Oh, Mr Porter!
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| Oh, Mr Porter! | |
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 Titles to Oh, Mr Porter! |
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| Directed by | Marcel Varnel |
| Produced by | Edward Black |
| Written by | J.O.C.Orton Marriott Edgar Val Guest |
| Starring | Will Hay Graham Moffatt Moore Marriott |
| Music by | Louis Levy |
| Cinematography | Arthur Crabtree |
| Editing by | R.E. Dearing Alfred Roome |
| Distributed by | Gainsborough Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1937 |
| Running time | 85 minutes |
| Country |  UK |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Oh, Mr Porter! is a comedy film from 1937 starring British actor Will Hay with Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt and directed by Marcel Varnel. While not his most commercially successful movie, it is probably his best-known film amongst modern audiences.
The plot of Oh, Mr Porter was loosely based on the Arnold Ridley play The Ghost Train and was later remade (with a naval setting) as Up the Creek (1958) with David Tomlinson and Peter Sellers.
Jimmy Perry has stated that he came up with the triumvirate of Captain Mainwaring, Corporal Jones and Private Pike in Dad's Army after watching Oh, Mr Porter.[1]
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[edit] Plot
William Porter (Will Hay) is an inept railway worker who - due to family connections - is given the job of stationmaster at Buggleskelly, a remote and ramshackle rural Irish station, situated on the North/South border.
After taking the ferry from England to Ireland, Porter is abashed to discover just how rural the station is - two miles cross country from the nearest bus stop. To make matters worse, local legend has it that the ghost of One Eyed Joe the Miller haunts the line and, as a result, no-one will go near the station after dark.
Porter's co-workers at the station are the elderly deputy stationmaster, Harbottle (Moore Marriott), and an overweight, insolent young porter, Albert (Graham Moffatt), who make a living by stealing goods in transit and swapping railway tickets for food. They welcome Porter to his new job by regaling him with tales of the deaths and disapperances of previous stationmasters - each apparently the victim of the curse of One-Eyed Joe.
From the beginning it is obvious that the station is run very unprofessionally. Porter is woken up by a cow sticking its head through the room he is sleeping in, for instance (the cow has been lost in transit and is being milked by Harbottle), and the team's breakfast consists of bacon made from a litter of piglets which the railway are supposed to be looking after for a local farmer.
Determined to shake things up (particularly after he is forced to deal with the irate farmer when he comes to collect his pigs), Stationmaster Porter tries to renovate the station in several ways, most sensibly by painting the entire station, but also by less conventional means - including stopping the passing express and organising an excursion to Connemara.
Porter attempts to drum up business amongst the local people in the pub by offering tickets to this excursion, but no-one is interested and instead a fight breaks out. Porter crawls to safety in the landlord's rooms next door, where he meets a one-eyed man who introduces himself as Joe and offers to buy all of the tickets for an away game that the village football team, the Buggleskelly Wednesday, are playing the following day.
Unbeknownst to Porter, howver, he has really agreed to transport a group of criminals who are involved in running guns to Southern Ireland. The 'football' train leaves at six a.m. the following morning, rather than the scheduled ten a.m., at the insistence of Joe and although Porter questions some of the odd packages being loaded onto the train, he accepts Joe's claim that these are in fact goalposts for the game.
The train disappears as the smugglers divert it down a disused branch line near the border, and with everybody claiming that Porter has lost his mind (there is no such team as Buggleskelly Wednesday, and no excursion was supposed to leave until ten a.m. in any case), he and his two assistants head off to track down the errant engine.
The trio find the missing train inside a derelict railway tunnel, underneath a supposedly haunted windmill. They investigate and are briefly captured by the gun runners, but escape and climb progressively higher up the windmill until eventually they are trapped at the top.
Using the windmill sails, they contrive to get down where they hatch a plan to capture the gun runners. Coupling the carriages containing the criminals and their guns to their own train, Gladstone, they carry them away from the border at full speed, burning everything from Harbottle's underwear to the remnants of a fence they smash through in order to keep up steam.
Keeping the criminals quiet, Albert climbs on top of the carriage and hits anyone who sticks their head out with a large shovel.
Porter writes a note explaining the situation and places it in Harbottle's empty 'medicine' bottle. When they pass a large station, he throws the bottle through the window of the stationmaster's office, alerting the authorities to their plight. The entire railway goes into action, with lines being closed and other trains re-routed so that Gladstone can finally crash into a siding where the waiting police force arrest the gun runners.
