Demobbed ** (1944, Norman Evans, Nat Jackley, Dan Young, Betty Jumel) – Classic Movie Review 13,075

The fun curio and nostalgia 1944 British comedy film Demobbed – ‘a musical comedy burlesque’ – stars famed English comics Norman Evans, Nat Jackley, Dan Young and Betty Jumel.

Director John E Blakeley’s fun 1944 British comedy film Demobbed is listed in the opening credits as ‘a musical comedy burlesque’ and stars famed English comics Norman Evans, Nat Jackley, Dan Young, Betty Jumel, and Gus McNaughton.

The drolly amusing ‘over-the-garden-wall’ British drag comic/ pantomime dame Norman Evans gets a rare star spot in this fairly feeble but fun British slapstick comedy with a group of demobbed ex-soldiers Norman, Nat and Dan trying to get work after being demobbed from the army, getting new jobs, and then discovering a factory thief, and staging a concert party.

A curio and nostalgia fest, it is of interest mainly for the relatively rare film glimpses of the performers, but also for its game high spirits, and a view onto another, rather mysterious age. Ah, yes, ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently over there.’

The husband and wife team of English tenor Webster Booth and light operatic singer Anne Ziegler appear as themselves as ‘Guest Artistes’, singing ‘So Deep Is the Night’ and in the garden medley, and Felix Mendelssohn’s Hawaiian Serenaders are a high note, playing ‘Won’t You Take Me Back to Hawaii?’. Norman Evans, Dan Young, Nat Jackley, and Tony Dalton sing ‘Dont Hit the Sergeant With a Hammer’.

English stage and radio comedian Norman Evans (11 June 1901 – 25 November 1962) was famed for his sketches and shows called Over the Garden Wall, in which he played Fanny Fairbottom, a toothless hatchet-faced gossiping Lancastrian housewife, apparently based on his mother!

He enjoyed three BBC radio series, in which Betty Jumel played his neighbour, and several films: Demobbed (1944), Under New Management (1946), The Calendar (1948) and Over the Garden Wall (1950). It inspired Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough’s Cissie and Ada characters.

English comic actor Nat Jackley (6 July 1909 – 17 September 1988) starred in revue, variety, film and pantomime from the 1920s to the mid-1980s. His rubber-neck dance, skeletal frame and speech impediment made him a famous comedian and pantomime dame.

Norman Evans, Betty Jumel and Terry-Thomas in the London Palladium’s panto Humpty Dumpty (1951).

Betty Jumel, billed as ‘The Bundle of Fun’, one of the last survivors of the variety halls, died in 1990 at the age of 89. She appeared in pantomime with Evans (and Terry-Thomas) in the London Palladium’s panto Humpty Dumpty (1951) that was so successful that it ran from Christmas Eve to Easter.

Webster Booth and light operatic singer Anne Ziegler, known as the ‘Sweethearts in Song’, were among the most popular British musical acts of the 1940s.

The cast are Norman Evans as Norman, Nat Jackley as Nat, Dan Young as Dan, Betty Jumel as Betty, Tony Dalton as Billy Brown, Jimmy Plant as Graham, George Merritt as James Bentley, Fred Kitchen as Black, Arthur Hambling as Curtis, Gus McNaughton as Captain Gregson, Marianne Lincoln as Marianne, Anne Firth as Norma Deane, Neville Mapp as John Bentley, Webster Booth as himself, Anne Ziegler as herself, Sydney Bromley as BBC announcer, Kay Lewis as Norman Evans’s partner, Freddie Watts as Landlord of the Red Lion, Edgar Driver as the bookie, Noel Dainton as Police Inspector, Marjorie Gresley as the mother, and Angela Glynne as the child.

Release date: June 19, 1944 (UK).

Demobbed is directed by John E Blakeley, runs 96 minutes, is made by Butcher’s, is released by Mancunian, is written by Roney Parsons and Anthony Toner, is shot in black and white by Geoffrey Faithfull and G Gibbs, is produced by F W Baker and John E Blakeley, is scored by Percival Mackey, and designed by Jim Carter.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,075

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