(1954, b/w) In Salford, Lancashire, during the 1890s, the corpulent widower Henry Horatio Hobson (Charles Laughton, looking somewhat like W.C. Fields), owner of a boot shop, has three adult daughters, whom he will not permit to openly court men of their choice while making them run his shop and keep his household without paying them.

"You'll not rule me," he insists, telling the younger pair, Alice (Daphne Anderson) and Vicky (Prunella Scales): "I'm gonna choose husbands." As for the eldest, Maggie (Brenda De Banzie at 45), who's 30, he pronounces her past the marrying age, relegating her to her mother's place in taking care of himself: "I'm master here!"

One of his customers, Mrs Hepworth (Helen Haye), a wealthy elderly woman, comes into the shop to praise the boot hand who'd crafted her footwear; giving him her calling card, she tells the meek Willie Mossop (John Mills) that if he were ever to leave Hobson's he is to inform her. Over at the Moonrakers pub, where Henry often spends time tippling and chatting with his pals, he turns against finding temperance lads to marry his girls when he learns that each would cost him £500 in marriage-settlement expenses.

Headstrong with a grasping nature, Maggie takes Willie aside - "We are a pair…. I think you'll do for me" - urging him with his natural-born genius at making boots to leave off from her father's shop: "You're a business idea in the shape of a man."

On a Sunday walk in the park, Will admits of an impediment to her plan: "I'm none in love with you." He says he's already "tokened to Ada Figgins," the daughter of his landlady. After setting Ada and her mother straight and removing Will from their clutches, Maggie sets the new terms and conditions with her father. When Henry strikes Will with a belt, the boot hand departs the premises with his fiancée. In need of capital to set up a new shop, the couple go to Mrs Hepworth for an investment, using Will as collateral.

Adapted from Harold Brighouse's play, director/producer David Lean had a hand in co-writing the script of this working-class comedy with Norman Spencer and Wynyard Browne, updating Thomas Hobson's 400-year-old example of a free choice that lacks an alternative.

Maggie and Will set up shop in an old cellar and announce the banns for their wedding; Maggie purchases two brass rings from her sister at her father's business to be attached to their fingers during their vows. She begins teaching Will to read and write. With Alice's boyfriend Albert Prosser (Richard Wattis) given the duties of best man, Will says to Maggie: "You're growing on me."

Absent from the wedding, waking late after having fallen into the corn chandler's cellar while inebriated, Henry appears at the dinner, frantic over a legal notice he's received for trespass and damages; hateful of lawyers, fearful of a lawsuit and bad publicity, he comes seeking Maggie's advice. Instead, expecting him, she's ready with Albert, an attorney (who reminds the bootmaker that "abuse of a lawyer is remembered in costs"), and Vicky's beau Freddy Beenstock (Derek Blomfield), whose temperance-favoring father had made the complaint, letting Will dispense his views before pressing her father into agreeing to a settlement of £500, which she divides in half for each of her sister's marriage settlements, throwing Henry's words back into his face: "It clears the shop of all those fools of women who used to get in your way."

An awkward wedding night for Will precedes Maggie's proud declaration: "You're the man I made you." A year later, having repaid Mrs Hepworth her £100 plus £20 interest, Will and Maggie go to her father, suffering from chronic alcoholism and having lost his high-class trade to his son-in-law, with an offer of his agreeing to their terms or nothing at all.

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