Ray Milland's late career choices must have seemed pretty grim, though he certainly proved his versatility and work ethic in roles big and small, worthwhile and, well...if you've seen The Thing with Two-Heads (1972), you get my drift. Having read Milland's jaundiced 1975 autobiography, Wide-Eyed in Babylon, I don't think I learned much about the man's films, other than the fact that he loathed Marlene Dietrich, was repelled by Hollywood by the '60s and pretty fed up with show biz--though it was too late to pursue another career in his view. His frustrations over his career seemed to color his whole book, but that might be one of the reasons that he brought such bile to his roles beginning in the '60s, (especially in those parts where he didn't wear his toupee. I guess if his pate was bald, so were his emotions--though it looks as though the rug is in place in this movie). Where, I wondered, after finishing this book, had the charmer of Arise, My Love and The Uninvited, and the excellent actor in Ministry of Fear, The Lost Weekend, and Dial M for Murder disappeared to between the '40s and the '70s?
As if to prove his resilient spirit and real talent, Ray Milland took a play that he had appeared in on a worldwide tour, Hostile Witness (1968), written by Jack Roffey (who was a British attorney), and translated it to film on a shoestring budget under his direction.
The basic story of Hostile Witness is about a Queen's Counsel barrister whose loss of his daughter to a hit-and-run driver leads him to seek revenge on the man responsible. Described by critics at the time of release as "stagey" it really sounds pretty interesting, since it opens with a judge announcing to his staff that he is about to be arrested for murder and includes the odd line, "If you'd hit me and given me orders on our wedding night, I'd have kissed your hand." (Not sure who says this, but it sure got my attention ).
Have you ever noticed how many times Milland played roles of fathers who are troubled by something that happens to their daughters such as Panic in the Year Zero, Daughter of the Mind, and now this one?
Here are the basics of this one and a link to an article about the movie on TCM :
Producer: David E. Rose
Director: Ray Milland
Screenplay: Jack Roffey (screenplay, play)
Cinematography: Gerald Gibbs
Art Direction: George Provis
Music: Wilfred Josephs
Film Editing: Bernard Gribble
Cast: Ray Milland (Simon Crawford - Q.C.), Sylvia Syms (Sheila Larkin), Felix Aylmer (Justice Osborne), Raymond Huntley (John Naylor), Geoffrey Lumsden (Major Hugh Beresford Maitland), Norman Barrs (Charles Milburn), Percy Marmont (Justice Matthew Gregory), Dulcie Bowman (Lady Phyllis Gregory), Ewan Roberts (Hamish Gillespie), Richard Hurndall (Supt. Eley)
C-103m. Letterboxed.
