Spotlight on Ask a Policeman 4

What, With This Car?

The three heroes of “Ask a Policeman” have their cushy lives rumbled when the BBC come along to celebrate the “lack of crime” in Turnbotham Round. A letter from the powers that be states that as there is no crime in the village, there is no need for their jobs to exist. They then of course set themselves the task of defeating a few crimes in order to keep their paypackets, and the crime that they have chosen to defeat is speeding. Some of the best scenes in the film follow, as they measure out timings and distance and attempt to catch drivers in the act of breaking the law.

I wondered how much of a problem speeding actually was in 1939 – not nearly as much as today of course, when everyone has a car that is capable of going over the limit, and when our cars are such quiet and comfortable bubbles that people often speed without realising. But I searched the newspaper archive for reports on the subject from that year and found some quite amusing little snippets:

Sunderland Echo, May 1939

A fine of 40 shillings was imposed at Sunderland Crown Court today…Mr S was alleged to have travelled at speeds as high as 45 mph in a built up area. When told of the offence by P.C. R he replied “What? With this car?”

Express & Echo, April 1939

“How unkind of you” was the reply of a woman motorist of Taunton, when told by a police officer that she would be reported for having exceeded the 30 mph speed limit. She also observed “one does not notice the speed, does one?” She was fined £1.

Sheffield Evening Telegraph, August 1939

The Sheffield United goalkeeper was fined 40 shillings at Barnsley for his excessive speed. When asked to account for this, he replied that he was “in a hurry to get to Leeds.”

I’ve heard of people being in a hurry to get away from Leeds before, but never to the 3^rd best city in Yorkshire…

The outbreak of the war in September considerably reduced the number of speeding cases. From an average of 2,500 cases per month in the first part of the year, in November there were less than 1,000 cases.

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Spotlight on Ask a Policeman 3

Harbottle’s Stores

Will Hay’s sidekicks, Moore Marriott (the old man) and Graham Moffatt (the fat lad) are as well-loved as the main man himself. Marriott plays old Harbottle, prematurely aged after seeing the headless horseman driving the phantom hearse. It made all his teeth fall out. The scene where he explains this to the Chief Inspector is priceless.

When he isn’t doing his constable-ing around Turnbotham Round, Harbottle runs the local stores. This shop offers a wonderful peep into rural retail customs of the day. Next time you watch ‘Ask a Policeman’ (you never watch this film just once, it bears repeated viewings) take your eyes off the main characters while they are in the stores and see what’s going on in the background.

First of all there is the library, with its notice imploring readers not to tear out pages. It seems rather a limited selection and I’m sure local avid bookworms would not be satisfied! Before local authorities opened public libraries, then you would have to use a subscription library within a shop – Boots famously ran one for several years and it features in ‘Brief Encounter’.

Then we have the brilliant notice outside the shop  - “Funerals undertaken and other odd jobs”. It seems Harbottle was happy to bury your granny and put your shelves up on the same day.

Then there is the bizarre mix of products on sale, which includes broken biscuits and dog biscuits – hope he never mixed the two up…

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Spotlight on Ask a Policeman 2

The Real Smugglers of 1939

Much of the fun in ‘Ask a Policeman’ is based around smuggling. The proper old fashioned smuggling that abounds in Cornish legend and the like – barrels of rum left in caves, mysterious lights and tunnels, villagers that clam up when a stranger is within earshot. I wanted to know if this kind of smuggling did still go on in 1939, or if Will and the gang were just taking us back in time to distract from the imminent world war.

I only came across one newspaper report from 1939 that was anything like the old smuggling stories – and this smacked more of ‘Whisky Galore’. In July of that year, ‘The Cornishman’ newspaper reported that casks of wine from a recent shipwreck were being washed up on Cornish beaches, and that the locals were rolling them home and getting drunk on the contents, making themselves “insensible”. As you would. But the more upright members of society were discussing whether the smuggling laws applied to this case because the intoxication was untaxed. So dry were the legal points being discussed in this case, I couldn’t be bothered to find out what the upshot was. Sorry.

Beware of toothless old men offering sweets

But taking a more serious turn, a search for the keyword of smuggling in the newspaper reports of 1939 turned up something else entirely. The biggest smuggling operation of that year involved people. Here are two sobering reports:

Birmingham Daily Post, May 1939

“A 28 year old former Austrian, now without a country, who was smuggled into England for £5 and started a greengrocery business in Birmingham pleaded guilty at police court of landing in the UK without permission.”

