St. Trinians - The Pure Hell Of St. Trinians [DVD] [1960]

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Alexander was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1993 at the age of 55 and was admitted to the Meadbank Nursing Centre in Battersea in London in 1997. She died there aged 64 in January 2003. [1] [5] She was cremated in a non-religious ceremony at Putney Vale Cemetery. Webb, Kaye, ed. (1959). The St Trinian's Story. London; New York (respectively): Perpetua Books; London House & Maxwell. pp.44–45. OCLC 2898524. Please feel free to visit my Just For Laughs list to see where I ranked The Pure Hell Of St Trinians. The musical score for the St Trinian films was written by Malcolm Arnold and included the school song, with words accredited to Sidney Gilliat (1954). [13] In the 2007 film, a new school song, written by Girls Aloud, was called "Defenders of Anarchy". The school also has a fight song. During his BBC interview [8] Searle agreed that the cruelty depicted at St Trinian's derived partly from his captivity during World War II but stressed that he included it only because the ignoble aspect to warfare in general had become more widely known.

During her brief acting career she appeared in the films Hello London (1958), Operation Bullshine (1959), Dentist in the Chair (1960), The Pure Hell of St Trinian's (1960), The Terror of the Tongs (1961) and A Matter of WHO (1961). [5] Late years and death [ edit ] There were some great actors involved and they all do well with the script. I might have come up with an alternative to the "Dance" idea, but actually it did grow on me. In the films the school became embroiled in various shady enterprises, thanks mainly to Flash, and, as a result, was always threatened with closure by the Ministry. (In the last of the original four, this became the "Ministry of Schools", possibly because of fears of a libel action from a real Minister of Education.) The first four films form a chronological quartet, and were produced by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. They had earlier produced The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), a stylistically similar school comedy, starring Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Richard Wattis, Guy Middleton, and Bernadette O'Farrell, all of whom later appeared in the St Trinian's series, often playing similar characters. Julie Alexander (9 May 1938 – 31 January 2003) was a British model and actress of the late 1950s and early 1960s known for playing glamorous roles including Rosalie Dawn in The Pure Hell of St Trinian's.

See also

Barchester and Barset were used as names for the fictional towns near which St Trinian's School was supposedly located in the original films. In Blue Murder at St Trinian's, a signpost was marked as 2 miles to Barset, 8 miles to Wantage, indicating a location in what was Berkshire at the time of filming (transferred to Oxfordshire in 1974}.

The Terror of St Trinians or Angela's Prince Charming (1952; text by Timothy Shy, pen-name for D. B. Wyndham Lewis) The Pure Hell of St. Trinian'sbegins with a joke recycled from the first film. As the school burns to the ground, the narrator tells us:Webb, Kaye, ed. (1959). The St Trinian's Story. London; New York (respectively): Perpetua Books; London House & Maxwell. pp.46–48. OCLC 2898524. It's a quaint British comedy and I'm feeling a trifle warm just thinking about. I should have taken the tablets. Born in Fulham in London as Julia Yvonne Alexander, [1] on leaving school Alexander worked in an insurance office and then for an optician to pay for drama lessons. [2] Career [ edit ] There's just something utterly magical about the first three St. Trinian's films. Almost every character in them is played by an actor recognisable from over fifty other British films of the time, and they frequently have the best cast lists of comic talent ever seen in a British comedy. Quite often a film with a cast this distinguished can turn out to be a grave disappointment (such a fate befell efforts like "The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins", in which most of the effort on the part of the film-makers seemed to have been in actually recruiting the actors, rather than giving them anything worthwhile to perform). However, "Pure Hell", like "Belles" and "Blue Murder" before it, has a script and a story good enough to support the weight of these amassed comedy greats, most of whom you'll probably never have heard of. They're usually actors who appeared in loads of films of the period, and you'd never have thought of making a film at the time without them, but who never became stars in their own right - chaps like Raymond Huntley and Nicholas Phipps (most memorable in "Doctor in Love" as the frankly spiffing Dr. Cardew). Those actors who, if you're a vintage comedy connoisseur like me, you'll see and then go "Ahhh, yes!" It has some hilarious moments - particularly the opening trial sequence and the striptease to the soliloquy from "Hamlet" - but it's on the same level as the first two films. As I said yesterday, Alastair Sim's virtual absence from "Blue Murder at St. Trinian's" was a blow to the film while his complete absence from this one is a major blow to it. Considering the importance of Miss Fritton to the first film and the fact that the school burns down, it's bizarre that she isn't even mentioned.

