Tommy Handley

Teddy Brown

Donald Calthrop

Jack Hulbert

Helen Burnell

The Three Eddies

Lily Morris

Will Fyffe

Cicely Courtneidge

John Longden

Anna May Wong

Bobbie Comber

Gordon Harker

Hannah Jones

Gordon Begg

Lawrence Green

Ivor McLaren

Nathan Shacknovsky

Jameson Thomas

John Stuart

Alfred Hitchcock

Paul Murray

Adrian Brunel

Walter C. Mycroft

Val Valentine

John Maxwell

Claude Friese-Greene

Emile de Ruelle

A.C. Hammond

James B. Sloan

Alec Murray

André Charlot

Music

Comedy

Elstree Calling

British International Pictures

United Kingdom

CinemaSerf

A distinctly off-form Tommy Handley introduces this rather curious piece of cinematic entertainment that features a variety of stars from the British stage at the end of the 1920s. The mixture of musical, comedy and magical turns illustrates well just quite how a real pot-pourri of acts took to the stage in theatres up and down the UK - but there is no audience. Without the engagement, even applause, from those watching the whole thing comes across as a rather sterile collection of concert performances, as if filmed in an empty television studio. It has a couple of rather tenuous continuing threads that try to hold it together - one features a fellow with an elementary television trying, unsuccessfully usually, to catch some of the performance on his set. The other, has a more contrived Shakesperian theme to it that coupled with a lot of Handley's equally over-cooked links make this all rather a disjointed, and frankly rather staccato film to watch. As a curiosity, it is certainly worth a watch - but mainly just as a bit of nostalgia.

English