Gump

“The Gump” was Norman Wisdom’s own name for his idiot character, who is perhaps not quite fully established or embodied in his first star feature, TROUBLE IN STORE.

Wisdom’s once-upon-a-time appeal to kids is easy enough to understand. The typical Wisdom routine is Norman fucking up in front of an increasingly irate authority figure, which is a neat summary of the entire condition of childhood. And of course the one doing things wrong becomes the sympathetic one. To err is humorous.

Not content with that, of course, Wisdom pours on sentiment, which is unfortunate. As with Jerry Lewis (whose WHO’S MINDING THE STORE? is a ten-years-later improvement on this film), sometimes wringing some pathos out of the character involves stepping out of character altogether, seen most clearly when Norman sings “Don’t Laugh at Me ‘Cos I’m a Fool” in a voice which feels dubbed even though it isn’t.

About the only classically constructed gag of surprise in TROUBLE IN STORE.

What’s surprising, as this begins, is how stroppy Norman is. A regular little Jimmy Porter. There is, it turns out, a lot of class resentment at work in the Gump. He works in the storeroom at a large department store but dreams of being a window dresser. When he mistakenly thinks he’s got the promotion, he swans around the shop floor talking in grotesque toffee-nosed accents and using big words he doesn’t understand. The working-class kid is just waiting to move up.

Wisdom is agile — he can do spectacular falls, not on a Buster Keaton level, but there’s some impressive acrobatics here. Not really many interesting or surprising or sustained gag sequences, though. The best bit may be Norman setting himself on fire during his employer’s speech, and being too embarrassed to interrupt it. That’s some good Britishness. It reminds me of the very funny Manuel on fire bit from Fawlty Towers. Set a small man ablaze and everybody laughs.

Interesting people are involved — not director John Paddy Carstairs, who did a great many of these and not much else of distinction in a career starting in the thirties. THE SAINT IN LONDON looks to have been his one brush with the big time. He was the brother of producer Anthony Nelson Keyes, and he also directed SPARE A COPPER with George Formby, so he had form. Formby form. If you can direct one awful British comedian, you can direct ’em all.

Co-writer Ted Willis also had a hand in BITTER VICTORY, which takes some swallowing. But he was a man of many parts — British proto-kitchen sink realism like FLAME IN THE STREETS and WOMAN IN A DRESSING GOWN were at least as much his style as this muck. He devised THE BLUE LAMP and created its cop show spin-off, Dixon of Dock Green which started in 1955 and lasted until 1976 — I remember the damned thing.

A subplot, of sorts, has Margaret Rutherford, a more established star than Norman, as a shameless shoplifter. She doesn’t need material to be entertaining, she just inhabits a perpetual zone of entertainment which follows her about, emanating from her body. Also good value is Joan Sim, Carry On film goddess and a comedienne who never really got her due. Well, you don’t if you’re in a dozen carry Ons.

Megs Jenkins is on hand to answer any trivia questions about what connects Norman Wisdom to BLACK NARCISSUS.

There are some grace notes. Not many, but some, and they’re quite odd. When Norman sings his tearjerking song, he’s still sodden from wading into the duck pond in order to grab a duckling for his romantic interest to feed. A birdlike listener is so entranced she goes on filling her cup with sugar lumps. Norman’s physical wetness in this scene chimes well with his obvious mental and spiritual wetness.

Later, Norman gets into a row with a camp window dresser and they start smashing crockery, to the amusement of a crowd. Norman produces a small hammer to destroy a tea pot, but then his eye is caught by some rando in the crowd, who shakes his head confidentially. Norman puts down the small hammer and picks up a big hammer. The rando now nods, confidentially. And never appears again. I like this because it’s eccentric. Everything else in the film goes the direct route: things are smashed, people fall down, there is embarrassment, there is gurning. But here, in this strange exchange between strangers, one a sheer interloper in the film, something closer to British eccentric comedy in the Lewis Carroll tradition — or Dan Leno, maybe — peers its head round the corner, frowns slightly, and then disappears forever.

It seems that Awful British Comedians have a way of growing on one — Will Hay and George Formby both seemed less offensive on the second go-round, so I popped in another Wisdom, THE SQUARE PEG, lured by the prospect of Norman in a duel role — a typical Norman gump and a fiendish Nazi general. But any resemblance to THE GREAT DICTATOR, or even WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT? is purely uninspired. (Actually, I wonder if Jer saw this and decided, wrongly, that he could do better.)

