“They’ve purloined my code! What a jape, eh?” “Oh, how I loathe adventurous-minded boys!”įowler and some of the of the other kids went on to storied careers. Sim, who would go on to play the most memorable Ebeneezer Scrooge of them all in “A Christmas Carol,” is deliciously owlish here, his eyes bugging out of these deep, dark sockets, the words a florid whirl of plummy posh locutions. The fresh restoration of “Hue and Cry,” with its simple, immaculate construction, artful shadows, vivid depiction of late ’40s London and jaunty, roiling action, is part of a new Alastair Sim boxed set from Film Movement, which takes another Sim film - “School of Laughter” - as its title. What follows is “The Goonies” of its day, an Anglicized “Hardy Boys” where the boys are legion and include plucky, two-fisted Clarry ( Joan Dowling).īrawls, melees, kids swarming cops and thugs alike like ants defending the colony, bees swarming to save the hive. He even tracks down the taxidermy-crazed fussbudget ( Alastair Sim) who writes the comic to prove his theory. “Look, sonny, I really think you ought to lay off those ‘shockers.'” He starts to enlist the other lads - billed “The Blood and Thunder Boys” in the credits - in his “theory.” The police inspector ( Jack Lambert) may not want to hear it. Joe Kirby ( Harry Fowler) is the teen in tatty tie and vest who uncovers the “code.” He’s too old to admit he loves comics, “what a load’a tripe!” But “The Trump,” set among mobsters, thieves, cutthroats and pathological liars (go figure) has him hooked.Īnd he can’t help but notice the real street names and addresses that turn up in “The Trump” every week, among other coincidences. It starts swell, bounces through the middle acts and finishes with a flourish, a classic that, dated-or-not, still delivers laughs almost 75 years after it was made. It’s a bouncing, energetic farce using real bombed-out buildings and London street scenes, and a sea of little kids teaming up to foil villains. Clarke and director Charles Crichton He finished his career directing a modern classic, “A Fish Called Wanda.”īut here’s how it all stared, in postwar “Broke if not Broken Britain” in 1947, with a tale of boys who get the idea that their favorite comic is sending messages, in code, to London’s underworld to arrange this week’s burglary. Some of the most beloved and timeless comedies in screen history would wear that label, a couple of the very best - “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “The Titfield Thunderbolt” - by the “Hue and Cry” team of writer T.E.B. But with “Hue and Cry,” the very first “Ealing Comedy,” by London’s Ealing Studios, the die was cast from the opening credits, which are hand-painted onto the ruins of just-blitzed London. The “mystery” is only half-solved, and the real mayhem is yet to come. The other – he can’t be more than ten - blanches. One, who looks to be about 13, fumbles pulling out his pocket knife to comply. And two English lads have been given their orders. They’ve got a lady crook - they think - tied up.

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