True as a Turtle

John Greyson wants to spend the honeymoon on Cecil Parker's boat, 'The Turtle'. His fiancee, landlubber June Thorburn reluctantly agrees. The usual sorts of misadventures occur.

This is not in anyway an indictment of this movie. It is, in fact, a superior example of the landlubber-at-sea comedy-drama. I attribute this to the direction of Wendy Toye, one of the few woman directors working at the time. Although everyone has plenty to do, this movie offers us the viewpoints of the women confronting their men's seafaring hobby: Miss Thorburn, Elvi Hale as the guest of the boat's second mate, Keith Michell, and Avice Landone as Parker's long-suffering wife. As the two younger women are instructed in sea craft, we learn the ins and outs of small boats, and their reactions to the bumptious behavior of weekend sailors become ours. We even feel sympathy for Parker, a specialist in unlikeable, comic stuffed shirts, because his wife loves him.

Miss Toye entered show business as a child, and was choreographing ballets by the age of nine. Her movie career began in 1931 as dancer. Within five years, she was choreographing for the movies, and she began directing movies in 1952. She was in charge of half a dozen movies, then continued to direct on television through 1982. She was awarded a CBE in 1992, and died in 2010, aged 92.