Jack Hawkins hunts for Michael Medwin: The Intruder (1953)

This post was written for Written for Terence Towles Canote's 12th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon.

What do we know about Britain in the Fifties? Well for one thing, people couldn’t get enough of films about the recent war, could they?

Not so fast. Here’s the beginning of a film review from Picturegoer (24 October 1953):

Hold your groans about yet another war film. This one really is different. The war flashbacks are just the frame for an enthralling postwar story about an ex-soldier who goes to the dogs.

What turns a good combat-man into a bitter delinquent? Colonel Jack Hawkins makes it his conscience-stricken duty to find out.

And to make sure you’ve got the message, it concludes:

If you're tired of war films, this is the one to kill the yawns.

It seems the conventional view of the Fifties needs a bit more work.

The great thing about Jack Hawkins

The film being talked about in Picturegoer is The Intruder, which was directed by the future James Bond director Guy Hamilton and based on the novel Line on Ginger by Robin Maugham. He was the nephew of the writer W. Somerset Maugham, and his first novel, The Servant, was adapted by Harold Pinter for the celebrated film directed by Joseph Losey.

That review tells you enough to see the parallel between The Intruder and another film involving Colonel Jack Hawkins and men who have not coped well since the war. And indeed, Hawkins’ Colonel Merton in The Intruder is a benign prototype of his bitter Colonel Hyde in The League of Gentlemen, who puts together a whole team of such former soldiers to rob the Bank of England.

The great thing about Jack Hawkins in such roles is that he has an authority that makes you absolutely believe he has commanded men in battle. And he did see action as an officer in the war, though he ended it with ENSA (the Entertainments National Service Association), which organised entertainment for troops. He reached the rank of Lieutenant and was made an honorary Colonel in 1946.

In The Intruder, Hawkins’s Colonel Merton arrives home from an evening out to find an armed burglar in his house. He recognises him as Ginger Edwards, one of the men he commanded in the war – and one of the bravest. He starts to talk to Edwards, but then there’s a misunderstanding and Edwards, thinking the Colonel has called the police, flees.

The rest of the film sees Merton tracking down Edwards, who has escaped from prison, to see if he can help him. Merton has left the Army, but has a crisis of conscience that he has not, as a good officer should, still been concerned for the welfare of the men he commanded. In the course of the film, part of which is told in flashbacks to the war, we see why Edwards has turned to the bad.

There turns out not to be much of a mystery to that, but there is much to enjoy from the talented cast as we follow the Colonel on his journey.

The amazing Michael Medwin

Ginger Edwards is played by Michael Medwin, who was a popular young actor in 1953. Helped by his “cheeky chappy” looks, he often played Cockney characters. Yet his background was not what you would expect from his performance in The Intruder. He came from a Dutch and Irish background, but was adopted from an orphanage by two rather grand English ladies who were to send him to public school – for American readers, in Britain a public school means a private school. Obviously.

When Medwin died in 2020, the Guardian quoted Michael Caine in its obituary:

"I was amazed when I met him to discover that he had a very upper-crust accent. Cockney is a hard accent to do and he did it brilliantly."

And Edward Fox heard of Medwin’s childhood for the first time when he sat in on a press interview Medwin gave as the two of them were about to open a touring production of My Fair Lady (Fox was Professor Higgins, Medwin Colonel Pickering) in Glasgow:

Fox, who would be an asset to any audience, had by this time gone into spasms of laughter that were obviously causing him great pain. ''A handbag? A handbag?'' he shrieked, Lady Bracknell-like, although, so far as he knew, Medwin had not actually been found in one.

As the years went on, Medwin acted less and became more involved as a successful producer in both films and the theatre. If he’s remembered now, it’s as Don Satchley, the radio station boss, in Shoestring, the late-Seventies private detective series that launched the career of Trevor Eve.

Jack Hawkins turns to his old comrades

The first old comrade Jack Hawkins turns to in his hunt for Medwin, is John Summers, who is played by George Cole. Summers has returned to running his wholesale greengrocery business in Covent Garden market. We learn that Hawkins promoted him from the ranks and that we see him struggle with the snobbery of the officers’ mess and go carousing with Edwards for old times’ sake. Nevertheless, Hawkins refuses to listen to him when he wants to hand back his commission.

After Cole, Hawkins meets his former second-in-command, and we find him played by Dennis Price in a typically cool, disengaged performance. We learn that an act of cowardice on Price’s part would have cost an injured soldier his life if Medwin had not risked his own to save him. Angered by Price’s lack of cooperation, Hawkins tells him that if it weren’t for Edwards he would have had him court martialled. After Hawkins has left, Price phones the police and tells them that Hawkins may know the whereabout of Medwin.

Then Hawkins visits Arthur Howard, who is now the headmaster of a private school. Arthur Howard was the younger (by almost 20 years) brother of the film star Leslie Howard and specialised in small comic parts. Sure enough, he is in The Intruder to provide comic relief. His character was not a member of Hawkins’ tank corps, but became mixed up with them and .through a chapter of accidents set in motion by his showing a good-time girl played by Dora Bryan the inside of a tank, was the subject of a famous photograph depicting a heroic British tank driver. Dora Bryan is, of course, wonderful – she brightened any film by her presence.

Finally, Medwin runs Hawkins to ground at a farm in Wales belonging to another of his former soldiers. There is at last some tension, as Hawkins has to reach him while avoiding the attentions of the police. Medwin is persuaded to give himself up and Hawkins promises to help him when he leaves prison.

What turned Ginger bad

What did happen to turn Ginger Edwards bad? The answer is simple: he came home from the war to found his girl (played by Susan Shaw) with another man. He also found his younger brother was being beaten by the uncle who was raising him (and had raised him the same way). When the boy was knocked down and killed running into the road, the uncle blamed Edwards, who punched him and sent him crashing down a conveniently placed flight of stairs to his death. Edwards was then imprisoned for manslaughter.

It's not a great film: the pleasure lies not in the unravelling of the mystery so much as the comic interludes and the tension at the end when Hawkins fears arrest himself for helping an escaped prisoner. And its unchallenging moral is that things would be fine if only a benign upper class helped the lower orders.

There is an unexpected twist involving Dora Bryan though, and I won’t spoil that for you.