Half A Sixpence

Product Information

Finale: "Half a Sixpence" (reprise)/"Flash, Bang, Wallop" (reprise), performed by Artie, Ann and Chorus Several years later he meets up with Ann once again, and with the coin cut into two he gives one half to Ann as a symbol of their love.

Artie grows up into a young man. Work at the draper's store is difficult. He becomes friends with Harry Chitterlow, an actor-playwright, who discovers that Artie is heir to a fortune left him by his grandfather. Artie becomes wealthy as a result of the inheritance, and invests in one of Chitterlow's shows. He breaks up with Ann, who has become a maid, and becomes engaged to the wealthy upper class Helen Walsingham. Kipps gets Helen's brother Hubert to invest his money.

Tagged In This Story

Artie and Ann reunite and prepare happily to live in a modest cottage. Then Chitterlow reappears with news that his play is a success and that Artie will earn some of the profits. Time Out London says, "the film lays on the period charm rather exhaustingly, and the songs ... don't exactly sweep you along." [19] Box office [ edit ] What’s in a name? Quite a lot in the case of the musical Kipps, which aired on Sky Arts on Wednesday night. The title comes from the 1905 HG Wells novel, but the show itself is a radical rewrite of an earlier musical version of the story, Half a Sixpence, which starred Tommy Steele on stage and film in the 1960s. Julian Fellowes wrote the fresh book, which he titled Half a Sixpence, in 2016, while George Stiles and Anthony Drewe added seven new numbers to the original David Heneker score. What we saw on screen was a filmed performance at London’s Noël Coward theatre in 2017. The show was created to fulfill a licensing requirement of CTV’s Vancouver station, CIVT, which originally promised, as an independent station, to produce 20 episodes of an anthology series entitled The Storytellers. Only ten such episodes were produced. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission did not agree that CIVT’s new network programming supplanted this commitment and asked the station to fulfill its promise. CTV believed the anthology would be more successful as a series with common characters, and Robson Arms was the result.

Variety said, "The cohesive force is certainly that of Tommy Steele, who takes hold of his part like a terrier and never lets go. His assurance is overwhelming, and he leads the terping with splendid vigor and elan." [17]

The joyous screen version of the Broadway and London musical hit. "If I had the money, I'd buy me a banjo!" says struggling sales clerk Arthur Kipps (Tommy Steele). Soon he'll inherit enough to buy a whole bloomin' orchestra. But can his newfound wealth buy happiness? Multi-talented Steele brings his London and New York stage smash to the screen in this big, cheerful tune-filled production based on H.G. Wells' charming novel "Kipps." Cyril Ritchard costars as a thespian who introduces Arthur to the joys of Edwardian London's music halls. And a huge cast of high-stepping, high spirited singers and dancers have the time of their lives. Enjoy because "Half A Sixpence" gets you a million dollars' worth of fun. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times felt that "Tommy Steele is just the performer for this sort of schmaltz. He is, in fact, a very good song-and-dance man, the only member of his generation who bears comparison with Gene Kelly and Dan Dailey ... [George Sidney's] timing tends to lag, his sight gags telegraph ahead, and his songs drag." [14] The piece received a five-star review from WhatsOnStage when it hit the West End, being described as"a charming night out that is certain to warm the chilliest of London evenings this winter. The musical of the year." A Proper Gentleman" (Reprise) – Arthur Kipps, Mrs. Walsingham, Helen Walsingham, Mrs. Botting, Young Walsingham and Party Guests Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News that "for all Gillian Lynne's high-stepping choreography, the film is about as light and as graceful on its feet as an elephant. Only one sequence moves at a rate approximating speed. It is the gay Henley regatta, with Kipps crewing for the Ascot set, slicing the Thames in a racing shell. One longs for the simplicity of the original, when the story, although hardly novel, at least held its own, and when the music, although hardly memorable, was not drummed up into interminable, brassy music hall routines." [12]

Half a Sixpence tells the story of Arthur Kipps, an orphan and a draper's assistant who unexpectedly inherits a fortune. The new stage version is the musical adaptation of HG Wells's semi-autobiographical novel Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul, first created by Beverley Cross and David Heneker. Songs included in the show are "Flash, Bang, Wallop" and "Half a Sixpence".sold to Gulf & Western. Half a Sixpence should have been a small and intimate picture. It turned out to be anything but that. The director and the star ran away with it, and I was virtually out of the picture. I was very unhappy about the whole situation." [6] Production [ edit ] Half a Sixpence is a 1963 musical comedy based on the 1905 novel Kipps by H. G. Wells, with music and lyrics by David Heneker and a book by Beverley Cross. It was written as a vehicle for British pop star Tommy Steele. The World's Top Twenty Films." Sunday Times [London, England] 27 Sept. 1970: 27. The Sunday Times Digital Archive. accessed 5 Apr. 2014