The Happiest Days of Your Life ***** (1950, Alastair Sim, Margaret Rutherford, Joyce Grenfell, Richard Wattis, Edward Rigby, Guy Middleton, George Cole) – Classic Movie Review 2793

Co-writer/co-producer/director Frank Launder’s 1950 British school-days farcical comedy is super vintage fun.

John Dighton and Launder’s screenplay, adapted from John Dighton’s stage play, is all about the antagonism and chaos caused when a British government department administrative mix-up sends class-loads of girls from St Swithin’s Girls’ School to be billeted with an old established, all-boys boarding school, Nutbourne College.

Alastair Sim (as the kindly Wetherby Pond, head teacher of Nutbourne College) and Margaret Rutherford (as Muriel Whitchurch, head teacher of St Swithin’s) are wonderfully funny as the respective school head teachers, who are soon battling for the upper hand with each other and the Ministry. But their mutual dislike turns into a spirit of co-operation when various crises force them to work together and the error has to be hidden from visiting inspectors.

Comic turns almost as brilliant as those from the stars include appearances from Joyce Grenfell as her immortal Miss Gossage gym mistress character, and Richard Wattis, Edward Rigby and Guy Middleton as other teachers.

Also on the cast is Sim’s friend and protégé George Cole and Rutherford’s husband Stringer Davis, as well as Muriel Aked, John Bentley, Bernadette O’Farrell (Fifties TV’s Maid Marian), Patricia Owens, Arthur Howard, Gladys Henson, and George Benson.

The Happiest Days of Your Life is a gem of British comic playing and timing, beautifully handled by director Launder. It was filmed at the village infant school in Liss, Hampshire, where the pupils were used as extras.

It was a deserved big hit as the fifth most popular movie at the British box office for 1950. This success prompted Launder and co-producer Sidney Gilliat to make a follow-up in 1954, The Belles of St Trinian’s, another classic comedy about chaos at a girls’ school, also with Sim, Grenfell (as police woman Ruby Gates), Cole, Wattis and Middleton. Ronald Searle provides the cartoons for both film’s titles.

Oliver Twist is recalled when the kids are served porridge and one boy says: ‘Please, sir, I don’t want any more. No, sir!’

The J Arthur Rank Organisation’s iconic pre-movie gong insignia is referred to when the St Swithin’s teachers arrive, Miss Gossage loudly strikes the gong in the hall and Whitchurch tells her: ‘Tap it gently. We’re not here to announce a film.’

Bizarrely, Grenfell appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show alongside Elvis Presley. In 1998, the Royal Mail memorialised her with her image on a postage stamp as one of its series of stamps celebrating Heroes of Comedy.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2793

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