'The Warden and the Householder' Part 3: Analysing the Ludicrous Cold War Film in Detail

It’s time for part three of our look at the farcical Cold War masterpiece that is 1961’s The Warden and the Householder. If you haven’t so far, go back and have a look at parts one and two to make sure you’re up to speed with the story. This time, we’re rejoining the lunacy at 15 minutes into the film. As Civil Defence warden Mr. White continues his rounds, the nuclear tension begins to mount to unbearable levels… That’s a touch of sarcasm there, in case you missed it.

The Warden and the Householder: Part one

The Warden and the Householder: Part 2

Scene 10: Clipboard in hand, Mr. White strides across a street that looks as though it has already been subjected to a couple of bombing raids. As he pounds towards the camera, the clodhopping oaf barges through a flock of pigeons, sending them scattering skyward. Mr. White is metaphorically the cat among the pigeons, with the general public - the pigeons - following the flock with their negligence to nuclear preparedness, while Mr. White - the cat - disrupts their complacency with his ‘common sense’ advice on Civil Defence. So confident is he in his ability to survive the coming apocalypse, Mr. White whistles a jolly tune as he walks along. A small smile plays on his lips, conveying the sense that he is positively cheerful, almost excited, about the annihilation lurking over the horizon. One gets the sense that he is desperate for the bombs to begin falling so that he can leap into action and prove what he’s learned at his weekly CD meetings, rather like a Scout demonstrating their knot tying on a camping holiday.

“Hey, Mr. White!" calls a voice from across the street, shaking the Warden from his daydreaming and back to reality. A man runs towards Mr. White from the ironmongers across the road, where a queue is snaking from the shop door as people anxiously attempt to buy building materials for their home shelters. The man is pointing at Mr. White and scowling in agitation. "What I want to know is, what are you Civil Defence people going to do about it? The shops are cleared right out of primus stoves, battery radios and torches. Can’t get ‘em for love nor money. Your book says we ought to have ‘em. Well, what are you going to do about it, eh?"  

The irony is, this man has actually lost his place in the queue to go over and rant at Mr. White about queues.

Rather than calmly reassure the clearly stressed man that all eventualities have been planned for and that he needn’t panic – which one would have thought would be the best course of action, even if it were stretching the truth – Mr. White responds with one of his trademark eye rolls and a singular raised eyebrow of incredulity. We don’t get to hear what advice our supposedly ‘happy to help’ Warden gives the worried man, but I think we can safely assume that it would be dripping with sarcasm and devoid of anything even remotely useful. We now begin a montage of the general public’s ‘strange ideas’ about nuclear fallout and radiation, as Mr. White yet again stands by looking bored to death and infuriated by the sheer stupidity of the community he supposedly cares passionately about protecting. We meet:

• The vegetable stallholder, who believes that his produce is radioactive even before any bombs have fallen. “Bloke on the bus says these cases are all contaminated,” he says, waving his arms over his potatoes. “Says they’ve been put through a secret ray before sending ‘em over ‘ere." The moral of the story here is to not believe everything one hears from the Bloke on the Bus. 

• The allotment holder. Holding a polka-dotted cabbage aloft, a concerned gardener says, "See these purple spots, Mr. White? Joe Smith says it’s radioactive. Will it hurt me?” Quite why this poor woman’s vegetables have become plagued with mysterious purple blobs is not explained, but if I were her I’d be digging them up regardless and stashing them safely in my fallout room, before writing to Gardener’s World to ask if they knew what the purple cabbage plague might be.

Spotty cabbages: a clear sign that nuclear war is imminent.

• The head-scratching man at the playground. As children shriek with joy on the roundabout behind him, this man, presumably a teacher or a concerned parent, asks, "What about the children, Mr. White? Ought we to send them off to the country?" This is actually a valid question, given that in 1961 evacuation was still very much part of the UK’s war planning, with children indeed being moved to supposedly safer areas had conflict threatened. As The Warden and the Householder leads us to believe that a nuclear attack is scarily imminent, we have to wonder just why the children are still happily playing in a city centre, rather than having been shipped away to the country at the first whiff of war. Talk about leaving everything to the last minute.

• The snooty lady. Garbed in pearls and a fur coat, with her nose wrinkled in disdain, this prim and proper lady’s main concern for the coming apocalypse is, "Who’s going to empty the dustbins? We shall be up to our necks in rubbish!” I’d like to think that Mr. White would respond to this question with a long, cold stare and a muttered retort along the lines of, "Better up to your neck in rubbish than six feet under, Mrs. So-and-so.”