Sunderland Echo, March 1939

“An ex-sergeant of the Vienna police who was said to have been smuggled into England after being in a concentration camp pleaded guilty at Hove to having landed without permission.”

None of the reports say what happened next….

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Spotlight on Ask a Policeman 1

In the Air

‘Ask a Policeman’, one of Will Hay’s finest films, was released on 28^th August 1939 - a turbulent year in British history. The next few posts will look at some rather serious historical points that this extremely funny film raises, but let’s begin by looking at items of news reported in the Daily Mirror on that day:

That man Hitler dominated the main headline, as he had refused all talks with the Poles. And to prove that it was obvious to all that war would be declared the following week, child evacuation plans were well under way. Teachers had been recalled from their summer holidays in order to rehearse the evacuation process, while 250,000 parents were given advice.  London Fire Brigade officers had also been told to cut short holidays and return to duty. There must have been a sense of impending doom hanging over London at that point – I wonder if people found ‘Ask a Policeman’ helpful in temporarily forgetting their worries, or if personal anxieties over-rode the wonderful sense of comedy in this film and it only began to be properly appreciated later on.

In lighter news, nine wedding guests got stuck in a lift in Stepney and the bride was completely unaware at the time. Meanwhile, there is the heart-warming story of two sisters who shared children. One sister had given birth to two children, while the other one’s union had not been blessed with the bawling of tiny lungs. The children therefore spent alternate weeks at each house, swapping over every Saturday. Without knowing the children, it is difficult to pinpoint which sister was kindly and generous – the one who gave her pride and joy away every other week, or the one who gave her sister a well needed break…Depends on whether they were the kind of kids who got sent to St Michaels' doesn’t it?

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The First Frenchman of British Film

Like many of George Formby’s previous films, ‘Get Cracking’ was directed by Marcel Varnel. Varnel also worked with other British comedy legends such as Arthur Askey and Will Hay (and I will be focussing on ‘Ask a Policeman’ next). Surely the man who turned out such loved and remembered comedy classics as ‘Oh, Mr Porter!’ should be a bit more famous than he seems to be.

I searched the British Newspaper Archive for his obituary to try and find out more about his life. However, all I could find was the same single paragraph marking his death, tucked away at the bottom of the page in numerous provincial news sheets.  And it’s not as if he died when his star had long since faded.

Don't be fooled by the friendly smile...the man'a foreigner doncha know.

Varnel was killed in 1947, when he was aged just 53. He had been working up to the end, and his car crash death was unexpected. But there it is – a single paragraph stating that the French-born Varnel had trained in Hollywood then spent the 1930s and 40s making films in Britain. They all stressed that he was a British citizen at the time of his death, as if that had some kind of bearing on his demise, or the sadness of it. There is no mention of family, no quotes from Formby or Askey. What a sad dismissal from this life for someone who helped to make so many people happy. It just goes to show that directors then were held in nothing like the esteem that they are today.

I can only find two write-ups on Marcel Varnel that are anything approaching more in-depth than his sad obituary. One of these is his page on the BFI website – not contemporary with his life or death of course. There is also an article about ‘Oh, Mr Porter!’ in the Coventry Evening Telegraph (November 1937) that does give us a glimpse behind the curtain. It points out how remarkable Varnel’s success is…

“…but then you probably forget that Varnel is a Frenchman. For a foreigner to grasp and handle such essential English humour…is an achievement.”

It seems that Varnel was viewed as a Frenchman first and Director second. What a difference a few miles of water can make to a man’s reputation.

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Spotlight on George Formby's Get Cracking 7

More Musings

During the course of ‘Get Cracking’ we get other glimpses of wartime initiatives. While introducing his new tank to the people of Minor Wallop, George gets back into the sulking Mary’s good books by using it to help her to sell saving stamps. The government encouraged people to use their national savings scheme in order to fund the war. Stamps could be purchased for various amounts and stuck onto a card. Full cards could then be exchanged for a bond which attracted a good interest rate. This use of a tank to help publicise them reflected real life, where communities might be encouraged to buy enough stamps to meet the cost of a Spitfire.

