London Town (1946)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Absolutely brilliant

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

A good musical must have some tuneful melodies,reasonable book and not outsmart its welcome.This film fails on all three counts.Furthermore it has Sid Field in the lead.Now whilst this may be a good thing for music hall historians he simply is not up to the lead role in a film.Furthermore if you don't enjoy the humour of his sketches then you really are stuck.He has a good supporting cast in Claude Hulbert Sonnie Hale and Jerry Desmonde.It is difficult to understand why Rank let Wesley Ruggles direct it,then allow it to be released in a version over two hours long.By 1950 Rank was overdrawn by millions of pounds and brought in John Davis to wield the axe.

Now that the full film is finally available on DVD, complete with the deleted scenes restored in the right order, the film is no longer to be seen as such a turkey. It lost money, embarrassed it's backer's, affected careers, and was badly directed by Wesley Ruggles, brought in at Sid Fields request. It still suffers from a missing laughter track in some sketches, and due to his sudden demise, few know Sid Fields huge reputation as a top comic. Rank tore the film apart in efforts to get it through the US censor system, added the cost of the rebuild of Shepperton to the bills, and restricted the distribution to the UK at first. The film is not bad, just disjointed in places, with a poor story line, but the musical numbers work fine. Sid Fields routines are flat because there is no audience roaring with mirth at his every prat fall and joke. The 1980's issue made things worst, with numbers chopped and altered in order, making it a mess from start to finish. But now restored, even the joke apology ending, and re-ordered, it works as a fine nostalgic look at a 1940's review show, in excellent colour, and now very pristine look. Kay Kendal said it ruined her career, yes, but because it stalled at the US box office, not because it was bad, after all it did good business in the UK when new. She had been slated for stardom before the film, and lots of publicity was given , that backfired when they could not sell it to the US distributors, leaving her career in limbo.

For the first few scenes I couldn't understand why this production had a bad name: the film was interesting, engaging, affectionate -- even funny. Sid Field's impromptu staging of "You Can't Keep A Good Dreamer Down" (evidently a domestic bed-time tradition) is very enjoyable, and the segue into the dream sequence which ends with him arriving on the stage of the theatre -- and waking up! -- is ingenious and well done. Even if nowadays the rooftop dance carries inevitable echoes of "Mary Poppins", these can scarcely be laid at the door of a 1946 production.At the theatre the first of the film's plot revelations proves equally effective, and the important sparring relationship is established between the show's lead comedian, hypochondriac Charlie De Haven, and its producer, the elegant Mrs Barry. In fact, as long as the action stays behind the scenes it doesn't go far wrong, though the vagaries of the plot mean that Kay Kendall is rarely seen out of the heavy stage make-up which makes her look older and harder than her nineteen years, and her romantic relationship with Jerry Ruggles, the hero, is a bit arbitrary.It's unclear why stage star Sonnie Hale was engaged to play the rival comedian, since the plot never actually allows us to see the character's stage performance. However, the part makes good use of his acting talents, especially in scenes with Mrs Barry (a glamorous Greta Gynt) and with Charlie's long-suffering dresser Belgrave (an outstanding turn from Claude Hulbert), and acid put-downs against the unfortunate Jerry are deployed to entertaining effect. Jerry Desmonde (Sid Field's real-life 'straight man') also makes a favourable impression as urbane George, the other half of the act.And while it's always risky to rely on child actors to play a pivotal part in the plot, Petula Clark is note-perfect here as Jerry's daughter. In the absence of a mother-figure (the former Mrs Ruggles evidently long deceased) the two of them form a convincingly close unit, with the little girl alternately managing her father with a briskly adult air or engaging in mutually childish behaviour. Her trips to the joke-shop are adroitly established before it turns out to be crucial to the outcome of the story, and Petula Clark does a brilliant job of depicting her increasingly uneasy conscience as she realises that her prank on Charlie has had more serious consequences than she had ever intended. (The film rose somewhat in my estimation as a result of this: most comedies of this genre would just sweep the issue under the carpet on the grounds that anyone who is unpleasant to the hero deserves anything he gets...)Sid Field himself is perfectly adequate as Jerry, although with hindsight I do feel that he and Kay Kendall are rather overshadowed by the strong supporting cast -- but my main complaint against Sid Field would be that, as a comedian, his act simply didn't entertain me at all.A large chunk of the running-time of "London Town" is taken up with either musical production numbers or comedy sketches, representing the material being performed on stage by the cast. The musical numbers start off reasonably entertaining -- "My Heart Goes Crazy" is a generic springtime number with a nice ironic touch -- but seemed to get more tedious as they went on. Either my patience was decreasing, or the (American) director and song-writers' idea of 'London' got harder and harder to swallow as it got into more and more clichéd and unconvincing territory. Meanwhile, the comedy sketches, which are supposedly an irreplaceable record of Field's stage act, are presented in a straight-through-the-proscenium-arch format and a dead soundtrack that kills whatever amusement value they may have had in the first place.I have to admit that on the basis of this film I don't 'get' Sid Field as a comedian at all. Fast-talking Max Miller is amusing in the pre-war "Friday the Thirteenth" and "The Good Companions", as is Sonnie Hale himself with partner Jessie Matthews in "First a Girl". Field's own act seems to rely on relentless repetition to ensure that even those 'at the back of the gallery' will eventually follow the joke, coupled with a comedy based around errors, failures and ineptitude, a style that I'm afraid I've always personally disliked. The infamous 'photographer' sketch with its blatantly homosexual overtones is probably the funniest, mainly because the humour is character-based (the client complaining pettishly 'But I've always wanted to see his kitchen!') rather than revolving around slapstick or laboured misinterpretations.But the film has other issues, among them clumsy sound-track editing and lip-synch, and some very fake outdoors scenery: bizarrely, it also contains some beautiful location work that not only provides an invaluable Technicolor archive record of the River Thames on a sunny summer's day but demonstrates a rather more subtle sense of humour into the bargain. (Keep an eye out for the sly social observations concerning the holiday-makers in the boats...)The full-length release of "London Town" is currently available for free viewing at the NFT 'Mediatheque', split into a 90-minute and a 35-minute section due to limitations on maximum viewing length: this makes it all the more obvious, alas, that the plot is effectively over after ninety minutes! There is actually a good deal to like in this production: it's just that the most successful parts of the film are not those which were intended to sell it as a grandiose post-war celebration. Keep the existing story, strip out and/or replace almost all the on-stage stuff, and you'd probably get an entertaining and unassuming seventy-minute picture. As a two-hour spectacle it is hopelessly overblown.

London Town is a must see for any other Greta Gynt fans out there. Her saucy madam with the chestnut hair is about as far removed from the icy blonde femme fetales she played in the 30s as can be! It took about half of the film before I really recognised her. Kay Kendall is also splendid in her role, as is a very small Petula Clark. Petula is Peggy, whose father is an out of work comedian. She plays a trick on the other comedian, so that he'll have to miss a night and give her father his big break. Watch out for Belgrave as well - he steals every scene he's in!The movie is fairly light on plot, most of the time being made up with the stage numbers, some of which get a bit long (the golf one...good at first but soon I was dying!), but over all it's a lot of fun. I'm sure I could have though of a better ending, though!