From "Dark Victory" and "Wuthering Heights" to the "Arthur" movies and two episodes of "Golden Girls". That's just a brief summary of the career of Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald who got her restart in this British quota quickie, a fantastic look at the going on inside a department store that involves mixed identity's, corruption and lots of intrigue. It's a fun comedy of ironies that features the lovely Ms. Fitzgerald as a clerk involved in the sinister activities of crooked department store manager Garry Marsh, a nasty, tyrannical sort who in his stupidity mistakes a recently released cracksman for nephew of the owner, and vice versa, and decides to pin embezzlement on the alleged crackman, really the heir, who has willingly taken the lower position to see what's really going on while his uncle is away. Sebastian Shaw and Jack Melford are the nephew and the real ex-con, complete opposites, and Eve Gray is a delight as Marsh's secretary, a wisecrack in every thought.
The witty script is reminiscent of the classic American screwball comedy 'The Devil and Miss Jones", although that plotline is completely different outside the coincidence of Charles Coburn's character posing as a salesman to spy on goings on in his own store. I found this to be, outside of early Hitchcock films, to be one of the easiest British films of the 30's for Americans to get into, simply because it's not overloaded with hard to understand British dialects slang. This easily could have been remade as an American film with little or nothing changed. Truly a lot of fun with the audience rooting for Marsh to get his comeuppance, not only for being an embezzled, but for being a rotten and condescending boss. At 65 minutes, it's a fast moving delight, and I'm proud to add it to the list of the top films of 1935.
The witty script is reminiscent of the classic American screwball comedy 'The Devil and Miss Jones", although that plotline is completely different outside the coincidence of Charles Coburn's character posing as a salesman to spy on goings on in his own store. I found this to be, outside of early Hitchcock films, to be one of the easiest British films of the 30's for Americans to get into, simply because it's not overloaded with hard to understand British dialects slang. This easily could have been remade as an American film with little or nothing changed. Truly a lot of fun with the audience rooting for Marsh to get his comeuppance, not only for being an embezzled, but for being a rotten and condescending boss. At 65 minutes, it's a fast moving delight, and I'm proud to add it to the list of the top films of 1935.