 Strangest wartime glimpse of them all in this film is the young girl evacuee that is billeted at George’s house.  For the purposes of the film it appears that they live together alone, something that is highly incongruous to modern eyes. Perhaps another example of Formby trying, but being no longer able to pass himself off as a youngster. Having said that, there is one scene where a housekeeper figures appears to be hovering in the background, waiting to take the young girl inside.  But still, would a single little girl have been billeted with a single man? I’m torn between finding this hard to believe and that knowledge that evacuees were often difficult to place – and perhaps some were put into unsuitable houses just to get them off the billeting officer’s hands. Or is it all artistic licence?

My new collection of short stories is available for download now. Three of the five stories are set in wartime Skipton, Yorkshire. Each one was inspired by a Yorkshire Post newspaper article about something connected with the Belle Vue Mill, home of the Sylko cotton reel.

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Spotlight on George Formby's Get Cracking 6

Tank Top

After George’s disgrace over failing to secure the spare gun for Minor Wallop Home Guard, he must redeem himself. This is what George Formby films are all about, after all. And this redemption stays on the theme of weaponry by George constructing himself a tank. That’s right lads and lasses, a tank.  In civilian life, George is a mechanic, running his own garage that currently boasts no petrol and no spares. So, he is able to spend his days converting his work truck with corrugated iron pinched from a chicken coop. Back in the platoon’s good books, George and his tank (christened Mary Mk 1) are commissioned to represent Minor Wallop in manoeuvres against Major Wallop. Being on the receiving end of Ronald Shiner’s dirty tricks, George gets properly shot at by the real army while he is in the process of invading the neighbouring village.  But of course, George rolls into Major Wallop triumphant and gets a promotion to boot.  Finally, the two platoons are told that they are to merge – which they agree to do quite happily – and they begin making plans to trounce another neighbouring settlement’s platoon. After all at the bottom of it, they are all one against Jerry.

Formby sang about Frank on his Tank being a Swank - then built his own!

Along the way, there is a reminder of a more sinister aspect of the Home Guard’s manoeuvres – that is, what they have been formed to do. George has difficulty in getting his tank going because he is missing a rotor arm for the truck’s engine.  We learn during the process that rotor arms had been removed from the engines of vehicles in case of invasion – an early immobiliser. The invasion that was so anticipated in the early 1940s never took place, so we don’t fully know what tactics the Home Guard would have used to hold enemy forces back…but this little part of the storyline gives us one clue and it is momentarily sobering – invasion really could have happened, and how many of these parochial soldiers that we now laugh at every week in ‘Dad’s Army’ and in this film would have given up their lives?

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Spotlight on George Formby's Get Cracking 5

Home Guard Games

The story within the film ‘Get Cracking’ is all rather like an extended episode of ‘Dad’s Army’ and one wonders how well Croft and Perry knew this film. George Formby plays a member (occasional Corporal) of the Home Guard in the village of Minor Wallop. The story begins, after the initial scene setting, when it is discovered that a gun has been left at the local railway station goods depot without a label. A porter telephones to see if it belongs to their platoon, or to the one at Major Wallop. George is immediately despatched on his motor bike to go and claim it before the Major Wallopers hear about it. But the Home Guard office is situated in the back room of the pub, and little do they know, but the barmaid is a fifth columnist. She fancies Ronald Shiner’s character, who is part of Major Wallop’s platoon. The barmaid telephones Shiner and delivers the information on the gun in the hope of a back row liaison at the flicks in return. Shiner’s character sets out for the gun too, and the usual trademark Formby chaos ensues as they collide, then fight to get there first. George loses the gun and to add insult to injury he is accused of giving the game away. He is stripped of his stripe and is in disgrace. So, what with the local Home Guard rivalry between platoons and the acute lack of proper weapons there is more than a touch of Dad’s Army here.

You can have a gun and no uniform, or you can have a uniform and no gun, but you can't have both.

 Of course, I’m not accusing Croft and Perry of plagiarism – the point is that they both reflect the Home Guard as it was, each corroborating the other’s evidence.  It is known that the lack of available uniform and weaponry beset the Local Defence volunteers from the beginning. But I think that it also shows what we all suspect about men of a certain age. Get them together in a unit that has to compete with another one, then they will try their best to outdo each other at all costs as if they were back in the playground!

