Sing As We Go! **** (1934, Gracie Fields, John Loder, Dorothy Hyson) – Classic Movie Review 8429

Director Basil Dean’s bright and breezy 1934 British musical comedy drama Sing as We Go! is by far the most resilient of Gracie Fields’s films, bubbling with the spectacle of Lancashire folk at work and play in the Thirties, and packed with pungent dialogue by J B Priestley (hired no doubt to provide a touch of class as story as co-screenplay writer).

Gracie plays Gracie Platt, an unemployed mill girl seeking seasonal work in seaside resort Blackpool, where she meets financier Sir William Upton (Lawrence Grossmith), whom she talks into backing the textile mill, which has closed, bringing it back to prosperity.

The local footage, inventively edited by Thorold Dickinson, gives Sing as We Go! a real boost, and the film’s optimistic tone is still a crowd-pleaser. Hugely popular in its day, it is now a fascinating piece of evidence of a vanished world.

The title song ‘Sing as We Go!’ (by Harry Parr Davies) was one of Gracie’s permanent anthems, nearly as popular as her all-time great ‘Sally’. Gracie also sings ‘Just a Catchy Little Tune’ (by Harry Parr Davies), ‘Thora’, ‘In My Little Bottom Drawer’ and ‘Love, Wonderful Love’ (with Stanley Holloway and Norman Walker).

Also in the cast are John Loder, Frank Pettingell, Dorothy Hyson, Stanley Holloway, Lawrence Grossmith, Olive Sloane, Muriel Pavlow, Arthur Sinclair, Morris Harvey, Marie O’Neill, Ben Field, Margaret Yarde, Evelyn Roberts, Norman Walker, James R Gregson, Richard Gray, Margery Pickard and Florence Gregson, with Richard Greene in a bit part.

Sing as We Go! is directed by Basil Dean, runs 80 minutes, is made by Associated Talking Pictures, is released by Associated British Film Distributors, is written by J B Priestley and Gordon Wellesley, based on a story by J B Priestley, is shot in black and white by Robert G Martin, is produced by Basil Dean, is scored by Ernest Irving and is designed by J Elder Wills.

Gracie Fields’s other big hit song was ‘Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye’, by Phil Park and Harry Parr Davies, from her 1939 film Shipyard Sally.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8429

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