St. Martin's Lane

This is a rare treat for coinnesseurs, a film where three of the greatest actors of Hollywood, Rex Harrison, Charles Laughton, and Vivien Leigh, strut their considerable stuff! They were all still relatively young in 1938, but already you can see the promise of great things to come, for the three, especially Laughton, who was already one of the world's finest actors.

In many ways the story resembles Harrison's later role as Professor Higgins in "My Fair Lady"(1964). Laughton and Leigh play buskers in the street, and Harrison plays a toff who gives Leigh a chance at stardom. Laughton plays quite a similar role to his later "Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939) who falls in love with the girl but recognises he is too ugly for her, and eventually contents himself with her kindness towards him. You can see Laughton's superb acting skills, when she kisses him, and his eyes shine with satisfaction and pride, as they wave goodbye to each other. It is truly a precious moment in films, a moment to savour.

The following year saw the release of Leigh's "Gone With The Wind" and of course "The Wizard of Oz", two of the greatest films ever made, so minor films like this tended to be forgotten quickly. It's worth taking another look, though, at this film, which deserves far more recognition than it got.

This is a wonderful story of love, ambition and sacrifice among the buskers (street performers) of London. Everybody's good, but Laughton and Leigh will stay in your mind and your heart long after you've seen this great film.

Laughton's performance should be studied by every acting student. He gives us a Charlie Staggers who is funny, resourceful, honest and pathetic and with a great capacity to love and do right by others. He is a simple and good man with a deep soul, and his audition in the theatre at the climax of the picture is both sad and uplifting.

Viven Leigh demonstrates a great talent and the characteristics that made her so successful the following year as Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind." In this film she begins as a self righteous and petty thief and by the end she has grown to become a highly successful but humbled actress. Leigh carries this change superbly and makes it completely believable. By any measure it is a great performance.

"Sidewalks of London" is also very well written, directed and edited. I rank this as one of the best English language films of the 1930s.

I was in awe of this movie. THREE great actors right off the bat: Rex Harrison, Charles Laughton AND the incomparable, Vivian Leigh thrill the senses! I was pleased just to look at them & watch them apply their craft. I wasn't as excited about the plot. It was the actors I enjoyed seeing. However, the movie was great in it's historic setting. Of course, it took place in the 1938's present day. But it was like a history lesson in the arts. Street performers still perform on the streets of New York. It was interesting to see it in the London setting. Viewing live 1930s entertainment was such fun & historically educational. Much more enjoyable watching it "live" than reading it in a dusty old book.

When St. Martin's Lane first came out it was not given any release in the United States, I suppose because American audiences would not be attuned to buskers. We have no equivalent of that here.

Nevertheless it's a nice film. Charles Laughton is the head of a troop of buskers (British street entertainers)who inhabit and perform in and around the London theater district. The group takes in street waif Vivien Leigh and it's obvious she's got real talent. And theatrical composer Rex Harrison appreciates her charms even more than her talent.

Laughton is not a man who takes betrayal gladly as he sees it. The rest of the film you'll have to see for yourself.

It's nice to see both Harrison and Leigh in good parts before they became big stars. Laughton as always is fabulous, he's got the London cockney accent down pat.

After Vivien Leigh became a star with the release of Gone With the Wind, St. Martin's Lane made it to the states in a limited run. It was no big hit in Great Britain for Laughton who co-produced it with Erich Pommer, the second of three films they did. But Vivien Leigh's success helped them recoup a bit.

Vivian Leigh charms and beguiles as does Charles Laughton and Rex Harrison,all of them in their innocence and unaffected excellence. A needful but blithe and hopeful era in London, after the internecine slaughter of World War I and the unimaginable evil of World War II and the Holocaust. To experience these three and others in a blitheful , happy episode of innocent merriment will uplift thee.