Top quality swinging social comment, as a floppy Lynn Redgrave stumbles about in awe of loose and louche flatmate Charlotte Rampling, lusts after a brilliantly deranged Alan Bates, and eventually succumbs to shabby-but-rich James Mason. And of course, there’s *that* Seekers’ theme song, with Oscar winning lyrics from the one and only Jim ‘Dr Nookie’ Dale, as our Lynn ambles around NW1 looking in shop windows.
JIM DALE CORNER: Time to reflect on what a fine clutch of film theme songs the trolley-surfing one-time possible Dr Who has amassed. Of course, he was a consummate singing star before he ever set foot on a film lot, hosting Six-Five Special and recording a slew of waxings like Be My Girl and the classic Rock Island Line parody Piccadilly Line. Once he got into film (appropriately enough via a Norman Hudis-scripted film spin-off of Six-Five Special, wherein two girls travel to London on the titular train, which conveniently happens to be packed full of pop and skiffle greats, plus Jim, Bernie Winters and the John Barry Seven in the guard’s van) there was no stopping him effortlessly marrying the two disciplines. There was his theme song to Doris Day vamp-in Tread Softly, Stranger; The Ballad of Shalako for the eponymous Sean Connery western; wrote and sang the titular theme to Twinky, the slightly off-colour tale of middle aged pornographer Charles Bronson copping off with a sixteen-year-old Susan George (with Michael ‘Triangle’ Craig and Honor Blackman as George’s parents, and, better still, Paul ‘Bilkooo!’ Ford as Charlie’s dad, and best of all, Jimmy Tarbuck playing a certain ‘Norman Vaughan’, while Norman Vaughan plays a certain ‘Jimmy Tarbuck’); and lent his pipes to various other films he starred in, belting out Milligan’s It’s Gonna Be a Good War for the film of Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, and getting all 18th century for also-romped bawdy second-stringer Joseph Andrews.
