Press for Time (1966)
Directed by Robert Asher

Film Review

By the mid-1960s, the British comic actor Norman Wisdom had long ceased to be a major box office draw, despite some notable successes behind him - Just My Luck (1957), The Square Peg (1959), Follow a Star (1959). Wisdom's career was in decline for a few years before he started work on Press for Time, the last film he made for the Rank Organisation.  It did not help that the film had major weaknesses in both the scripting and directing departments.  The comic situations are painfully drawn out and the jokes lack the spontaneity and surprise seen in previous Wisdom films.

Norman's sadly under-used talent for character acting is exploited in the film's opening sequence in which he plays his familiar Gump character's doddery grandfather and suffragette mother, a sequence which offers more laughs than virtually most of what follows.  Despite admirable support from such talented performers as Derek Francis and Peter Jones (with an amusing cameo from Stanley Unwin), Norman has a hard job delivering the laughs.  The film struggles to keep going and ends up looking like an asthmatic jogger.  This was very nearly the last nail in the coffin for Norman Wisdom's film career, although he would still remain a much loved entertainer for many years, attracting large audiences with his frequent stage and TV appearances.

Film Synopsis

Who would think that humble newspaper seller Norman Shields is the grandson of the Prime Minister of Great Britain?   The Prime Minister is less than happy at this revelation, having disowned his daughter, a suffragette, when she married a sewer man.  Norman is summarily dispatched to the seaside town of Tinmouth to work as a reporter on the local newspaper, which is run by Conservative MP Major Bartlett.  In no time at all, Norman has managed to wreak havoc in the town, disrupting a council meeting and wrecking a photo opportunity for Bartlett and his Labour opponent Alderman Corcoran.  The only person who takes a shine to Norman is Corcoran's  sweet-natured daughter Liz...