Room at the Top is a 1959 British film based on the novel of the same name by John Braine. The novel was adapted by Neil Paterson with uncredited work by Mordecai Richler. It was directed by Jack Clayton and produced by John and James Woolf. The film stars Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston and Hermione Baddeley.
Room at the Top was widely lauded, and was nominated for six Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Best Director for Clayton, Best Actor for Harvey, and Best Supporting Actress for Baddeley, winning Best Actress for Signoret and Best Adapted Screenplay for Paterson. Baddeley's performance became the shortest ever to be nominated for an acting Oscar (she had 2 minutes and 20 seconds of screen time).Synopsis
In late 1940s Yorkshire, England, Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey), an ambitious young man who has just moved from the dreary factory town of Dufton, arrives in Warnley, to assume a secure, but poorly paid, post in the Borough Treasurer's Department. Determined to succeed, and ignoring the warnings of a colleague, Soames (Donald Houston), he is drawn to Susan Brown (Heather Sears), daughter of the local industrial magnate, Mr. Brown (Donald Wolfit). He deals with Joe's social climbing by sending Susan abroad; Joe turns for solace to Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret), an unhappily married older woman who falls in love with him.
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