Norman Wisdom: Looking back at comic’s big screen career

A Stitch In Time was Norman Wisdom’s most commercially successful picture.

That might sound dubious, considering it came out in 1963 and was his last in black and white.

But the truth of the matter is that, as reported by the Radio Times, “this was Wisdom’s last big starring success at the box office, for he belonged to a more innocent age”.

Also, the film’s takings were given a belated and somewhat bizarre boost when it was re-released in Chennai, India, in 1984, proving to be an unexpected smash hit and packing in the crowds for weeks on end at the old Alankar Theatre, now sadly demolished.

It seems strange that the height of Norman’s big-screen career came so long ago, as he was such a fixture in people’s lives right up until his death a decade ago aged 95.

I well remember watching 1965’s The Early Bird, in which he played a milkman, on TV in the early ’80s and when the last of the sequence of starring vehicles, Press For Time, came out in 1966, he was still voted the fifth most popular star at the British box office.

The series mostly followed a standard pattern – Norman as a hapless chap, usually called Norman Pitkin, with either Edward Chapman’s Mr Grimsdale or Jerry Desmonde as the straight man.

Both are present here, as are future Carry On regular Patsy Rowlands and Johnny Briggs, playing an armed robber before finding fame as Coronation Street’s Mike Baldwin.

Filmed almost entirely at Pinewood Studios to keep location filming to a minimum, Wisdom is a bumbling butcher’s assistant, causing no end of accidents at the traditional shop run by Mr Grimsdale, one of which lands him in hospital.

Visiting his boss there, Wisdom meets a young girl who hasn’t spoken since her parents died in a plane crash and resolves to put a smile on her face, giving him ample scope to showcase his practiced and impressive slapstick skills.

Cue a madcap race on casualty trolleys down the hospital corridors and a hectic ride for a bandaged Norman on top of an ambulance.

And, as the Radio Times added: “The script sticks closely to the winning Wisdom formula as he knots his cap in confused shyness in his attempts to declare his love for a pretty nurse.”

Films such as this secured Sir Norman Joseph Wisdom OBE celebrity status in South America, Iran and many Eastern Bloc countries, particularly Albania, where his films were the only Western movies permitted to be shown by dictator Enver Hoxha.

Ol’ Enver felt proletarian Norman’s ultimately victorious struggles against capitalism, personified by Mr Grimsdale and the effete aristos portrayed by Jerry Desmonde, were a Communist parable on the class war.

Which explains why, in 1995, Norman was given the Freedom of the City of London – and Tirana.

There he was known as “Mr Pitkin” after his most popular character, and when a 2001 visit coincided with the England football team playing Albania, he overshadowed David Beckham.

He appeared on the pitch before the start of the match wearing a half-England, half-Albania strip and was loudly cheered, especially when he performed one of his trademark trips on his way out of the centre circle.

Charlie Chaplin once referred to Wisdom as his “favourite clown” but not everyone was such a fan.

Actress Fenella Fielding was his co-star in 1959’s Follow A Star and said he was “not a very pleasant man”.

And Michael Caine, who made an early appearance in the 1960 comedy The Bulldog Breed, didn’t enjoy working with him because he “wasn’t very nice to support-part actors”.

That might have been because his rise to stardom was phenomenally quick.

A career soldier between the wars – he often met Churchill working in a communications bunker in Whitehall during the Second Wold War – Wisdom developed the persona he called “The Successful Failure” during NAAFI entertainment nights.

Demobbed in 1945, Rex Harrison was in the audience one night and urged him to become a professional entertainer, and he quickly became magician David Nixon’s straight man before his TV debut in 1948.

Wisdom had already adopted the costume that would remain his trademark – tweed flat cap askew with peak turned up, a suit at least two sizes too tight, a crumpled collar and a mangled tie.

The character that went with this costume – known as the Gump – was to dominate Wisdom’s film career.

A Stitch In Time (1963), Talking Pictures, Saturday March 28, 2.35pm.