A Night Like This *** (1932, Tom Walls, Ralph Lynn, Winifred Shotter, Robertson Hare, Claude Hulbert, Mary Brough) – Classic Movie Review 11,177

Director Tom Walls’s 1932 British black and white comedy A Night Like This is an extremely funny old-style farce, based on a play by Ben Travers, concerning a group of gamblers and the policeman who tries to rumble them.

Winifred Shotter plays Cora Mellish, a nightclub cabaret star dancer at the notorious Moonstone Club, who is being blackmailed by the illegal gambling club’s owner after she borrowed a necklace to pay off her gambling debts. But she is helped out of her jam by a lovesick playboy, Clifford Tope (Ralph Lynn), who is love with her, and an Irish cop, P.C. Michael Mahoney (Tom Walls), who has gone under cover as a gentleman to get into the club to conduct an investigation.

This theatrical Aldwych Farce style of humour transfers to the movies nicely and the film has dated extremely well, thanks to the superb British cast of farceurs and being wittily written by the great Travers, writer of Plunder, Banana Ridge and Rookery Nook.

Winifred Shotter, star of eight of the Aldwych farces and five of the filmed versions.

Also in the cast are Robertson Hare, Claude Hulbert, Mary Brough, Joan Brierley, C V France, Boris Ranevsky, Kay Hammond (Mimi – Cocktail Shaker), Al Bowlly (Singer), Roy Fox (Bandleader), Reginald Purdell, Ernest Sefton, Hal Gordon and Norma Varden (Mrs Tuckett).

It is shot at British and Dominions Studios, Elstree, Hertfordshire, England.

A Night Like This is directed by Tom Walls, runs 72 minutes, is made by Herbert Wilcox Productions and British & Dominions Film Corporation, is released by Woolf & Freedman Film Service (W & F) (1932) (UK), is written by Ben Travers, Tom Walls and W P Lipscomb, based on a play by Ben Travers, is shot by Freddie Young, is produced by Herbert Wilcox, scored by Lew Stone (music arranger / orchestrator) and designed by Lawrence P. Williams.

Ralph Lynn plays lovesick playboy Clifford Tope.

The series of 12 stage Aldwych farces, nine written by Ben Travers, were staged more or less continuously from 1923 to 1933 at the Aldwych Theatre, London. Most of the farces, and other Travers works, were filmed during the 1930s, with many of the actors from the plays. Tom Walls directed all but two of the films.

The films of the original Aldwych farces are: Rookery Nook [One Embarrassing Night] (1930), Plunder (1931), A Night Like This (1932), Thark (1932), A Cuckoo in the Nest (1933), Turkey Time (1933), Just My Luck (1933; filmed version of Fifty-Fifty), A Cup of Kindness (1934), Dirty Work (1934), and Marry the Girl (1935).

Other filmed farces by Travers, with one or more of the Aldwych stars, are: The Chance of a Night Time (1931; based on The Dippers), Fighting Stock (1935), Foreign Affaires (1935; original screenplay), Pot Luck (1936; loosely based on A Night Like This), Second Best Bed (1938; based on a Travers story), and Banana Ridge (1941).

On stage, Rookery Nook has been regularly revived and Plunder has had several revivals.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,177

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