Champagne Charlie

The rivalry between George Laybourne and The Great Vance in the music hall era.

I enjoyed this for its affectionate look into a bygone era of British culture, it's amusing characters and impressive set pieces.

The plot is a character-driven and fairly nonintrusive excuse to show a number of musical hall sequences and songs relating to the era. It is very much a film of two halves, with the rivalry between the two great musical hall stars in the first half and the struggle to keep the musical halls open taking focus in the second. A sub-plot involves a fairly uninspired romance.

There are a number of pub and musical hall set-pieces that work very well to capture the tone of the movie and it's subject matter. I found all these scenes highly entertaining. I try to imagine myself watching this in 1944 when the world was in devastation and in need of some positive escapism. It hardly feels authentic Victorian Britain, bit it certainly makes you want to go out, have a few drinks and enjoy yourself in a crowd of friends.

The songs are all good fun but pretty forgettable in the grand scheme of movie music. For me it's all the social settings, high energy, humour and enthusiasm that give it charm.

Performances are mixed, with charismatic stars Tommy Trinder and Stanley Holloway excellent as the above mentioned protagonists, but for me its Betty Warren who holds it altogether with a quite dominant turn as Bessie Bellwood. Most supporting roles are fairly uninspired, however Jean Kent does have a certain presence Dolly.

It's remarkable when you consider that this era depicts entertainment that predates radio broadcasting. Outside of church, this would have been a victorian equivalent of screen time. You look around at the world now and marvel at how much investment and technology has gone into providing people with that continual fix in the palm of their hand.

For me its 6.5/10, but I round upwards.

Yes it is perhaps one of Ealing Studios forgotten films, but that really shouldn't surprise too much since it is a very acquired taste, and something of a curio piece to those not familiar with the source of the story. The film is a quaint look at mid Victorian musical halls and the people who frequented such establishments, it shows in earnest just what wonderful places they were for people to escape to. The songs come thick and fast and are all jolly numbers that can't help to lift the spirits, but chiefly central to the films above average rating is the rivalry between the two main players in the piece. Stanley Holloway and Tommy Trinder sing for different musical halls, and it is this story arc that makes for much fun culminating in a quite daft but delightful duel sequence.

The film came in for some criticism due to it not portraying the dank and miserable side of mid Victorian England, but as George Perry says on his introduction to the DVD of the film, "it really is all about escapism", not only for the people back then who sought fun there, but also for us the viewers, 7/10.

There's a lot of Victorian music hall songs in this film about a man who travels from Leybourne in the north down to London to help his brother get a job in a boxing ring. After he sings a song in a bar ("an 'alf of 'alf an' 'alf"), he is taken on as a singer and later gets a job in a music hall, which is a dinner theatre, not like on "The Good Old Days". A parliamentary enquiry aims to shut down music halls for intemperate behaviour. Stanley Holloway is "The Great Vance", a rival in another music hall. Songs include "Don't bring shame on the old folks", the risqué "Come On Algernon", "'it 'im on the boko", "Strolling in the park" , then a series of drink related songs (which all sound very similar) - "Ale, old ale", "I like a drop of gin", "Burgundy, claret and port", "Yo ho ho rum", "The brandy and seltzer boys", "A glass of sherry wine", and the title "Champagne Charlie". Then "The daring young man on the flying trapeeze", and the risqué "Hunting after dark", and "By and by".

Joe/George (Tommy Trinder) and the Great Vance (Stanley Holloway) have a Music-Hall rivalry in the ale-houses of Victorian England. When the theatre owners threaten to close down the music-halls, George and Vance come together to fight off the threat.

There is strangely no romance for the lead characters in this story. This is given to Jean Kent as "Dolly" to play out with some complete non-entity. It has relevance to the story but, unfortunately, the story isn't exactly gripping. We are subjected to lots of forgettable songs that all sound the same. The most memorable part of the film is an amusing section about a duel between the two main rivals and it is actually quite funny. Far better than the appalling attempt at making a humorous duel scene that was made by another British film, "Vice Versa", in 1948. "Champagne Charlie" passes the time, reminds us of a time now forgotten, and you will enjoy the film if you like boring sing-a-longs.

This must be the first time since the nineteenth century that the audience for a show could be heard to leave the building still humming 'Champagne Charlie' :-) (In fact, I did wonder if we were going to get some audience participation at one point -- I was on the verge of it myself -- and am curious as to whether sing-alongs ever happened during the original screenings.) This is a wonderful experience, with Tommy Trinder clearly in his element as music-hall entertainer George Leybourne: his singing voice clearly doesn't equal that of Stanley Holloway, but he can put over the songs so well that you can credit him as a serious competitor... if one can ever describe either of these two as 'serious'! Betty Warren is magnificent in every sense of the word, the very image (and figure) of a Victorian stage star, brimming with coquetry, charisma and sound business sense, and it's a pity that the only number featuring these three together gives her so little to do. A host of minor, unnamed but recurring characters bring the genial, raucous world of the music hall to life, with its flickering stage flares, its haze of smoke and its plentiful supply of drink.

But the true stars of the picture are surely the composers and lyricists who contributed the host of songs that enliven the soundtrack, the new music fitting seamlessly with such genuine period hits as "Champagne Charlie" and "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze". The plot requires the rival stars to cap one another with song after song on the theme of alcohol, every one of which has to be a credible smash hit: with writers like Billy Mayerl and Noel Gay involved, plus the bravura delivery of the two vocalists, the audience both offscreen and on are completely convinced.