Mention must also be made at this point of the welcome appearance of E V H Emmett’s voice as the film opens. The famous tones of the Gaumont News narrator (well known to Carry on fans as the voiceover in ‘Carry On Cleo’) is used to commentate on the initial formation of the Home Guard in Major and Minor Wallop, describing how one got weapons while the other got uniform. He really gets the film going with a smile and sets the scene brilliantly.

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Spotlight on George Formby's Get Cracking 4

Dinah Might

George’s potential squeeze in ‘Get Cracking’ is Dinah Sheridan, aged 23 and at the start of her career. Dinah will always be best known to me (and probably much of my generation) as the mother in the 1970s film of ‘The Railway Children’ and to see her so early on in her life is a happy curiosity. But she does seem to be rather an odd choice for the role of Mary Pemberton. Both George and the actor who plays Mary’s father (Lancashire born Frank Pettingell) sound as northern and as common as can be, while she talks like she has half a pound of plums in her gob and it’s just too noticeable and incongruous. I have to really try hard to believe that snooty Mary fancies dippy George. Lovely as she is, I can’t think why they chose her. I wonder if it was an attempt to appeal to the officers as well as the privates in the Home Guard audience?

"I can't tell a word you're saying"

A much better bit of casting is the glorious appearance from one of my favourite bit-part actresses, Irene Handl. She ramps up the dizzy, wandering in and out of the Home Guard office wittering on about “our Ben”, a mythical character who is always elsewhere. My favourite part is where she comes in seeking the teapot, and finds that their Ben, the tidy soul, has put it in the filing cabinet (under T of course). She adds a great bit of down-to-earth fun to the film and it would be much duller without her. Here we see on screen the forerunner of those Carry On characters that Irene was to so memorably play over a decade later on.

Her role also serves to re-inforce the message that these Local Defence Volunteers were ordinary men with other lives running parallel. Much is made at the beginning of the film of the trouble of fitting guard duties around social lives – you can’t put so and so down for Tuesday because that’s his night at the flicks and so on. The Home Guard had jobs, meetings to attend, courting to do and dippy sisters chasing round after them. It puts the British in a good light – that men were doing this job out of choice, and not because it had been dictated to them.

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Spotlight on George Formby's Get Cracking 3

George v Ronald

‘Get Cracking’ was released in May 1943 – that same month George Formby turned 39 years of age.  His film career was drawing to a close, only 4 more would follow, with ‘Civvy Street’ being his final release three years later. At this point in time, his work in entertaining the troops for ENSA was as well-known as his on-screen entertainments. Perhaps you could say that ‘Get Cracking’ was an extension of this, as he entertained the Home Guard by having a laugh with them at their under-equipped exploits. But after the war ended, George’s career in film stalled. Instead, he had to capitalise on his touring success and he took his act to Africa and Australia. His next big thing in his home country would be his appearance on the West End stage in the play ‘Zip Goes a Million’ in 1951.

There are two good reasons why George’s film career came to a close. Firstly, he had typecast himself as the innocent Lancashire lad, who got himself into daft scrapes but always got the girl. By the time he turned 40, this was getting a bit tired, perhaps also slightly weird.  As he started to look his age, the unworldly-wise act didn’t wash quite so well. His love interest in ‘Get Cracking’ is Dinah Sheridan, who turned 23 in 1943, making George very nearly old enough to be her father.

But also, the war had changed audiences. Compare George’s continuing happy-go-lucky output with the films that Powell and Pressburger were turning out as the war drew to a close. Ours was a nation that was now bereaved, thoughtful and ready for change. George represented pre-war days of seaside trips, motorbike racing and cheeky innocence and perhaps everyone was now just a bit tired of all that.

It is interesting to compare the post war careers of George with his ‘Get Cracking’ nemesis Ronald Shiner. Shiner had been in several of George’s previous films and from memory I seem to think that he usually portrayed the petty villain in some way. I personally always see Shiner as being a wrong-un, which is probably unfair to the actor behind the roles, who may well have been the salt of the earth.  But where George faded, Ronald prospered. He went on to work with the likes of Arthur Askey and Margaret Rutherford and in 1952 he was voted the most popular male film star. After working with George one last time in ‘Civvy Street’ he went on to appear in more than 20 other films. The more cynical kind of character that he was good at – the spiv, the petty crook, the streetwise chum – were in demand.  The film world at least had tipped in favour of Ronald’s type.

