It’s Not Cricket ** (1949, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Susan Shaw, Maurice Denham, Alan Wheatley, Diana Dors) – Classic Movie Review 10,876

The cricket-crazy duo of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, are this time bright and early, Major Bright and Captain Early that is, a couple of upper class twits who are kicked out of British Army Intelligence after letting a captured Nazi escape, and then set up as bumbling private detectives who become mixed up in a Nazi plot by the same German to find a cricket ball containing a missing diamond.

The 1949 film It’s Not Cricket is an amusing and engaging minor comedy, one of several the stars made together after four appearances as Charters and Caldicott and before Radford’s early death in 1952.

The farcical script may be underwritten and the playing unsubtle, but the stars’ gentle fooling keeps the film attractive. Diana Dors appears in an early role typecast as Blonde.

Also in the cast are Susan Shaw, Maurice Denham, Nigel Buchanan, Alan Wheatley, Jane Carr, Patrick Waddington, Edward Lexy, Leslie Dwyer, Frederick Piper, Diana Dors, Mary Hinton, Margaret Withers, Brian Oulton, John Boxer, Cyril Cunningham, Charles Cullum, Hal Osmond, Sheila Huntington, John Warren, Arthur Hambling, Hamilton Keene, Meinhart Maur, and Viola Lyel.

Radford and Wayne made 11 films together: Crook’s Tour, Dead of Night, Girl in a Million, It’s Not Cricket, The Lady Vanishes, Millions Like Us, Next of Kin, Night Train to Munich, Passport to Pimlico, Quartet, and Stop Press Girl.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,876

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com