basis the louder her voice the bigger the laughs.Alas it just doesn't work.Margaret Rutherford i find hilarious but alas Peggy Mount leaves me cold as does this film

Ladies Who Do

[CinemaSerf · 7/10 · 11 November 2022]

You can tell from the first few bars of the theme tune that Ron Goodwin has been brought on board to score this, and together with George H. Brown (think Margaret Rutherford's "Miss Marple" series) sets us up for a jolly hour and a half. A cleaning lady (Peggy Mount) stumbles upon some sensitive commercial information which she innocently passes to "The Colonel" (Robert Morley) who buys some shares and makes a killing. They discover that what better a way to capitalise on their windfall than by getting a few other ladies who also clean up carelessly discarded paperwork together, and with a bit of discerning analysis, they are soon wheeling and dealing like experts so they can save their local street from demolition. It's a charming, comedic little story that works really well for about an hour; thereafter it drops off rather - too much script - and the women seem to end up as unscrupulous as those they are trying to protect their community from. Morley and Mount are great though.

Delightful British Comedy In The Ealing Mold

[ShadeGrenade · 10/10 · 28 May 2008]

Mrs.Cragg ( Peggy Mount ) is a charlady in the employ of the successful property development firm Ryder Enterprises. One day she finds a barely-smoked cigar in her employer's waste-paper basket, and, wrapping it in a piece of paper, gives it to her other employer, Colonel Whitforth ( the splendid Robert Morley ).

Noticing that the paper is in fact a telegram warning of an imminent company take-over bid by R.E., the wily Colonel instructs his stockbroker to buy shares in the doomed firm, and then sell them when the bid goes through. He makes a profit of £5,000! He offers Mrs.Cragg a share in the money, but she thinks he has done something illegal and goes to James Ryder ( Harry H.Corbett ) to come clean about the whole business. While waiting to see him she finds out R.E. have bought Pitt Street - where she lives - and plans to turf out the residents in order to build office blocks.

Enraged, she enlists the help of other chars to beat the greedy Ryder at his own game...

The post-war years saw much social change in Britain. Houses were demolished all over the country as redevelopment took place on a grand scale. 'Ladies Who Do' effectively captures those far-off times.

It is like an Ealing comedy in that it features ordinary people unexpectedly finding themselves in positions of authority, and the world becomes better off for it. The Colonel uses the money to form a company called 'Ladezudo' ( ladies who do ). Initially, they set out to save working class communities from predators such as Ryder, but by the end of the picture, they are seduced by the capitalist system and have adopted his entire philosophy.

A mouth-watering cast - Peggy Mount, Robert Morley, Harry H.Corbett, Jon Pertwee, Nigel Davenport, Dandy Nichols, Miriam Karlin, Graham Stark, Cardew Robinson, Avril Elgar, Arthur Mullard, John Laurie - and a witty script by Michael Pertwee add up to 85 minutes of absolutely charming comedy.

Mount's 'Mrs.Cragg' is not as domineering as her other screen roles, such as 'Emma Hornet' in 'Sailor Beware'. Here she is lovable. I'm sure audiences cheered as her army of women in aprons and curlers advanced menacingly on the builders.

'Ryder' has worked his way up from nothing to become a tycoon. He is the sort of man Harold Steptoe could have been had he gone into the property developing business instead of totting.

Barbara Mitchell appears briefly at the end, her character is not too far removed from the one she played in 'Please Sir!' and 'The Fenn Street Gang'. Also one to watch out for is a young Carol White ( of 'Cathy Come Home' fame ).

Favourite moment - a couple takes up R.E.'s offer of £100 to move out of Pitt Street, then the husband ( Ed Devereaux ) admits they were going to go anyway!

The only thing this film needed to make it a bona fide classic was the presence of John LeMesurier. But even without him, its still pretty good. Great music by Ron Goodwin too!

The char business really picks things up in this fine British comedy

[SimonJack · 7/10 · 23 April 2023]

I don't know what the producers had in mind with the tittle of this film. . Robert Morley's Colonel describes the title of their firm, LADEZUDU, as Ladies, You Do. It surely invites the use of one's imagination. But this is a delightful little British comedy. All filmed in London, and yet it's first release was in the U. S. A. Well, some Hollywood films are released first in the U. K., so who knows what the movie moguls are up to, or looking for.

