Acting
A BBC television series of forty-five-minute excerpts from stage plays running in London.
All her life, Englishwoman Gladys Aylward knew that China was where she belonged. Unqualified to be sent as a missionary, Gladys works as a domestic to earn to send herself to a poor, remote village. There, she eventually lives a full and happy life: running the inn, acting as 'foot inspector', advising the local Mandarin, and even winning the heart of mixed-race Captain Lin Nan. Gladys discovers her real destiny when the country is invaded by Japan and the Chinese children need her to save their lives.
In 13th century Italy, Francis Bernardone, the son of an Assisi merchant, renounces a promising army career in favor of a monastic life and starts his own religious order, sanctioned by the Pope.
A charming but ruthless criminal holds the family of a bank manager hostage as part of a cold-blooded plan to steal £90,000.
The boys of Melbury Primary School are plunged into turmoil when the new French Master turns out to be a Mistress! Madelin Leforge's (the French Mistress) effect on the boys is swift and amazing. Suddenly everyone wants extra French Lessons just to glimpse the teacher in revealing shorts and bikinis. As discipline crumbles, a scandal explodes when the Head discovers the mademoiselle's mother was an old flame. Madeline must be dismissed to save further embarrassments.
In a quiet summer corner of Wiltshire that is forever England, David and Janet decide to tie the knot. Unfortunately this is the cue for everyone else to take over proceedings, to the dismay of the couple and the increasing despair of Janet's father.
A priest arrives at a mission-post in China accompanied by a young native girl who has joined him along the way. His job is to relieve the existing priest, who is now too old and weak to continue with the upkeep of the church. However, Communist soldiers arrive at the mission and seize it as a command post. Their leader rapes the native girl and impregnates her, only later to realize that Communism is no good for him. In the end, the foursome flee to the border, but are pursued by Communist forces along the way.
A working-class boy wins a scholarship to a public school, as part of a post-World War Two experiment in bringing boys of different social classes together.
A young girl goes through the trauma of her parent's divorce and seperate re-marriages.
A British coastal command pilot is charged with neglect when it is thought that he has sunk a British submarine rather than a German U-boat. Unable to live with his actions, he volunteers for a deadly mission. His girlfriend meanwhile tries to prove that he is innocent.
The bewildered wife of a bigamist allows her child to be adopted and then regrets it.
A Chinese missionary comes to England and helps a young girl ill-treated by her father. A remake of D. W. Griffith's masterpiece.
Canadian World War II veteran John Graham works in London as a code breaker. Tragedy strikes when his pregnant wife, Carol, is accidentally run over by two crooks who are speeding away from the scene of a murder. Haunted, grieving, and thirsting for revenge, Graham sets out to find the two fugitive murderers.
Old Mother Riley is a British comedy film directed by Oswald Mitchell and starring Arthur Lucan, Kitty McShane, Barbara Everest, Patrick Ludlow and Hubert Leslie. Mother Riley and her daughter stop the plans of some disinherited relatives to overturn the terms of a will. It was the first in the Old Mother Riley series of films.
George Winter, a self-made businessman and MP, lets nothing get in the way of his climb to the top. Certain in his belief in the corruptible and foolish nature of others, whenever Winter meets a competitor who can't be bought, he destroys the man through methods both legal and underhanded. Then, he meets his 'tenth man': a victim who refuses to be silenced by threat or bribery, with the power to bring Winter's house of cards crashing down around him.
Roger Thursby is an overly keen, newly-qualified barrister who rubs his fellow barristers up the wrong way. When he is thrown in at the deep-end, with a particularly hot-tempered judge and tricky case, Thursby learns how to prove himself not only to the judge and fellow barristers but also to the public gallery.
Impoverished British bank clerk John Ross is hopelessly in love with drop-dead gorgeous Irene James. Ross will do anything to win Irene's affections - including embezzlement. She ends up marrying him, but she can't give up her true love, slimy counterfeiter Jimmy Smart...
Billie Burke, the real-life wife of Flo Ziegfeld, plays Ziegfeld Follies dancer Elizabeth Banks who falls for a wealthy young man. His parents are shocked--and so is Elizabeth when she decides she'd rather have her beau's nerdish brother. She turns the mouse into a lion so that he'll be a worthy husband.
This cheerful maze of melody, song, comedy and drama showcases the talents of Henry Hall and His Dance Band.
