My Learned Friend **** (1943, Will Hay, Claude Hulbert, Mervyn Johns) – Classic Movie Review 8393

Will Hay’s last film My Learned Friend, directed in 1943 by Basil Dearden and Will Hay, is extremely funny and has the bonus of an unusually macabre edge to it. Hay plays seedy lawyer William Fitch, the incompetent defence counsel of a forger and mass murderer called Grimshaw (Mervyn Johns) bent on killing everybody connected with his trial.

Claude Hulbert returns as Hay’s sidekick after they teamed for The Ghost of St Michael’s (1941) and makes a fine silly-ass foil as Claude Babbington. There are lots of laughs along the way, and there is a dizzying classic climax on Big Ben which wraps things up with a flourish, in a scene reused to serious effect in the Seventies version of The Thirty-Nine Steps (1978). Hay hangs from the hands of the clock face of Big Ben to try to prevent a time bomb being detonated.

Ill health forced Hay off the screen after this, but here he bows out in considerable style. However, he went onto star as Doctor Muffin in The Will Hay Programme that aired on radio in 1944.  He first came to public notice for his theatrical sketch as a jocular schoolmaster, known as Doctor Muffin.

Also in the cast are Ernest Thesiger as as Ferris, Charles Victor as ‘Safety’ Wilson, Lloyd Pearson, Lawrence Hanray as as Sir Norman, Aubrey Mallalieu, Derna Hazell, Leslie Harcourt, Eddie Phillips, G H Mulcaster, Gibb McLaughlin, Maudie Edwards, Ronald Shiner (as the Man in Wilson’s café, uncredited), Hy Hazell (uncredited), H Victor Weske (uncredited), Valerie White (uncredited), Hyma Beckley (uncredited) and Ian Wilson (uncredited).

The original screenplay is by Angus MacPhail and John Dighton.

It is produced by Michael Balcon and Robert Hamer at Ealing Studios.

Peter Ustinov, who made his film debut with Will Hay in The Goose Steps Out (1942), said of the comedian: ‘He was very funny when you saw him on the screen, but in life all those people are very, very strange.’

My Learned Friend is directed by Basil Dearden and Will Hay, runs 74 minutes, is made by Ealing Studios, is released by Ealing Distribution (1943) (UK), is written by Angus MacPhail and John Dighton, is shot in black and white by Wilkie Cooper, is produced by Michael Balcon, S C Balcon (associate producer) and Robert Hamer (associate producer, uncredited), is scored by Ernest Irving and designed by Michael Relph.

In British law, a barrister refers to the opposing counsel using the respectful term ‘my learned friend’.

The Will Hay films are: Those Were the Days (1934), Radio Parade of 1935 (1934), Dandy Dick (1935), Boys Will Be Boys (1935), Windbag the Sailor (1936), Where There’s a Will (1936), Oh, Mr Porter! (1937), Good Morning, Boys (1937), Hey! Hey! USA (1938), Old Bones of the River (1938), Ask a Policeman (1939), Convict 99 (1939), Where’s That Fire? (1940), The Ghost of St Michael’s (1941), The Big Blockade (1942), The Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942), Go to Blazes (1942) (short), The Goose Steps Out (1942) and My Learned Friend (1943).

William Thomson Hay (6 December 1888 – 18 April 1949).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8393

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