Morley, in the second lead of this film, will be recognized by movie fans on both sides of the pond, and around the world. And the first lead, Peggy Mount, should be recognized by film mavens, at least in the English-speaking world. She was a riot in "The Naked Truth" (aka, "Your Past in Showing") of 1957. Most of the rest of this cast won't be known outside of the U. K. except by the most ardent and long-time, fastidious, film watchers.

But the ladies and Morley have lots of fun as they beat the money-grubbers at their own game, make a mint and save their neighborhood on the side. Harry Corbett gives a good performance as the flustered James Ryder.

Here are some favorite lines from this film.

James Ryder, "Well, gentlemen, we've all been hit by this thing. I'm getting so jumpy I don't even trust myself."

Mrs. Cragg, "Ten minutes ago we had 15,000 pigs. Now we haven't got a ham sandwich between us."

Emily Parish, "What are we voting for?" Mrs. Cragg, "Pigs!"

Mrs. Higgins, "What about your bosses, eh? Look at them, sittin' there, stuffin' themselves with goose and caviar. Yeah, well you go and tell them that the bourgeois and proletariat blood will mingle in the gutters of the Kerry Crossroad before they get chucked out of here. Go on, tell 'em!"

James Ryder, "There's 500 quid in it for you." Mrs. Cragg, "Five hundred? For doing what?" Ryder, "Nothing." Mrs. Cragg, "You told me yourself, that nobody gives you anything for nothing."

Mrs. Cragg, "There's one thing that money can't buy - that's friends."

Funny and clever.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 18 August 2015]

Peggy Mount stars in this British film. Since she isn't exactly a star and the film was relatively low budget, it's rare for anyone here in the States to get a chance to see it. I found the film on YouTube and am very glad I saw it, as the film was quite funny and very original.

Mount stars as a cleaning lady. One day, by chance, she brings home a slip of paper from an office she'd been cleaning and her renter (Robert Morley) recognizes that the paper is actually inside information about a big financial deal. So, he gambles everything and soon earns a tidy return. But when he approaches his landlady about the idea of her bringing in more papers she finds in the trashcans, the story ends up going places you don't expect-- including his soon employing several cleaning ladies to bring him all the trash from their offices! Soon, they're making a fortune. What's next?

The plot is quite original, there are plenty of cute and funny moments and the film is nice because the acting and writing are spot on target. It also has a strong populist bent--one that pits these simple ladies about capitalist investors. Well worth seeing.

Ladies Who Do

[henry8-3 · 5/10 · 8 March 2020]

After accidentally acquiring details of a corporate purchase, cleaner Mount and her friends, including finance whizz Morley, decide to set up a company to use this and other information to make stocks and shares trade killings.

Sweet, simple and very British, this is fun enough with Mount wonderful as the world's grumpiest bag with a heart of gold supported by an impressive array of British character actors.

One of the greatest of British comedies, and it has a message

[robert-temple-1 · 10/10 · 16 December 2010]

The first thing that needs to be explained to people who are not British, or who are British but under the age of 30, is the title. 'Ladies who do' was the polite way of referring to cleaning ladies, or char women, up until fairly recent times in Britain. A woman who cleaned for Mrs. So-and-so would proudly say to her friends: 'I do for Mrs. So-and-so.' It was all a way of being polite in a class-based society so that a cleaning lady did not have to be called a cleaning lady. That is all gone now, and people today merely speak in a derogatory way of 'cleaners', who are all Polish or Estonian or Latvian and many do not even speak English. But at the time this film was made, 'ladies who do' were everywhere, and in London, where this film is set, they were all wisecracking Cockney women who made pithy irreverent comments in their charming East End accents, and made everybody laugh (or cry). This utterly hilarious film is based upon the premise that 'ladies who do' could get together as a group and systematically raid the dustbins of the offices they cleaned, and get hot tips for the stock market. This is indeed what happens. The story was written by Jon Pertwee, a comic actor who also appears in the film. He certainly knew more than a few char ladies, and his characters and dialogue are hysterically funny because they are so accurate. Apart from anything else, this is a first rate social history document! The leading presence on screen is the overwhelmingly dominant Peggy Mount. There was never anyone like her, she was a Force Ten Gale for laughter. She and her three chums and the old mother of one of them make up a quintet of breathtakingly brilliant character acting, who are so effective that they nearly eclipse the talents of the two male actors with the biggest parts, Robert Morley and Harry Corbett. I had the rare privilege long ago of seeing Peggy Mount in a lead role onstage in a serious play. It was Gerhard Hauptmann's THE BEAVER COAT, directed by Bernard Miles at the Mermaid in London. She was like a hurricane onstage. I have rarely seen such a powerful dramatic performance. If she had not been so busy being a comedienne for most of her career, she would have been recognised as a great dramatic actress. Apart from the hilarity and biting satire of this wonderful film, it has a very serious underlying message. The motivation of the char ladies is not to get rich, but to save their street, Pitt Street, from a rapacious developer who wants to knock down all their houses (they all live in the same street) and build a new development. They use the money they make by stealing inside information about stocks (including some from his own waste baskets!) to fight him and save their neighbourhood. It is a true 'peoples' uprising'. They even stage obstructions in their street to stop the bulldozers and prevent the police arresting them (one char lady snips the aerial off the police car to stop the police calling for backup). The performances of Dandy Nichols, Miriam Karlin, Avril Elgar, and Joan Benham are all marvellous, as ladies who terrify. This is a truly wonderful film, and a tribute to that British sense of humour which existed until recently but is now tending to be drowned out by the suffocatingly dreary 'political correctness' and poe-faced formalism of those mediocre political nonentities who have constituted themselves the regulators of public behaviour. To such people, laughter poses an intolerable threat to their ersatz 'dignity'.

