Parky at the Pictures (DVD 11/9/2014)

The following were produced in the 1930s and capture the odd familiar face doing the occasionally unexpected thing.

ELSTREE CALLING (1930).

This country's first musical was produced by British International Pictures in imitation of the revue movies being churned out by the Hollywood studios in the early sound era. Given the film's significance in domestic screen history, it's ironic that the various music-hall and radio stars on show are performing for a ground-breaking live television spectacular. Alfred Hitchcock directed the segments in which Gordon Harker complains about the poor reception, while emcee Tommy Handley tries to keep everyone in order, including Donald Calthorp, whose efforts to recite some Shakespeare culminate in him duelling with Anna May Wong in a scene from The Taming of the Shrew. Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge team to typically amusing effect among the 19 songs and sketches on view (some of which are presented in their original Pathecolor). However, the tinny timbre of the recording does few favours to singers like Lily Morris and Helen Burnell, while the dancing of The Charlot Girls leaves as much to be desire as Will Fyffe's misfiring routine. But time has been least kind to The Three Eddies, `the blackfaced trio from Blackburn', whose minstrel shuffling is as inexpert as it's inappropriate, in spite of cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene's best efforts to capture the undoubted energy of their performance.

THE LOVE RACE (1931).

Adapted from a West End show that had enjoyed a decent run at the Gaiety Theatre, this musical comedy is something of a family affair. It was directed by former silent clown Lupino Lane from a scenario by his cousin, Stanley Lupino, who also headlines alongside Lane's brother, Wallace Lupino, and his own debuting teenage daughter, Ida, who would go on to become a major star in Hollywood and one of the studio era's few women directors. The Romeo and Juliet-style story is predictably lightweight and the songs are feebly integrated into the action. But `Dancing the Blues Away' is catchy enough and there are a few laughs to be had as Stanley Lupino, the scion of a car manufacturing dynasty, falls for Dorothy Boyd, even though she is the sister of his fiercest motor-racing rival, Jack Hobbs. Lane and co-director Pat Morton cut in plenty of documentary racetrack footage, which should appeal to petrolheads of an historical bent. But there's nothing like a suitcase full of lingerie in the wrong hands to kick a romantic farce into second gear.

THE GREAT DEFENDER (1934).

An engineer who changed tack to become a vaudeville performer specialising in characters from Charles Dickens novels, Thomas Bentley was a prominent figure in British cinema from 1912 to the mid-1930s. In addition to several Dickens adaptations, he also made the first sound versions of Young Woodley (1930) and Hobson's Choice (1931). This is an entertainingly creaky courtroom saga that barely works as a whodunit as there are so few suspects. However, the scenario is rather racy for its day, as it turns around artist Richard Bird being charged with the murder of his model mistress, Jeanne Stuart. Abandoning plans to divorce her husband, Margaret Bannerman hires Frank Atkinson to mount his defence. But he knows the only person who can take on prosecuting counsel Sam Livesey is Matheson Lang, who is more than willing to assist Bannerman, as she is the unspoken love of his life and he is prepared to risk his fragile health in order to accept the case. Plot heavy and largely populated by caricatures, this will chime with those who recall Crown Court with affection. The supporting performances are a touch stiff, but Lang (who was one of the founders of the Old Vic) imposes himself on a role that is not dissimilar to Sir Wilfrid Robarts, the QC essayed by Charles Laughton in Billy Wilder's take on Agatha Christie's play, Witness for the Prosecution (1957). Moreover, any film featuring Kathleen Harrison (who plays Bannerman's maid) can't be all bad.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS (1934).

Will Hay made his feature debut in Thomas Bentley's boisterous adaptation of Sir Arthur Wing Pinero's 1885 farce, The Magistrate. He's on fine form, as the pompous pillar of society suspecting that wife Iris Hoey has been lying about her age because tearaway stepson John Mills simply cannot be 15. However, it takes a brouhaha at the local music-hall and a curious session in Hay's courtroom for the truth to emerge. Overlooking the essential chauvinism of the scenario, this affords Hay plentiful opportunity to display the blustering stuffiness that made his school and station masters so memorable. He is ably supported by the scampish Mills and by Hoey, whose efforts at the music-hall to prevent old acquaintance Claud Allister from blowing her cover land her and sister Angela Baddeley in the dock. Like Hay, a variety veteran, Bentley can't resist showcasing Harry Bedford and Lily Morris, whose respective contributions, `A Little Bit Off the Top' and `My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)', capture the waning spirit of a once hugely popular form of entertainment.

