GB
1943
1hr 24mins
Dir: Walter Forde
Starring: Tommy Handley and Greta Gynt
A local mayor, who is also a con man, gambles municipal treasury funds in a poker game and wins a rundown theatre
This film was based on the popular wartime ITMA (It’s That Man Again) radio show and features a railway journey as Tommy Handley heads to London. This is basically made up of Handley sitting in a studio mock-up of a corridor carriage with back projection of passing scenery through the window. No locomotives appear in this sequence but a fascinating collection of bygone rolling stock passes by in the form of various LMS wagons, vans, open planks, a four-wheel bolster, a brake van and a coach, which can all be seen in the yards. There is initial confusion with the back projection in this sequence which is passing from right to left at the start of the journey but then goes from left to right after Mrs Mopp enters the train. This apparent reversal in direction is easily explained, however, because Mrs Mopp, played by Dorothy Summers, enters the carriage from the outside and then leaves via the corridor!
