Tony Hancock - The Break With Galton and Simpson

The Break With Galton and Simpson

Hancock starred in the 1960 film The Rebel, where he played the role of an office worker-turned-artist who finds himself successful after a move to Paris, but only as the result of mistaken identity. Although a success in Britain the film was not well received in the United States: owing to the existence of a contemporary television series of the same name, the film had to be renamed, and the new title, Call Me Genius, inflamed American critics. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times thought Hancock "even less comical" than Norman Wisdom.

His break with Galton and Simpson took place at a meeting held in October 1961, where he also broke with his long-term agent Beryl Vertue. During the previous six months the writers had developed without payment three scripts for Hancock's second starring film vehicle in consultation with the comedian. Worried that the projects were wrong for him, the first two had been abandoned incomplete; the third was written to completion at the writers' insistence, only for Hancock to reject it. Hancock is thought not to have read any of the screenplays. The result of the break was that Hancock chose to separately develop something previously discussed and the writers were ultimately commissioned to write a Comedy Playhouse series for the BBC, one of which, "The Offer", emerged as the pilot for Steptoe and Son. To write that "something previously discussed", which became The Punch and Judy Man, Hancock hired writer Philip Oakes, who moved in with the comedian to co-write the screenplay.

In The Punch and Judy Man (1962), Hancock played a struggling seaside entertainer who dreams of a better life; Sylvia Syms played his nagging social climber of a wife, and John Le Mesurier a sand sculptor. The depth to which the character played by Hancock had merged with that of the actor is clear in the film. When Hancock first read the script, he looked at Phillip Oakes, and his only comment was "You bastard..." Hancock knew that the film was going to be about him, and the film owes much to Hancock’s memories of his childhood in Bournemouth.