The Gang's All Here

Light hearted 1930s comedy from Britain that has more interesting anecdotes about the cast and crew than the film in places!

Jack Buchanan as the lead insurance investigator John Forrest gives an interesting performance showing his stage acting experience from London and Broadway.

Googie Withers plays his wife and the pair really are a double act as Forrest is lured back from retirement to investigate one last heist at his old employers.

I see from the trivia about this film that the great Alfred Hitchcock was lined up to direct at one stage before landing work in Hollywood. I can't see that having worked really. The comedy doesn't match his output.

THE GANG'S ALL HERE is a very typical comedy of 1939, made with a deliberate lightness of touch which is no surprise given what was happening in the world at the time. Jack Buchanan and Googie Withers play a crime-fighting duo who are on the trail of some stolen jewellery in a plot that props up many a 1930s crime movie. This one's British and was originally meant to be directed by Hitchcock, which doubtlessly would have made it more interesting; as it stands it's rather bland and generic, with a few laughs here and there. Withers sparkles and is the best thing in it, and you get to see a few youthful faces in support, such as Ballard Berkeley.

It is rather difficult to believe that that Jack Buchanan was the matinée idol of his day but he was.Whatever lustre he may have had in his stage outings does not translate to the screen.Instead he is rather still and awkward and rather wooden.The script in this take off of American gangster films is rather uninspired.The only real standout is Edward Everett Horton who does his usual fey butler actor to perfection.In fact Horton made a few British films in the 1930s when it seemed to be very common to have an American actor in one of the lead roles in the hope that this would enable American distribution to be secured.It is has to be said though that whatever entertainment value this film might have had has now evaporated.