St Trinian's is depicted as an unorthodox girls' school where the younger girls wreak havoc and the older girls express their femininity overtly, turning their shapeless schoolgirl dress into something sexy and risqué by the standards of the times. St Trinian's is often invoked in discussions about groups of schoolgirls running amok. [ citation needed] It's a bit repetitive for poor old Ruby too and she deserved so much better than the rogues she got caught up with and definitely didn't need that useless police officer fiancée. Third, and third best, film in the St. Trinian's series. The decline in quality is gentle and, although it looks a bit tired, this one still offers a lot of entertainment largely due to some wonderful comedic performances. The concept was very clever and although I still enjoyed it, I would have liked to have seen more jokes and perhaps, as with the last film, another 15-20 minutes to help the pace and give room for extra pranks and plots.If it's not as fun as `Belles' or `Blue Murder', `Pure Hell' does have its good points. Cecil Parker's down-at-heel headmaster is a major asset to the movie, while it's nice to see the likes of Sid James, Denis Price and Liz Frazer make an appearance. Goodwin, Stephen (October 22, 1998). "Revealed: belles of the real St Trinians". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-05-24 . Retrieved April 23, 2017. Launder does a near-perfect job of bringing the girls onto the silver screen. The film's tempo keeps to a fast trot and sometimes breaks into a gallop. His comedic timing is excellent. When the Civil Servants dance, he keeps his distance and films them in full, adding to the funniness of the sketch. But if somebody is whispering, he goes for a close-up, and you feel like you're sharing the joke - once again adding power to the humour. The St Trinian's girls themselves come in two categories: the Fourth Form, most closely resembling Searle's original drawings of ink-stained, ungovernable pranksters, and the much older Sixth Form, sexually precocious to a degree that may have seemed alarming to some in 1954. [ citation needed]

The school has no fixed motto but has had several suggested ones. The school's motto is depicted in the original movies from the 1950s and 1960s as In flagrante delicto ("Caught in the Act"). This can be seen on the trophy shelf, above the stairs in The Belles of St Trinian's (1954). The lyrics of the original theme song by Sidney Gilliat (c. 1954) imply that the school's motto is "Get your blow in first" [11] ( Semper debeatis percutis ictu primo).

Storyline

The comic high-points come early in the movie, with Raymond Huntley stealing the movie as a Judge distracted by the charms of a leggy Sixth-Former, while later the 'striptease' Hamlet provides the film's most memorable moment. Irene Handle is also on top form as a more than slightly batty teacher. For a film as old as it is, it did still have a magic and, for the most part, it could be made today with very few changes. This is a repeat of Alastair Sim's line as Miss Fritton in The Belles of St. Trinian'sthat "I cannot afford to have continual arson about in my school!" The action gets more frantic and less amusing as it goes along and, by the end of the whole thing, I'd pretty much lost interest in it. The cast are reasonably good. The girls are in two camps – the young thugs and the sexy `girls' (albeit it they are happily in their 20's). The support cast includes good performances from George Cole (complete with cheeky chappy music in case you didn't get it). Parker and Grenfell are OK but their stuff on the island doesn't really wash. Barker and Walters are fine, as is a cameo from Le Mesurier, but Sid James is pretty wasted. THE PURE HELL OF ST. TRINIAN'S is the third of the initial four films, coming hot on the wake of the very good BLUE MURDER AT ST. TRINIAN'S. This one's not as hot, as it feels like the series was winding down by now, the gags are limited and it's more like an endless parade of cameoing guest stars, including the likes of Sid James, Thorley Walters and the ubiquitous Michael Ripper.