A Cuckoo in the Nest *** (1933, Tom Walls, Ralph Lynn, Yvonne Arnaud, Tom Walls, Robertson Hare, Mary Brough, Grace Edwin) – Classic Movie Review 10,606

Director Tom Walls’s 1933 British black and white comedy A Cuckoo in the Nest in an endearing, vintage Ben Travers farce with the best London Aldwych Theatre interpreters enjoying themselves enormously in a tale about a just-married man, Peter (Ralph Lynn) enjoying innocent high jinks with his ex-fiancée Marguerite (Yvonne Arnaud) when they are compelled by carefully laid plot-points to share a hotel room overnight after their car breaks down.

Both of them are married to other people as they have to check in as husband and wife when the landlady, Mrs Spoker (Mary Brough), will not admit an unmarried couple. Peter’s wife Barbara (Veronica Rose) thinks Peter and Marguerite have run away together. Her parents, Major Bone (Tom Walls) and Mrs Bone (Grace Edwin), Marguerite’s husband Claude (Cecil Parker) and then Barbara arrive at the inn.

This old material has aged remarkably well and Travers’s plays seem timeless, though there is little concession to the cinemas in the rather cost-conscious production by Gaumont British Picture Corporation. But, otherwise, it is 85 minutes of vintage farcical bliss, in the hands of experts.

Also in the cast are Tom Walls, Robertson Hare, Mary Brough, Veronica Rose, Gordon James, Roger Livesey, Cecil Parker, Frank Pettingel, Joan Brierley, Grace Edwin and Mark Daly.

The screenplay by Ben Travers and A.R. Rawlinson is based on the original 1925 Aldwych farce of the same title. Tom Walls, Ralph Lynn, Yvonne Arnaud, Mary Brough, Robertson Hare, Gordon James, Grace Edwin and Roger Livesey were all in the original stage production.

It is made at Lime Grove Studios and also filmed at the Red Lion Inn, Avebury, Wiltshire, England.

The sets are designed by Alfred Junge.

It is remade in 1954 as Fast and Loose.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,606

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