Professor Marcus

Thank you to Glinda for getting a Hollywood Star for The Professor - it was most kind - especially what she had to do to get it!!Dentists... Copied from MySpace.com -- Find me on MySpace and be my friend!IMDb profile This article is about the 1955 original. For the 2004 remake, see The Ladykillers (2004 film). The Ladykillers is a 1955 British film. It is one of a series of classic post-war Ealing comedies. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, it stars Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Danny Green, Jack Warner and Katie Johnson.American William Rose wrote the screenplay, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay and won the Bafta Award for Best British Screenplay. He claimed to have dreamt the entire movie and merely had to remember the details when he awoke.In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted The Ladykillers the 36th greatest comedy film of all time.A comically unpleasant criminal, Professor Marcus (Guinness), rents a room in the crumbling King's Cross house of a bewilderingly innocent old lady, Mrs. "Lopsided" Wilberforce (Johnson) - who lives with her parrots. The Professor, with his gang of curious characters, Claude (Parker), Harry (Sellers), "One-Round" (Green) and Louis (Lom), are plotting a sophisticated armoured car robbery, while convincing Mrs Wilberforce, by playing records, that they are in fact musicians using the room for rehearsal space.After the successful theft, in which Mrs Wilberforce plays an unwitting central role, the real conflict of the film begins. As the gang leaves her house, One-Round accidentally spills his cello case of loot in front of Mrs. Wilberforce. Realising the truth, she informs Marcus that she is going to report them to the police.The gang has no choice but to do away with her. However, One-Round and Claude have taken a liking to the old lady. Claude is selected to do the deed, but contrives to make a run for it. In quick succession, the criminals double-cross and kill one another, with the bodies dumped into railway wagons passing behind the house. Through all this, the marvellously oblivious Mrs. Wilberforce remains asleep.In the end, the gang members have managed to kill each other, and Mrs. Wilberforce ends up with the money. The police, familiar with her fussing and strange stories, pretend to believe her story about the robbery, and jokingly tell her to keep the money as it was insured. Ironically, the insurance was Professor Marcus's justification for the theft.