Will Hay

Frank Pettingell

Julien Mitchell

Charles Hawtrey

Barry Morse

Peter Ustinov

Peter Croft

Anne Firth

Leslie Harcourt

Jeremy Hawk

Raymond Lovell

Aubrey Mallalieu

John Williams

Lawrence O'Madden

John Boxer

Clifford Buckton

Arthur Denton

Leslie Dwyer

Richard George

Walter Gotell

William Hartnell

Bryan Herbert

Vincent Holman

Charles Paton

Lloyd Pearson

Johnnie Schofield

Harry Terry

Jack Vyvyan

H Victor Weske

Basil Dearden

Angus MacPhail

John Dighton

Bernard Miles

Reg Groves

Michael Balcon

Bretton Byrd

Ray Pitt

Thomas N. Morahan

John Croydon

Len Page

Roy Kellino

Ernest Palmer

Comedy

The Goose Steps Out

Ealing Studios

United Kingdom

CinemaSerf

Will Hay delivers quite well in this wartime pick-me-up of a film. He is discovered to be the spitting image for a Nazi general who happens to be in charge of a prestigious Hitler Youth establishment. As you'd expect, his character "Potts" is the least like a general you can imagine, but soon he has been dispatched as a sort of doppelgänger and is causing the predictable havoc amongst the aspirational young men of the great Arian race. Hay always had solid entertainment skills, good comedy timing and a very expressive face - he easily raises a few chuckles here. Charles Hawtrey is also quite good fun as "Max" and there's even some Peter Ustinov faffing about as "Krauss" in this amiable farce that had a pretty clear propagandist purpose which I suspect would have worked well with audiences in Britain at the time. It's maybe a little long, but it does what it set out to do and as an example of the star's ability to chivvy up the viewers, it's a fair effort.

English