The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom is a 1968 British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 directed by Joseph McGrath

Joseph McGrath (film director)

Joseph 'Apocalypse' McGrath , sometimes referred to as "'Apocalypse'" Joe McGrath or Croisette Meubles, is a Scottish film director and screenwriter best remembered for his two films, Casino Royale and The Magic Christian . McGrath frequently collaborated with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers...

. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by Alec Coppel

Alec Coppel

Alec Coppel was an Australian born screenwriter, novelist and playwright. He spent the majority of his career in London and Hollywood, specialising in light thrillers, mysteries and sex comedies...

 and Denis Norden

Denis Norden

Denis Mostyn Norden CBE is a former English comedy writer and television presenter. After an early career working in cinemas, he began scriptwriting during World War II. From 1948 to 1959, he co-wrote the successful BBC Radio comedy programme Take It from Here with Frank Muir...

 was adapted from a play by Coppel that was based on a short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 by Josef Shaftel, who served as the film's producer.

Plot

Robert Blossom is a workaholic

Workaholic

A workaholic is a person who is addicted to work.The term generally implies that the person enjoys their work; it can also imply that they simply feel compelled to do it...

 brassiere

Brassiere

A brassiere is an undergarment that covers, supports, and elevates the breasts. Since the late 19th century, it has replaced the corset as the most widely accepted method for supporting breasts....

 manufacturer. When his wife Harriet's sewing machine breaks down, he sends his bumbling employee Ambrose Tuttle to repair it. Mrs. Blossom seduces him, then hides him in the attic

Attic

An attic is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building . Attic is generally the American/Canadian reference to it...

, instructing him to sneak out in the middle of the night. Ambrose, however, is enchanted by the woman and decides to settle in to serve as her secret paramour. When he's reported missing, Det. Sgt. Dylan from Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...

 is assigned to the case, one he doggedly pursues for years. The mysterious noises Robert frequently hears overhead finally lead to his nervous breakdown

Nervous breakdown

Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...

, but Ambrose saves the day by passing along stock tips that turn his employer into a millionaire

Millionaire

A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. It can also be a person who owns one million units of currency in a bank account or savings account...

. The grateful Mr. Blossom not only allows Ambrose to remain with his wife, but presents the couple with his factory

Factory

A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...

 as a wedding present.

Story

The film is loosely based on a real incident. In the early 1920s, Walburga Oesterreich

Walburga Oesterreich

Walburga "Dolly" Oesterreich was an American homemaker and wife of a wealthy textile manufacturer. She gained notoriety for her bizarre 10-year affair with Otto Sanhuber which culminated in the shooting death of her husband...

 kept her lover, Otto Sanhuber in the attic where he lived for many years. The real story doesn't have the happy ending of the movie.

Production notes

Assheton Gorton

Assheton Gorton

Assheton Gorton is an English production designer. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Art Direction for the film The French Lieutenant's Woman and was the BAFTA nominated art director for Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blowup.-Selected filmography:*The Knack ...and How...

 served as production designer

Production designer

In film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...

 for the film.

Location scenes were filmed in Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury

-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...

, at the National Film Theatre in the South Bank Centre

South Bank Centre

Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, UK, on the South Bank of the River Thames between County Hall and Waterloo Bridge. It comprises three main buildings , and is Europe’s largest centre for the arts. It attracts more than three million visitors annually...

, and at Alexandra Palace

Alexandra Palace

Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. Interiors were filmed at the Twickenham Film Studios

Twickenham Film Studios

Twickenham Film Studios is a film studio located in St Margarets, London, England used by many motion picture and television companies. It was established in 1913 by Dr. Ralph Jupp on the site of a former ice-rink. At the time of its original construction, it was the largest film studio in the...

 in Middlesex

Middlesex

Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...

.

The soundtrack

Soundtrack

A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...

 includes the songs "The Way That I Live" performed by Jack Jones

Jack Jones (singer)

John Allan "Jack" Jones is an American jazz and pop singer. He was one of the most popular vocalists of the 1960s.-Overview:...

 and "Fall in Love" performed by the New Vaudeville Band.

Frank Thornton

Frank Thornton

Frank Thornton is an English actor who is best known for playing Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served? and its sequel Grace & Favour and as Truly in Last of the Summer Wine.-Early life:...

, Barry Humphries

Barry Humphries

John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...

, Bea Arthur and John Cleese

John Cleese

John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...

 make brief appearances in the film.

Principal cast

• Shirley MacLaine
  Shirley MacLaine
  Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...
  
   ..... Harriet Blossom
• Richard Attenborough
  Richard Attenborough
  Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...
  
   ..... Robert Blossom
• James Booth
  James Booth
  James Booth was an English film, stage and television actor and screenwriter. Though handsome enough to play leading roles, and versatile enough to play a wide variety of character parts, Booth naturally projected a shifty, wolfish, or unpredictable quality that led inevitably to villainous roles...
  
   ..... Ambrose Tuttle
• Freddie Jones
  Freddie Jones
  Frederick Charles "Freddie" Jones is an English character actor.Jones was born in the town of Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, the son of Ida Elizabeth and Charles Edward Jones. He became an actor after ten years of working as a laboratory assistant with a firm making ceramic products,...
  
   ... Det. Sgt. Dylan
• Bob Monkhouse
  Bob Monkhouse
  Robert Alan "Bob" Monkhouse, OBE was an English entertainer. He was a successful comedy writer, comedian and actor and was also well known on British television as a presenter and game show host...
  
   ..... Dr. Taylor
• Patricia Routledge
  Patricia Routledge
  Katherine Patricia Routledge, CBE is an English character comedy actress and singer. She is best known for her role as character Hyacinth Bucket in the British television series Keeping Up Appearances and Hetty Wainthropp in the British television series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates...
  
   ..... Miss Reece

Reception

In his review in the New York Times, Howard Thompson called the film "roguish, restrained and absurdly likable, with a neat climactic twist."

Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

described it as "a silly, campy

Camp (style)

Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...

 and sophisticated marital comedy, always amusing and often hilarious in impact . . . although basically a one-joke story, [the] idea is fleshed out most satisfactorily so as to take undue attention away from the premise. Performances are all very good, Attenborough's in particular."

Time Out New York calles it a "coarse comedy which looks a little like Joe Orton

Joe Orton

John Kingsley Orton was an English playwright.In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death, he shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies...

gone disastrously wrong . . . any sparks in the script or performances are ruthlessly extinguished by atrocious direction."