Full specs announced:
The Adelphi Collection
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary & My Wife’s Lodger
Two films by Maurice Elvey
A delicious double-dose of effervescent vintage comedy starring Britain's blondest bombshell, the one-and-only Diana Dors, at her saucy best. Released in a Dual Format Edition (DVD & Blu-ray).
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary sees US army airman Laurie Vining hankering after a little rest and recreation with his new bride, when his gorgeous ex, Candy (Diana Dors), arrives insisting they're still man and wife. Wisecracking co-pilot Hank Hanlon (Sid James) and girl-shy lawyer Frank Betterton (David Tomlinson) try to lend a hand – but Laurie’s troubles have only just begun...
My Wife’s Lodger finds hapless soldier Willie Higginbottom (Dominic Roche) hoping for a hero’s welcome when he returns home after the war. But, while he was away, shifty spiv Roger the Lodger (Leslie Dwyer) got his arms around his wife and his feet under the table, and now Willie’s ditzy daughter (Diana Dors) only wants to sing, dance and jitterbug!
With striking new transfers taken from the original negatives preserved at the BFI National Archive, both films are made available here for the first time. They are packaged with a lavish illustrated 30-page booklet featuring original promotional materials and specially commissioned essays, including ‘Diana Dors, My Mother’ by Diana’s son Jason Lake, ‘David Tomlinson and I’ by David Tomlinson’s widow Audrey and ‘That Diana Dors Moment’ by Damon Wise, author of Come By Sunday: The Fabulous, Ruined Life of Diana Dors.
Adelphi Films was a small British company run by Arthur Dent and his sons that produced more than thirty films in the 1940s and 1950s from noir-ish crime pictures and buoyant musicals to colourful melodramas and slapstick comedies. Sid James, Diana Dors, Ted Ray, Petula Clark, Ronnie Corbett, Rolf Harris and Prunella Scales are just some of the many well-loved performers who appeared before Adelphi’s cameras early on in their careers. Adelphi is now managed by Arthur Dent’s granddaughter Kate Lees and the company’s original film materials – for a long time stored in a suburban garage in London – are now safely preserved at the BFI National Archive.
Release date: 21 June 2010
RRP: £19.99 / cat. no. BFIB1075 / cert PG
UK / 1953 + 1952 / black & white / English, optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / PCM stereo audio (48k/16bit) / 79 mins + 79 mins / Original aspect ratio 1.33:1
Disc 1: BD50 / 1080p / 24fps / PCM mono audio (48k/24-bit)
Disc 2: DVD9 / PAL / PCM mono audio (48k/16-bit)
Incidentally, to forestall pedants, the title of
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary appears exactly like that on screen - i.e. without the question mark.