Elstree Calling

In producing this brand-new singing, dancing, all-talkie film, British International Pictures inadvertently contrived to preserve a cross-section of the contemporary London stage scene from the West End to the music halls. Sit back in your seat, enjoy the entertainment beamed directly to your home (I had no idea that television existed in the popular perception long before the BBC), and let yourself be carried away back to the days of 1930, flitting from venue to venue to experience a night out in the London of the era. Some of the acts are to one taste, some to another, but you've paid for the programme as a whole so applaud and wait to see what's coming next.

My personal favourite would be the live-wire tapping and jazzy tunes of the Three Eddies' blackface act (especially the skeleton dance!), but while overall I was interested in this revue chiefly for the music -- it features unknown (at least to me) tunes by Vivian Ellis and Ivor Novello, for example -- there's a good deal else that's worth enjoying, and a few tantalising glimpses 'backstage' at the Elstree studios as well.

"Elstree Calling" was edited on the cheap and rushed out in ten days for a hasty release to recoup the cost of production, and it shows. Few of the five or six camera angles filmed on every shot actually got used, for instance, and a number of bizarre choices seem to have been made, such as choosing to show a dance sequence via a camera focused too high and showing a vast expanse of curtain above the performers' heads but cutting off their actual feet -- or a shot that shows the performers disappearing off the left-hand side of the frame while focusing on the empty set centre-stage. Did anybody even take the trouble to screen these clips before attaching them together? (Director Adrian Brunel, who had left detailed directions for the compilation of his footage only for them to be totally ignored, complained in his autobiography "How could the Hulbert-Courtneidge numbers be slung together like that without looking like casual newsreel photographing?")

I was also a bit puzzled by the smoke that appears to be pouring out of the top of the jaw-droppingly gigantic image of 'Little' Teddy Brown in the background of his first musical interlude -- presumably a side-effect of the stage lighting? But it isn't just the editing: certainly in the chorus sequences, the choreography tends to suffer from being cramped onto a film set, while no-one seems to yet have worked out how to avoid having a long line of girls strung out across the middle of a square-format screen. (See, e.g. the chorus sequences in British-Gaumont's "First a Girl" for more sophisticated treatment later in the Thirties.)

Still, I found this glimpse onto the theatre world of the era thoroughly enjoyable: it was particularly interesting after having screened the shorts in the silent "On With the Dance" series of only a few years only, since the styles are very similar but obviously this time with music. Just don't expect cinema: theatre is what is advertised, and theatre is what you will get -- though there is a brief homage to the antics of Douglas Fairbanks in the burlesque "Taming of the Shrew" that closes the act!

Is it worth it to buy this movie? To a Hitchcock fanatic like myself (Vic Evans)I would say "Yes!" but to any person other than a movie historian I would say "Forget it!"

It is a collection of skits and songs with a bit of comedy in the form of a London stage musical and comedy "Vaudeville" revue. Revues like this one have been done on the London stage from time to time since Vaudeville days. I remember seeing one in London in 1974 called "Carry On London" with Sid James and many other members of the "Carry On" movie comedy crew.

"Elstree Calling" (1930) is presented in the form of a very early live TV broadcast hosted by Tommy Handley. You also see a family attempting to tune into this program. Every so often between skits, you see how they are making out. They experience great difficulty throughout the show. The picture comes and goes as they attempt to adjust the set. The TV set even blows up and is later repaired. By the end of the presentation, the reception finally is restored and the program ends. The problems with this new medium (television) is one of the running jokes.

To the audiences of today it is of little interest. The singing, dancing and comedy is standard for this type of English variety show of the day but terrible by today's standards. For dancing, think of "The Pleasure Garden" as a comparison. Those familiar with Hitchcock's work may remember "Mr. Memory" from "The Thirty-Nine Steps". The music hall in that film is a similar setting. Alfred Hitchcock said to Francois Truffaut about this film - `Not good.'

There is little evidence of Hitchcock except perhaps for a short scene about a murder of the "wrong man". You should recognise the Hitchcock touch in it.

While I don't think anyone knows for sure, I have read that Alfred Hitchcock may have been responsible for the TV broadcast/TV viewing family framework that links the skits together and a running gag with Donald Calthrop attempting to recite Shakespeare periodically throughout the broadcast.

Best wishes,

Vic Evans (marmalade_man [NOSPAM] at yahoo.com

It involves a variety of directors, including Andre Charlot, Jack Hulbert, Paul Murray, and Alfred Hitchcock. The film is comprised of short segments, usually stagebound, with singers, dancers, comedians, and assorted musicians, hosted by MC Tommy Handley, and also using a wraparound segment involving some people trying to watch the program on a primitive television, the development of which was in the news in the UK at the time. The performers include Donald Calthrop, Teddy Brown, The Three Eddies, Helen Burnell, Bobby Comber, Will Fyfe, and Anna May Wong, among many others.

This works best as a snapshot of the vaudeville-style entertainment of the time, often corny and grating, and occasionally inspired. Some segments are in Pathecolor, a technique wherein the frames were hand-colored. I enjoyed Calthrop's recurring gag as a would-be Shakespearean actor struggling to perform some of the Bard's works but always being interrupted. Hitchcock, whose participation has kept this from disappearing into obscurity, reportedly directed the interstitial bits with the people trying to watch TV. Not among the highlights of his career, to be sure.

Recommended for film historians interested in British film. All others YMMV.

I've always wanted to see proper vaudeville live. The ever-changing tones, acts, talents, & forms seem like a lively style of theater. Onscreen, however, it's just a mess. I think we're taught to expect a through-line in film, & there simply isn't one. Not to mention several of the segments are hindered by mawkish emotion, unoriginal musical numbers, or straight racism. Still, there are good pieces (fat musician, "wrong apartment", recurring Shakespeare joke).

As you would expect, how much you enjoy the film will depend on your tastes. The film is little more than a filmed variety show from that era. It features a diverse set of performers and comedians putting on a show for the audience. The MC is actually fairly funny, employing the style of humour where the talking starts out serious but then falters into something ridiculous. Some of the "connecting" skits (i.e. antics in between the main numbers) are quite good too. The main numbers ranged from excellent to awful. On the awful side, I didn't enjoy the bits of ethnic humour (e.g. Scottish people being cheap, which is the topic of an overly long "comedy" song). Weirdly, there's an act in this movie (featured twice) called "The Three Eddies", which was actually quite a spectacular piece of footplay (I chose to re-watch those dance numbers a few times - also, see Youtube). The "weird" (and sad) part is that "The Three Eddies" were three black men wearing black face! The black face made me feel uncomfortable even though they were actually black men underneath. The movie also has a very rotund xylophonist who made great music but also told an ethnic joke during one of his episodes (that joke ruined an otherwise pleasant scene). Another item of interest is the early colour in some of the other dance numbers. Although primitive, the colour adds a kind of pastel prettiness that makes the number look like a painting rather than real life. There's also, by the way, a few connecting sequences directed by a young Alfred Hitchcock (only one of these sequences has an identifiable Hitchcockian style). Overall, I wouldn't recommend this film to the casual viewer... but it's well worth a look if you enjoy exploring the early history of talking cinema and can overlook some humour that is offensive by today's standards.