Jack Hawkins

I'm sure it looked better.

There were a few things like that where I'm like, sometimes I'm like, maybe restoration is too much because like, I'm sure you couldn't see, uh, is it Richard Jenkins? Is that, is it Jack Hawkins? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shake it up a bit and put a bit of Schuster on it and you get Tony Ben.

And then if you go a bit like that, you get Jack Hawkins.

It's all the same.

A

Don't break your neck going to see it or trying to find it.

But on to this week's large question, which I shadow dropped today.

Because at the time of recording, just about, it would have been Jack Hawkins' 116th birthday.

God bless him.

I really, really struggle that Alec Guinness walking around in, I mean, the worst brown face of the movie.

Alec Guinness also said in his diaries that David Lean got mad at Jack Hawkins, who played General Allenby, for dancing in celebration at the end of a shooting day.

Like, why aren't you staying in character? God

forbid a man celebrate that he's done with a shooting day in the desert.

Luckily, I loved the sea.

What was Jack Hawkins like?

Oh, a wonderful man.

My only problem there was that...

Somebody said, where's Donald? And he said, Dr.

Ryan, he's still in there.

So Jack Hawkins, bless his heart, dived in and brought me out.

But for him, I wouldn't be here.

Our listeners will be pleased to hear Hacked Hawkins isn't coming back, because once we'd sorted out his fee, quote-unquote, that he drank at the Dog and Duck pub or wherever it was, he's not coming back, folks, thank God.

However, this week features the real Jack Hawkins, and it is back.

The Malta story.

This was a Patreon pick.

That's pretty much it with romantic subplot bolted on.

More in production from Matt.

So the cast, yes, indeed, is helmed, technically helmed, by Jack Hawkins himself as Air Vice Marshal Frank, possibly based on the real-life Air Marshal Keith Park or Hugh Lloyd, who were both instrumental in the defence of the island proper.

Mm.

And, you know, we have the likes of Ralph Richardson, Guy Hamilton, and Charles Friend directing here.

And casts that include Jack Hawkins, Ralph Richardson, Dennis Price, Margaret Leighton.

The mighty Jack Hawkins takes center stage in this triple feature of brilliant British noir, Home at Seven from 1952.

Ralph Richardson reprises his role from R.C. Sheriff's play as a bank clerk whose inexplicable amnesia leaves him without an alibi after a murder robbery.

Co-starring Jack Hawkins and the marvelous Margaret Leighton, This twisty mystery, a.k.a. murder on Monday, saw Richardson direct for the first and only time in his illustrious career.

So that's really interesting in and of itself.

But I do like Jack Hawkins quite a bit.

These are really exciting sets.

Ah, yeah, definitely.

Not the TV show, the movie with Jack Hawkins.

Yeah, where

he recruits all of these ex-soldiers who were trained up in these specialised skills during the war and then sort of made redundant because the war ended.

Actually, precisely the opposite of his real background.

The great Jack Hawkins played the missionary Otto Witt as a wild-eyed drunkard, which the real and, I think, rather respectable Reverend Witt's descendants understandably resented.

Nigel Green actually gave us the definitive colour sergeant born, calm, gravel-voiced, unshakable, though he played the kid as a grizzled veteran twice the age of the real 24-year-old.

James Booth played Private Hook, And the whole thing is narrated in the unmistakable voice by Richard Burton, a Welshman reading the role of the Victoria Crosses at the end.