Jassy (Gainsborough 1947, Margaret Lockwood, Patricia Roc)

Flamboyant Gainsborough melodrama Jassy was firmly in the tradition of the genre of British costume pictures exemplified by such films as The Man in Grey and The Wicked Lady , and, noted the Evening Standard, ‘As a piece of unabashed romantic hoodlum, I found it more and more diverting as the plot thickened.’

Certainly the screenplay, by Dorothy and Campbell Christie and Geoffrey Kerr, and based on the novel by Norah Lofts, provided a heady brew of romance and dark deeds that was as baroque as the Jacobean manor of Mordelaine, the focus of the proceedings. And they also provided an archetypal role – splendidly taken – for Margaret Lockwood, then at the height of her box office popularity.

She plays Jassy Woodroffe, a young gypsy girl with the gift of second sight who is saved by Dermot Walsh from a ducking by villagers, who have accused her of witchcraft. Taken in by Walsh and his family, she rises from maid-of-all-work to mistress of Mordelaine, where she marries villainous gambler Basil Sydney as part of her scheme to return Mordelaine to its rightful owner, Walsh. And she ends up accused of murder…

production details
UK | GFD – Gainsborough | 100 minutes | 1947

Director: Bernard Knowles
Script: Dorothy Christie, Campbell Christie, Geoffrey Kerr, from the novel by Norah Lofts,

cast
Margaret Lockwood as Jassy Woodroofe
Patricia Roc as Dilys Helmar
Dermot Walsh as Barney Hatton
Linden Travers as Beatrice Helmar
Ernest Thesiger as Sir Edward Follesmark
Jean Cadell as Meggie
Grace Arnold as Housemaid
Bryan Coleman as Sedley
Clive Morton as Sir William Fennell
Torin Thatcher as Bob Wicks
Beatrice Varley as Mrs. Wicks
Eliot Makeham as Moult
Joan Haythorne as Kathleen Hamilton
Alan Wheatley as Sir Edward Walker
Hugh Pryse as Sir John Penty
Susan Shaw as Cecily
Grey Blake as Stephen Fennell
Cathleen Nesbitt as Elizabeth Twisdale
Nora Swinburne as Mrs. Hatton
Basil Sydney as Nick Helmar
Esma Cannon as Lindy Wicks
Maurice Denham as Jim Stoner
Dennis Price as Christopher Hatton
John Laurie as Tom Woodroofe