Trouble in Store

Despite becoming a national treasure of the Stage and having his own BBC TV show, film studios were extremely reluctant to give Norman Wisdom a chance on the big screen, so much so that it wasn’t until the second year of his seven-year contract with the Rank Organisation in 1952, that the wonderful stage character of Norman Pitkin, in his debut film, appeared in Trouble in Store. This fabulously entertaining film follows a hapless stock clerk working for a large Department Store named Burridge’s. Norman’s career dream is to become the store’s window dresser, but what he really wants is the attention of an assistant who works at the store named Sally (Lana Morris), who he’s absolutely smitten with. As he tries to win her over, he sleepwalks into several hilarious situations, from constantly and inadvertently getting on the wrong side of Burridge’s smug and dim-witted owner Augustus Friedman (Jerry Desmonde), to trying to stop a robbery of the store to falling down a manhole whilst trying to catch a bus. Whenever The Gump’s on screen, yup you’ve guessed it, there’s always Trouble in Store.

Now considering this was Norman Wisdom’s first feature film, (besides a tiny cameo in a tiny B-movie variety Musical Date with a Dream, a few years earlier), this is a seriously impressive debut, he didn’t just prove that his unique style of slapstick worked on the big screen, but he was also a superbly relatable lead actor and a courageous stuntman. The biggest surprise is that he is even a better singer, performing the main theme of the film ‘Don’t Laugh at Me’, which was an even bigger success than the movie was at the box office, staying in The Top Ten of the charts for nearly a year. Whilst Wisdom is the obvious centrepiece of the film and without doubt, the best thing in it, the movie also has several other major merits. The pace of the film is incredibly swift, even for a comedy of its day, whilst the supporting cast is hilarious, particularly Margret Rutherford’s as a cunning, elderly shoplifter. The direction of Paddy Carstairs is superb for a comedy of it’s time. This film is an important milestone’s in cinematic history, we must never forget this complete actor and wonderful human being, although he was just 5′ 2″ inches tall, Trouble in Store made Norman Wisdom a giant of British Film.

9/10 – Calum Roberts