January

The habit of borrowing a famous song title for a new British musical film died hard, never having weakened at Butcher’s Film Services. The creators of Lily of Laguna had long histories. Sidney Morgan produced. His daughter Joan, the one-time silent screen star of Shoreham and beyond, provided the story as Joan Wentworth Wood. Oswald Mitchell directed the screenplay written by Ian Walker (Rose of Tralee and My Irish Molly). In November 1934 the Era had reported that production was soon to begin at Shepherd’s Bush on a Gaumont-British Lily of Laguna, to be directed by Jack Raymond. It was hoped that Robert Donat would star. It is doubtful that Butcher’s version bore any relationship to the Gaumont-British project, which seems not to have materialised; even so, it is unlikely that Butcher’s would ever have lured Donat into their studios. Four years later, in November 1937, the Era assured its readers that ‘important and dramatic scenes’ involving leading lady Nora Swinburne were that week being shot by Butcher’s at Walton-on-Thames.

The star of the musical show ‘Lily of Laguna’, Gloria Grey (Swinburne), leaves the profession to marry an Edinburgh scientist. Wedded bliss fades and Gloria goes back to the boards. Years pass. Her daughter falls in love with a Scotsman. Gloria also is drawn to him, but realises her daughter has prior claim. A displeased suitor shoots Gloria, a misadventure that reunites Gloria with her ex-husband.

In the circumstances, Swinburne emerges with dignity. The MFB sighed that it was ‘inclined to be tedious and could have been shortened’, complaining that ‘the character of the scientist is a caricature of an intelligent person – the Professor as imagined by the ignorant’.