An absolute joy.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 9/10 · 30 November 2018]

Quality comedy from 1963. Even all these years later it's still wonderfully funny, and gloriously sentimental. All of the actors play to their strengths, Peggy Mount is the domineerinf, brash lead, Miriam Karlin is the shop steward, Harry H. Corbett is the rags to riches businessman, and Robert Morley is the bumbling Colonel.

A story that would have been very relevant at the time, many houses were pulled down, with people forced to move out. Plenty of laughs throughout, with such a cast as this, it was never going to fail was it. 9/10

10/10

[missbellu-43142 · 10/10 · 9 February 2019]

A host of well known British actors in a jolly good old British BW film. Highly recommended.

Clichéd but amusing

[Andrew_S_Hatton · 8/10 · 6 May 2012]

I enjoyed it because it shows an east London with which I am familiar and some very familiar character comedians and actors in situations that I recognise.

I suspect others not familiar with London in the mid 20th century would find it atypical as an example of British life.

Another Reviewer makes the point that this is a London with no black faces, and I think implies they were absent in 1963. They certainly weren't.

I am not sure where Pitt Street is but I suspect it is less than 5 or 6 miles from Ridley Road Market in Hackney or Brixton Market where non white faces were very common although not in so large a number as perhaps a few years later.

Limehouse had been a home for Chinese for at least a century by then and in the London Docks area there had long been residents of all the races that provided crew to ships that came to London for as long as they have been coming to London. We just deluded ourselves and acted as if they were absent or as in this film, invisible which our anti racist training of the 1980's onwards taught us we were wrong to have behaved in such ways.

It is very likely that whilst filming there were Black, Asian and people of other races passing nearby but the 'white' entertainment industry was producing material for us the white majority and for a 'non white' person to come into prominence they had to be outstanding in a similar way to a woman in business or politics.

None of this takes away my enjoyment of the film, which I feel a little guilty about with hindsight because I was brought up in such ignorance of the diversity of our nation. I would be very interested to know the precise location of Pitt Street. London is so large in fact it could be in many places within a thirty mile radius of the mythical centre of London (I think according to the Automobile Association's mileage measuring system at Charing Cross, Westminster) It is very likely in that area had a black person lived locally he would have attracted a nickname such as 'Sambo' - offensive now but not necessarily used in a negative way in the early 1960's, even though we were past the riots of Notting Hill.

Another characterisation shown is the 'Robert Morley' acted character, the retired army officer, living in very reduced circumstances trying to maintain some sort of faux status, and probably acted by Morley because Jimmy Edwards was not available! Such characters were part of the British scene, when we were mostly far less sophisticated and pretentious than nowadays.

I hope this gets an airing on TV before long and am surprised I had never seen it before now.

A final comment - this era was almost gone by 1963 although there are folk like those portrayed still around today, my mother in law, from Walthamstow was one such, and she only died, aged 89 a year ago.

The Eagle has Landed.

[Cinema_Fan · 8/10 · 24 January 2021]

Under the surface of this fascinating culture of opposing opposites of post-World War Two lies a more sinister tale of contemporary Social Cleansing in the guise of corporate greed and indifference. This is simply more than a battle of social grading where, here, the A's and E's live within their individual stratosphere but Ladies Who Do project's a culture clash between high-stakes business and proud, and to an extent, naïve, English proletariat working-class.

