Boys Will Be Boys

Dr. Alexander Smart (Smart Alec to the boys) gets himself headmastership at a boys' school when he and another man forge a letter of recommendation from his previous boss (throwing out the original letter that says quite the opposite!) While there, he ends up tangled in an elaborate jewel robbery, and is caught between a rock and a hard place when the thief lets him know that he still has the original letter, which he will show to the heads if Alex should mess up their plans.

During his career, Will Hay played a bunch of roles where he starred as an incompetent professor at a boys' school. Well, for you trivia folks, "Boys Will Be Boys" is his film film in which he plays this sort of role.

When the film begins, you see that Dr. Alec Smart (Hay) is teaching at a prison and daydreams about teaching at a boys school where the kids love and respect him. The problem is that the governor (we'd call him a 'warden' here in the States) thinks Dr. Smart is an incompetent and doesn't want to inflict him on the boys! But the letter from the governor is intercepted by one of the inmates and he then forges a much more favorable letter and sends it. Soon, Smart's been chosen for the job.

As soon as Smart arrives, he naturally screws up since he's a bit of an idiot and has a penchant for gambling. Naturally, there's a real rules-oriented guy at the school who takes a fast dislike of Smart and vows to get him fired. In the midst of all this, Smart's lady benefactor has her valuable necklace stolen and it becomes an integral part of the big rugby match.

In many ways, Hay is grabbing onto the big trend in American comedies of the early to mid-1930s--the big football game. But, since this is a British comedy, it's rugby. And, as far as Hays later films go, this one is very comparable though his character is a bit less stupid in this one. Still funny...but not quite the bumbler, as you'll see by the end of the film. Worth seeing...particularly if you like Hay films, though sadly I am in the minority here in the USA because most folks simply haven't heard of this fine comic.

Will Hay is Alexander Smart, who whilst teaching in prison, asks the Governor to write him a recommendation to aid his application for the position of Headmaster at Narkover School. Thinking the Governor has done him a favour, Smart is most perturbed to find that the Governor has written a less than flattering reference. Hope comes in illegal form when prisoner Faker Brown sends off a forged signature glowing reference, one that gets Smart the position. However, Smart's problems are just about to begin because Narkover is a hotbed of crime, and that's just the pupils!

Based on J.B. Morton's {AKA Beachcomber} humorous Dr Alec Smart character than ran in column form in Britain's Daily Express Newspaper from the mid 1920s, this was to be Will Hay's first film for Gainsborough Pictures. It was also to be his big break in cinema. Hay had made his name in British music hall productions in the 1920s, where as a bumbling buffoon schoolmaster, he served notice of a character that would make up a number of his big screen persona's. Boys Will Be Boys, directed by William Beaudine and co-written by Hay and Robert Edmunds, finds Hay honing the inept teacher role for better and far funnier productions that were still to come. But that in no way means this film isn't funny, because it certainly is.

A number of well executed comedy sequences light up the already jolly script. See an interesting line in carpet surfing, a how high is a Chinaman skit and a fabulous finale involving the school annual rugby match. Where missing diamonds and a whistle provide first class excuse for fun and frolics. There's also a fun thread involving Davy Burnaby's constantly exasperated Col. Crableigh, who had wanted his hapless nephew Theo P. Finch {Claude Dampier} in the headmasters position. If you can't find joy in a magic trick scene involving Crableigh's watch then there be no hope for you!. Filling out the cast is Norma Varden as Lady Dorking and Gordon Harker as the crooked Faker Brown who has come to the school to get rewarded for his forging favour to Alec. Oh and a whole ream of unruly pupils getting up to no end of mischief and crooked shenanigans.

Allegaza, Allegazi, Allegazam. 7/10

This was the Master Will Hay's 4th film and 1st for Gainsborough, for which he did his best work overall – although his last for Ealing was also a world-beater. He was playing his long established stage persona of seedy schoolmaster here even though it was also supposedly based on Beachcomber's (J.B. Morton) Narkover from the Daily Express - Morton later stated he had had no involvement in the production.

School and prison school teacher Dr. Alec Smart by criminal (and comic) means gets the job of Headmaster at Narkover School, a notorious training ground for the criminals of the future. When arriving he gets a boisterous welcome from the "boys", including being unceremoniously towed on a rug around the entrance by a taxi and then being hoisted aloft and blanketed. Next day he's caught playing cards by the chairman of the Board of Governors, who he tells to mind his own business not knowing how important a personage he is. The "boys" were out of control yet still wore impeccable school uniforms and caps - I say "boys" because half of them looked over 30. I think the film was given an "A" certificate by the UK censor so as not to set youth a bad example! Nowadays it's all they're set. It's all delightful stuff, one episode flowing into the next, and leading soon to the theft of a diamond necklace. Favourite bits: Gordon Harker as an ex-lag then dubious school porter and rather intense thief; playing banker with the "boys"; the singing of the rousing school song on Founders Day by the "boys"; the rugby match where the possession of the ball was the main thing. Hay certainly made an impression here!

The very best was still to come, but this is a joy to watch too and always a pleasant 80 minute time filler for me.

If you're not a fan of the great Mr Hay, have never seen one of his films but are wondering what all the fuss was about don't watch this one first. Eventually you love this but only after you've become a fan. To do that watch OH MR PORTER first, then you'll be desperate to voraciously devour this and the rest of them.

This film basically showcased the music hall act Will Hay had been touring with since the 1920s, his performance is therefore honed to perfection. To some extent this is like the pilot episode of what was to follow - it's nearly there but even so however many times you watch it, it never gets stale or fails to make you laugh. His character and his story is extraordinarily silly but by setting it within an insular and isolated environment, without contextual reference to the outside world, such silliness seems fine. English public school system in the 1930s was hardly the exam-focussed institutions of today. They had improved since the bad old days when they were there to make money and in theory develop boys' character rather than educate him with the philosophy exemplified by the famous quotation of Thucydides: The strong do what they can and the weak suffer as they must but a lot of them were still atrocious places with completely unqualified teachers so Narkover School is probably a lot more representative of reality than you'd imagine. This is hardly a brutal and cutting satire of that system but nevertheless like Monty Python did years later (who'd also had first-hand experience of public schools) it laughs at the stupidity and incompetence of such institutions.

Will Hay was born for cinema. Although he had been a massive comedy star on the stage since starting off as 'the English W C Fields' in the 20s, because so much of his humour is derived from his facial expressions and his incoherent mumblings - things which couldn't be picked up on a stage fifty metres away, moving and talking pictures were the perfect medium for bringing his anarchic yet safe humour to the world. His first few films at BIP can be ignored but having moved studios to Gaumont-British, this was his first 'proper' picture. Some might say that all his subsequent ones at G-B were just remakes of this, indeed Will Hay himself thought that towards the end of his contract there but if it's such a good formula, why not repeat it! As time progressed his pictures got much better both funnier and better produced but this one, the original is the comedy equivalent to the source of the Amazon - perhaps not as wild and torrential as further downstream but pure and full of life.