Turn the Key Softly

The Rank Organization

Presents

A Maurice Cowan Production

TURN THE KEY SOFTLY

Starring: Yvonne Mitchell as Monica Marsden, Joan Collins as Stella Jarvis

Kathleen Harrison as Mrs. Quilliam, Terence Morgan as David, Thora Hird as Landlady, Dorothy Allison as Joan, Glyn Houston as Bob, Geoffrey Keen as Gregory, Russell Waters as Jenkin, and Clive Morton as Walters.

Screenplay by Jack Lee & Maurice Cowan. From a novel by John Brophy. Music by Mischa Spollansky. Director of Photography, Geoffrey Unsworth. Produced by Maurice Cowan. Directed by Jack Lee

Three very different women are released from prison at the same time. Monica imprisoned for a crime the man she loved committed. Stella fond of men and what they can give her! Mrs. Quilliam old enough to know better, but with a petty shoplifting record and a hungry mouth to feed. Over the twelve hours following their release, they must face many temptations that may see them back behind prison walls. They must thread carefully and try to Turn The Key Softly!

© 1953 Rank. 81 Mins B/W REG 0 DVD AMCO.

“Turn the Key Softly” is another of Joan’s films that casts her as a wayward woman. Joan plays a West End prostitute who is trying to get out of the profession to marry her bus driver boyfriend Bob and move to Cannenbury. Shot on location in London in the middle of winter, Joan spent her days freezing in her far-from-winter wardrobe. She had to wear the traditional tarts outfit of tight black satin skirt, with a flimsy low-cut lurex sweater. She then had to go home exhausted and attempt to cook dinner for her then husband Maxwell Reed, who’s raging moods and occasional episodes of flinging her less-than-gourmet cooking at the walls of their Mayfair flat, not to mention having to share it with Max’s pet monkey! But she was beginning to get noticed by the press, who were featuring her so often that she was crowned Miss Press Clippings of 1952 and accepted her award by the Hollywood actor Forrest Tucker. One press photo used to publicise “Turn the Key Softly” showed so much cleavage that the paper got letters of outrage. Joan was still unhappy with her roles, as she continued to get the “Coffee Bar Jezebel” parts. She had auditioned for the role of Monica that finally went to Yvonne Mitchell, but had to settle for the part of Stella. The film’s opening scenes were shot on location in Holloway’s women’s prison. The film has very likeable characters and show’s a slice of London life in a bygone era.

The film received good reviews, including from The New York Times:

“Turn The Key Softly,” is pointedly realistic of its examination of the short courses of the lives of three ladies of varying degrees, after they have left London’s Holloway prison. While not precisely on a heroic scale, the producers have endowed the proceedings with compassion, sensitivity and a modicum of irony. Credit Jack Lee, the director and Maurice Cowan, the producer, who also collaborated on the script, with keeping their heroines on the move, without snarling the traffic in tales. Joan Collins is properly lush and brassy as the cockney charmer who almost, but not quite, reverts to her gay way of life!”

© 2010 Mark McMorrow