THE COURT JESTER (1955)
With five kids and a full-time job, my mother didn’t have much time to take us to movies, or watch them with us at home. But I remember as a boy one rainy Saturday, bored and hoping for something on TV, on came The Court Jester with Danny Kaye, Glynis Johns and Basil Rathbone. It was just starting as my mother passed through the room tidying up. “Oh, you’ll like this,” she said, “it’s one of my favourites.” And from time to time she’d come back into the room to share some of the best bits with me. She was right, of course: With singing, sword fights, pratfalls and wordplay (“the pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle”), it’s become one of my favourites, too. And one that makes me think of her.