Here’s a suggestion for every metalcaster’s movie library: The Lavender Hill Mob, a 1951 Oscar-winning film starring Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway. The premise: a bank employee teams with the owner of a small metalcasting facility to steal a delivery of gold bullion from a London bank.

Bank clerk Henry Holland (Guinness) has overseen the delivery of gold bars from the refinery to the bank for 20 years, and he dreams of hijacking one of the shipments and living the rest of his life in wealth. But to pull off the job, he needs a way to smuggle the gold out of England. He finds a solution to the problem when he meets a new neighbor, Alfred Pendlebury (Holloway), who produces souvenirs for export to other countries. When Pendlebury gives Holland a tour of his permanent mold facility, the banker notices the similarities between the shop and the refinery where the gold bars are cast. He subtly puts the idea to Pendlebury to melt the stolen gold and cast it into Eiffel Tower paperweights as a way to smuggle the treasure out of the country, and the diecaster agrees to the heist.

As one of the main settings in the film, Pendlebury’s facility will look amiliar to many metalcasters who have worked in a small melt shop. Several scenes depict the thieves melting the gold and pouring the
molten material into metal molds. Metalcasters also may enjoy the etal-forming puns throughout the film, as well as a casting-centric two-line song sung by Holland.

The movie won an Oscar for best writing, story and screenplay, and Guinness was nominated for best actor in a leading role. The movie also features a young Audrey Hepburn in what is considered her first appearance in a major film.