You're Only Young Twice

Beginning with crowds of young people (played by genuine Glasgow students) misbehaving in the streets, this looks as though it may be an early British teen movie. Far from it. Based on a 1939 play, "What Say They?", by James Bridie, it concerns the stuffy hierarchy of the university. It's probable that the original play script was so dull and unfunny that all the material with Charles Hawtrey as a professor's son has been added. Hawtrey spends about half the film falling about drunk and this is a relatively skilled comic performance. The tedious dialogue whenever he is not on screen provokes no interest. Robert Urquhart must be the squarest student since "Tom Brown's Schooldays". It's no surprise he doesn't get the girl. She's pert Diane Hart, who seems to be a modern miss with ideas of her own; but as soon as marriage is proposed, she reverts to stereotype. In his first film "Ronald" Corbett has little to do. He was to be discovered 15 years later.

Diane Hart arrives at the very Scottish, very Presbyterian university in search of her uncle, Joseph Tomelty. During the Troubles, he was a revolutionary poet. He is believed to have gone to America, but he really is the gate porter of the university under a fake name. He also has a few businesses in town that arouse the ire of bluestocking Professor Duncan Macrae. Due to the usual sort of mixup that takes place in comedies, she is mistaken for the woman who is to become the secretary of university president Patrick Barr.

Miss Hart is an attractive woman with a smoky creak in her voice, and in the manner of this sort of comedy, she succors the weak, stands up to the tyrant, and captures the heart of Barr. Is he too set in his ways to do anything about it?

The story is underpinned by the growing Post-War prosperity that was cracking the old facade of Scotland. Time has passed, and nowadays Scotland's issues are of an entirely different type, but as a classical farce, it's buttressed by some good writing, some fine comic performances by the likes of Charles Hawtrey, and some good location shooting at Glasgow University.... whether that's meant to be the actual site of the movie or not.

Charles Hawtrey turns in a terrific comedy performance in this rather sour comedy about unruly students and an unlikable secretary at a college in Scotland.

Story has a new secretary (Diane Hart) arriving at a college where drunken students led by Sheltie (Robert Urquhart) are overdoing a campus celebration, much to the annoyance of a dean (Duncan Macrae) whose son (Hawtrey) is not among them. She works for the college president (Patrick Barr) and intrudes into all the college business.

Sheltie frequents a local bar where students drink, and with his pals gets Hawtrey drunk and engaged to a local floozy. The students go on strike after Sheltie gets expelled, but the secretary wins over the president and the students win.

There's a silly subplot about the bar owner who is really a world-class scholar of Celtic culture (but no one knows who he is).

Charles Hawtrey is very funny as the uptight student (and son of the dean), but his treatment by others is rather mean-spirited. Macrae and Barr are solid. Hart's character is very unlikable as an outright liar and manipulative woman. Urquhart is a decade too old for his role as a student and comes off as being a stupid clod. Others include Joseph Tomelty as the Celtic scholar, Jacqueline Mackenzie as the floozy, Ronnie Corbett as a student, and Arthur Hill as the mystery man.

