Two a Penny is a 1967 British film, released nationally in 1968, featuring singer Cliff Richard. The film was directed by James F. Collier and produced by Frank R. Jacobson for Billy Graham's film distribution and production company World Wide Pictures.[1][2] The original story and screenplay was written by Stella Linden.
Jamie Hopkins (Cliff Richard)[3] is an art student and frustrated pop star who lives with his mother (Dora Bryan). She works as a receptionist for Dr. Berman (Donald Bisset), a psychiatrist who is experimenting with psychedelic drugs. Jamie wants to make money quickly, and begins to work at the doctor's office as a pretence in order to steal drugs.[4]
When his girlfriend Carol (Ann Holloway) is converted to Christianity while attending a crusade led by evangelist Billy Graham, she attempts to show him the error of his ways. Soon after, Jamie is caught stealing from Dr. Berman's drug supply, and attempting to double-cross drug dealer Alec Fitch (Geoffrey Bayldon).
Initially hostile toward his girlfriend's newfound faith, Jamie eventually accepts it.
The "Billy Graham movies" were an effort to "extend the Billy Graham ministry into a filmic medium."[2] Their standards of success were therefore not the usual Hollywood standards.[5] This film followed one of several formulas,[2] developing a small cult following due to several notable factors, as Peter T. Chattaway writes:
Two a Penny stars Cliff Richard, who I do admire, as well as a number of actors I fondly recognize from other British films (including To Sir with Love and The Family Way); because it is the only film so far in which dramatic action takes place on the actual platform from which Billy Graham speaks at the London crusade (in contrast to all the other films, where footage of Graham’s sermons is spliced into an otherwise unrelated dramatic story, and the closest the characters ever get to the stage is milling about with the other converts after they come forward); because it is the first film in which the title song represents a character’s troubled inner thoughts and not the message of the film; because it ends on an ambiguous note in which the protagonist’s salvation is still kind of up in the air; and for other, smaller reasons besides.[2]