Ronald retired in the early 60s to run a pub before his death in 1966 while George’s life ended with some acrimony and scandal. Funny how the roles seem reversed at the end.

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Spotlight on George Formby's Get Cracking 2

Geography with George

The action in ‘Get Cracking’ takes place around the villages of Major Wallop and Minor Wallop. The idea for these names of course comes from the actual Wallop villages in Hampshire (Over Wallop, Middle Wallop and Nether Wallop, south west of Andover).  Such is the delightful nonsense of the name Wallop that Will Hay also put it to use – the action in ‘Where’s That Fire’ takes place in Bishop’s Wallop. A name I am so fond of that I stole it for my novella ‘Temporary Accommodation’.  Has anyone named a craft beer Bishop’s Wallop yet? If not, they ought to.

Will Hay films are a great source of made up place names. I also love the setting for his ‘Ask a Policeman’ – Turnbotham Round.  If you are reading this blog post in another part of the world, you might need to be told that Turnbotham is pronounced “Turnbottom” before you get the humour. That’s another thing that we are good at in this country – place names that are not pronounced how they are spelled.  One of George’s co-stars in ‘Get Cracking’, Edward Rigby, also features in a film called ‘Don’t Take it to Heart’ (1944).  In this chucklefest of a film, we are introduced to the fictional village of Chaunduyt, but we soon learn that it is pronounced “Condit”.   It’s a great send up of those pockets of rural Britain where there hasn’t been an injection of fresh bloodstock for far too long.

Rigby and Formby

There are hours of fun to be gleaned from English placenames. People are always compiling lists of double-entendre geography and the area around the real Wallop villages (Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire) is particularly blessed. What with names that have the River Piddle as their source and places that sound like a retired Victorian Colonel with a big moustache and ruddy cheeks (Glanvilles Wooton, Compton Chamberlayne, Brown Candover).  We have our rich and chequered history of language and settlers to thank for this and of course our early film industry was going to mine this comedic seam.

As for places that sound different to how they are spelled – every county has places like this. The town where I live is almost always pronounced wrong if we ever get a mention on national television (usually thanks to our famous MP). Bolsover is pronounced “Bolzovva” by residents, but southern TV types usually give it a soft s and a full English pronunciation of the “over” bit. This is how they know when strangers are in town and know when to light the torches and sharpen the pitchforks. I tease, I am from the big city…although me and my children marvel sometimes at how we are the only family here not related to everyone else.  In ‘Don’t Take it to Heart’, Chaunduyt is portrayed as a place stuck in the past, where strangers are frowned upon as foreigners or socialists – perhaps place pronunciation is a quick method of identification of friend or foe, dating back to when these things really were important.

Click here to download my own Bishop's Wallop story - Temporary Accommodation

Spotlight on George Formby's Get Cracking 1

A Peach of a Playwright

I’m going to start my Spotlight on George Formby’s “Get Cracking” by looking at one of the screenwriters. The 1943 Home Guard themed film was based on a play originally written by L du Garde Peach – famous for writing the Ladybird Adventure from History books.  Peach also contributed to the screenplay along with Edward Dryhurst and Michael Vaughan. So, you could say that Peach has a significant role at the root of this film. How close the film runs to the original play (called “According to Plan”) I’m not sure, as I have not seen a copy of the script. However, Peach recorded in his book “25 Years of Play Producing” that he thought that his original play was unrecognisable on the screen and that he was glad of this fact.

Although he is now only remembered for his Ladybird books, this is just one small part of the career of my fellow Sheffield-born Lawrence du Garde Peach. After studying English at universities in Manchester and Germany, he was then caught up in World War One. Presumably due to his fluency in the German language, he was given a role in intelligence after a spell in the Manchester regiment.  He survived the conflict and began contributing articles to Punch magazine while lecturing in English at Exeter University. His articles in Punch were popular and this led to him being offered work on the radio. He was an acknowledged pioneer of plays for the radio and by 1937 over 100 of his works had been heard in parlours throughout the land.  During this period he also established the ‘Little Theatre’ in Great Hucklow, near Buxton in Derbyshire. This was where he settled when he was able to earn his living purely through writing – he knew it from spending childhood summers there at a religious holiday home with his father, who was a minister. The Great Hucklow players achieved some fame between the wars and attracted audiences from far afield.

