Elizabeth of Ladymead

Elizabeth of Ladymead (1948) offers star Anna Neagle 4 characters to play. In each vignette (she dreams after walking into a wall) she plays a wife awaiting her husband's return from war. The sly script is not so much about wars or even husbands (they never really change), but looks at how women have changed. All the women are named Elizabeth and all the stories occur at the country estate Ladymead.

The Crimean War wife is a proper little thing who bravely awaits and crochets doilies. The Boer War wife tries to stay active and becomes a suffragette. The WW I wife becomes a "lost generation" hedonist, and the WW II wife has become a capable business woman who turns the estate into a money-making farm. Neagle is terrific and almost shocking as the would-be flapper dressed in garish purples and greens and wearing war-paint makeup. The husbands are all played by different actors, as are the mothers (who move in during the various war years). Very entertaining. Hugh Williams play the current-day husband. Co-stars include Isabel Jeans, Edie Martin, and Jean Anderson. Oh, and the wall Neagle walks into used to be a doorway as seen in the earlier stories.