The Wrong Box. 1966. UK. Directed by Bryan Forbes. Screenplay by Larry Gelbart, Burt Shevelove, based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. With Michael Caine, John Mills, Ralph Richardson. 35mm courtesy Sony Pictures Entertainment. 105 min.
Michael Caine makes a brief but memorable appearance as a 33-year-old virgin in this Ealing-styled comedy about two Victorian-era brothers who seek to inherit a fortune by outwitting, and outliving, each other. Caine surmised that “The Wrong Box should have been a massive success if you went by its pedigree. Bryan Forbes had just directed King Rat and Séance on a Wet Afternoon; and the screenplay was written by Americans Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove, co-authors of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It was also the film debut of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and contained a wonderful cameo role by Peter Sellers as well as being stuffed full of great actors who were completely unknown outside Britain. Ralph Richardson and John Mills were famous, I suppose, but here were brilliant, internationally unknown stars like Tony Hancock, Cicely Courtneidge, Irene Handl and that most British actor of them all, Wilfred Lawson.”