Elderly Mrs. Ross lives alone in her meager flat, scraping by on government assistance even as she claims to have great wealth. After finding stolen money she is victimized, making it necess... Read allElderly Mrs. Ross lives alone in her meager flat, scraping by on government assistance even as she claims to have great wealth. After finding stolen money she is victimized, making it necessary to find her support in her declining years.Elderly Mrs. Ross lives alone in her meager flat, scraping by on government assistance even as she claims to have great wealth. After finding stolen money she is victimized, making it necessary to find her support in her declining years.
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 9 wins & 4 nominations total
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe director Bryan Forbes and Nanette Newman, who played the upstairs neighbor, were husband and wife.
- GoofsThe old kitchen curtain is shown in scene after Archie leaves, while Margaret is moping around the apartment. The new curtains are shown again after she returns from seeing Mr. Conrad at the National Assistance Board.
- Quotes
Archie Ross: What kind of job might it be, sir?
Mr. Conrad: Doorman at a cinema.
Archie Ross: Oh, wonderful. Nice and healthy and in the open.
Mr. Conrad: The healthiest jobs, Mr. Ross, are the ones you keep.
- ConnectionsVersion of ITV Play of the Week: The Whisperers (1961)
- SoundtracksShall We Gather at the River?
(uncredited)
Written by Robert Lowry
Performed by Edith Evans and mission attendees
At home she looks through newspapers, eats bread with honey, sips tea and listens to radio as her sink faucet drips, drips, drips. She constantly hears voices (the "whisperers" of the title) and turns up the radio to drown them out. When the upstairs neighbors, an interracial couple with an infant, pound on the floor in protest, she pounds back on the ceiling with a broomstick and is showered with bits of plaster. (We see the bald patch from where the plaster has fallen but the absence of other patches means that she has never before banged on the ceiling; this strand of the story would have been more convincing if more of the ceiling was similarly defaced.) When not talking to the imagined voices, she spends her solitary life visiting the library where she surreptitiously warms her feet on the heating pipes, collecting welfare from a local government office where she makes frequent references to her good breeding and high-class family connections, listening to sermons at a local evangelical storefront chapel, and tending to household chores which seem to consist mostly of emptying large quantities of dust, coal ashes and bottles and cans from which she derives most of her nourishment.
Evans brings dignity to the role but somehow she does not seem to be the right actress for the part. Margaret Ross is a woman of humble origins. Evans is a thoroughbred. True, she does claim that she married beneath herself, but that would be putting it mildly. Still, she has the acting skills to keep us entertained, and she gets brilliant support from the secondary players: Eric Portman as her surly husband, Avis Bunnage as a predatory welfare mom and Gerald Sim as a welfare clerk add a great deal to the overall presentation. Leonard Rossiter, too, shows up for a strong few minutes as a government official. And John Barry supplies a melancholy but unobtrusive musical score.
Evans got an Oscar nomination for this performance. Fair enough. But I think Gerry Turpin should have also gotten one for his beautiful cinematography.
- How long is The Whisperers?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Runtime1 hour 46 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.66 : 1