Here Come the Huggetts | |
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Directed by | Ken Annakin |
Written by | Muriel Box Sydney Box Peter Rogers Denis Constanduros Mabel Constanduros |
Produced by | Betty E. Box |
Starring | Jack Warner Kathleen Harrison Jane Hylton Susan Shaw Petula Clark |
Cinematography | Reginald H. Wyer |
Edited by | Gordon Hales |
Music by | Antony Hopkins |
Production company | |
Distributed by | General Film Distributors |
Release date |
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Running time | 93 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | £100,000 [1] |
Box office | £127,000 [1] |
Here Come the Huggetts is a 1948 British comedy film, the first of the Huggetts series, about a working class English family. All three films in the series were directed by Ken Annakin and released by Gainsborough Pictures. [2]
Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison head the cast as factory worker Joe Huggett and his wife Ethel, with Petula Clark, Jane Hylton and Susan Shaw as their young daughters (all with the same first names as the actresses portraying them) and Amy Veness as their opinionated grandmother. Diana Dors had an early role. [3]
Joe and Ethel had been introduced a year earlier in the film Holiday Camp and there would be two sequels, Vote for Huggett and The Huggetts Abroad (both 1949).
Factory worker Joe Huggett has a first-time telephone installed at home, for work purposes, but his daughters quickly find a lot more use for it. Diana, a flighty cousin of Ethel's (played by a 16-year-old Diana Dors), arrives for a not-very-welcome visit and causes problems at home and at Joe's workplace when Ethel persuades Joe to get her a job there. Eldest daughter Jane must choose between her fiancé who has been away in the forces and a new local admirer. Meanwhile, the family is planning to go to London to see the royal wedding, and Grandma Huggett joins them in camping out overnight near Buckingham Palace.
Clark, who began her career as a child vocalist on BBC Radio, sings the song "Walking Backwards".
Ken Annakin had directed three films for Sydney Box, then head of Gainsborough Pictures. He was ambitious to do other work but Box offered him Here Come the Huggetts, featuring characters in the popular Holiday Camp, directed by Annakin. "I had to delay my dreams and ideas for ‘great films’, and churn out the Huggett series, because Sydney needed them," wrote Annakin later. "I owed him a debt and had to earn cash as quickly as possible to pay off the mortgage." There would be three Hugget films in all. Annakin added, "The Huggett years were not really such a bind. Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison were a joy to work with. Jack would always come in with a new joke, and amuse us with his Maurice Chevalier imitations. Kathleen seemed to adore me and performed, marvellously and amusingly, everything I asked of her. Dinah Sheridan, Jane Hilton, Susan Shaw, Petula Clark and Diana Dors were a great team and fun to work with as well. However, the challenge was no longer there." [4]
Filming took place in June 1948. The working title was Wedding Bells. [5] Annakin said he had "a little affair with Susan Shaw" while making the films, although he did not specify which ones. [6]
Film reviewer Stephen Vagg described the film as a breakthrough role for Diana Dors, who played Ma Huggett's niece. [7]
Petula Clark CBE is a British singer, actress, and songwriter. She started her professional career as a child performer and has had the longest career of any British entertainer, spanning more than 85 years.
Gainsborough Pictures was a British film studio based on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, northeast London. Gainsborough Studios was active between 1924 and 1951. The company was initially based at Islington Studios, which were built as a power station for the Great Northern & City Railway and later converted to studios.
Kathleen Harrison was a prolific English character actress best remembered for her role as Mrs. Huggett in a trio of British post-war comedies about a working-class family's misadventures, The Huggetts. She later played the charwoman Mrs. Dilber opposite Alastair Sim in the 1951 film Scrooge and a Cockney charwoman who inherits a fortune in the television series Mrs Thursday (1966–67).
Kenneth Cooper Annakin, OBE was an English film director.
The Fast Lady is a 1962 British comedy film, directed by Ken Annakin and starring James Robertson Justice, Leslie Phillips, Stanley Baxter, Kathleen Harrison, and Julie Christie. The screenplay was by Henry Blyth and Jack Davies, based on the 1925 novel of the same name by Keble Howard. It was the third in a trilogy of comedies written by Jack Davies that Annakin made for Independent Artists.
Easy Money is a 1948 British satirical film about a modern British tradition, the football pools. It is composed of four tales about the effect a major win has in four different situations in the post-war period. Written by Muriel and Sydney Box, based on the play "Easy Money" written by Arnold Ridley, and directed by Bernard Knowles, it was released by Gainsborough Pictures.
Dance Hall is a 1950 British drama film directed by Charles Crichton. The film was an unusual departure for Ealing Studios at the time, as it tells the story about four women and their romantic encounters from a female perspective.
Susan Shaw was an English actress.
Vote for Huggett is a 1949 British comedy film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Susan Shaw and Petula Clark. Warner reprises his role as the head of a London family, in the post-war years.
The Huggetts are a fictional family who appear in a series of British films which were released in the late 1940s by Gainsborough Pictures. The films centre on the character of Joe Huggett, played by Jack Warner, the head of a working class London family. Along with the Gainsborough melodramas, the Huggett films proved popular and lucrative for the studio. All four films were directed by Ken Annakin and produced by Betty E. Box.
The Huggetts Abroad is a 1949 British comedy drama film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Petula Clark and Susan Shaw. It was the fourth and final film in The Huggetts series.
Holiday Camp is a 1947 British comedy drama film directed by Ken Annakin, starring Flora Robson, Jack Warner, Dennis Price, and Hazel Court, and also features Kathleen Harrison and Jimmy Hanley. It is set at one of the then-popular holiday camps. It resonated with post-war audiences and was very successful. It was the first film to feature the Huggett family, who went on to star in "The Huggetts" film series.
Landfall is a 1949 British war film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Michael Denison, Patricia Plunkett and Kathleen Harrison. It is based on the 1940 novel Landfall: A Channel Story, written by Nevil Shute.
Value for Money is a 1955 British comedy film directed by Ken Annakin and starring John Gregson, Diana Dors, Susan Stephen and Derek Farr. It is based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Derrick Boothroyd.
Double Confession is a 1950 British crime film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Derek Farr, Joan Hopkins, William Hartnell and Peter Lorre. The screenplay by William Templeton is based on the novel All On A Summer's Day by H.L.V. Fletcher, written under the pen name John Garden.
Home and Away is a 1956 British drama film directed by Vernon Sewell and starring Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison. It depicts the life of an ordinary working-class man after he wins the football pools. The film reunited Warner and Harrison who had previously appeared together in the Huggetts series of films.
My Brother's Keeper is a 1948 British crime film in the form of a convicts-on-the-run chase thriller, directed by Alfred Roome for Gainsborough Pictures. It was the first of only two films directed by Roome during a long career as a film editor. The film stars Jack Warner and George Cole and was produced by Sydney Box.
Jane Hylton was an English actress who accumulated 30 film credits, mostly in the 1940s and 1950s, before moving into television work in the latter half of her career in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Company of Youth was an acting school for young contract players for the Rank Organisation who were being groomed for stardom. It was commonly known as the Rank Charm School.
John Blythe was an English character actor.