His radio play success had led to several screenwriting roles in the 1930s; and then when World War Two arrived, L du G became a Major in the Home Guard. This role, it seems, was a mine of inspiration for his wartime work.  And so we arrive at “Get Cracking”. This was his final credit in films, but by no means the end of his writing career. Much of his radio career involved writing small plays for Children’s Hour on historical subjects, which in the 1950s led to his Ladybird Adventures From History.

I have now produced a small book about L du Garde Peach - click here to purchase. Kindle download also available.

Spotlight on Brief Encounter 10

Three Films

Throughout World War Two, Noel Coward and David Lean collaborated on three films

In Which We Serve (1942)

This Happy Breed (1944)

Brief Encounter (1945)

Lean directed, while Coward came up with the story.

One of Laura Jesson’s lines in ‘Brief Encounter’ is

“I didn’t know that such violent things could happen to ordinary people.”

An earthquake in tweed

This sums up what the Coward/Lean wartime partnership was all about.  ‘In Which We Serve’ is about the ordinary Brit facing the violence of war – at sea and in port as both the sailors and their wives are put in mortal danger. ‘This Happy Breed’ follows an ordinary family facing the many trials that life had to offer in the early 20^th Century, including death and fates considered to be worse than death. And so the pattern continued with ‘Brief Encounter.’ This time though, the violence is that of complicated love – not quite the same as that faced by women in the previous two films but all the same, this is how Laura feels.  As with the previous two films, it does reflect events that were common to a lot of the British public at this time. By 1945, quite a lot of women had fallen for men who were not their husbands. The evidence can be found in contemporary newspapers.

In January 1945, the Gloucester Citizen reported that the London divorce courts were trying 65 cases per day.

In October 1945, the Lancashire Evening Post reported that the divorce of Winston Churchill’s daughter Sarah was granted at the same time as 291 others.

I must also put a word in for the autobiography of Doreen Hawkins – ‘Drury Lane to Dimapur’. This gives a fascinating description of the process of a post-war divorce, which she went through before marrying her second husband, Jack Hawkins. She also mentions the sheer volume of divorces being handled at that time, and the temporary buildings that had to be given over to get through them all.

Marriage was another, major casualty of World War Two, and though Coward gives it a discreet, middle class treatment, we get a glimpse of the turmoil that it caused. 

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Spotlight on Brief Encounter 9

Laura Jesson’s Guide to Train Travel Etiquette

1. Never stand too close to the edge of the platform when the express is due. A piece of grit is bound to fly up and lodge itself in one’s eye. As well as the immediate pain, there is a high risk of falling in love with the person who removes it for you. Stand right against the nearest wall and look away. Better still; take cover in the ladies’ waiting room.

2. In Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’ it is stated that “one should always have something sensational to read on the train.” Nonsense. One should read either a library book (from a subscription library of course, not a council one) or The Times. On no account complete the crossword in The Times – leave this for one’s husband. In any case, frown lines may be caused by thinking about the answers with too much concentration.

3. When sharing a compartment with an acquaintance that won’t stop talking, it is permissible to fake an illness or extreme fatigue, both of which necessitate a nap. There is no other means of escape without seeming dreadfully rude.

The 'Leaning out of the Open Window' position is only permisable after 12 noon

4. Remember that this is England, and do not speak to those sharing your compartment unless you have been formally introduced.  However, if it is necessary to leave the compartment suddenly, then an explanation is permissible.  So, if one boards a train and then decides that indeed one is only middle aged once, and that invitation to a liaison simply cannot be resisted after all, then one should:

-Affect a worried expression

-Give up one’s seat

-Say to the compartment in general “Oh! I’ve forgotten something.”

-Bustle back on the platform with purpose

This manoeuvre is quite acceptable in polite society.

5. One may spend a train journey staring through the window – but only if one has a corner seat.  If sat in a middle seat, then looking out of the window may involve accidently looking at another person, which is simply not done.

If staring through the window and it becomes dark, people may think that you are vainly staring at your own reflection, so remember to cast eyes downwards or move the eyeballs about. The same applies if it is dark and you are using the reflection of the compartment to keep an eye on the hatless character in the corner.

6. When travelling on a regular route, select a landmark at which alighting preparations should be launched. Mostly, this simply means straightening ones hat and powdering one’s nose. Arrival on the destination platform with an incandescent nose could cause the guard to blow his whistle prematurely.

