Bless 'Em All

BFI Most Wanted: the hunt for Britain's missing films

Directed by Robert Jordan Hill, 1948

Missing in action: a boisterous army comedy celebrating bygone days of wartime camaraderie - with a dozen rousing songs, a pie fight in a camp kitchen and an early appearance by Max Bygraves.

The original poster

Credits

Director Production Company Producer Screenplay Photography	Robert Jordan Hill Advance / Adelphi Films Arthur Dent Aileen Burke, Leone Stewart and Arthur Dent S.D. Onions
Cast: Hal Monty (Skimpy), Max Bygraves (Tommy), Les Ritchie (Sgt. Willis), Jack Milroy (Jock)
79 mins, 7,133 ft, sound, black & white

Why are we so keen to find it?

It marked the screen debut of genial entertainer Max Bygraves. Need we say more? It was also the first feature film to star stage and radio comic Hal Monty (who, more than a decade previously, had trod the boards in a double act with future showbiz mogul Bernard Delfont). The film's lighthearted depiction of national service and the liberation of France would surely fascinate modern viewers - and comedy historians would no doubt be intrigued to see how similar it may have been to army-based comedies made on the other side of the Atlantic in the same decade, such as Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates Come Home (1947) or Laurel and Hardy's Great Guns (1941).

What's it about?

Described by the Monthly Film Bulletin as "a skit on the old army life", Bless 'Em All was a comedy-musical designed to warm the cockles of all those who had recently served in the forces. The Monthly Film Bulletin synopsis, from April 1949, was as follows:

"Skimpy, Tommy and Jock meet at their call-up medical inspection and are posted to the same unit. Tommy's efforts on the parade ground invoke the wrath of the choleric-tempered Sgt. Willis, and matters do not improve when Tommy falls for Val, an Ensa entertainer, only to find that she has a date with Willis. In France, to make matters worse, Skimpy meets Lisette, but finds that Willis was an old admirer of hers. The retreat of 1940 interferes, Tommy is wounded and the friends do not meet again until they are once more in France in the liberation battle. In the meantime, Tommy learns that Val is Sgt. Willis's daughter, and despite further complications, matters eventually straighten themselves out and the film ends with a double wedding."

Convoluted though this narrative might look, it would seem likely that - in keeping with other productions of the small, family run film company Adelphi Films - the plot was merely a frame on which to hang a string of songs, cheerfully corny jokes, sketches and variety turns.

Last seen?

A quickly-shot, cheaply made 'quota' picture - which meant that it counted towards film exhibitors' legal requirement to show a certain percentage of British-made film each year - Bless 'Em All was released to little fanfare in July 1948. Adelphi correspondence reveals that a 1958 re-release was planned to take advantage of Bygraves' blossoming fame. Sometime afterwards, this, along with many other modestly-made 'quota' films, vanished into oblivion. Indeed, various other Adelphi productions also disappeared, including Nitwits On Parade (1949) - another musical comedy, again featuring Max Bygraves, and rumoured to have been an influence upon the absurdist exploits of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - and The Tell-Tale Heart (1953), an unusual adaptation of the classic terror tale, starring Stanley Baker as Edgar Allan Poe.

Does anything survive?

Though the film itself is AWOL, a two-and-a-half minute trailer remains, providing a tantalising glimpse of what we've lost. While stoic soldiers sing uplifting songs including 'We're Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line', and an excited narrator promises "the most uproarious comedy this side of the Iron Curtain", the viewer gets a peep at Skimpy (Hal Monty) upsetting an enjoyably apoplectic Sgt Willis (Les Ritchie) on the drill-square, Max Bygraves suavely singing that "I'm afraid to love you... afraid I might like it...", as well as brief clips "of mademoiselles who parlez-vous and roaring sergeants you want to do"; before, as the reel scratchily ends, Skimpy's platoon marches off into the mists of time to postings unknown.

Reviews

Today's Cinema reported that the film "breaks no new ground, but makes successful comedy bid on pace, vigour and variety of Army hilarities, including dolours of medical exam, cook-house inanities, drill ineptitude, and hearty sergeant baitings, all punched over with tremendous enthusiasm by handful of talented comedy experts... these crazy army escapades follow a pattern which the masses have always keenly savoured, and once more provide hilarious entertainment for the populace."

The Monthly Film Bulletin had some reservations, however. "The film is... extremely funny in the parts which are not too-long-drawn-out. Army entertainments serve to provide the three friends with a reason for doing individual variety acts which are really the best part of the film... but the film as a whole is amateurish and technically below average. Les Ritchie is excellent as the sergeant, but Hal Monty, Max Bygraves and Jack Milroy, as the three friends, are wasted in a badly photographed, sketchy production." Was it really that bad? We may never know.

Vic Pratt, Curator (Fiction), BFI National Archive

You can find more about British films of the late 1940s, including entries on surviving films and video clips for users in UK schools, colleges, universities and public libraries, at BFI Screenonline. You can also view similar titles at the BFI Mediatheques.