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Penny Points to Paradise

1951 film by Tony Young

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ12126898 ↗
Source-derived summary

Penny Points to Paradise is a 1951 second feature ('B') comedy film directed by Tony Young and starring Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers of The Goon Show in their feature film debut. It was written by John Ormonde.

In 1963–1964 Young produced The Telegoons for BBC Television.

Plot

Harry Flakers has had a big win on the football pools. He and his friend Spike Donnelly decide to go to the same shabby seaside boarding house that they have always patronised for their summer holiday, but this year most of the other guests, including a young woman out to marry money, a dodgy investment advisor and a master forger and assistant, are intent on taking the fortune off them in one way or another.

Ultimately the forgers manage to substitute fake five-pound notes for the real ones that Flakers keeps in his suitcase, but before they can abscond with the money one of the women is given cash by Flakers to buy some cigarettes, and accused of passing false currency when the forgery is detected. A chase follows with half the characters pursuing the other half through a waxwork museum in which the true crooks have taken refuge. Justice is served when the chief forger boasts of his crime in front of what he thinks are two waxwork policemen, but who turn out to be real members of the force.

In the final scenes Flakers and Donnelly marry the two women.

There are sequences featuring a night out at the theatre where a stage hypnotist mesmerises Flakers and a woman into performing an operatic duet, he singing soprano and she baritone, and a scene in which Flakers wordlessly mimes an entire heart operation being carried out by a nervous surgeon.

Editorial summary

“Penny Points to Paradise” enters the record as 1951 film by Tony Young. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Penny, Points and Paradise can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1951, 1963, 1964—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1951-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Penny, Points and Paradise.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Penny Points to Paradise” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Penny, Points and Paradise provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12126898. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1963 and 1964.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Penny Points to Paradise”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Penny Points to Paradise primary sources, Penny Points to Paradise archive and Penny research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Penny Points to Paradise”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Penny Points to Paradise” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.