Boys Will Be Boys **** (1935, Will Hay, Gordon Harker, Jimmy Hanley) – Classic Movie Review 5825

Director William Beaudine’s 1935 British public school (ie private school) comedy is a vintage treat, with the first screen appearance of Will Hay in his famous schoolmaster role.

The satirical writings of J B Morton (aka Beachcomber) were lucky enough to find star/ co-writer Will Hay to bring them to the screen, though satisfyingly there is as much of Hay’s famous music-hall seedy schoolmaster act on show here as there is the work Beachcomber.

In his first film for Gainsborough Studios and the start of his film career proper, Hay clowns highly amusingly as the fake Dr Alec Smart, the incompetent headmaster of school-for-scandal Narkover College, where the boys grow up to be convicts.

In the funny story written by Will Hay, Robert Edmunds and J B Morton, the head boy Cyril Brown (Jimmy Hanley)’s ex-con dad Faker Brown (Gordon Harker) makes Hay’s Dr Alec Smart employ him as butler to steal a governor’s necklace.

Also in the cast are Davy Burnaby as Colonel Crableigh, Norma Varden as Lady Dorking, Claude Dampier, Charles Farrell, Charles Hawtrey, Percy Walsh, Peter Gawthorne and Clive Dunn.

The plot is recycled in Blue Murder at St Trinian’s (1957).

Hay had already appeared in Those Were the Days, Radio Parade of 1935 and Dandy Dick. His next is Where There’s a Will (1936). His best is Oh, Mr Porter! (1937).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5825

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