Most of the Awful British Comedians did WWII pics — Old Mother Riley battled Nazi spies in OLD MOTHER RILEY JOINS UP, Will Hay teaches the Hitler Youth a thing or two in THE GOOSE STEPS OUT, George Formby literally punches Hitler in LET GEORGE DO IT. So it was natural for Norman to have a go, even if the war had been over for years.

Again, Norman is surprisingly stroppy — instead of setting him up as sympathetic, the movie takes pains to show its hero as an officious, petty council worker who regards his own roadwork as more central to the war effort than that of enlisted men. The movie introduces Edward Chapman as Mr. Grimsdale, his employer. Chapman had already played Norman’s boss in JUST MY LUCK, but that was Mr. Stoneway, who never appeared again. Mr. Grimsdale would recur several more times, even though Norman himself has a different surname each time. Maybe one reason Mr. G. gets increasingly grumpy (they’re kind of pals, here) is that he keeps running into idiots called Norman, all with the same face. The reason for his reappearance goes beyond a sympathy between the two actors — for some reason, Norman Wisdom yelling “Mr. Grimsdale!” in a helpless, panicky manner was judged to be hysterical. Like how Jerry Lewis was always shouting “Lady!” only he never did.

This one also has Honor Blackman — too interesting and sexy for this context — and lots of other favourites like Andre Mauranne from the PINK PANTHERS (Herbert Lom’s pained assistant) and the mighty Hattie Jacques. Oliver Reed is apparently in there somewhere also, but the anticipation of a Reed-Wisdom face-off (delicious? horrifying?) remains unfulfilled.

Nazi Norman is quite a good bit of play-acting — one always suspected he had an inner sadist. In another weird moment, non-Nazi Norman has to pretend to be French, but doesn’t speak the language so he acts the part of a non-verbal idiot. A little idiot playing a bigger idiot. Russian dolls of imbecility.

Some peculiar Nazi loveplay as Nazi Norman pours champagne over Nazi opera diva Hattie’s ample bosom. “Cor,” says non-Nazi Norman, peeping through a keyhole.

It isn’t any good, you understand. Occasionally Norman, by going too far (like Jer) can raise a laugh with dismal material or no material, but we all pay a terrible price for it. My favourite bit was when he runs out of air after being repeatedly told to exhale by a doctor. As an asthmatic, I enjoyed the ghastliness of a man deflating himself through the medium of acting.

Matthew Sweet’s section on Wisdom in Shepperton Babylon is very enlightening — and just short of nasty. He notes the way Wisdom’s home (on the Isle of Man, a tax haven) was a kind of shrine to his career. We get the Chaplinesque upbringing of horrible poverty and neglect, which does seem to explain the needy screen persona. And real life persona. And Sweet nails the way maturity tends to erode one’s ability to sympathise with the Gump.

There’s also this documentary, made subsequent to Sweet’s visit, when Norman was suffering from Altzheimer’s. Except, in a Norma Desmond version of ironic mercy, he wasn’t really suffering. His illness reduced him to the character he’d played so often, a big kid. You don’t want to get Altzheimer’s, but if you get it, this is the form you want to get it in. It’s tragic, but not for you. Norman’s biggest worry is being forced to take a bath. His second childhood was, thanks to his wealth and his loving children, a lot happier than his first.

Norman, to camera: “Thanks ever so much for looking at me.”

Chin

Jack Hulbert is a somewhat atypical awful British comedian. Less awful than some, it’s more his undistinguished films that drag him down. He fits the Matthew Sweet formulation of looking like a human being reflected in a tap, but more precisely he looks like an inept drawing of a handsome man. While the stereotypical hero is supposed to have a lantern jaw, the Hulbert chin is more like a melted candle or perhaps a stalactite. Disturbing in a frontal view it surprises with an outward curve when viewed in profile, like its gotten caught in a mechanism. Like most chins, you can’t see it from the back, his neck’s in the way, and this is perhaps a blessing. Who knows what it’d get up to in a dorsal elevation.

THE CAMELS ARE COMING is a title that brings a smile to my lips, which the film itself rarely manages. It’s not totally cringe, though. Hulbert can do a parody of stiff-upper-lip acting which is quite winning. Rather than being a low-status chump man-child like Formby or Wisdom later on, or a smutty imp like Max Miller or Arthur Askey, Hulbert is more of a twit or silly ass. In his more sympathetic moments he can get you thinking how awkward it must have been to be a posh idiot, automatically placed in a position of power and responsibility by dint of race and birthright that you’re totally unequipped to handle. Then you reflect that there may be better people to feel sorry for in this situation.

