BOOTLEG FILES 913: “The Lambeth Walk” (1939 British feature starring Lupino Lane).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the proverbial cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.
Comedies that thrust earthy working-class characters into snooty high society settings might be among the most predictable pieces of entertainment, but they often produce the best results. Chaplin plumbed this concept as a disguised convict mixing with the wealthy in his 1917 classic “The Adventurer,” George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” and its musical successor “My Fair Lady” uneasily turned a Cockney flower seller into a lady, Abbott and Costello were crass plumbers mistaken for well-heeled guests at a Long Island estate with “In Society,” and the Three Stooges often ran amok through the mansions of the hoity-toity, leaving the residue of pie fights along the way.
This fish-out-of-water plot device was used in the 1937 musical “Me and My Girl,” which became a sensation on the London stage. British audiences responded strongly to its story of a wisecracking Cockney who learns he is heir to an aristocratic fortune – even King George VI was a fan – and the ran show for 1,550 performances between 1937 and 1940. While the show was enjoying its lengthy West End run the BBC presented “Me and My Girl” with a 1938 radio broadcast and a 1939 television presentation.
It made sense for “Me and My Girl” to be turned into a movie musical, but curiously its cinematic adaptation occurred with all but two of its songs removed – the lovely title tune and “The Lambeth Walk,” a bouncy celebration of the Cockney spirit that inspired a popular dance craze. Since the mostly non-musical film version deviated from its tuneful stage source, the title was changed to “The Lambeth Walk.”
The most important part of the show that was retained for the film version was its star, Lupino Lane. A member of Britain’s prominent Lupino theatrical family, Lane first gained success on the British stage before coming to America in the 1920s to appear in silent comedy shorts. He had no problem transitioning from silent to sound films, but opted to leave Hollywood in 1930 and resume his career in London, alternating between stage and screen output. In 1935, he created the character of the boisterous Cockney racetrack tout Bill Snibson for the musical comedy “Twenty to One,” and he brought Snibson back in 1937 for “Me and My Girl.”
The film gets off to a sluggish start with some clumsy slapstick involving Lane’s Snibson and a youthful shoplifter pilfering apples from an East End fruit seller’s barrow. Snibson is identified and brought to a manor where he meets his hitherto unknown blood family – it seems that his father was an earl who had a secret marriage with a working-class woman that resulted in his birth, except that he claims to be unaware of his parentage. When the cocky Cockney struts into the manor to see the too-dignified aristocrats viewing him in stony silence, he exclaims, “Blimey, Madame Tussaud’s.”
Snibson initially makes a poor impression with his failure to remove his derby (despite multiple coughing cues from those present) and by his indecipherable Cockney rhyming slang (saying “bees and honey” when he means “money”). But there is a catch – he is unable to claim his inheritance unless he convinces his new family that he has aristocratic bearing.
Inevitably, this leads to Snibson’s struggles to learn the protocol of upper-class behavior. There is a lengthy and ultimately tiresome sequence where a battalion of servants come in and out of his bedroom while he tries to avoid being seen out of his bed. The sticking point to his re-education is the refusal of his new family to allow the continuation of his relationship with Sally, a sweet blonde Cockney. She’s played by Sally Gray, a popular British actress who brings a strong infusion of spirit to the proceedings – and considering she was 24 when Lane was 47 during the film’s production, it is no surprise that her scenes contain higher doses of energy.
“The Lambeth Walk” veers back to its musical-comedy roots roughly 41 minutes into its 76-minute running time when Lane and Gray perform “Me and My Girl” in a setting outside of a tavern. At first, it is a bit jolting for the film to abruptly break into song-and-dance, but it is a charming number. But the real jolt comes at the 50-minute mark after Snibson’s Cockney pals crash a society party and he leads everyone in a staging of “The Lambeth Walk” where upper-class and lower-class happily share common ground in the jaunty dance and catchy song. For British audiences back in the day, “The Lambeth Walk” sequence was a rare obliteration of the ossified class structure the defined the kingdom’s socioeconomic structure – though, strangely, the remainder of the film boomerangs back to the rigid class differences that were so strict that the only way for Snibson and Sally could stay together was if she underwent training to lose her Cockney roots and become a posh lady.
“The Lambeth Walk” was unimaginatively directed by Albert de Courville, who specialized in comedies and thrillers but whose work is mostly unknown on this side of the Atlantic. The only recognizable actors in the cast were Seymour Hicks, the star of the 1935 “Scrooge,” and the delightful Wilfrid Hyde-White who is buried under heavy make-up as an aged aristocrat.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picked up the theatrical rights to the film, successfully playing it across the UK but having much less success in the US market where the Cockney humor failed to connect with Americans. The stage production “Me and My Girl” never played in the US until the 1987 Broadway production.
“The Lambeth Walk” has never been made available in any US home entertainment format. There is a terrible quality print on YouTube with French subtitles. And while that is not the best way to view this obscure little film, it is the only route available for us today.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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