Violet Loraine
Bessie Bolton
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Comedy
Music
Drama
The owner of a fish-and-chips shop in the Billingsgate area of London harbors a secret ambition: to become a movie star. It turns out that she has a beautiful singing voice, and when that fact comes to the attention of a movie studio, it begins to turn her and her family's lives upside down.
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| Release Date | 1933-01-01 |
|---|---|
| Runtime | 1h 20m |
| Directors | Sinclair Hill, Mutz Greenbaum |
| Producer | Michael Balcon |
| Writers | Sewell Stokes, Ralph Stock, Christine Jope-Slade, G.H. Moresby-White |
This is actually quite a cheery little feature that sees fish and chip shop owner "Bessie" (established theatre star Violet Loraine) aspire to become a film star. Fat chance thinks you! Well, as it happens she has a decent enough singing voice and when she is "discovered" by a local studio, her life with family "Bert" (Gordon Harker), "Pearl" (Kay Hammond) and "Fred" (John Mills) is suddenly all topsy-turvy. What makes this a little more memorable is that it demonstrates to an audience just how films were put together then - the filming, audio, lighting - and film was expensive stuff so much of this was live! Harker and Loraine have a conviviality to their characters that lends well to the gentle comedy very much of it's time: an amiable English combination of stoicism and opportunity - with a solid supporting cast. It has a charm to it this. That doesn't make it memorable or really even very good, but it had a job to do in 1930s Britain and I suspect it did it well enough to pack out the houses for eighty minutes on a Saturday afternoon.
— CinemaSerf