The Runaway Bus *** (1954, Frankie Howerd, Margaret Rutherford, Petula Clark, George Coulouris) – Classic Movie Review 9,477

‘All Aboard for a Non-Stop Ride of Fun!’ Writer-producer-director Val Guest’s 1954 British black and white crime comedy film The Runaway Bus stars Frankie Howerd, Margaret Rutherford, Petula Clark and George Coulouris.

London’s Heathrow Airport (then called London Airport) is fogbound, crooks stash a fortune in gold on an airport bus, and a relief driver takes off with a coachload of passengers, cops and villains.

The robbers have stolen £200,000 worth of gold bullion from the airport bonded store and have hidden the proceeds in the coach boot. With the heavy fog as London Airport, bossy Cynthia Beeston (Margaret Rutherford) insists on being taken to Blackbushe Airport, where she can fly to Dublin. Harassed airline employees find emergency relief coach 13 and reserve driver Percy Lamb (Frankie Howerd) to transport her.

A funny Frankie Howerd stars in his first movie as the bus driver Percy Lamb, and Margaret Rutherford and Petula Clark (Lee Nicholls) raise their fair share of smiles too, in this well-upholstered Fifties comedy vehicle, a relative of The Ghost Train. Guest had helped to adapt The Ghost Train in 1941 as a vehicle for Arthur Askey.

Future DJ Jimmy Young pops in.

It is the film debut of Belinda Lee, apparently the 77th young woman who auditioned as pulp-thriller addict Janie Grey. Also in the cast are Terence Alexander, Toke Townley, John Horsley, Stringer Davis, Reginald Beckwith, Sam Kydd, Anthony Oliver, Marianne Stone, Lisa Gastoni, Michael Gwynn, Richard Beynon, Cyril Conway, Arthur Lovegrove, James Brown, Ted Chapman, Alastair Hunter, Lionel Murton, and Frank Phillips.

In 2016 Petula Clark called this a ‘dreadful film’, adding that the noxious artificial fog used in studio to disguise the lack of background scenery made the cast fall ill.

It is shot at Southall Studios in West London, with sets designed by art director Wilfred Arnold. Shooting took five weeks, with a budget of £45,000.

The cast are Frankie Howerd as Percy Lamb Margaret Rutherford as Cynthia Beeston, Petula Clark as Lee “Nikki” Nichols, George Coulouris as Ernest Shroeder, Toke Townley as Henry Waterman, Terence Alexander as Peter Jones, Belinda Lee as Janie Grey, John Horsley as Inspector Henley, Anthony Oliver as Duty official, Stringer Davis as Transport officer, Michael Gwynn as Transport dispatcher, Reginald Beckwith as Telephone man, Marianne Stone as Travel girl, Lionel Murton as American traveller, Lisa Gastoni as Receptionist, Richard Beynon as Transport officer, Sam Kydd as Airport security officer, Cyril Conway as 1st crook, Arthur Lovegrove as 2nd crook, Alastair Hunter as Detective Spencer, James Brown, Ted Chapman, Alastair Hunter, Lionel Murton, and Frank Phillips.

Val Guest and Eros Films decided to make a film with Frankie Howerd after meeting him backstage in his dressing room at the London Palladium where Howerd was topping the bill in a long-running variety show.

Howerd agreed to star on three conditions. Val Guest had to write a comedy-thriller, so if the comedy did not work, the thriller might. Second, he did not want his name first above the title. Last, he wanted his favourite comedy actress Margaret Rutherford to co-star.

Howerd later said he ‘wanted to do a comedy thriller. Bob Hope’s first real success was in The Cat and the Canary. I saw it when I was in the army and thought that if I ever get out I’d make a comedy thriller.’ He added that Guest ‘wrote the story but I mostly wrote my own part and we did it. In those days we didn’t have much money so to make the film you set the whole thing in a fog so you wouldn’t use much scenery. The great advantage was having Margaret Rutherford in it.’ Rutherford appeared at Howerd’s request and brought along her husband Stringer Davis in support as usual.

Guest realised on the last day of filming that the film was running 72 minutes, three minutes short to qualify as a feature, so Howerd improvised an extra scene in a phone box.

Guest recalled the film was enormously successful: ‘Everybody made an enormous amount of money out of that. And it comes back time and time again. It was re-released in cinemas again and was a very big hit.’

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9,477

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