This is a truly hilarious, witty and satirical film of the highest quality. I wonder if Americans could possibly understand the humour, which is quintessentially British. The script is liberally filled with the most devastatingly clever one-liners, not all of which will be grasped by everyone, as many of them are extraordinarily subtle. As an example, there is a pub called The Plough and the Stars, run by a renegade Irishman. The horrid Professor Heyman, who is the bogey of the story, says: 'There's something behind the name "The Plough and the Stars".' This is amusing for those who realize that it is a pointed reference to the famous play of that title by Sean O'Casey. But those not familiar with O'Casey and what he stood for will not understand the joke. This was the first film appearance of Ronnie Corbett, who became one of Britain's best-loved and most famous comedians. It is so amusing to see him as a squeaky little young man with an eager face, right at the commencement of his career. (After his death I bought his Saab.) Charles Hawtrey, though young, was already a film veteran by this time. I found him delightfully funny all the way through this film, and he added greatly to it. He later became a 'Carry On' regular. He was really a Kenneth Williams before Kenneth Williams, so outrageous and hilarious to watch. The film is set entirely on a fictional university campus in Scotland, though the University of Glasgow was used as the location. In most of the scenes the students are played by actors and actresses who are far too old. Towards the end of the film, there is a scene in a huge hall of the University where there are hundreds of real Glasgow students taking part, and then it is more realistic and convincing, because they are genuine university students. The film has one of the wittiest and most literate scripts of any British comedy film. It is based on a play by James Bridie (1888-1951), who alas died before the film was finished. Bridie was a fascinating character who worked with Alfred Hitchcock on three films and was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Festival. The film is a devastating attack on academic pomposity, which is a delight to watch if you are one of those like myself who has encountered and detested it. This film is one of a number of British comedy classics which have recently been released for the first time on DVD. There are many lost gems to be found in those recent releases, along with some disappointments such as ONE WILD OAT (1951, see my review). In this film, the actress Diane Hart gives an extraordinary performance, which I find rather hard to describe, and so I leave it to viewers to see what they can make of it. She plays a young woman named Miss Shore who turns up at the university and is mistaken for the Principal's new secretary, Miss Lamplighter. In fact, the real Miss Lamplighter later sends a letter saying she is not coming, but in the meantime Miss Shore thinks it amusing to pretend to be her, and so she acts as the Principal's secretary. She is really the niece of the gate-keeper, who goes under the name of Dan McEntee but is in fact a famous Irish poet and nationalist fighter, a 'General', who has gone to ground incognito. On the side, he owns and runs the pub near the campus called The Plough and the Stars, which all makes sense as the tale progresses. The twists and turns of the story, the juggling with identities, what with two people pretending to be someone else, and the academic stresses and conflicts, make this film engrossing to watch. A great deal of use is made of the wonderful university locations, and the atmosphere is successfully conveyed. There are many good character actors in the film. Edward Lexy as the elderly Lord Carshennie is very god, Robert Urquhart as young Sheltie, Dancan Macrae (who really came from Glasgow, lived and died there) as the horrid Professor Hayman, and Patrick Barr as Sir Archibald, all do very well. Diane Hart's uncle is played very broadly, as if he were onstage at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, by Joseph Tomelty, and he was a real Irishman, not someone just putting on the accent. Terry Bishop directed the film very well indeed, even though it was his first feature film. It is a pity that he never got a major feature film success in his career and got stuck in TV series like DANGER MAN (1960-1) instead; he retired in 1964 even though he lived until 1981. This film is wonderfully funny, and it disembowels academic pretensions and pomposities so ruthlessly and gleefully, that I suspect James Bridie, and possibly some of the screen writers as well, must have endured the hideous experience of witnessing, or even having to spend time in close proximity with, such nightmare people in their bubble. See this if you can, especially if you have ever had any contact with the world of academics. If you have had bad experiences and know what the film is 'on about', you will laugh yourself sick and love every minute of it. If only more such films were made, exposing the monstrous world of academe, with its reptilian denizens, who tear at each other's throats like the vicious saurians that they so often are.

Having just watched this film I'm left wondering what was the point of it? It was about a bunch of university students and a university porter, the students didn't get on with one of the senate and the porter was really a well regarded writer. The storyline was confused without any clear sense of direction.

All the cast seemed to put in a reasonable amount of effort, but the script didn't allow us to like any of the characters. Charles Hawtrey, of Carry On fame, always struggled for laughs when he was playing 'a boy' and he shambles through half of this film pretending to be drunk.

I guess this film was made when most of the population had never been to university. Perhaps then film makers could get away with students having an average age of 30+, but today it looks plain silly.

Really this film had no redeeming features, other than I think it was filmed in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow. There are many better ways to spend 80 minutes.