Almost a Honeymoon is a 1930 play by Walter Ellis. [1] It debuted at the Garrick Theatre in London and later enjoyed a successful run at the Apollo Theatre. [2] A farce it concerns a young man who has secured a lucrative post in the colonial service. His problem is that the post requires him to be married, and he has just a day to find a woman to be his wife.
The play was twice adapted for film. In 1930 Almost a Honeymoon directed by Monty Banks and starring Clifford Mollison and Dodo Watts and in 1938 Almost a Honeymoon directed by Norman Lee and starring Tommy Trinder and Linden Travers. [3] [4]
Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It concerns a divorced couple who, while honeymooning with their new spouses, discover that they are staying in adjacent rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for each other. Its second-act love scene was nearly censored in Britain as too risqué. Coward wrote one of his most popular songs, ‘Someday I'll Find You’, for the play.
Anna Lee, MBE was a British actress, labelled by studios "The British Bombshell".
Claude Noel Hulbert was a mid-20th century English stage, radio and cinema comic actor.
Sir John Selby Clements was a British actor and producer who worked in theatre, television and film.
Rodney Ackland was an English playwright, actor, theatre director and screenwriter.
Sir Edward Seymour Hicks, better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, actor-manager and producer. He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and producing Edwardian musical comedy, often together with his famous wife, Ellaline Terriss. His most famous acting role was that of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
The Family Way is a 1966 British comedy-drama film produced and directed by John and Roy Boulting, respectively, and starring father and daughter John Mills and Hayley Mills. Based on Bill Naughton's play All in Good Time (1963), with screenplay by Naughton, the film began life in 1961 as the television play Honeymoon Postponed. It is about the marital difficulties of a young newlywed couple living in a crowded house with the husband's family.
Thomas Kirby Walls was an English stage and film actor, producer and director, best known for presenting and co-starring in the Aldwych farces in the 1920s and for starring in and directing the film adaptations of those plays in the 1930s.
Norma Varden Shackleton, known professionally as Norma Varden, was an English-American actress with a long film career.
Edward Chapman was an English actor who starred in many films and television programmes, but is chiefly remembered as "Mr. William Grimsdale", the officious superior and comic foil to Norman Wisdom's character of Pitkin in many of his films from the late 1950s and 1960s.
Three Men on a Horse is a three-act farce co-authored by John Cecil Holm and George Abbott. The comedy focuses on a man who discovers he has a talent for choosing the winning horse in a race as long as he never places a bet himself. Originally titled Hobby Horse by John Cecil Holm, Three Men On A Horse was a property controlled and produced by Alex Yokel, who reached out to Warner Bros. for financial assistance; Warners agreed to provide financing on the condition Yokel find someone to doctor the script and direct the Broadway production. George Abbott, the director, who had since 1932 directed and produced each of his Broadway productions, immediately saw the potential and rewrote the script and agreed to direct if he received co-author credit and split the author's royalties with Holm. Abbott wrote a third act, resulting in a new three-act play titled Three Men on a Horse.
Ralph Clifford Lynn was an English actor who had a 60-year career, and is best remembered for playing comedy parts in the Aldwych farces first on stage and then in film.
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? is a 1953 British comedy film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Bonar Colleano, Diana Dors, David Tomlinson and Diana Decker. It was based on Vivian Tidmarsh's 1944 West End hit play by the same name.
The Whitehall farces were a series of five long-running comic stage plays at the Whitehall Theatre in London, presented by the actor-manager Brian Rix, in the 1950s and 1960s. They were in the low comedy tradition of British farce, following the Aldwych farces, which played at the Aldwych Theatre between 1924 and 1933.
Rookery Nook is a farce by the English playwright Ben Travers based on his own 1923 novel. It was first given at the Aldwych Theatre, London, the third in the series of twelve Aldwych farces presented by the actor-manager Tom Walls at the theatre between 1923 and 1933. Several of the actors formed a regular core cast for the Aldwych farces. The play depicts the complications that ensue when a young woman, dressed in pyjamas, seeks refuge from her bullying stepfather at a country house in the middle of the night.
Almost a Honeymoon is a 1930 British comedy film directed by Monty Banks and starring Clifford Mollison, Dodo Watts and Donald Calthrop. It was based on the play Almost a Honeymoon by Walter Ellis. A second adaptation was made in 1938. It was made by British International Pictures at their Elstree Studios.
Dorothy Margaret Watts, known professionally as Dodo Watts, was a British stage and film actress. She played Fay Eaton in the 1929 Broadway version of Ian Hay's play The Middle Watch, and reprised her role in the 1930 British film version the following year. When her career wound down, she became a business woman, owning a successful millinery firm in London's West End. She was later a casting director and head of casting for ABC Weekend TV, and largely responsible for casting Diana Rigg in the role of Emma Peel in The Avengers TV series. She later became a theatrical agent.
Almost a Honeymoon is a 1938 British comedy film directed by Norman Lee and starring Tommy Trinder, Linden Travers and Edmund Breon. It was based on the 1930 play Almost a Honeymoon by Walter Ellis, previously filmed in 1930. Its plot is about a young man who urgently needs to find a wife so that he can get a lucrative job in the colonial service, and sets out to persuade a woman to marry him.
The Aldwych farces were a series of twelve stage farces presented at the Aldwych Theatre, London, nearly continuously from 1923 to 1933. All but three of them were written by Ben Travers. They incorporate and develop British low comedy styles, combined with clever word-play. The plays were presented by the actor-manager Tom Walls and starred Walls and Ralph Lynn, supported by a regular company that included Robertson Hare, Mary Brough, Winifred Shotter, Ethel Coleridge, and Gordon James.
Sally Smith is a British actress born in Godalming, Surrey. Although primarily a star of both dramatic and musical theatre she appeared in several films and dozens of television shows.