GIRLS WILL BE BOYS (1934).

There's plenty of continental chichi in this droll gender-bending comedy. The screenplay was adapted from Robert Siodmak's play, The Last Lord, and it marked the English-language debut of Dolly Haas, a spirited German star who was keen to lie low after the Nazis had caused a riot at the premiere of her previous picture, Das häßliche Mädchen (1933), which had been directed by Hermann Kosterlitz, who would become better known as Deanna Durbin's favourite director, Henry Koster. Haas's director here is Marcel Varnel, a veteran of the Parisian stage who was just making his way in Britain and who would become a trusted confidante of Will Hay and The Crazy Gang. He certainly keeps the action moving briskly to prevent anyone taking too close a look at a plot that sees actress Dolly Haas pose as a man in order to teach chauvinist ducal grandfather Cyril Maude a lesson for disowning her father. However, having cut her hair and chosen a suitable wardrobe, Haas finds drinking heartily, smoking cigars and suppressing feelings for mentor Edsmond Knight more difficult than she had anticipated. Following Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) and Renate Muller in Reinhold Schünzel's Viktor und Viktoria (1933), Haas looks very dashing in her designer suits. But, for all the picture's gently subversive wit, she was better served by John Brahm's 1936 remake of DW Griffith's Broken Blossoms and her sole credited Hollywood outing, Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess (1953).

ROYAL CAVALCADE (1935).

Despite the best efforts of Winston Churchill to concoct a scenario for Alexander Korda, the privilege of producing a feature to mark the Silver Jubilee of George V's accession fell to British International Pictures. Clearly taking their cue from Frank Lloyd's adaptation of Noel Coward's Cavalcade (1933), which had just scooped the Academy Award for Best Picture, producer Walter C. Mycroft and supervising director Thomas Bentley opted to pack the episodic narrative with guest stars to put a bit of gloss on events that had often made great demands of the nation and the wider empire. Interspersing the dramatic reconstructions with newsreel footage, the directorial team (which included prodigal Irishman, Herbert Brenon) harks back to regal predecessors like Henry V (Matheson Lang) and Queen Elizabeth (Athene Seyler), while also recreating key moments from the 1912 expedition to the South Pole (with Frank Vosper and Austin Trevor playing captains Scott and Oates) and the Great War, with H. Saxon-Snell appearing as Sir Edward Grey, CM Hallard as Churchill and Esme Percy as Lloyd George. There are also vignettes about the Suffragettes and the labour unrest and financial crises of the 1920s. But snippets about changing fashions and social habits lighten the mood, as does a rousing reflection on the first Royal Command Performance in 1911, with George Robey playing himself and Pearl Argyle stepping in Anna Pavlova's ballet shoes.

SATURDAY NIGHT REVUE (1937).

Evidently seeking to follow the Hollywood formula of melding gangsters and glamour, Norman Lee and screenwriter Vernon Clancey become increasingly reliant on contrivance in this unpersuasive melodrama. Having defied snooty parents Charles Carson and Mary Jerrold by following her dream to become a singer, Sally Gray forms a partnership with crooner Billy Milton. However, he hangs with a rough crowd in Soho that gravitates around mobster Edward Ashley, who is indebted to Milton because he saved his life when jealous moll Betty Lynne tried to kill him. Consequently, when Milton's eyes are damaged in a car accident, Ashley hires the best doctor in London to operate on him. But Milton goes into hiding and Gray becomes increasingly concerned for his safety, until she realises that he is the masked man with whom she has been asked to duet on the radio. Featuring guest turns by the likes of Webster Booth and Gerry Fitzgerald, as well as such bandleaders as Sydney Kyte, John Reynders, Billy Reid and the mysterious Strad (with his Newsboys), this offers a decent insight into British musical tastes in the late 1930s. But the story and the performances are pretty forgettable, while Lee would do much better before he finally quit directing in 1949 to reinvent himself as a crime writer using such aliases as Raymond Armstrong, Mark Corrigan, J. Earle Dixon and Robertson Hobart.

MAKE-UP (1937).