• The bank manager. This frowning businessman – who suspiciously resembles the man at the playground minus his moustache – demands to know: “What about the banks, Mr. White? Is our money going to be safe?” Ironically enough, if this chap’s money were stored below ground in a giant steel safe and the bank were comfortably enough outside the blast zone, then his money would indeed quite probably be safe. Not that he’d be able to spend it, of course. In the run up to war, anyone with half a brain would stock up on dead rats with which to barter in a post-nuclear world, rather than ensuring the safety of their pounds, shillings and pence.

The Bank Manager. Presumably the man from the playground's identical twin.

• The teenager. A group of anxious youths cluster around Mr. White. One girl asks, “This fallout dust, if it gets on me, will it hurt me?” Yes. Yes, it will. That being said, these teens most likely wouldn’t need to worry about the fallout period, as the copious amount of hairspray caked on their bouffant hairdos would spontaneously combust if somebody so much as lit a match nearby, let alone unleashed a nuclear firestorm on the city. 

• The angry homeowner. This gentleman is understandably livid that he’s destroyed his prized lawn to build an utterly pointless shelter. “Now look here, Mr. White,” he rants, pointing at his ruined garden. “I’ve done what the handbook said, took me four flaming days. Now look at the bloomin’ thing, it’s got two feet of water in it! Just where the ‘eck do you expect me to dig my slit trench now?” Mr. White crouches beside the flooded trench and shakes his head, as though it’s the homeowner’s own stupid fault for having bought a house prone to flooding in the first place. Looking on the bright side, however, even if the man can’t use his trench as a shelter, he’s got himself a handy grave to plop any dead relatives in after the attack, so that’s one job ticked off the list!

This chap's garden isn't going to be winning a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show any time soon...

Scene 11: We now see a projector winding down and find ourselves back in the Civil Defence training room from the start of the film. The patronising instructor is back. “You see,” he says, breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience. “Now, those scenes aren’t exaggerated. The public will be told that you are in charge, so you must be ready for it if you’re to help them keep calm.” The Instructor fails to recognise that Mr. White’s character does absolutely nothing to help keep his community calm. He also neglects to acknowledge that all of the ‘strange concerns’ expressed in the film were actually valid issues, which most likely would be part and parcel of nuclear war. Shops would indeed run out of food and building supplies; crops would indeed be contaminated by fallout; litter and human waste would of course form verminous mountains in the wrecked streets, spreading disease and pestilence. 

The Warden and the Householder sneakily scoots around the issues Civil Defence planners knew existed by having them come from the mouths of comedic, stereotypically gormless people. The audience is tricked into believing that only fools question the clever people in the CD, who of course have the solutions to nuclear war’s trivial little problems so well planned that they needn’t waste time explaining them. The audience doesn’t want to join the ranks of the gullible numpties in the film, so they themselves will not raise such questions for fear of themselves being labelled stupid or not trusting of the powers that be. This is Cold War reverse psychology at its finest. 

“Now,” continues the Instructor, “you’ll recall that Mr. White in the film invited householders to come and see the arrangements he’d made in his own home. This is an excellent idea, so you must be sure that your own fallout room conforms to the requirements laid down in the handbook.” He leans forward to confide in his students and adds in a voice barely above a whisper, “Within the limits of your purse, of course.” He then gives a small laugh. This is actually rather horrifying, for the CD planners who made the film are humorously acknowledging that the survival methods they recommended were in fact totally unachievable. If even the members of the CD would struggle to afford the basic necessities required to build and stock their shelter, how on earth would the general public do it? Remember that defence personnel would be forewarned of international tensions and be able to start their preparations early; by the time the public had been alerted, panic buying would have sent prices skyrocketing beyond affordable levels. The truth is that only the very affluent would be able to afford the means to survive a nuclear attack, a fact which defence planners were well aware of but chose to ignore. Social status and affluence are themes that will crop up again in our next scene, as we pay a visit to Mr. White’s own shelter. 

"I'll let you in on a secret... All this Civil Defence stuff is a load of rubbish! Tee hee!"

The film projector whirs into life again, and we are once again immersed in the world of The Warden and the Householder.

Scene 12: We cut to Mr. White’s refuge room. Like a performer stepping onto a stage, our favourite patronising warden bursts through a pair of snazzy zig-zagged curtains with his arms flung wide. “Well,” he declares, "this is it." (Curtains, of course, would offer no protection whatsoever against blast or fallout, which begs the question why our so-called expert has used them to block up the door to his refuge room.) Mr. White is still wearing his Civil Defence uniform in the comfort of his own home, implying that he never takes it off and is at all times ready to leap into action if danger calls. You won’t find Mr. White in his slippers and dressing gown when the missiles start flying, make no mistake!  

