Hobson's Choice

In this delightful award-winning comedy from 1954, Charles Laughton delivers a splendid if occasionally over the top performance as Henry Horatio Hobson, the tyrannical owner of a well established boot shop in 1880s Salford. Hard-drinking and domineering over his three long-suffering daughters, the table is about to turn when eldest daughter Maggie decides that enough is enough.

Widower Hobson, when not busy giving his talented but underappreciated and underpaid bootmaker Will Mossop (John Mills, sporting the worst haircut in his career) a hard time, is busy giving his three daughters a hard time. Vicky (Prunella Scales) and Alice (Daphne Anderson) are the youngest, and eager to break loose from a life of tyranny, not to mention fed up working for free in their father’s shop. Their planned escape route is via marriage – while Vicky has her eyes set on Freddy Beenstock (Derek Blomfield), the son of a corn merchant, Alice is romantically hooked up with Albert Prosser (Richard Wattis), an up and coming solicitor. Which leaves Hobson with Maggie (Brenda De Banzie), his eldest daughter and with her thirty years of age mocked as a ‘spinster’ by him (especially upon returning from his regular drinking sessions at the Moonraker pub).

But Maggie has a plan, a plan that involves good-hearted but simple-minded bootmaker Will. She proposes to him, twice in fact! First she proposes a business deal which would earn him more money and expand his reputation as a bona fide bootmaker. Second, she wishes to set up her own boot maker shop, which she intends to achieve with the combined efforts of her razor-sharp brain and Will’s craftsmanship. Her idea to get all of this off the ground is by marrying Will. The understandably horrified man, who is a bit on the timid side to say the least, protests and declares that he is not in love with Maggie… what’s more, there is another girl he is promised to. The resolute and headstrong Maggie, on the other hand, is not in the least bit interested in his arguments and heads straight for the squalid flat in which Will’s sweetheart resides. In a hilarious scene, Maggie gets into a spat with the girl and her mother, declaring that she is the new woman in his life, while a mortified Will seeks refuge on the street. Maggie gets her way in the end, and despite her father’s protest and his refusal to pay her, both she and Will get married and make plans to open their own shop.

A customer acquaintance lends them the much-needed capital, and the couple set out to find suitable premises and turn the place into shop and home alike. Thanks to Maggie’s shrewd business sense and Will’s talent as a genius bootmaker, business begins to flourish fast. The same can be said about their growing fondness for each other, especially after the wedding night (a scenario which makes for another hilarious scene). One client after another deserts Hobson’s shop and begins to buy at Mossop’s, allowing the couple to pay off their loan before the year is over. Furthermore, Maggie takes Will under her wing and teaches him to read and to write, and to add up numbers.
Meanwhile, back in the Hobson establishment, the embittered and deserted widower slowly drinks himself to death, even plummeting down the storage cellar of another shop during a particularly booze-soaked night out during which the drunken reveller tries to chase the moon in the gutter. Embarrassed and harassed by a consequent solicitor’s letter, he turns up at Maggie’s shop and asks for help. As ever, Maggie takes over and hatches another plan. This time round, she turns up in her father’s shop with her husband, where Will offers Hobson to go into partnership on condition that Hobson allow the couple free reign in all business matters. Reluctantly and defeated by his own daughter, the old man agrees and henceforth the shop is called ‘Hobson and Mossop’.

Hobson’s Choice is an utterly enjoyable period rom-com with memorable performances by all the cast, in particular John Mills, Charles Laughton and Brenda De Banzie.

To celebrate the film’s 60th Anniversary, Studiocanal presents Hobson’s Choice fully restored on DVD, Blu-ray and EST, and with Interviews with Prunella Scales and associate producer/co-writer Norman Spencer.