GB
1953
1hr 12mins
Dir: John Paddy Carstairs
Starring: Ronald Shiner and Harry Fowler
A bookmaker hides out in a boys’ school, posing as a professor. When the undisciplined and lazy boys have to pass a few tests, cheating becomes the only option.
This entertaining comedy has a couple of railway related scenes that centre around a journey across the channel to France. The sequence opens with a stock shot of an express approaching Esher behind a ‘King Arthur’ 4-6-0, a shot that is also seen in Chance of a Lifetime (1950) and A Day to Remember (1953). There is then a shot of the ‘Golden Arrow’ arriving at Dover Marine behind a streamlined ‘West Country’ Class Pacific. For those who like things a little more exotic, there are shots of trains at Gare du Lyon in Paris and Stazione Termini in Roma. The film was originally known under the title Fair’s Fair.