Evergreen **** (1934, Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, Betty Balfour) – Classic Movie Review 7056

Director Victor Saville’s delightul evergreen 1934 British musical – and there are so few to speak well of – is perhaps the vivacious and spirited Jessie Matthews’s finest hour in the movies, playing Harriet Green, a daughter who steps out of the chorus into mother’s shoes, pretending to be a musical comedy star.

Evergreen is a free adaptation by Emlyn Williams (adaptation) and Marjorie Gaffney (scenario) of Matthews’s 1930 stage hit by Benn W Levy, with the Richard Rodgers (music) and Lorenz Hart (lyrics) score (‘Dancing on the Ceiling’ is a gem) augmented by Harry M Woods songs such as the glorious ‘Over My Shoulder’ and the lovely ‘When You’ve Got a Little Springtime in Your Heart ’.

Perhaps some of the comedy has faded a little, but Matthews and her numbers (particularly her long dance solo through the house) live on vibrantly. Her real-life husband Sonnie Hale co-stars as Leslie Benn.

Also in the cast are Betty Balfour, Barry MacKay, Ivor McLaren, Hartley Power, Patrick Ludlow, Betty Shale, Marjorie Brooks, Buddy Bradley and Richard Murdoch.

Evergreen is directed by Victor Saville, runs 92 minutes, is made and released by Gaumont British, is written by Emlyn Williams and Marjorie Gaffney, based on the stage hit by Benn W Levy, is shot in black and white by Glen MacWilliams, is produced by Michael Balcon, is scored by Louis Levy, and is designed by Alfred Junge and Peter Proud.

Matthews’s 12 starring films from There Goes the Bride (1932), The Good Companions (1933), The Man from Toronto (1933), Waltzes from Vienna (aka Strauss’s Great Waltz) (1933), Friday the Thirteenth (1933), Evergreen (1934), First a Girl (1935), It’s Love Again (1936), Gangway (1937), Head Over Heels (1937; aka Head Over Heels in Love), Climbing High (1938) to Sailing Along (1938) have been released in the UK by Network DVD.

She was born in a flat behind a butcher’s shop at 94 Berwick Street, Soho, London, the seventh of 16 children of a fruit-and-vegetable seller. As a child she took dancing lessons in a room above the pub at 22 Berwick Street. A memorial plaque there was unveiled on 3 May 1995 by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ruthie Henshall.

She was hugely popular in a series of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-Thirties and won fans in the US, where she was dubbed ‘The Dancing Divinity’.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7056

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