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Spotlight on Brief Encounter 8

Myrtle Bagot’s Bath Buns

Taken from a 1950s Good Housekeeping Recipe Book:

1lb flour

6oz butter

1oz yeast

1-2oz sugar

¼ pint milk

2 eggs

3oz sultanas

2oz chopped peel

½ lemon

5oz caster sugar

Egg & milk glaze

Crushed loaf sugar

Warm and sieve flour and rub in fat. Cream yeast with 1 tsp sugar and add lukewarm milk. Beat eggs and sugar, mix with yeast and pour into  a well in the flour.  Beat well, adding more milk if required to make a soft, sticky mixture, cover with a clean, damp cloth and put to rise about 1 hour, or until it doubles in size. Mix sultanas, peel, grated rind and caster sugar, and warm slightly. Place on a floured board and mix in fruit roughly – do not knead in. Divide into 12-14 roughly shaped buns and put on greased tin. Prove 5-10 minutes, glaze and sprinkle with crushed sugar; bake in a hot oven (450F or gas mark 8) for 20 minutes.

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Spotlight on Brief Encounter 7

The Tealady & Albert

If Laura and Alec wear the tragedy masks, Albert Godby (Stanley Holloway) and Myrtle Bagot (Joyce Carey) wear the comedy ones. But is the thing that makes them so amusing the idea that they are “at it” at their age?

If a young sailor came into the refreshment room and tried to goose young Beryl; that would be a matter of course in those days. But when old Albert gets frisky with the middle aged Myrtle, it gives us all a good laugh (although of course some of this is down to the excellent comedy talents of the actors behind the characters). I wonder what the age difference is meant to be between the two couples? It was more difficult to say in those days because everyone seemed to look old after a certain point. I recently read a family memoir by one of my favourite authors, Margaret Forster. She compares her own life to that of her mother and grandmother in “Hidden Lives” and it is fascinating. She includes a photograph of her mother at the age I am now – 45 – and she looks like a tired, wrinkly old granny! These days we try harder to cling on to our youth and embrace diversity in hairstyles and clothes rather than sink gracefully into a pinny and perm. Back in the 1940s, it seems that once you had turned 30 you accepted old age and surgical stockings and that was that. Also, life was harsher and this showed in the face.

How old are Alec and Laura meant to be? They have young children and Laura’s appear on screen and look to be under 10 years old. Women tended to have children earlier in their twenties back then so I think that this puts her a little above 30. Alec also speaks of young children, he must be in his thirties too. There’s not a lot to go on in terms of aging Myrtle Bagot. She’s been married, divorced and seen off a gentleman ‘business partner’. Perhaps she is meant to be 10-15 years older than Laura.

The ages of the actors involved when the film was released are as follows:

Celia 37, Trevor 32, Joyce 47, Stanley 55. At 45 I certainly feel more of a Myrtle than a Laura. If a young doctor started paying me attentions I’d tell him to push off and leave me alone to drink tea and eat buns in peace. Myrtle holds no doe-eyed romantic thoughts about Albert either. She’s going to make him work hard to prove himself worthy of her and that’s where we get our fun.

 

The sugar's in the spoon...

But it wasn’t all fun being older and single back in the 1930s and 40s. Myrtle’s life has obviously been unsettled while it emerges that Albert lives in lodgings with a mad animal menagerie. A life in lodgings for a gentleman is something that I looked at in my ‘Lavender Hill Mob’ post a few years back. I mused:

  "The Lavender Hill Mob" shows the two main characters each having rooms in a lodging house (or 'private hotel') which is shared by several people.  This is how they meet and formulate the robbery. This gives us a peep at how some single men of the lower middle class lived then.  I wonder how much of this situation was due to the housing shortage, and how much was due to these men never having learned to look after themselves?  It would have been assumed in their upbringing that there would always be a female in their life to see to domestic matters.  Neither of these characters are married so they have placed themselves in the care of a landlady.  In modern times, they would most likely live alone in a small flat each (if not even still be at home with parents!)

To be growing old and not have a home of your own must have been awfully depressing. No wonder Albert was so persistent in his pursuit of the hand that baked those delightful Bath Buns. We can laugh, but old Albert and Myrtle seem to get their happy ending after he saves her from the lippy soldiers – and they will appreciate each other much more than Laura or Alec ever would.

