March

An appreciation of Mancunian Films may be an acquired taste; admiration may be difficult to justify – appreciation may follow. The gloriously enjoyable Demobbed, produced and directed by the unflagging John E. Blakeley, collected some giants of northern comedy under the pretence of a screenplay by Blakeley (credited as Anthony Toner) and Roney Parsons (in fact, Arthur Mertz), loosely based on a story by Julius Carter and Max Zorlini. Costing just over £30,000, Demobbed was ‘trade shown in February 1944 and by 1946 had been screened in half the country’s cinemas with estimations that it would earn three times its production costs’.

Its quartet of rustic clowns is worth every penny spent by Blakeley and his expectant patrons: Norman Evans, the ‘Over the Garden Wall’ ample-bosomed neighbour ‘Fanny Fairbottom’; rubbery Nat Jackley; wannabe upper-crust Dan Young of the frenzied squawk; and rarely filmed Betty Jumel, one of the zaniest and least remembered female exponents of music-hall. They take to the floor in a Hawaiian routine, assisted by Felix Mendelssohn’s Hawaiian Serenaders. The comedians clear the floor for two artistes who, according to their introduction, ‘are known throughout the English-speaking world, idolised in millions of homes’ and are to appear in ‘a glorious song scena’ ‘The Garden of Romance’, its décor bearing a remarkable resemblance to many a tea-cosy. Extras enter, dressed most unsuitably for a trip around the garden, as the film switches from high comedy to kitsch, with Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth performing ‘Until’ and ‘Just A Song At Twilight’, and Booth singing ‘I Hear You Calling Me’ and ‘Two Little Words [Good Bye]’. A sort of plot is of even less interest than usual, only occasionally getting in the way of the comical and musical antics, as in the sketch with Young as a ventriloquist with rubber-limbed Jackley on his knee.