The Crowded Day – 1954 | 82 mins | Comedy, Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

The Crowded Day is a bitter-sweet tale of shop-floor intrigue set against the busy backdrop of a London department store during the Christmas shopping season. Billed as ‘a story of shop girls and their men,’ the episodic look at the trials and tribulations of five salesgirls is pleasant, tightly-written and utterly forgettable. Despite the contribution of comedy writers John Paddy Carstairs and Talbot Rothwell the storyline is an uneasy mix of fluffy comedy and social drama. The interiors shot at Bourne & Hollingsworth on Oxford Street add authenticity.

The lives of five young salesgirls and their boyfriends in a big department store, Bunting and Hobbs, intertwine on one day during Christmas week. Peggy French (Joan Rice) is fed up of her boyfriend (John Gregson) paying more attention to his car than her, so decides to make him jealous by flirting with the store personnel manager. Relentlessly glum Yvonne Pascoe (Josephine Griffin), who is unmarried and hiding the news that she is expecting a city playboy’s baby from both work colleagues and management. Platinum blonde Suzy Green (Vera Day) is exasperated at supervisor Mrs. Morgan (Freda Jackson) seizing her potential sales and uncertainty over her alleged film producer boyfriend (Sydney Tafler). Shy Alice (Patricia Plunkett), who has to hire a male escort to the works Christmas party.