Calendar Girls


Calendar Girls is a 2003 comedy film directed by Nigel Cole. Produced by Harbour Pictures, it features a screenplay by Tim Firth and Juliette Towhidi, based on a true story of a group of middle-aged Yorkshire women who produced a nude calendar to raise money for Leukaemia Research under the auspices of the Women's Institutes in April 1999 after the husband of one of their members dies from cancer. The film stars an ensemble cast headed by Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, with Linda Bassett, Annette Crosbie, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton, Geraldine James, Harriet Thorpe and Philip Glenister playing key supporting roles.
Calendar Girls premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and was later shown at Filmfest Hamburg, the Dinard Festival of British Cinema in France, the Warsaw Film Festival, the Tokyo International Film Festival and the UK Film Festival in Hong Kong. It garnered generally positive reactions by film critics, who compared it with another British comedy film The Full Monty. At a budget of $10 million it also became a major commercial success, eventually grossing $93.4 million worldwide following its theatrical release in the U.S. In addition, the picture was awarded the British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Film, and received ALFS Award, Empire Award and Satellite Award nominations for Mirren and Walters, and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Mirren.

Plot

Friends Annie Clarke and Chris Harper live in the Knapely, Yorkshire, where they attend the local Women's Institute group. After Annie's husband, John, is diagnosed with terminal leukaemia, the two regularly visit him at the hospital. Chris complains about the uncomfortable couch in the waiting room. After noticing a nude calendar in a local mechanic's shop, she comes up with an idea to raise funds to buy a new sofa. Chris proposes producing a calendar featuring other female members of the WI discreetly posing nude while engaged in traditional WI activities, such as baking, knitting and playing the piano.
Chris's proposal initially is met with skepticism, especially from Marie, Knapely's WI chairwoman, but eventually Chris convinces nine other women to participate in the project alongside her and Annie. They enlist Lawrence, a hospital worker and amateur photographer, to help with the project. The women are initially shy but grow in their support for each other and overcome their insecurities. When Marie refuses to sanction the calendar, Chris and Annie plead their case to the national congress of the WI in London. They are told the final decision rests with Marie who grudgingly agrees to the calendar's sale.
The initial printing of 500 calendars proves to be successful, selling out and gaining media attention both nationally and internationally. The publicity surrounding the calendar eventually takes a toll on Chris' personal life involving her husband and son. Despite this, the women are invited, with an all expenses paid trip, to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in Los Angeles, United States. Initially Annie convinces Chris to not go and spend time with her troubled teen. However, a scandalous story surrounding her and her husband in News of the World spurs her to go anyway. Annie is disappointed in Chris. During a commercial photoshoot in America, tension boils over, Chris and Annie angrily clash. Annie accuses Chris of ignoring her family in favour of being a celebrity while Chris believes Annie revels in her Mother Teresa-like status of catering to the ill and fan mail.
After returning to Knapely, the women find out they raised over half a million pounds, and with the proceeds build a special leukemia wing on their local hospital. Annie and Chris reconcile.

Cast

  • Helen Mirren as Chris Harper, the driving force behind the idea of stripping off for the local Women's Institute calendar.
  • Julie Walters as Annie Clarke, Chris's best friend whose husband John's death from leukemia serves as the basis for her friend's idea to purchase a sofa for hospital visitors in remembrance of him.
  • Linda Bassett as Cora, a shop owner and divorced single mother. She is the official pianist of the Knapely WI.
  • Annette Crosbie as Jessie, a retired teacher.
  • Celia Imrie as Celia, a major's wife.
  • Penelope Wilton as Ruth Reynoldson, a carpet dealer's housewife. Wilton initially rejected the offer to join the project as she refused to be filmed semi-naked.
  • Geraldine James as Marie, chairwoman of the Knapely WI group.
  • Philip Glenister as Lawrence Sertain, John Clarke's nurse and photographer of the calendar, based on photographer Terry Logan.
  • Ciarán Hinds as Rod Harper, Chris's husband, a florist.
  • John Alderton as John Clarke, Annie's husband, who dies from leukaemia.
  • George Costigan as Eddie Reynoldson, Ruth's husband. He generally shows little affection for Ruth and ultimately bashes her participation in the calendar. Ruth later leaves him when he has an affair with a woman whom he introduced himself to as a widower.
  • John-Paul Macleod as Jem Harper, Chris and Rod's son.
The film's fellow calendar girls include Georgie Glen, Angela Curran, Rosalind March, Lesley Staples and Janet Howd as Kathy, May, Truday, Julia and Jenny respectively. Calendar Girls also cast Graham Crowden as Jessie's husband Richard, Belinda Everett as Cora's daughter Maya, Marc Pickering as Jem Harper's friend Gaz and Harriet Thorpe as WI president Brenda Mooney. Gillian Wright appears as Eddie Reynoldson's lover, while John Sharian plays an American commercial director named Danny. In addition actors and actresses Richard Braine, Ted Robbins, Alison Pargeter, Angus Barnett, John Sparkes, Elizabeth Bennett, Christa Ackroyd, Matt Malloy, Patton Oswalt and John Fortune appear in short roles. American television host Jay Leno appears as himself in the film during the ladies' visit to California; they also encounter the American heavy metal band Anthrax while relaxing by the pool.

