With the exception of screen adaptations of the Aldwych farces, the best British film comedy in the 1930s relied on recruited stars from music hall and revue. Hay (1888-1949), who had spent years on the Moss Empires theatre circuit honing his flustered schoolmaster sketch, was a prime example, but, unlike many of his cohorts, he took the process of filmmaking seriously.
Alongside the schoolmaster comedies, including Boys Will Be Boys, Good Morning Boys, and The Ghost of St Michael's, Hay played variations on his basic character prototype of a cynical chancer, promoted beyond his depth and trying to get by via bluster and deceit. Beyond the aforementioned films, Hay deployed the type to good effect in Ask a Policeman (playing a police sergeant), Where's That Fire? (as a fire chief) and The Black Sheep of Whitehall (as a professor). Of all of them, Oh, Mr. Porter! is widely agreed to be the best.
In this film, he is the hapless master of the dilapidated country station of Buggleskelly, on the Northern Irish border, facing the sack until he succeeds in foiling a group of gun runners. The film's rustically imaginative sets and props, as well as the lively performances of other cast members, elevate Oh, Mr. Porter! beyond that of a standard 1930s star vehicle.
It is directed by Marcel Varnel, a Paris-born filmmaker with Hollywood experience, who helmed seven other Hay comedies. Hay (as William Porter) begins the story as a chirpy wheeltapper, but nepotism leads to his being assigned to Buggleskelly, 'a country station rather off the beaten track that has mysteriously seen off five-station masters in 12 months.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
