Yes Mr Brown

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

Directed by Jack Buchanan, 1933

Musical comedy set in Vienna, starring one of the most popular matinee idols of its day, Jack Buchanan.

Jack Buchanan, very possibly about to utter the film's title.

Credits

Director Production Company Producer Screenplay Original Play Photography Music Lyrics	Jack Buchanan British and Dominions Film Corporation Herbert Wilcox Douglas Furber Paul Franck, Ludwig Hirschfeld Freddie Young Paul Abraham Douglas Furber
Cast: Jack Buchanan (Nicholas Baumann); Margot Grahame (Clary Baumann); Elsie Randolph (Anne Webber); Hartley Power (Mr Brown); Vera Pearce (Franzi); Clifford Heatherley (Carlos)
94 mins, 7,852 feet, sound, black & white.

Why are we so keen to find it?

Because it is one of the few British sound films starring Jack Buchanan to be considered missing, and the first of three films that the star directed. Denis Gifford's 'The British Film Catalogue'), credits producer Herbert Wilcox as co-director, but contemporary sources The Kinematograph Weekly and Variety credit Buchanan alone.

What's it about?

The Kinematograph Weekly (7 February 1933) contains possibly the most detailed synopsis available:

"Nicholas Baumann, manager of a Viennese branch of an American manufacturing concern, sets out to impress his employer, Mr Brown, who is new to the city. He arranges a dinner party, but quarrels with his wife, Clary, over her dog, and she leaves their flat in a huff. He then induces his secretary, Anne Weber, to act in Clary's stead, and the complications, worked out in a night club, lead to good fun before Nicholas' explanations are accepted by Mr Brown, and he earns a coveted partnership."

Last seen?

The film was trade shown at the Tivoli cinema in London on either 18, 20 or 23 January 1933 (accounts differ among various sources). 'Whitaker's Almanac' claims that it opened to the public at the Tivoli on 23 January, which, if correct, suggesting an earlier trade show date. It went on general release on 3 April that year, and was picked up for distribution in the US by United Artists.

What else do we know about it?

The film's origins lay in the German stage musical, 'Geschauml;ft mit Amerika', by Paul Franck and Ludwig Hirschfeld, which had already been adapted for the screen in 1932 as Ein Bißchen Liebe für Dich starring Lee Parry and Magda Schneider.

Having enjoyed an enormous box office success with the musical romance Good Night Vienna (1932), producer/director Herbert Wilcox and leading man Jack Buchanan clearly hoped to repeat the feat with this new musical comedy set in the same city.

Buchanan, now in the director's chair, brought in two of his long-standing stage collaborators to work on the British version. Lyricist and writer Douglas Furber adapted the original screenplay and wrote new lyrics for the songs, while actor Elsie Randolph, a former chorus girl in Buchanan's shows who had progressed to co-star status, was making the first of four films appearances alongside her mentor.

Buchanan would star in four further films for Wilcox before establishing his own production company in 1937, and the producer would remember the star fondly in his autobiography: "For elegance and charm he stood alone, and his own unadorned personality filled any theatre or cinema in the country."

Does anything survive?

No film materials are known to survive. As well as publicity materials in the contemporary trade journals, such as the poster art work and a still to be found in both 12 and 19 January issues of The Kinematograph Weekly, the BFI holds a collection of over 30 stills from the film, including star portraits of Margot Grahame, together with four black and white lobby cards.

Reviews

If Wilcox and Buchanan had designs on repeating their earlier success, they had fallen well short, at least according to the 1 April 1933 issue of The Picturegoer: "It is a far cry from Good Night Vienna, with its polished technique and sophistry, to this naïve and conventional marital upset play".

But other reviews were more positive, with Buchanan singled out for his audience appeal. The Kinematograph Weekly declared the film "a profitable booking through the untiring efforts and gay versatility of Jack Buchanan, whose wide popularity is of definite box office value," while also acknowledging other virtues: "The score, too, is tuneful, and the interpolation of song and dance completes the entertainment and gives it the spirit of gaiety which should infect the average audience".

Variety was even more enthusiastic. "There seems to be no limit to the entertaining talents of Jack Buchanan. He not only stars in this picture, but directed it in a manner which establishes him as an expert", its reviewer proclaimed, concluding on a positive note for British cinema as a whole: "A generous production, directed in good taste, marred occasionally by defective lighting, but not enough to interfere with the fact that it is another successful British picture."

John Oliver, Curator (Fiction), BFI National Archive

You can find more about British films of the early 1930s, 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.