WHEN your latest film is set on board a fictional US submarine, and you’re keen to publicise its Scottish launch, where better than on an actual submarine? In February 1960, at Faslane, Cary Grant, star of Operation Petticoat, had lunch on a depot ship, HMS Adamant, at Faslane, before boarding the submarine, HMS Narwahl, at Arrochar, and spending more than two hours talking to the crew. He is photographed here chatting to the submarine’s commander, Lieutenant-Commander K.Vause.

Grant, wrote the Evening Times columnist, Eric de Banzie, said Narwahl made those submarines he had experienced during filming seem almost prehistoric. “Certainly,” added de Banzie, “there was little sensation when Narwahl submerged and proceeded on her torpedo run up Loch Long. She dives steeply, but apart from the consequent tilt those aboard might otherwise be unaware that she’s gone under.” De Banzie also wrote of the “crazy” feeling of sitting in the submarine beside Grant, “watching a film about a submarine in which Cary stars.”

This newspaper’s film critic said hardened filmgoers would have little difficulty in recognising any of the film’s characters, including Grant’s harassed captain and Tony Curtis’s “handsome lieutenant”, “but in this case the playing is unusually expert, particularly from Cary Grant, who has been doing this sort of thing superbly for more years than he probably cares to count ... All in all, the two hours for which the film lasts slip by very pleasantly.”