Plot
Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) is a timid London bank clerk who has been in charge of gold bullion deliveries for over 20 years. He has a reputation for fussing over details and panicking about suspect cars following the bullion van, and appears to be a man dedicated to his job and the gold's security. But, in fact, he has hatched the "perfect" plot to steal a load of bullion and retire. The one thing that has prevented this plan from being put into operation is that selling the gold on the black market in Britain would be too risky, and Holland is at a loss as to how to smuggle it abroad.
One evening a new lodger — artist Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) — arrives at the boarding house where Holland lives in Lavender Hill. Pendlebury owns a foundry that makes presents and souvenirs that are sold in many resorts, including foreign ones. Noticing how similar the foundry is to the place where the gold is made into ingots, Holland decides that the ideal way of smuggling the gold out of the country would be as Eiffel Tower paperweights sold in Paris, and puts this hypothetically to his new friend: "By Jove, Holland, it's a good job we're both honest men." "It is indeed, Pendlebury."
When Holland suddenly finds that he is about to be transferred to another department at the bank, he and Pendlebury quickly move into action. They recruit two petty crooks, Lackery Wood (Sidney James) and Shorty Fisher (Alfie Bass), to help them carry out the robbery. The plan is simple but clever, and it succeeds: Wood and Fisher carry out the hijack of the bullion van and switch the gold to Pendlebury's works van. Holland, who is supposedly assaulted and almost drowned in the robbery, becomes the hero of the hour. The police find themselves running around in circles, unable to track down the "master criminal" who is in fact right under their noses giving them false statements and misleading clues. Meanwhile, Holland and his associates melt the gold in Pendlebury's foundry and export it to France disguised as miniature Eiffel Towers.
The plan goes wrong when the woman who runs the Eiffel Tower souvenir kiosk misunderstands what she is supposed to do, and instead of holding back the specially-marked box of Eiffel Towers, opens it and puts the souvenirs out for sale. Pendlebury and Holland, who have adopted the names of "Al" and "Dutch", arrive to retrieve their disguised bullion only to find that six of the towers have been sold to a party of British schoolgirls. A wild chase back to the Channel ferry follows but all sorts of hold-ups, including problems with the customs men, prevent them from getting to the ship and the girls in time.
If just one of those towers is found to be gold then the game is up. Pendlebury and Holland therefore track down the schoolgirls and, in exchange for a similar tower and ten shillings, recover most of the loot. One girl however refuses to return hers since she intends to give it to a friend who is a policeman. The girl delivers the souvenir to the officer, who is at an exhibition of police history and methods at Hendon Police College. Also attending is a police inspector who is investigating the robbery. As part of the case he checked up on Pendlebury's foundry and was told that many souvenirs bought in foreign places are actually made in England. A sudden thought occurs to him and he orders the souvenir to be tested. At that moment Pendlebury snatches it and he and Holland make their escape in a police car.
A confused pursuit then takes place through London, with Holland using the radio in the police car to give false descriptions of the vehicle in which the crooks are riding. Eventually, though, an officer succeeds in getting into their car and arresting Pendlebury. Holland escapes to Rio de Janeiro with the six gold towers, worth "twenty-five thousand pounds, enough to keep me for one year in the style to which I was, ah, unaccustomed." After the money is mostly gone, he is telling his story to a British visitor before they both leave the restaurant, handcuffed to one another; Holland has been found and arrested and is due for extradition back to the UK.
Read more about this topic: The Lavender Hill Mob
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