Production

Inspiration

The fundraising phenomenon of the Calendar Girls was inspired by the death of Angela Baker's husband John Richard Baker, an Assistant National Park Officer for the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, who died from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of blood cancer at the age of 54 in 1998. During his illness, Baker's friends began to raise money, initially with the aim of purchasing a sofa for the visitors' lounge in the hospital where John was treated. Nothing could have prepared them for the way their original calendar took off. To date, they have raised over £3 million for Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, the UK's leading blood cancer charity.
The photos for the 2000 Alternative WI Calendar, as it was named, were taken by Terry Logan, a former professional photographer who was married to one of the models. It was released on 12 April 1999 and became a runaway success, selling out in the first week. 10,000 additional copies were printed, all of which were sold within three weeks. Nine months after its launch, the calendar had sold 88,000 copies. It then was adapted for a US version covering June 2000 – December 2001. The ladies were invited to appear with Jay Leno and Rosie O'Donnell on their respective talk shows. That year the calendar sold 202,000 copies, with its proceeds being used to fund lymphoma and leukaemia research in new laboratories at the University of Leeds.
Since 2000, the Calendar Girls have produced calendars for 2004, 2005, 2007 and a recipe calendar for 2008 with their favourite Yorkshire recipes on the back of each month. Ten years on, they launched a 2010 calendar with a new set of full colour images and the aim of raising £2 million for Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research. In addition, they have released a range of merchandise in aid of the charity throughout the years.

Development

Six of the eleven women who were pictured in the original calendar sold the rights to their stories, including Angela Baker, Tricia Stewart, Beryl Bamforth, Lynda Logan, Christine Clancy and Ros Fawcett. Screenwriter Juliette Towhidi first came across the story when she was shown an article in The Guardian, and she straight away took the idea to producer Suzanne Mackie. The two of them had been discussing ideas for a female-driven film for a while, and this struck them as the perfect project. They travelled up to Yorkshire together to meet the women, and were able to secure life story rights in the face of fierce competition, including from Hollywood. Towhidi then worked on multiple drafts of the screenplay, getting to know the women and developing the script over several years. In this time the film's working title switched from 'Calendar Girls' to 'Jam and Jerusalem' and back again. A first director was attached, but when he dropped out, so Nigel Cole, known for his screen debut Saving Grace starring Brenda Blethyn, was brought on board, quickly followed by screenwriter Tim Firth, who took over writing duties from Towhidi and worked on rewrites of the script up until production.
Cole approached Julie Walters and Helen Mirren to play the lead roles in the film. Both actresses had been aware of the WI calendar backstory. Based on Baker, Walters was Cole's first choice to play the "more quiet and sensitive" role of Annie. Known for her comedic roles, Walters initially thought Cole had accidentally offered her the wrong part, and although pleased to have been cast against stereotype, she considered the role "a difficult path to trap" while striking a balance between Annie's grief and humorous moments. As a result, she was heavily involved in the modification of several scenes. Mirren was initially hesitant to sign on to the project because she considered it "too English" and disliked the idea of a "poor woman's Full Monty." Upon learning that Walters and other colleagues had signed on, however, she rethought her original decision and accepted the offer. Modelled after Stewart, Mirren has described Chris as a "dash in"—character who shared similarities with Stewart but was actually not based on her real persona. Anne Reid was also offered a major role in Calendar Girls, but choose to do Roger Michell's The Mother instead. With Calendar Girls being rare for a film to focus on middle-aged women, while not just portraying them as mothers or aunts, Cole experienced difficulties with casting the male roles: "several actors disliked the idea of being subsidiary to women."