Lieutenant Wilfred Cartroad. |
Tony Hancock's debut feature film was a movie that could easily have
been a feature length episode of an upcoming British sitcom The Army Game which ran on ITV - on a
Friday night if I remember correctly - from 1957 until 1961 the movie even had
one the Game headliners Bill Fraser starring, but in the film he was not
coupled with Alfie Bass but Peter Sellers.
In David Paltenghi’s British comedy film Orders are Orders (1954), which was a remake of the 1933
film Orders is Orders, Hancock played
Lieutenant Wilfred Cartroad the harassed leader of the regimental band. The
1954 version also starred Sid James who teamed up with Hancock in what is still
one of the Britain's finest comedy programmes. Broadcast as Hancock’s Half Hour from1954 on the
radio and concurrently on BBC television for a period of seven years. It was Hancock
that carried the series virtually playing himself in this hilarious situation
comedy, Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock lived at "23 Railway Cuttings" in East
Cheam, and the humour was generated from the characters and the circumstances
in which they found themselves.
Paltenghi was a British ballet dancer, choreographer, director and film
director who directed two other films in the mid fifties. Orders are Orders is about an American film production company led
by Ed Waggermeyer - James with an American accent - who take over a British
Army Camp to make a science fiction movie using the camps soldiers as extras.
Obviously the encampments commanding officer (Raymond Huntley) is none to keen
on the arrangement and attempts to make life as difficult as possible, that is
until Wanda Sinclair (Margot Grahame), Waggermeyer assistant, woes our
commanding officer.
The film also gives early roles to Sellers, Eric Sykes and Donald
Pleasance and is at best amusing but certainly worth a look to see 'the lad
himself' in his debut movie. We had to wait another seven years to see him in
his second feature film The Rebel
(1961). It was between these two movies that Hancock was at the peak of his
career but only a further seven years before his suicide on the 25th June 1968
in Australia – a massive loss to British comedy.
The Lad Himself, one of Britain's best comedians. |
No comments:
Post a Comment