Hobson's Choice

In 17th century England, a man named Hobson rented out horses to Cambridge students, but to make sure the best horses weren’t overworked, he gave the students a choice: take the horse nearest the stable door, or none at all. Somehow this entered into popular slang so that “Hobson’s choice” meant being given the illusion of a choice when only one thing is actually being offered. In 1915, a playwright, Harold Brighouse, used the expression as the title for a comedy which became a hit in London and New York. There were film versions in 1920 and 1931, and later there was even a musical based on it, but I doubt if Hobson’s Choice would mean anything today if it hadn’t been made into a movie in 1954 by the preeminent British director David Lean, famous for The Bridge on the River Kwai, Laurence of Arabia, and many others. It’s one of the lesser known jewels in the director’s artistic crown.

Charles Laughton plays Henry Hobson, a widower who owns a boot shop near Manchester in Victorian England. He’s a lazy, arrogant old man who tyrannizes over his three adult daughters, who keep the shop going while he spends most of the time at a nearby pub gossiping with his dissolute friends. He fully expects the two younger daughters to get married eventually, although he doesn’t approve of the men currently courting them—but the eldest daughter, Maggie, played by Brenda de Banzie, he has decided must stay single for life and take care of him. She’s thirty years old, and according to him that she’s “on the shelf,” destined to be a spinster. But, she has a different idea.

Maggie is a splendid character, a strong, assertive woman who knows exactly what she wants and how she’s going to get it, not the kind of female figure that moviegoers were used to at the time. She plans to win her struggle with her father, and she has her eye on a shop employee, a timid bootmaker named Willie Mossop, played by John Mills. The quality of Willie’s work is so good that one of Hobson’s best customers, a wealthy old lady, demands that her boots be made by him exclusively.

Maggie tells Willie right out that she wants to marry him, which comes as a great surprise to him. He’s already been pressured into getting engaged to his landlady’s daughter. She promptly marches him over to his lodgings and tells the landlady that the engagement is off. Willie is shocked, but doesn’t protest, which shows that he’s actually quite relieved. The comedy of this whole situation is delicious in an unexpected way. Such a headstrong woman might have usually been portrayed at the time as a nuisance, but her resistance to her father’s cruelty is heroic. When Hobson finds out that Maggie is planning to marry Willie, he insults him and ends up hitting him with his belt. This has the effect of making Willie angry and defiant, and he goes away with Maggie to set up a boot shop of his own. Gradually, Maggie’s love inspires him to grow a spine.

This is the set-up for a marvelous turning of the tables. John Mills is very funny as Willie, but the dominating presence in this film, larger than life, is of course Charles Laughton, with one of his  career best performances as an exasperated curmudgeon, who delights us with his abusive wit even as we cheer his comeuppance. Lean’s direction is smooth and confident. When Hobson’s Choice arrives at the choice promised by its title, the audience has had all the satisfaction it could desire.