Barnacle Bill [All at Sea] *** (1957, Irene Browne, Percy Herbert, Harold Goodwin, Maurice Denham) – Classic Movie Review 8596

Director Charles Frend’s good-humoured little Ealing Studios 1957 black and white comedy film Barnacle Bill [All at Sea] stars Alec Guinness as seasick sailor Captain William Horatio Ambrose, who buys a seaside hotel (which he dubs Arabella) and a decrepit amusement pier at the British resort town of Sandcastle-on-Sea.

The drama is that the prim and proper local authority will not let him use the pier for entertainment, banning arcade games as gambling, so he circumvents them by running the pier as a naval vessel and legally claiming the pier as a ship for the seasick.

Barnacle Bill is neatly directed by Frend and adroitly written by T E B Clarke, both especially clever talents, and it is a very welcome film. But it stays a minor pleasure, as it is just not quite as witty or sharp as earlier Ealing classics. However, Guinness gets a welcome chance to show his versatility in impersonating several of his character’s ancestors, recalling his first Ealing movie Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). And, happily, the support cast rounds up many of the usual Britcom suspects of the day, usual back in 1957, but very unusual now.

Also in the cast are Irene Browne, Percy Herbert, Harold Goodwin, Maurice Denham, Jack Rose, Jackie Collins, Victor Maddern, Lionel Jeffries, Lloyd Lamble, Warren Mitchell, Richard Wattis, Frederick Piper, Eric Pohlmann, Donald Pleasence, Miles Malleson, Joan Hickson, Sam Kydd, Newton Blick, Harry Locke, Fred Griffiths, Gerald Case, William Mervyn, John Horsley, Derek Waring, Junia Crawford and Allan Cuthbertson.

Barnacle Bill [All at Sea] is directed by Charles Frend, runs 87 minutes, is made by Ealing Studios and MGM, is released by MGM, is written by T E B Clarke (story and screenplay), is shot in black and white by Douglas Slocombe, is produced by Michael Balcon and Dennis Van Thal and is scored by John Addison, with Art Direction by Alan Withy.

It cost $659,000, grossed $405,000 in the US, with a cumulative worldwide gross of $950,000, making it a hit.

It was retitled All at Sea in the US perhaps to avoid confusion with the American 1941 Wallace Beery comedy Barnacle Bill.

It was filmed at Hunstanton Pier, Hunstanton, Norfolk, England, and at MGM British Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England. It is an Ealing Studios movie, but the Studios had closed down and so it was shot at Borehamwood.

It is Guinness’s last film for Ealing Studios. He said only made this movie as a favour for his friend Charles Frend and recalled it as ‘wretched’. He served in the Royal Navy in World War Two.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8596

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