To win a £100,000 lottery, an 80-year-old man is determined to kill his 74-year-old kid brother, in the classic Victorian spoof, THE WRONG BOX.
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Pleased with the just-completed King Rat, Columbia Pictures offered its director, Bryan Forbes (Séance on a Wet Afternoon), a new screenplay written by Tony award-winning playwrights Larry Gelbert and Burt Shevelove (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 1962). Forbes accepted the assignment, entitled THE WRONG BOX.
     Forbes: "The story is based on a little known novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. It is believed to have been put together by his stepson, Lloyd Osborne, and polished by Stevenson."
     Written in 1887, THE WRONG BOX focused on the final payoff of a £100,000 tontine. Named after financier Lorenzo Tonti, a tontine was a lottery where the last surviving participant won the pot.
     Designed as an ensemble piece, the cast of THE WRONG BOX was made up entirely of English actors, with the exception of George Hamilton, who was originally scheduled to play the virgin medical student, Michael Finsbury. In March 1965, it was announced that Michael Caine would take over the role.
     Caine: "It was an antidote to Alfe. I wanted to play a shy man with glasses."
     To play Joseph Finsbury, the farce's 74-year-old younger brother, Forbes contacted Ralph Richardson, who was in Spain, filming David Lean's Doctor Zhivago.
     Forbes: "He replied immediately with a hand written letter. 'Dear Forbes, although I was greatly taken with the script and would like to attempt the role of Uncle Joseph, I must point out one glaring error. Corridor trains were not in general service at the time indicated in your piece and unless this is corrected I might be precluded from accepting your offer.'"
     The director wrote back, confirming Richardson's suspicions, but pointed out that, without corridor trains, there would be no plot and, therefore, no Uncle Joseph.
     Forbes: "His second letter arrived by return. He could accept my argument and the role."
     Oddly, Richardson also requested permission to wear the same jacket he was currently wearing in Doctor Zhivago, as it was "very comfortable."

     Forbes: "Students of the cinema who can arrange to see both films in the same programme can check Sir Ralph's wardrobe: his costume is identical in both."
     Agreeing to play the murderous older brother, Masterman, was John Mills. THE WRONG BOX would mark a reunion between Mills and Caine, who had met on the set of 1950's Morning Departure (Caine was a teaboy). Joining them was the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, in their screen debuts. The ingénue role fell to Forbes' wife, Nanette Newman. Playing Peacock the butler, was legendary English actor, Wilfred Lawson (Pygmalion), in his final screen appearance. A celebrated inebriate, Lawson was uninsurable, a condition which forced Forbes to put up the actor's bond himself.
     Caine: "[Lawson] was bombed out of his mind twenty-four hours per day, but he was still one of the most brilliant actors with whom I ever worked."
     Rounding out the cast was Peter Sellers, in a memorable cameo as the fictional Doctor Pratt, a "well-known" British abortionist.
     Production of THE WRONG BOX began on September 5, 1965. Primarily filmed at Pinewood Studios and on location in Bath, it was a sequence shot at Englefield Green in Berkshire, that Caine, Newman and Forbes would never forget.
     Forbes: "Michael and Nanette were sitting in a Victorian hearse about ten feet off the ground and pulled by four horses, and Nanette was wearing very tight Victorian clothes.
     "The second unit cameraman made them go too fast and these four large dray horses took off. Everyone was shouting to Nanette to jump off and if she'd done that she would have been killed. Michael held on to those bolting horses for well over two miles and finally managed to stop them. I was shooting a distance away and I could hear the screams, I thought I was going to find my wife dead. Michael needed a very large brandy after that. He literally saved Nanette's life."
     Filming continued without further incident and wrapped on December 21, 1965.
     THE WRONG BOX opened in July 1966. Although a modest hit in America, the filmmakers were surprised by British response to the picture.
     Caine: "[The film] is so British that it met with a gentle success in most places except Britain, where it was a terrible flop. I suppose this was because the film shows us exactly as the world sees us - as eccentric, charming and polite - but the British knew better that they were none of these things, and it embarrassed them."
     Happily, Americans knew better what made for a good time at the cinema. One of the most delightful comic romps of the '60s, THE WRONG BOX, after thirty years, remains, "as funny, sunny and urbane a movie as any."

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