Boys Will Be Boys | |
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Directed by | William Beaudine |
Written by | Robert Edmunds Will Hay J.B. Morton |
Starring | Will Hay Gordon Harker Jimmy Hanley |
Cinematography | Charles Van Enger |
Edited by | Alfred Roome |
Music by | Louis Levy Bretton Byrd Jack Beaver |
Distributed by | Gaumont British Distributors |
Release date |
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Running time | 80 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Boys Will Be Boys is a 1935 British comedy film directed by William Beaudine which stars Will Hay, Gordon Harker and Jimmy Hanley. The film is set at Narkover School, where headmaster Doctor Alec Smart (Will Hay) becomes involved in the disappearance of a valuable necklace.
The setting is loosely based on the works of Beachcomber, where Narkover is a school specializing in gambling and extortion, and the headmaster is a "Dr. Smart-Allick".
Alec Smart, who is engaged teaching in a prison, applies for the job of headmaster at a nearby public school to replace the previous headmaster who has been convicted of writing forged cheques and has just been sent to prison. Smart appeals to the Governor to write him a good reference which he pretends to. Afterwards he writes his real recommendation which is very negative about Smart's talents.
The trustee who works as the Governor's secretary, Faker Brown, persuades Smart to send the letter praising him, and forges the signature of the Governor on it. On the basis of the faked letter, Lady Dorking, who runs the Board of Governors appoints Smart to the job. This angers her deputy, Colonel Crableigh, who had favoured promoting his nephew, the Deputy head.
On his arrival at the school, Smart is treated to a boisterous reception by the unruly students led by the Head Boy, Cyril Brown, who is the son of Faker Brown. Narkover proves to be a breeding ground for young criminals, who prefer to spend their time playing cards rather than taking classes. After his initial attempts to stop their games, Smart himself ends up playing cards with the students. He gets off on the wrong foot with Colonel Crableigh but, in spite of Smart's obvious incompetence, Lady Dorking immediately takes a shine to him. Crableigh begins engineering a scheme to have Smart dismissed and replaced by his own nephew.
Soon after his arrival Smart is approached by Faker Brown, just released from prison, who blackmails him into giving a job as a steward at the school. Brown has his eye on the valuable jewels of Lady Dorking, in particular her diamond necklace, which she is due to be wearing on Founders Day which takes place a few days later. It involves a dinner and a rugby match between the school's old boys and the current students, with Smart persuaded to captain the school team.
On Founder's Day, Lady Dorking wears her best jewels. In the Headmaster's study, she is shown some conjuring tricks by Smart. Crableigh places Dorking's necklace in Smart's pocket in an attempt to incriminate him and have him dismissed. However, the necklace is then stolen by Faker who hides it in a decanter. After trying, and failing, to persuade him to give it back Smart takes it and hides it in a jewellery box due to be presented to Lady Dorking at the dinner..
Shortly before the presentation, the diamonds are again taken by the Head Boy Cyril Brown who picks the lock. He hides the necklace in a rugby ball, but before he can make off with it, the ball is taken by the referee in the match. Confusion then ensues as during the match, Faker and Cyril Brown try to recover the ball and make off with it while Smart tries to prevent them. Eventually Smart kicks the ball towards some police spectators and unmasks the villains in spite of Crableigh's attempts to have Smart arrested for the theft.
A young Clive Dunn also made an appearance, aged 15.
His first production for Gainsborough Pictures, the film was a breakthrough role for Will Hay and helped establish him as a film star throughout the British Empire. The role of the bumbling schoolmaster, which he had first developed in his 1920s music hall act, would be reprised in another two of Hay's films, Good Morning, Boys and The Ghost of St. Michael's .
Writing for The Spectator , Graham Greene characterized the film as "very amusing", describing Hay's portrayal of Dr. Smart as "competent" and praising Dampier's portrayal of Second Master Finch as the film's "finest performance". [1] The Radio Times Guide to Films gave Boys Will Be Boys three stars out of five, observing that the film contains "the blend of bluster and dishonesty that makes [Hay's] films irresistible". [2]
This was Hay's first screen outing for his well-established "schoolmaster" music hall routine. Hay had previously appeared in two Pinero adaptations Those Were The Days and Dandy Dick , and a comedy revue show as the incompetent head of a broadcasting service in Radio Parade of 1935 . After the success of Boys Will Be Boys, Hay appeared in a number of films in which he played incompetent schoolmasters including Good Morning Boys and the Ghost of St Michaels . Hay has been described as being "surpassed only by Chaplin as an actor who ingeniously found how to translate his music hall performative to film". [3]
Based on this film, an Australian radio show was made called Fourth Form at St Percys, which quickly changed its title to Yes, what! The show features a teacher (Percy Pym) who sounded like Will Hay trying to teach a bunch of unruly children, the worst of who are Greenbottle (who sounded like Moore Marriott) and Bottomley. They never quite manage to get through a lesson through endless interruptions which easily lead the teacher astray which leads to punishments (hitting with a stick) being handed out. The shows were about 12 minutes long and normally began with chimes and; "Good morning boys! Good morning sir" The series lasted from 1935 till 1937 and cost A$10 an episode to make. Over seventy years later, it is still on a number of radio stations in Australia and is currently available on CD with one of the stars talking about the show.