TCAC has one thing most Awful British Comedian movies don’t have, which is production values, considerable location shooting having been accomplished in Egypt. It’s inspiring to see Hulbert, in blackface, patrolling the same historic sites Peter Ustinov and Mia Farrow would breeze through in DEATH ON THE NILE. History! The war would put a stop to this kind of foreign entanglement, and most ABCs are men of the sound stage or back lot almost exclusively.

Interesting credits — Tim Whelan, one of the team of piano-movers responsible for directing THIEF OF BAGDAD, is credited here, but the more interesting Robert Stevenson is his uncredited co-helmer. His KING SOLOMON’S MINES and NON-STOP NEW YORK and THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS MIND are an Imperial ton of fun.

The fact that this is — maybe — an actual adaptation and spoof of a Biggles novel makes a lot of sense. What doesn’t make sense is that there’s nobody called Biggles in it and original author W.E. Johns gets no credit. I now learn that The Camels are Coming was the very first Biggles book in 1932. Already by 1934 considered too ridiculous to be played straight. Or, as seems possible, maybe they just stole the title. But the movie is about a heroic (but silly) British aviator, pretty much a Biggle parody. (The book derives its title from the Sopwith Camel, as also flown by Snoopy — but the filmmakers were right, it’s clearly a comedy title, even if you don’t immediately get the pun on The Campbells are Coming — which the soundtrack obligingly points out.)

Like CITIZEN KANE this begins with a fake newsreel. There, it’s fair to say, the resemblance ends. Hulbert’s ass or arse character has elements in common with Clouseau — you get the impression he knows he’s a nit, but is not smart enough to know everyone else knows it too, so he has to put on a front to try and keep his incompetence a secret. A man in hell.

Because Hulbert (whose more distorted brother Claude played silly ass Algie in several BULLDOG DRUMMOND pics) looks more like a travesty of a leading man, less like a genetic throwback to amphibian times, the problem of how to pair him with a convincing leading lady is less hideously awkward than it would be with Formby (who, improbably, co-starred with the gorgeous Googie Withers, Kay Walsh, Phyllis Calvert, Linden Travers, Kathleen Harrison and Elizabeth Allen). The decorous Anna Lee is cast opposite Jack. Her main technique is to grin amusedly in closeup and then be merely smiling, lips closed, when we cut to the wide shot. A fine method if you can master it. She’s winning, but it’s not certain she can act. She’d have to get in with John Ford to prove that.

Hulbert is a proper posh boy — educated at Winchester and Cambridge (a Cambridge footlight, like several Pythons, though it was a rather different outfit in his day). He appears in ELSTREE CALLING but likely missed being directed by Hitchcock. He seems to have been a decent chap. Married for many years to Cicely Courtnidge, who sometimes co-starred with him. He was once listed as Britain’s most most popular lead, which shows you.

Oh yes, racism. Considering the period, it’s not as awful as it might have been. Jack does black up to pass as Egyptian. Since most of the film’s other Egyptians are also played by white dudes, this isn’t as unconvincing as it’s probably meant to be. The film is about drug smuggling — does this mean it would have been banned in the US? Or maybe it wouldn’t have stood a chance of release there anywhere outside the UK — none of our awful comedians cracked America, though HEY! HEY! USA! (1938) paired Will Hay with Edgar Kennedy in a foredoomed attempt at breaking through to a new and bigger audience. But America always had bigger idiots of their own.

(Wikipedia notes that TCAC never got a US release, also that Anna Lee met and married Robert Stevenson, who’s billed as Associate Producer, on the picture.)

There are a couple of songs, I have to warn you. There’s an Arab caravan chorus about robbing and killing which is quite cheerful, and then Jack has a gratuitous solo number which is good fun. Speaking of which, here’s a fun drug trip musical number with Melesian trick effects from another Hulbert flick.

By coincidence, this song is memorably used in MURPHY’S WAR, for which I’ve recently made a video essay (for the Arrow Films Blu-ray release).

