Ladies Who Do

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.

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.

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.

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.!!!

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