London Melody

Nice little film patterned after "Daddy Long Legs" (not "Pygmalion")in which a street singer (Anna Neagle) bumps into a diplomat (Tullio Carminati) outside a night club. One of her cohorts picks his pocket. When she discovers the theft she goes to a priest and they take the item back to the diplomat. He's charmed by the crude but beautiful Neagle (now working as a maid) and arranges with the priest to send the girl to dancing lessons. She lands a job in a night club and eventually rises to stardom. Her boy friend (Robert Douglas) is an underling to the diplomat and is sent away to Shanghai where he screws up. The diplomat takes the blame and loses his position. Will Neagle give up her career when she finds out about his sacrifice? Will they get together? Neagle is excellent, displaying her singing and dancing talent, especially in the campy "Jingle of the Jungle" number. There's also a nice montage sequence showing her dancing lessons (including ballet). Carminati, who had been in films since 1914, is solid as the diplomat, and Douglas handles his unlikable character well.

Horace Hodges is good as the old priest, and Davina Craig and Joan Kemp-Welch are funny as the house maids.

The main point of interest of this film is that it was the first film made at Pinewood.It was also to mark a sea change in Anna Neagles career.After this film she went on to pay Quuen Victoria in 2 films and Nurse Edith Cavell.On the strength of her performance in this film one can see why.Her singing is off key and when she is dancing she makes Ruby Keeler look like Eleanor Powell.In any event the screenplay is a direct piece of larceny as it is "My Fair lady" by any other name.Neagle starts with the most ridiculous cockney accent and ends up with what in those days would be called a Mayfair accent.Quite frankly the convoluted plot is so ridiculous that you wonder if they were serious when they made this film.It is strictly for fans of Anna Neagle before she became a royal.

Really disappointing - I was expecting a fun and engaging happy musical. This however conveys a very miserable and over-serious mood. Whilst there's of course nothing wrong with a serious story, if you don't care for the characters, it's just dull.

It's probably because of B+D's acquisition by Rank that there's not many of Anna Neagle's early pictures or even of Herbert Wilcox's prolific output still in existence. If this is anything to go by however then we're not missing much. The problem is the two leading men are just so frightfully uninteresting and Anna Neagle's character doesn't feel genuine.

Nevertheless it's a rare treat to see something from England's 'other' big studio (although it did burn down halfway through the production of this but hardly because the acting was so hot it set the place on fire.) Wilcox had been in the business since the early twenties so knew what he was doing but considering this was meant to be his big break-out 'spectacular' to take America by storm, the direction is pretty pedestrian. The way the dance scenes are filmed looks like they were taking direction notes from 1929's BROADWAY MELODY. The best part is the first few minutes - the montage of London life in 1937 which gives some lovely authentic atmosphere. After that it plummets downhill to become very artificial and studio bound. Gaumont or RKO had no worries about competition!

Before she became royalty, Anna Neagle was originally B+D's answer to Gaumont's Jessie Matthews. Unlike Jessie Matthews however, although Neagle was a competent and quite pretty young actress, she lacked Matthews' charm, acting, singing and dancing ability and of course that jaw-dropping sexiness of 'the divine diva.' Watching this, one can understand why she subsequently settled into the niche of comfortable costume dramas!

A challenge to anyone who watches this would be: write a paragraph of what the story was. Even if you can remember, you simply would be too bored to bother.