Observant readers will recall the mention above of Viktor and Viktoria. Well, its American-born producer, Alfred Zeisler, crops up as the director of this independent British production, which was filmed at Shepperton Studios. Associated British distributed the picture for Standard International, but it made little impact, in spite of the fact that it headlined Swedish star Nils Asther, who had been discovered by the great Mauritz Stiller and had teamed with such divas as Pola Negri, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies and Barbara Stanwyck during his time in Hollywood. Indeed, one of his best-known studio releases had much in common with this circus saga, which was adapted from Hans Mahner-Mons's novel, Bux. And the really alert will immediately know that Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928) not only starred Lon Chaney, but also earned a Best Director nomination at the inaugural Academy Awards for Herbert Brenon, who went on to co-direct Royal Cavalcade.

Asther plays a surgeon who was coerced into studying medicine by his ambitious circus parents. However, he decides to return to his old life by becoming a clown under the big top, where his skills come in handy when socialite June Clyde is knocked unconscious by an elephant. Clyde is instantly smitten. But Asther's ward, Jill Craigie, heartily disapproves of their liaison, as she is secretly in love with him. She is unaware, however, that lion tamer Kenne Duncan is besotted with her and is prepared to use poison to ruin Asther's reputation. But, when Duncan is murdered, Craigie suddenly needs Clyde's help to prove her innocence.

In vaudeville from the age of seven, Clyde made her screen debut at the age of 10 in 1920. She came to Britain with director husband Thornton Freeland (who had famously paired Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Flying Down to Rio, 1933). She was a reliable performer and is much more animated here than the bored Asther.But the standout is Craigie, who would marry co-scenarist Jeffrey Dell and collaborate on the script for his first directorial outing, The Flemish Farm (1943), before striking out on her own with the acclaimed duo of The Way We Live (1945) and Blue Scar (1948). She largely gave up her film career, however, to support second husband, Michael Foot, who would eventually become the leader of the Labour Party.

OH BOY! (1938).

Although his surname suggested somewhere more exotic, Albert de Courville was born in Croydon. He made his name directing theatrical revues and established a moderate screen reputation with the 1932 Jessie Matthews vehicles, There Goes the Bride and The Midshipmaid. However, he must have pined for enjoyable romps like Things Are Looking Up (1935) and Seven Sinners (1936) while making this lacklustre comedy with South Shields comic, Albert Burdon.

The story was concocted by Douglas Furber - the playwright who had teamed with L. Arthur Rose to write the lyrics to Noel Gay's melody, `The Lambeth Walk' - and it is packed with references to good old London town. For starters, Jay Laurier is a Beefeater at the Tower, who is being tapped up by American mobster Bernard Nedell in a bid to steal the Crown Jewels. But the main focus falls on Nedell's scrawny scientist son, Albert Burdon, who discovers the power to transform into a handsome hunk whenever he drinks Russian boffin Boris Ranevsky's secret formula. Mary Lawson is very taken with the new improved Burdon. But she knows nothing about a side effect that is slowly causing him to revert to childhood.

This comic spin on Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde fable feels like something that Eddie Cantor might have turned down before it was rejected by George Formby. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy had already encountered a rejuvenating elixir in Lloyd French's Dirty Work (1933), which had culminated in Stan knocking Ollie into a vat of Professor Noodle's hooch and sending him so far back down the evolutionary chain that he emerged as a chimpanzee. But there's precious little similar ingenuity in this undercooked time-passer. However, one wonders if Jerry Lewis ever saw it, as it does bear a passing resemblance to The Nutty Professor (1963). As for De Courville, he had one last hurrah before relocating to Broadway, as the following year, he directed Lupino Lane in The Lambeth Walk, which was the screen version of Furber, Rose and Gay's 1937 stage hit, For Me and My Gal.

MURDER IN SOHO (1939).

We've already encountered director Norman Lee above. But you may not have heard of scenarist F. McGrew Willis. He was best known for his work on the American stage, but still amassed 108 movie credits between 1914-41. This British B was his final screen assignment before his death in 1957. It's not much of a story, but it suggests that UK studios were giving their crime flicks a hard-boiled edge before the Second World War made film noir the style du jour. The action centres on Jack La Rue, an American racketeer who uses his Soho niterie as a front for nefarious purposes. However, underling Francis Lister decides to blackmail his boss and winds up dead in a Greek Street doorway. When Inspector Martin Walker of Scotland Yard discovers that some valuable pearls have also disappeared, he convinces Lister's estranged widow, Sandra Storme, to go undercover and keep an eye on La Rue, as well as the shifty James Hayter, feisty chanteuse Googie Withers and besotted hostess Drue Leyton. Bernard Lee rather gets in the way as an eager reporter, while Storme and La Rue generate fewer sparks than a damp match. But Claude Friese-Greene's inky photography is rather good and production designer John Mead deserves credit for devising The Cotton Club's mechanical stage.