THE CAMELS ARE COMING is mostly harmless, if witless. It took four chumps to write this rubbish, plus Hulbert himself on dialogue. Had the story been stronger, the comic situations been more and funnier, he could have been inspired to greater heights. Still, I can’t say I wouldn’t watch another Hulbert film. BULLDOG JACK has Ralph Richardson in it, and KATE PLUS TEN is a comic thriller based on an Edgar Wallace “shocker.” I find Wallace unreadably dully, despite the fact that one third of novels sold in English used to be written by him, or some such fantastical statistic. Spoofing him seems like the correct approach, though even there he may be too tedious.

NB: Doesn’t actually look much good, apart from an imported Genevieve Tobin.

The big finish of TCAC, in a besieged fort with Jack shooting Arabs off their camels, is a bit uncomfortable. I don’t recall any films where even Germans in wartime get this kind of treatment — killed as slapstick. It makes you appreciate how careful Keaton was with the very black comedy in THE GENERAL’s battle scene. Other examples of this kind of thing: Tashlin’s SON OF PALEFACE, where the slaughter of Indians for laughs is now very uncomfortable, even though it could be defended as genre parody — alas it’s not really ATTACKING the genre assumptions — and from the same director, the weirdly dislikeable (and I love Tashlin when he’s good) MARRY ME AGAIN, which celebrates Bob “the Butcher of Strasbourg” Cummings’ wartime heroics by having him shoot down countless “Jap” fighter planes, for laffs.

A strange personal resonance — when I were a lad, at the local Odeon in the seventies there was an ad for Rank Cinemas, a montage of unknown film clips, culminating in a closeup of a masticating or ruminating camel, with the words COME – BACK – SOON appearing sequentially over its face. The shot, as I recall, was in black and white, showing how far behind the times Rank had fallen. This movie MAY be the source of the camel shot.

Verdict: Jack Hulbert is Not Entirely Awful, but his films kind of are.

The Sunday Intertitle: Sydney Failure

I first realized how gifted a comedian Sydney Chaplin was when I noticed his interplay with his brother in A DOG’S LIFE — he’s the street vendor Charlie robs of cookies. The pair’s timing is exquisitely worked out, and the central conceit, that the number of cookies keeps diminishing and Charlie is the only suspect but Syd doesn’t feel able to make an accusation without catching him at it, is priceless.

I was disappointed, then, to learn that Syd was a rapist and a cannibal — and was caught at it. The story is gone over in Matthew Sweet’s Shepperton Babylon — Syd was preparing for the second of his British films when he assaulted an actress, Molly Wright, and bit her nipple off. He fled the country, leaving unpaid taxes (I know: infamy upon infamy) and the studio paid her a settlement.

It’s hard to imagine any way Wright could have made this story up (and certainly the studio acted like they believed her, in an era when movie studios were quite prepared to cover up sex crimes by their valued associates); it’s equally hard to imagine anyone biting off a body part unintentionally. It’s all horrific and creepy in the extreme, so much so that it’s not only surprising this isn’t better known, it’s slightly surprising that this story about the half-brother isn’t the first thing people think of when they think of Charlie. I guess that’s a measure of how his fame surpassed any scandal that came near him.

Sydney doesn’t seem to have done anything like this again, that we know of.

In THE MAN ON THE BOX (1925), made before the career-ending incident, Sydney is called a back-biter by a jealous husband, and makes the following denial —

It’s an odd film. A MacGuffin about plans for a new helicopter leads to millionaire’s son Chaplin disguising himself as a coachman (in 20s California?), getting hired as a groom, pressed into service as a butler and then disguising himself as a maid (like his semi-sibling, he’s very convincing in drag — CHARLIE’S AUNT was one of his biggest hits). Syd is able and agile — there’s some ferocious knockabout involving him and the film’s director, Charles Riesner (best known for skippering STEAMBOAT BILL JR) who co-stars as an enemy agent. Another future director, David Butler, also appears, and is just the kind of guffawing hearty you might expect from his later work.

“That’s right, Barrymore, pull them funny faces. HAW HAW!”

Syd is, as indicated, a skilled comedian, but he’s also an attractive and sympathetic screen presence, and at times his use of his eyes — flashing signals across a room like twin aldous lamps — is startlingly reminiscent of the better-known brother. For some reason, the squarer jaw-line makes his feminine side seem stranger — Charlie could be coquettish and it somehow seemed absolutely in keeping with his other qualities — imp, innocent, ruffian.

I guess if he ended up working in Britain his career was already on the slide, and there’s no reason to assume audiences had enough enthusiasm for him to want to see him move into talkies, so his career was going to be cut short by film history anyway. But it seems it should have been cut short by a prison sentence.