Mr. White's curtains: groovy but totally useless against fallout.

Mr. White is followed through the curtains by Mrs. Jameson and her husband, who look around the room in open-mouthed wonder. They nod in approval as Mr. White pulls back yet another pair of highly flammable curtains to reveal that he’s bricked up his windows in readiness for attack. It’s to be hoped that the bomb does drop to make his effort worthwhile, as it’d be a right pain to remove the bricks and put the windows back if the winds of war blew over and came to nothing. Still, it’s good to know that amongst his many skills, Mr. White also seems to be a fully-trained bricklayer, as he’s done a neat job that most contractors would be proud of.

Mr. White then points out a Princess and the Pea-style stack of mattresses piled in the corner of the room that is topped with ‘enough blankets for each member of the family.’ Mr. Jameson squashes the mattresses to feel their quality, nodding in approval as he decides they are suitably comfortable upon which to take a nice nap as the fallout dust settles. The mattresses being of good quality and surplus to the requirements of the household – they are obviously spares, assuming that Mr. White and his family are continuing to sleep in their bedrooms until they’re forced into their refuge room – gives the viewer with a strong hint that Mr. White is not short of a few quid. As we will shortly see, having enough dosh to afford all the mod cons is what will help the White family to ride out a nuclear war, not simple common sense methods as we are led to believe. 

Mr. White senses that Mrs. Jameson is itching to have a good nose around the fallout room and invites her to “have a poke around to see things” for herself. She doesn’t need asking twice and darts off across the room, eager to see how she can replicate the set-up in her own home. It’s a classic case of keeping up with the nuclear Joneses. 

Mrs. Jameson opens a cabinet and has a good dig around inside. “Hey Dad,” she shrieks, rather confusingly referring to her husband in paternal terms, “come over here. Paper plates and cups, that’s a good’un.” The plates in question are printed with a jolly design. Usually, they would be used at birthday parties, but here they will be eaten off at the biggest funeral in history: the death of civilization itself. Mr. Jameson sniffs at the notion of eating off such lowly rubbish, clearly being accustomed to fine china at dinner time: “I don’t fancy them much.” He's quickly converted to paper tableware, however, when he’s reminded that disposable plates will mean more water for the residents of the fallout room to wash themselves. No mention is made that more water would be available for drinking, only that Mr. White can rest assured that his family won’t stink at the end of the world, provided they remember to bring some soap with them, of course. 

Party tableware: perfect for the fallout room.

Mrs. Jameson rifles through the rest of the larder, nodding in approval at its neatly-stored contents. Then, echoing scenes that two decades later would be seen in the BBC’s nuclear war film Threads, she waves a tin opener in her husband’s face. “Eh Dad,” she says, "better remember to get another tin opener, just in case." 

“Oh, righto,” Mr. Jameson nods, taking a notebook from his jacket pocket and adding ‘tin opener’ to the most depressing shopping list ever written. He is also instructed by Mrs. Jameson to, “Make a note to check up on that primus stove of ours. You know, the one we bought for the camping holiday.” The Jamesons aren’t going to find themselves queuing outside a camping supplies shop in a desperate hunt for a primus stove like the people we saw earlier in the film; being wholesome, outdoorsy folk who patriotically holiday in the good old British countryside, they already have everything they need for nuclear war. Who knew that choosing a wet weekend in a tent over a luxury trip to the Bahamas could save your life? Yet again, the inference here is that if people aren’t able to obtain survival provisions, it’s their own fault for not being prepared in the old Boy Scout way. 

At this point, we see that Mr. White’s fallout room has a huge fireplace within it, where a cosy blaze is roaring away. This seems the height of idiocy: Mr. White may have proudly boasted his bricked up windows, but surely fallout dust is just going to funnel down the chimney and into the room? If he’d taken his own advice, he’d have bricked up this opening too, perhaps even putting some heavy furniture in front of it for good measure. Alas, this major flaw in Mr. White’s survival plan doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.

A fireplace in the fallout room: just in case Santa Claus wants to drop by.

