Before Richard E Grant’s Withnail, there was Kenneth More’s Chick Byrd. In Alvin Rakoff’s 1964 British drama, Byrd is an out-of-work actor whose breezy, cynical exuberance masks increasing terror of permanent unemployment and, like Withnail, he is desperate for his agent to call, stunned by his flatmate booking a glamorous film job and stuck living in a scuzzy boarding house in Camden Town (although exteriors were shot in Paddington).
After being fired from his job in provincial rep, Chick has come back down to London to try his luck, meeting up with all the old faces, the familiar parade of ageing thespian losers hanging round West End pubs and cafes during the day and mooching desolately past theatres with huge hoardings showing rave reviews for successful actors. Jaded, nasty agent Tommy Morris (Dennis Price) has no time for Chick, and neither does the raffish Prout (Frank Finlay), while slippery actor Rutherford (Cecil Parker) owes him money. But he meets up with old flame Judy (Billie Whitelaw) and a new one, Fay (played by More’s future wife Angela Douglas). And then, when something terrible happens to his pal Jack Lavery (Alan Dobie), Chick makes an awful decision which gets him a kind of fame and fortune, at a price.
It’s all performed with manic gusto and plenty of zip in the dialogue, and the opening scene, with Chick’s chaotic curtain-call speech, is in fact rather amazing. But it has to be said there is something a bit dated and tatty in the wrong ways about The Comedy Man, and for me this is down to More, a performer who is oddly pompous and self-satisfied in what is supposed to be a comedy role, albeit a melancholy one. He never looks like a professional actor, more like a golf club bore who fancies himself something of a card. Of course, Chick is supposed to be insufferable – but is he supposed to be quite that insufferable? And then there are the moments of casual misogyny and homophobia, which of course modern audiences can be aware of and even make allowances for, but are here not redeemed by any great wit or humanity in the way they might be for other pictures of the era.
Having said all this, it is solidly performed by its blue chip cast – though how sad to see Dennis Price, the legendary star of Kind Hearts and Coronets, not being properly used in a British film. It’s a vivid glimpse of early 60s Britain.
• The Comedy Man is on digital platforms, DVD and Blu-ray on 18 March
