My sister once said her favorite movie of all time is Hobson’s Choice (1954). And my own third-favorite movie of all time is an obscure British film called The Family Way (1966), which has never been released on VHS or DVD in North America, despite having a fairly impressive pedigree; it was written by Alfie playwright Bill Naughton and its score, by Paul McCartney, was the first-ever solo Beatle project.
What do these movies have in common? Sir John Mills as a decent working-class bloke who’s a little slower on the uptake than his wife, for one.
Actually, there’s not a whole lot that these two films do have in common. But we grew up with these movies, and The Family Way in particular caught my eye in late adolescence because it co-stars Mills’s real-life daughter Hayley as his brand-new daughter-in-law. (Alas, neither of them is on that VHS cover, and the DVD cover is even worse.) After seeing Hayley Mills as a child and teenaged star in several Disney films — Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, The Moonspinners, That Darn Cat — it came as a bit of a surprise to see her playing a newlywed bride who worries that her husband doesn’t find her sexually appealing. She even has a nude scene! But I always figured it was okay, because her dad was in the film, giving his approval to her maturation as an actress.
In fact, while the film starts out as a story of frustrated newlyweds, what I have always liked about the film most is how, in the third act, it turns the focus of our attention slightly away from the newlywed couple and over to the groom’s parents. There are some absolutely fantastic moments as the Mills and Marjorie Rhodes characters discuss the rather strange honeymoon they had, or as Mills mourns the loss of his best friend and his youth.
And it’s also a rather funny film, too. I cannot help but smile just thinking of the way Mills, who always reads his newspapers, serves the newlyweds breakfast in bed with the words, “There’s four Russians and a monkey up there.” “Up where?” asks his son. Mills replies, “Well where d’you think? In outer space!”
Anyway. Mills made his big-screen debut in the 1930s, and he won an Oscar for his role in Ryan’s Daughter (1970), one of the few David Lean films I have still not yet seen, and he kept on working for quite a while after that. I also knew him from his roles in In Which We Serve (1942), I Was Monty’s Double (1958) and Gandhi (1982). Even recently, I still saw him on the big screen occasionally, chairing the board in the film version of Bean (1997) or taking cocaine at a party in Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things (2003), but he usually had extremely little to do and it was clear that his health was in decline.
And so, it comes as no surprise to hear that Mills died today. He was 97 years old. You had a good long life, John, and you gave us some great performances. Thank you, and may you rest in peace.
UPDATE: A new version of that Associated Press story.
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