Gert and Daisy's Week-end

A light-hearted comedy featuring a duo that were hugely popular in the '30s and '40s. Although the Waters sisters have their moments, their chemistry is fatally diluted every time they have to share the screen with someone else. This might have had them rolling in the aisles back in the '40s, but the Waters sisters' type of comedy hasn't dated well

Maclean Rogers packs a lot of plot into less than eighty minutes in the first of three cheap & cheerful wartime vehicles for radio stars Elsie & Doris Waters; although after a quick knees up on the platform of Goodge Street tube station the plot relocates to yet another of those big country houses and a distinctly pre-War plot about jewel thieves.

(Forty years of film history are embodied in the unlikely pair of John Slater & Wally Patch as two tars on leave on the pull; while cameraman Stephen Dade later shot 'Zulu'!)

Whilst from 1942 it seems very dated, it contains humour, songs and plenty slapstick. Gert & Daisy comic timing is a delight and rare in a female singing duo. I had the esteemed pleasure of seeing them perform live on stage in the twilight of there long career on holiday in Bournemoth. Interesting to note that the Elder sister lived to grand age of 94yrs. That their younger brother celebrated actor, Jack Warner changed his stage name.. Talking Pictures once again gave me the chance to relive their film performance some 78 years later!

Elsie and Doris Waters take their music-hall characters to the movies in this cheap yet entertaining movie directed by the inexhaustible Maclean Rogers. They find themselves bamboozled into taking some children from Blitz-torn London on a weekend in the country, where they get tangled up in a jewel robbery. Along the way, they sing a few songs, including the mildly ribald "She Was A Lily (But Only By Name)". It's certainly not art, but as an example of the sort of act that appeared in the cheaper theaters, it's pretty good.

The two of them were the sisters of the better remember Jack Warner. The two women show a great comic timing with each other, clearly honed by years on the music hall circuit. The ladies continued in their two-act for many years, including an ITV show. Doris died in 1979, aged 74; Elsie in 1990, aged 96.

GERT AND DAISY'S WEEK-END is one of the few films made by sisters Elsie and Doris Waters. In this one they play a hapless pair who mistakenly sign up to chaperon a gang of kids on a trip to "the country" to escape the blitzkrieg. Once there, they get embroiled in a jewel robbery as well as a mix-up involving their London neighbor's daughter and her sailor boyfriend. It's all pretty basic and straightforward, the but the ladies are very funny (although a lot of the lines are hard to understand) and they even get to sing a ribald song called "She Was a Lily (but only by name)" at the house party in front of a vicar. Their characters of Gert and Daisy are those working class Brit types, ever cheerful and determined (see Gracie Fields and Betty Balfour) and always ready with a chipper song. The gang of kids pre-dates the St. Trinian's mob by a decade. Maybe it's just me, but I always find it funny to see middle-aged women shoved into a water pool. Also n the cast are John Slater, Wally Patch, Iris Vandeleur (a dead ringer for Irene Handl), Annie Esmond as Lady Plumtree, and Gerald Rex as the ringleader of the "children." I think the sisters' brother, Jack Warner, shows up as a London copper, but I could be wrong.

Elsie and Doris Waters are treasures.