In 1952, three years after Walls's death, Lynn and Hare starred at the Aldwych in a new Travers farce, Wild Horses. Some of the films do indeed suffer from this, and there are some rather long scenes that need a bit more pep, closer to the stodgy, theatrical style we tend to associate with 30s films. The two Aldwych farces not filmed by members of the company were It Pays to Advertise and A Bit of a Test. The Aldwych farces of the 1920s and 1930s provide a classic example of a fruitful collaboration between a playwright — Ben Travers — and a team of actors, headed by Ralph Lynn, Robertson Hare and Tom Walls, who managed and directed the company.

Ideal foils were provided by monocled silly-ass Ralph Lynn, and bald, timid, bird-like Robertson Hare, who inevitably found himself mixed up in the middle of things, wailing “Oh Calamity! A newlywed husband is compelled through circumstances to spend the night sharing a room with an also-married lady friend.If you are in Australia or New Zealand (DVD Region 4), note that almost all DVDs distributed in the UK by the BBC and 2entertain are encoded for both Region 2 and Region 4. centres around Ralph Lynn accidentally being forced to spend the night at a country inn with an old flame (Yvonne Arnaud) after they both miss their train, hire a car together and become stuck in the rain. Meanwhile, Ben Travers' first play, The Dippers, based on his 1920 novel of the same name, was produced and directed by Sir Charles Hawtrey. Things get a bit slow toward the end, but there are many funny sequences, including a dotty fantasy sequence that sends the whole cast back to the Stone Age.

TURKEY TIME’ boasts much better direction, including the interesting idea of giving each character a little vignette to introduce themselves in the opening credit sequence. Most were penned by leading comic playwright Ben Travers and peopled by a regular cast of silly-ass aristocrats, battleaxe wives and put-upon husbands; nimble wordplay and finely crafted buffoonery were their hallmarks and the public loved them. IO The "blowing off steam" - from Feydeau's La Dame de chez Maxim, through Travers's Rookery Nook, to Orton's What the Butler Saw, Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce and Stoppard'sDirtyLinen - usually involves real or suspected sexual misadventures, infidelity, adultery, or the confusion ofsexual roles. The highlight is undoubtedly Robertson Hare’s horror at being forced to shave his moustache and try on wigs to disguise himself as the burglar!In his place is the superb comic character Gordon Harker, who brings his rough-edged posh cockney (“Oh yerrrrrrs”) to the table. LESLIE SMITH Indeed, farce has a unique capacity for giving verbal and physical expression to our more anarchic imaginings or impUlses. Farce releases inhibitions, offers a holiday from conventional morality, and permits both outrage and the triumph of the carnival spirit. DIRTY WORK stands slightly apart from the other farces in that Tom Walls doesn’t appear , though he still directs.

The first of these plays was an updated and Anglicised adaptation of an American play of 1914; a version of the original play was filmed in the US in 1931, starring Norman Foster, Carole Lombard, and Richard "Skeets" Gallagher. But, they offer plenty of smiles and even the odd belly laugh, and point a clear way to the later character ensembles of Ealing and the Boulting Brothers. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. A series of now-legendary stage comedies from the 1920s and '30s, the Aldwych Farces broke theatre box-office records and made the transition to celluloid with a run of hit films making stars of Tom Walls, Ralph Lynn and Robertson Hare.In the early days, he also had reservations about the other star of the company, Ralph Lynn, who initially ad-libbed too much for the author's taste. Walls and Lynn would each make solo films as well, but their careers began to wind down in the late ’30s.

The first in the Aldwych farce series was It Pays to Advertise, which ran for nearly 600 performances. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. To satisfy the suspicious, god-fearing harridan of a landlady (Mary Brough) they pose as a married couple. The farces were so popular that touring companies were sent to present them in the British provinces. The plays generally revolved around a series of preposterous incidents involving a misunderstanding, borrowed clothes and lost trousers, involving the worldly Walls character, the innocent yet cheeky Lynn, the hapless Hare, the beefy, domineering Brough, the lean, domineering Coleridge, and the pretty and slightly spicy Shotter, all played with earnest seriousness.Lynn's younger brother Hastings Lynn, played his brother's roles in successful productions in Australia and New Zealand. The Aldwych Farces were a long-running series of comic plays written by playwright Ben Travers, and staged at the Aldwych Theatre by Tom Walls. Among the up-and-coming performers who appeared in Aldwych farces before becoming famous were Roger Livesey, [13] Margot Grahame, [14] and Norma Varden. Walls is a pugnacious chap, whose fights land him in bother, especially with his fiancé when he defends the honour of a showgirl on the pier. A CUP OF KINDNESS’ (1934) benefits from the additional presence of silly-ass Claude Hulbert, who I always find irresistible.