London Town

Interesting today mainly as a historical record of the Music Hall (Vaudeville to our American cousins), this is fairly slow and unfunny when not actually showing the performances.

Featuring Sid Field, a big star of the thirties and forties. He had a pleasant light singing voice but his act included a Golf Lesson routine not in the class of his namesake, W.C. Two-ton Tessie O'Shea, literally a big star, showed that she had lots of personality and there's an enjoyable Pearlie Kings act with `Any Old Iron?' etc.

Surprisingly in (pretty gaudy) colour.

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.

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.

Great Britain has made some really good movies over the years - comedies especially. Also war movies. BUT! their first venture into musicals, LONDON TOWN, was nothing short of a disaster. The acting was bad, the direction worse and as for the songs!! Diabolical. I class it just below THE ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES in my list of the worst movies of all time.

Over here in the UK, we frequently see scenes from this film on programmes like 'heroes of comedy' or 'Music Hall heroes' - that type of thing. The films star, Sid Field was a very popular (and funny) comedian at the tail end of the variety period before TV appeared and very little film of him was made. So the sketches and 'turns' from London Town are shown as an illustration of him in action. We recently bought the DVD of this film purely to see the snatches of Sid Field in action, as we both find him hilarious in a rather old-fashioned and unsophisticated way. What we weren't prepared for was the pure awfulness of the rest of it - the plot is almost non-existent, the writing and script are poor and the direction is all over the place. Happily, Sid Field in full flow makes up for all of this. OK, I admit that someone tripping up on stage is not the height of comedy class, but he does it so well, and the scene with the camera has me hooting with laughter. So three cheers for Sid, a resounding raspberry for the rest of it!