Forces’ Sweetheart ** (1953, Hy Hazell, Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine, Freddie Frinton) – Classic Movie Review 13,444

The 1953 British comedy film Forces’ Sweetheart stars bubbly actress singer Hy Hazell, along with funnymen Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine and Freddie Frinton.

Director Maclean Rogers’s 1953 British comedy film Forces’ Sweetheart stars Hy Hazell, Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine, and Freddie Frinton.

Bubbly actress singer Hy Hazell is everybody’s genial and amiable sweetheart as forces’ sweetheart entertainer Judy James, in this feisty, if largely unfunny British comedy, but with appealing enough game-for-it performances.

Michael Bentine, Harry Secombe and John Ainsworth vie for the entertainer’s charms, while popular comedian Freddie Frinton (star of TV’s Meet the Wife with Thora Hird) plays eccentric English chewing gum magnate Aloysius Dimwitty, funding Judy James’s London West End show.

Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine (from The Goon Show) star as Private Harry Llewellyn and Flight Lieutenant John Robinson who are infatuated with Judy James, fantasising that Judy is their fiancée, and go to London to try to meet her. But her actual boyfriend, Royal Navy Lieutenant John Robinson (John Ainsworth) arranges a meeting with her at the same time. Secombe and Bentine are mistaken for the real boyfriend and bluff their way into meeting Judy.

Leslie Roberts’s Twelve Television Girls shake their stuff, but even their obvious talents fail to give much life to the limp proceedings. Yet it’s good to see Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine, Molly Weir (inevitably as maid) and Graham Stark (as Simmonds) doing their once familiar turns again, and the film has plenty of UK post-war flavour too. It’s the stodgy writing by Carl Heck, Maclean Rogers and Michael Bentine that lets it down.

Forces’ Sweetheart (1953, Hy Hazell).

The cast

The cast are Hy Hazell as Judy James, Harry Secombe as Harry Llewellyn, Michael Bentine as John Robinson, Freddie Frinton as Aloysius Dimwitty, John Ainsworth as John Robinson, Molly Weir as maid, Adrienne Fancey [Adrienne Scott] as Audrey, Kenneth Henry as Tommy Tupp, Graham Stark as Simmonds, John Fitzgerald as producer, Ronald Leigh-Hunt as Navy C O, Alastair Hunter as Ghillie, and Michael McCarthy as plumber.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,444

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