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The Bootleg Files: The Lambeth Walk

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.
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