William Thomson Hay was an English comedian who wrote and acted in a schoolmaster sketch that later transferred to the screen, where he also played other authority figures with comic failings. His film Oh, Mr. Porter! (1937), made by Gainsborough Pictures, is often cited as the supreme British-produced film-comedy, and in 1938 he was the third highest-grossing star in the UK. Many comedians have acknowledged him as a major influence. Hay was also a keen amateur astronomer.
Dover College is an independent day and boarding school in the English public school tradition located in Dover in south east England. It was founded in 1871, and takes both day pupils and boarders from the UK and internationally.
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Hopkins School is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational, day school for grades 7–12 located in New Haven, Connecticut.
Sir John Deane's Sixth Form College is a sixth form college in Northwich, Cheshire, UK. It was formerly Sir John Deane's Grammar School, which was founded in 1557.
Summer Fields is a fee-paying boys' independent day and boarding preparatory school in Summertown, Oxford. It was originally called Summerfield and used to have a subsidiary school, Summerfields, St Leonards-on-Sea.
Lady Manners School is an English secondary school located in Bakewell, a market town in the Peak District National Park, Derbyshire. It was founded on 20 May 1636 by Grace, Lady Manners, who lived at Haddon Hall, the current home of Lord and Lady Edward Manners, and has also in the past been known as the Bakewell Grammar School. It is now a member of the Peak 11 group of secondary schools in the Peak District.
Ask a Policeman is a 1939 British comedy film directed by Marcel Varnel and starring Will Hay, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt.
Good Morning, Boys! is a 1937 British comedy film directed by Marcel Varnel and featuring Will Hay, Graham Moffatt, Martita Hunt, Lilli Palmer and Peter Gawthorne. It was made at the Gainsborough Studios in Islington.
Bishop Vesey's Grammar School (BVGS) is a selective state grammar school with academy status in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, England. Founded in 1527, it is one of the oldest schools in Britain, the oldest state school in the West Midlands and the third oldest school in the West Midlands after two independent schools, Bablake School and Wolverhampton Grammar School. The school had boarders until 1969 but is now a day school only.
Convict 99 is a 1938 British comedy film directed by Marcel Varnel and starring Will Hay, Moore Marriott, Graham Moffatt and Googie Withers.
Westminster City School is a state-funded secondary academy for boys, with a mixed sixth form, in Westminster, London. The school educates over 800 students, with links to more than 100 different cultures, in a central London location. The school offers places at Year 7 entry, each year, to boys of Christian faith, other world faiths, and those of no faith. The current headteacher is Peter Broughton, while the current deputy headteachers are Jen Lockyer and Simon Brown.
Tom Brown's School Days is a 1940 coming-of-age drama film about a teenage boy's experiences at Rugby School, Warwickshire in the early 19th century under the reforming headmastership of Thomas Arnold. It stars Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Freddie Bartholomew and Jimmy Lydon in the title role. The film was based on the 1857 novel, Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes.
Percy Walsh was a British stage and film actor. His stage work included appearing in the London premieres of R.C.Sherriff's Journey's End (1928) and Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1943) and Appointment with Death (1945).
Percy Shaw Jeffrey FRGS was a respected English schoolmaster and author of several books on a range of topics, including significant contributions towards the teaching of phonetics in schools. Shaw Jeffrey taught at a variety of schools before spending sixteen years as headmaster at Colchester Royal Grammar School. With his wife, Alice, he retired first to South Africa, then to the town of Whitby, North Yorkshire, in 1916, where he spent his time between numerous trips to countries around the world.
Dr. Benjamin Twist is a recurring fictional character who appears in several films featuring comedian Will Hay, who portrays the character in all mediums.
Du Barry Was a Lady is a 1943 American musical comedy film directed by Roy Del Ruth, starring Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, and Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra. It is based on the 1939 stage musical of the same name. Shot in Technicolor, the film was produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Charles Farrell was an Irish stage, film and television actor.
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Housemaster is a comedy by the English playwright Ian Hay, first produced at the Apollo Theatre, London, on 12 November 1936, running for 662 performances. Under the title Bachelor Born, the play was presented on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre in January 1938, running for just over a year. A film was made of the play in 1938.