Elizabeth Of Ladymead written by English playwright Frank Harvey is one of those films which provides its lead with a once in a lifetime opportunity to create multiple characters. The following year Alec Guinness had the same opportunity in Kind Hearts And Coronets to do the same thing that Anna Neagle has here.
The first Elizabeth we meet is the modern one, a woman anxiously expecting the return of husband Hugh Williams home from World War II. He's at loose ends, not really sure what he wants to do after five years of action. She's got ideas and the couple do get into a heated discussion. When Anna bumps into a wall and gets a concussion, the other Elizabeths Of Ladymead appear with the same post war problems after the Crimean, Boer, and World War I.
The four vignettes reflect the changing attitudes of British society, especially female British society over the year. Neagle does a marvelous job in creating the three imaginary Elizabeths, the proper Victorian woman of 1856, the anti-war and suffragette of 1903, and the pleasure crazed flapper of the Twenties. Of the four the flapper Anna and her husband Michael Lawrence are the best and definitely the most dramatic piece of the bunch. The other two imaginary husbands Bernard Lee of 1903 and Nicholas Phipps of 1855 are nicely done also.
Neagle gets to display all her talents, she sings as well, a nice version of Love's Old Sweet Song in the 1903 story before she starts starting her husband with new ideas about women's suffrage and the fact she thought the Boer War was not a good idea. Absolute blasphemy in her Edwardian home of the time.
Definitely Elizabeth Of Ladymead is for fans of Anna Neagle.
