‘Here come the
Huggetts’ (1948) is the second of four films featuring this ordinary London
family. We first met them in ‘Holiday Camp’, where they proved popular, and the
three eponymous follow ups soon appeared.
They also got their own radio show. When I explain the plot, it will
sound pretty run of the mill. But this
is a hugely funny film and I would urge anyone to seek it out and have a good
old belly laugh at the Huggetts’ antics.
Although the
cast is led by Jack Warner, and it features other male acting luminaries such
as David Tomlinson, this film belongs to the women. Kathleen Harrison delivers comedy platinum as
Ma Huggett – her conversation over the garden fence with her neighbour is funny
enough to make you cry – and it just puts you in the best of moods for the rest
of the film. Diana Dors shows a lesser known comedic talent as the flighty
niece and an angelic teenage Petula Clark plays the cheery younger daughter.
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| Kathleen Harrison by @aitchteee |
I would
summarise the plot as follows: the Huggetts have a telephone installed; the
flighty niece turns up and causes trouble at Pa Huggett’s workplace; some of
the family go and watch the royal wedding procession then the eldest daughter
gets married. Hardly nail-biting stuff, but it tells us a fair bit about British
society at the time. It looks to me like it was a forerunner to the television soap
operas that we have today and so it inevitably uses contemporary concerns to
attract an audience.
The war is not
long finished and it is by no means forgotten – rationing and food shortages
are alluded to. This is possibly the one thing that still affected everybody so
it would have seemed strange to ignore it.
But the other themes thread a solid seam of optimism through the film.
This comes from both official and personal actions. For example, the Huggetts having a telephone
installed shows that some people were now beginning to benefit from a growing
affluence which would develop more fully in the 1950s as the shortage of
materials was eased. At an official
level, the powers that be rolled out a royal wedding to cheer everyone up and
oil the wheels of industry. The film
shows how the marriage of the future Queen Elizabeth became a topic of
conversation; perhaps now and again taking the place of a conversation about
housing or queues. It also gives us a record of what it might have been like to
be present in London on the wedding day, including the sleeping on pavements
and the cardboard periscopes. It
captures an excitement that might only ever be found in London. This storyline
neatly dovetails with that of the eldest Huggett daughter, herself a jittery
bride-to-be. Her eventual capitulation to the institution of marriage leads to
confirmation that it is time to begin to move away from troubles and doubts,
and to take a step forward into a new beginning.
But what of
these doubts about the future? The
invasion of the flighty niece represents the modern world of fast cars and
loose morals. This may have been a worry to family-orientated types at the
time. This is an early sign of the
conflicts that will come along with the new affluence in the next decade. It shows that there were worries about the
divorce rates and the collapse of the family unit in the post war period. But the errant girl gets her commuppance
alright and she singularly fails to undermine the foundations of the Huggett’s
marriage. By having unshakable faith in each other, this trouble is
combated. It shows viewers how to conduct themselves in
order to share in the optimism delivered in the other storylines.
‘Here Come The
Huggetts’ is a wonderful and cosy view of a shaky nation finding its feet. It is a call for hope.
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