Banana Ridge *** (1942, Robertson Hare, Alfred Drayton, Isabel Jeans) – Classic Movie Review 10,340

The venerable, funny Ben Travers farce play Banana Ridge about the shenanigans on a Malayan rubber plantation becomes an actorish, theatrical film in Walter C Mycroft’s 1942 British black and white comedy Banana Ridge.

But the infectious fun is still there in the material, and the exuberant, expert comedy performances of Robertson Hare as pompous Willoughby Pink, Alfred Drayton as vain Digby Pound, Isabel Jeans as elegant Sue Long, Nova Pilbeam as pert Cora Pound and Adele Dixon as Mrs Ellie Pound still delight.

Travers (along with Mycroft and Lesley Storm) adapts his own play, one of his best, in which the gold-digging one-time lover Sue Long (Jeans) turns up and pretends that her now grown-up 20-year old son belongs to either Pink (Hare) or Pound (Drayton).

Also in the cast are Stewart Rome, Patrick Kinsella, Valentine Dunn, John Stuart, Gordon McLeod, Mignon O’Doherty, Basil Lynn, Wally Patch, Lloyd Pearson, Audrey Boyes, Ley On and Charles Stewart.

Dulcie Gray makes her film debut in an uncredited bit part.

Banana Ridge is directed by Walter C Mycroft, runs 87 minutes, is made by Associated British Picture Corporation, is released by Pathé Pictures (1942) (UK), is written by Walter C Mycroft, Lesley Storm and Ben Travers, based on the play Banana Ridge by Ben Travers, is shot in black and white by Claude Friese-Greene, is produced by Walter C Mycroft, scored by Harry Acres and Marr Mackie, and designed by J Charles Gilbert.

It is released on DVD by Network in a double bill with the 1937 Aren’t Men Beasts, also starring Hare and Drayton.

Nova Pilbeam returned to filming to distract herself from her grief after her husband Pen Tennyson’s death in a plane crash.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,340

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