This quaint amalgamation of English society concerns methods of progress and the struggle of a stagnation and inertia to change and adapt to better and further, to transcend, one's quality of life; the principle message within this narrative is freedom of choice.

Peggy Mounts' Mrs. Cragg is a Charwoman, a cleaner by trade, an extremely strong-headed woman, and this, too, is the point of the film's essence. Throughout the film we see an all-female power-base, remember, these middle-aged housewives were the backbone of the English war effort, when, some twenty years hence were working in the munition's factories, as Land Girls and other tasks that could not be maintained by the husbands and sons; This build-up of resilience shines with a determination from inserting a script that points not to a meek, menial stratification of the lower order but a self-belief and self-determination of almost militant attributes; to take on an enemy from within their own borders; Peggy Mount portrays her Mrs. Cragg with single-minded gusto up against the symbols of capitalism, and it is here that this free-spirited woman brings this conflict of interest to the forefront of a corrupt self-serving system that tires through battling techniques of bullying, bribery and bulldozers to control and relinquish any form of self-determination and choice.

Free will; pride; self-respect; camaraderie and once more, freedom of choice is the backbone that fights against a tyranny of oppression here; ironically, ladies making their luck, to help fight their cause, to legitimate money via the London Stock Exchange with the help of The Colonel, money makes money and information is wealth says he; Free will to capitalise on one's luck and to stand one's ground against those who wish to capitalise from the E's.

An exceedingly high-calibre British cast as Peggy Mount OBE and Miriam Karlin OBE et al bring about a division of narrative of a social spectrum that shows a seriousness here to the funny side of the seemingly condescending attitude toward these ladies. They may warrant comments as being naïve, simpleminded and unsophisticated but to only assume these labels is ignorance in itself; the irony is loud and telling; ladies, too, who are helping to put a man on the moon.

just watching again

[marktayloruk · 9/10 · 22 April 2020]

After fifty odd years. Better than I expected - one of those classic British comedies.Very distinguished cast and makes me laugh out loud.

Dolly Parton eat your heart out!

[michaelberanek275 · 9/10 · 24 August 2022]

I don't know how she did it, but Peggy Mount created a very likable loudmouth cockney char woman in this delightful movie expropriating the best of the Ealing tradition of clever farcical comedy. The 'ladies' are all excellent, but above all one finds oneself eager to rally behind the lead righteous cleaner with her fag dangling down, and piercing but remarkably accessible Estuary English delivered with the sonorous theatrical gusto of a music hall performer. She commands the sound stage with a wry eye towards the audience and as I say wins you over pretty instantly. The film presages Nine to Five by decades to present themes like female empowerment, (nice but) wicked property developers, insider dealing & short selling, insensitive government & town planning, potty socialism and hard hearted conservatism -- all making it quite relavent yet in the current age. The plot is far from complex but the movie just whisks along at a great pace pausing with enough time for the various ensemble actors to provide some fantastic performances along the way. The writing is excellent and takes care to make sure that even the bad characters are given enough to like them for, making this quite benign in nature, but with enough political, economic and cultural references to the 1960s in Britain to make this quite a fascinating film from an historical perspective as well.

Charladies of the world, unite !

[myriamlenys · 8/10 · 22 July 2023]

"Ladies who do" is a classic British comedy with a glorious cast of comedy greats. The plot deals with a cleaning lady who accidentally slips a stockmarket tip to another customer, a retired colonel. Clever use of the tip leads to a welcome windfall. Inspired by the success, the cleaning lady and the colonel create an information-gathering network spying on the movers and shakers of the economy.

The movie boasts some pretty funny characters, such as a devoutly Communist charlady who spouts effortless jargon about the blood of the workers and the blood of the bourgeoisie continuing their fight in the gutters.

In spite of its merry tone and zany plot, "Ladies who do" deals with a number of serious topics such as the darker side of urban development. Here, a group of hapless inhabitants get pressured into leaving their modest working-class neighborhood, which has been slated for demolition. They're supposed to abandon their "festering slum", so that rich investors and contractors can grow even more prosperous erecting luxury dwellings. On paper the plan is described as a triumph for social progress, but in reality it would mean the death of a harmonious and close-knit community.

Comedy highlight : the invasion of a street by a growing number of near-identical charladies.