After a short lived celebration, in which Harbottle points out that Gladstone[2] is ninety years old and Porter claims it is good for another ninety, the engine explodes after it's hectic journey, and Porter, Harbottle and Albert lower their hats in respect.
[edit] Cast
Will Hay - William Porter
Moore Marriott - Jeremiah Harbottle
Graham Moffatt - Albert Brown
Percy Walsh - Superintendent
Dave O'Toole - Postman
Sebastian Smith - Mr Trimblelow
Agnes Laughlan - Mrs. Trimbletow
Dennis Wyndham - Grogan
Frederick Piper - Ledbetter
[edit] Production
- The scene in which Porter travels to Buggleskelly by bus, whilst being warned of a terrible danger by locals, parodies that of the Tod Browning movie, Dracula (1931)[3]
- The railway station used in filming was the disused Cliddesden Station on the Basingstoke to Alton Light Railway, which had closed to goods in 1936. [4]
- The windmill in which Porter and his colleagues are trapped is located at Terling in Essex[5]
- The title sequence utilises scenes shot at a variety of locations on the Waterloo to Southampton railway line.
- According to John Huntley in his book Railways on Screen, "[t]he editor reversed his negative at one stage in preparing the title backgrounds, causing them to come out reversed on the final print."[6]
[edit] Reception
- Variety magazine described the movie as "amusing, if over-long" and noted that there was "[n]o love interest to mar the comedy"[7]
- The film critic Barry Norman included it among his 100 best films of all time.
- Fellow critic Derek Malcolm also included the film in his Century of Films, describing it as "perfectly representing a certain type of bumbling British humour,"[8] despite being directed by a Parisian director.
- The cult website TV Cream listed Oh, Mr Porter! at number 41 in its list of cinema's Top 100 Films[9]
- The director, Marcel Varnel, considered the film as amongst his best work[10], and it was described as "a comic masterpiece of the British cinema" by the Times in its obituary for writer, Val Guest[11]
- The British Film Institute listed the film in its 360 Classic Feature Films list. [12]
[edit] Reviews
[edit] Modern reviews
C4 Review
Spinning Image Review
Bootleg Files Review
Screenonline Review
[edit] Contemporary reviews
Variety Magazine Review, 1937
BFI Monthly Film Bulletin Review, October 1937
[edit] Other usages
[edit] Parody
The film was parodied in the Harry Enfield spoof documentary Norbert Smith, a Life, as Oh, Mr Bank Robber starring "Will Silly"[13]
[edit] Music Hall Song
The film was clearly at least in part inspired by the song "Oh! Mr Porter", as Will Hay's character is Mr. William Porter, although he is not in fact a railway porter, but the stationmaster of a Northern Irish station (which leads to some amusing confusion). Additionally a snatch of the song can be heard over the opening credits.
Oh! Mr Porter is an old British music hall song, and was part of the repertoire of singer Marie Lloyd. Written in 1893 by George LeBrunn, its lyrics include this chorus:
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The song was also modified for use in the BBC situation comedy Oh, Doctor Beeching! sung by Su Pollard.
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- Herman's Hermits recorded a cover version of the original song in the 1960s.
[edit] References
- ^ James Perry, A Stupid Boy (2002), p.100
- ^ Gladstone was built in 1899 and loaned by the Kent and East Sussex Railway to the film. The engine was returned to the company after completion of the movie and remained in service until 1941, when it was scrapped.
- ^ http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/444280/index.html
- ^ Ray Seaton and Roy Martin, Good Morning, Boys: Will Hay Master of Comedy (1978)
- ^ http://homepage.mac.com/elliottday/willhay/moreohmrporter.html
- ^ John Huntley, Railways on Screen (1993)
- ^ http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117793667.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&p=0
- ^ http://film.guardian.co.uk/Century_Of_Films/Story/0,,347664,00.html
- ^ http://www.tv.cream.org/extras/top100films/topfilms5041.htm
- ^ So You Want To Be In Pictures: The Autobiography of Val Guest
- ^ The Times, 16 May 2006
- ^ http://www.geocities.com/aaronbcaldwell/dimbfi.html
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/n/norbertsmithali_66601340.shtml