BLACK LIMELIGHT (1939).

Viennese director Paul L. Stein was best known for operettas and frothy comedies when he settled in this country in 1931. The year after he took citizenship, however, his work took on a darker hue and this atmospheric thriller (which is also known as Footsteps in the Sand) almost ranks alongside his best British picture, Poison Pen (1939). Adapted from a hit play by Gordon Sherry, the story turns on the amateur sleuthing of a middle-class housewife, who is convinced that her husband is not the serial killer known as `the Moon Maniac', on account of the fact that he slays women and children at specific times during the lunar cycle. Raymond Massey is typically brooding as the adulterer hiding out in his own home, while Walter Hudd and Henry Oscar provide solid support as his lawyer friend and the investigating inspector. But the picture belongs to Joan Marion. She may not have had the svelte appeal of Coral Browne as the murdered mistress (who would certainly have turned many a head in 1939 for the manner in which she slips off her bathing suit), but she is entirely credible as the loyal wife determined not to let her sense of betrayal cloud her judgement. A few years earlier, Marion had turned down Jack Warner's invitation to come to Hollywood and become the next Bette Davis. But she still made a name for herself in 1934 by starring in two West End plays simultaneously, Without Witness and Men in White. Marion might not have been in Davis's league, but she is every bit as effective here as Claude Friese-Greene's eerie chiaroscuro lighting.

THE GANG'S ALL HERE (1939).

This isn't the Busby Berkeley musical with Carmen Miranda singing `The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat', but a sequel to the Jack Buchanan comedy, Smash and Grab (1937). Following the release of the 20th Century-Fox picture in 1943, its British namesake was redubbed The Amazing Mr Forrest, although it may well have kept its original title had Alfred Hitchcock turned down David O. Selznick and remained in Blighty to direct it. This may seem an unlikely assignment for the Master of Suspense, but Buchanan and Googie Withers had the potential to become a Home Counties variation on the Thin Man duo of Nick and Nora Charles, who were played so peerlessly in six MGM mysteries by William Powell and Myrna Loy. Ultimately, however, this brisk saga was directed by the aforementioned Thornton Freeland, who plays up the comic banter between Buchanan, butler Edward Everett Horton and Cockney sidekick Syd Walker. But there is also plenty to puzzle over, as Buchanan abandons the detective fiction he was planning to write in his retirement to track down £1 million-worth of stolen jewels for former employers, the Stamford Insurance Company. Among the suspects are Walter Rilla, the potentate owner of the gems, American gangster Jack La Rue and the ever menacing Otto Kruger. But, with Robb Wilton and Ronald Shiner in minor comic support, this is always as amusing as it is intriguing.

DEAD MEN ARE DANGEROUS (1939).

Shortly before he signed up to play Horatio alongside Alec Guinness and Michael Redgrave in Laurence Olivier's Old Vic production of Hamlet, Robert Newton landed his first film lead in Harold French's simmering take on the HC Armstrong short story, `Hidden' The plot takes some swallowing, as Newton's struggling writer decides to swap clothing with the corpse he finds under a fallen tree, only for him to become the chief suspect in the Templemere Murder. Unable to let his uncle Kynaston Reeves, cousin Cyril Chamberlain or girlfriend Betty Lynne know that he is alive and well, Newton decides to attend his own inquest. But, while coroner Aubrey Mallalieu and police inspector John Turnbull fail to see through his disguise, actual culprit John Warwick does and he follows Newton in order to find the incriminating notebook that could land him on the gallows. Directing only his second feature after making the transition from acting, French papers over some of the cracks in the screenplay. Moreover, he finds plenty of ironic humour in the premise, particularly when the fugitive reads his glowing obituary and learns that he is being hailed as an undiscovered genius after his oft-rejected novel is published. But French's most laudable achievement lies in persuading the often hammy Newton to underplay the `wrong man' role and, thus, make him seem both pathetic and empathetic.