“Oh dear," says Mrs. Jameson in her usual optimistic tone, picking up a top of the range radio from the coffee table. “I do hope you don’t want us to buy a portable wireless set like yours, Mr. White." Her husband attempts to reassure her that they will be able to receive any emergency broadcasts on their ‘old mains set, just the same as everybody else.’ The couple’s confidence is short lived, however, as Mr. White barges in with a cheery reminder that mains power will likely have been destroyed by the attack, meaning that only those who could afford the latest wireless technology would be able to stay in the loop, while lowly paupers who relied upon affordable technology would be uninformed, unprotected and highly vulnerable. It was often said that nuclear weapons did not discriminate between people, killing civilians rich and poor alike. Mr. White and the rest of the CD seem not to have heard this, however, as they repeatedly reiterate that wealth is key to survival. One almost gets the feeling that the CD would consider a nuclear war as one giant weeding of the public, doing away with complacent fools and leaving only the patriotic and prepared alive to rebuild Britain. This is confirmed in a shot of Mr. White’s table of batteries and torches, where there is also a pack of matches. The brand? England’s Glory. 

“By gum,” says Mrs. Jameson, eyeballing a table of books. “I can see you’re going to do a bit of reading, Mr. White. I think I’ll stick to knitting myself.” Mr. White has yet again completely contradicted his own advice. Did he not tell Mrs. Richards earlier to clear out anything flammable from her fallout room? And yet here he is with a huge stack of magazines, newspapers and books, not to mention a massive frilly lampshade that will: A) go up in flames the moment a heat flash reaches the property, and B) be of no use anyway once the electricity's gone off, so surely is wasting valuable space that could be better filled with food and water supplies. 

Mrs. Jameson examine's some of Mr. White's highly flammable belongings.

While they’re on the subject of post-attack pastimes, Mr. Jameson chimes in with an idea of his own. “I’ll tell you what, love,”he says, “we’ll bring that old gramophone down from the attic!” Clearly, the jolly paper plates have had a positive effect on him, as he now seems to planning for a Saturday night knees up rather than for nuclear war. Mrs. Jameson is also thrilled at the idea of a boogie and suggests songs for the party playlist: “Oh yes, we can play some of those old Gracie Fields and Henry Hall records!” 

Mr. Jameson can't contain his excitement about his post-attack party...

Fields and Hall were of course huge celebrities during the Second World War, with their stiff-upper-lip-inducing hits such as ‘The Thing-Ummy-Bob (That’s Going to Win the War)’ and ‘Hush, Hush, Hush, Here Comes the Bogeyman’, both of which epitomised British defiance against the Nazi threat. Once again, viewers are given the suggestion that by recapturing the old Blitz spirit, which saw bombed out homeowners proudly jitterbugging to ‘In the Mood’ amidst piles of rubble, they would be able to pull through a nuclear war just the same as they had a conventional one. Unwittingly, the Civil Defence corps here highlighted it’s biggest flaw: it was trying to deal with ultramodern weapons with methods as worn out as an old, scratched record. That being said, Henry Halls’ music would perhaps be an appropriate soundtrack for the terrors of a nuclear apocalypse, as his genuinely creepy voice has since been used in a multitude of horror films such as Jeepers Creepers and The Shining. But I digress. Back to The Warden and the Householder.  

More frightening to Mr. Jameson than being vaporised by a nuclear fireball or a slow lingering death from radiation poisoning is the truly horrifying prediction from his wife that, “Our Bill and Vera will probably bring some of that rock and roll stuff.” The suddenly traumatised man visibly shudders at the nightmarish fate that awaits him and his country: imagine good old Blighty succumbing not only to nuclear attack, but also to the shockingly provocative music of the modern youth! 

...but is less excited about rock and roll music.

“Come on, now,” chides Mr. White, interrupting the couple's musical chat. “This is not Housewife’s Choice.” He paces past them with his hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head at their frivolousness as though he were Chief Constable of the Fun Police rather than a Civil Defence Warden. As he passes by her tutting under his breath, Mrs. Jameson's expression morphs from admiration to confused disbelief. Up until this point, she has had Mr. White on a pedestal as the patron saint of Civil Defence. Now, as the last few hours of human civilisation tick away, it seems to finally be dawning on her that Mr. White is a bit of a prat. 

Mrs. Jameson sees Mr. White in a new light. That huge lamp probably helped.

Next time: It's the big finale. As nuclear war looms over the horizon, we learn why winning the football pools won't save you from a hideous death, find out why Mrs. Jameson's dog is doomed, and finally meet that dreaded wrong'un, Mr. Wells. And, amidst the nail-biting tension, we have a shocking scandal: is Mr. White's wife expecting yet again? We'll find out next time. Oh, and we'll also find out if the world ends in a raging nuclear conflict. 

By Rebecca Shaw 

www.atomictargetlancashire.blogspot.com