Get your copy of my 1940s novella here!

Spotlight on Brief Encounter 6

The History of Celia and Trevor

“Brief Encounter” was Trevor Howard’s ‘breakthrough role’ in modern parlance. Until then, he had only had a couple of bit parts in wartime flicks such as “The Way to the Stars”.  Of course, he wasn’t new to acting, he had put in some well received performances on the stage, both in the West End and in Stratford-on-Avon.  He had also studied at RADA. But to give someone such an intense role without a solid cinematic track record seems to be rather a risk. However, it paid off.  Celia does get all of the acting plaudits it is true. The crew seem to have preferred working with her too, finding her more professional and efficient. There seems to have been issues with Trevor taking a slack attitude to learning his lines. But it is difficult to imagine anyone other than him playing Dr Alec Harvey.

Howard’s personal life is in fact rather more interesting than his role. In 1940 he joined the Royal Signals and publicity from early on in his career suggested acts of heroism. After his death, it emerged that these heroisms were fictional and he had in fact been invalided out due to mental health issues. These perhaps stem from his early life. He was born in Cliftonville in 1913, but moved around a lot with his mother, while his father worked in insurance.  It seems that he was left alone regularly, and reading between the lines he may well have grown up lonely and feeling unloved by his parents.  Perhaps he forever sought approval, no matter the morality behind his actions.

Off screen he lived for cricket – and a regular tipple. He married actress Helen Cherry.

"I have promised David Lean not to punch you on the nose today"

Celia Johnson was a little more experienced than Trevor Howard, and had appeared in two previous Noel Coward/David Lean collaborations – “In Which We Serve” and “This Happy Breed.” Previous to her appearance in film she had also had a successful stage career throughout the 1930s after finishing her course of study at RADA.

It is said that Celia turned to film and radio work because of other pressures that made taking on a long London theatre run undesirable. Married to journalist Peter Fleming (brother of Bond writer Ian), she had given birth to the first of her three children in 1939. When war broke out, she took on several roles outside of the entertainment industry. She enrolled as an Auxiliary Policewoman in Henley-on-Thames as well as helping to maintain the farm that she lived on. She also took in several relatives – and all this while her career continued, albeit at a lower key.

I read recently that Celia earned considerably more than Trevor for her role in “Brief Encounter”. If this is true – how refreshing!  She certainly deserved it, and apparently had to show a great deal of patience as well as talent, sitting through numerous takes while Howard fluffed his lines. Although the pair got on alright, no great friendship blossomed on this film set.

Celia had been hand- picked by Coward to play Laura Jesson and he was very pleased at being proved correct. I’ll finish with a typically modest entry in Coward’s diary from June 1945:

“Saw a very rough cut of “Brief Encounter”. Delighted with it. Celia quite wonderful, Trevor fine and obviously a new star. Whole thing beautifully played and directed – and, let’s face it, most beautifully written.”

More wartime stories can be found in my book inspired by Celia's friend, Joyce Grenfell

Spotlight on Brief Encounter 5

What Did We Do Before We Had Boxes to Stare At?

Laura Jesson’s reverie about her fleeting romance with Alec takes place in her sitting room at home. This gives us a little look at the kind of thing that middle class people got up to after their evening meal, before the ubiquity of television.  What was a married couple to do to avoid too much contact with one another?

·        Well, there’s always the radio. A bit of Rachmaninov, nice and loud, can drown out any boring conversation.

·        The Times crossword is the perfect way to temporarily forget the futility of life – and if you fill in some of the squares you boost your self-esteem to boot. If your spouse is feeling a tad dejected, then boost their self-esteem by asking them to complete one of the clues that falls within their field of knowledge. They might not look so bloody miserable then.

·        Wives might like to do something with their hands. This is useful tool in resisting the inevitable temptation to throttle their husband as they drone on about what thingummy said to doo-dah when the latest sales figures came in.  Knitting or sewing are the usual activities although sharp pointy things in jabby fingers may not always be a wise choice.

·        There is always your library book, which you can hold at an angle that will prevent you having to look at your spouse. Borrow this from Boots of course, a nice middle class place with a pleasant smell. Not the corporation library which is for grubby poor people. 

"It's alright,darling, I know you didn't really mean to shove that crochet hook up my nostril..."

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