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A good musical must have some tuneful melodies,reasonable book and not outsmart its welcome.This film fails on all three counts.Furthermore it has Sid Field in the lead.Now whilst this may be a good thing for music hall historians he simply is not up to the lead role in a film.Furthermore if you don't enjoy the humour of his sketches then you really are stuck.He has a good supporting cast in Claude Hulbert Sonnie Hale and Jerry Desmonde.It is difficult to understand why Rank let Wesley Ruggles direct it,then allow it to be released in a version over two hours long.By 1950 Rank was overdrawn by millions of pounds and brought in John Davis to wield the axe.

Interesting today mainly as a historical record of the Music Hall (Vaudeville to our American cousins), this is fairly slow and unfunny when not actually showing the performances.

Featuring Sid Field, a big star of the thirties and forties. He had a pleasant light singing voice but his act included a Golf Lesson routine not in the class of his namesake, W.C. Two-ton Tessie O'Shea, literally a big star, showed that she had lots of personality and there's an enjoyable Pearlie Kings act with `Any Old Iron?' etc.

Surprisingly in (pretty gaudy) colour.

Rank's ruinously expensive attempt to make a film star out of West End sensation Sid Field immediately acquired legendary status when it crashed and burned with both critics and at the boxoffice taking with it the career of director Wesley Ruggles and setting back that of Kay Kendal for several more years.

Predating British film comedies of the fifties and sixties which showcased British television comedians in Technicolor, like most really bad films the biggest sin 'London Town' commits is the one of simply being very dull, to the extent that for the next fifteen years it was produced as Exhibit 'A' whenever the case was argued that the British simply couldn't make musicals.

London Town is a must see for any other Greta Gynt fans out there. Her saucy madam with the chestnut hair is about as far removed from the icy blonde femme fetales she played in the 30s as can be! It took about half of the film before I really recognised her. Kay Kendall is also splendid in her role, as is a very small Petula Clark. Petula is Peggy, whose father is an out of work comedian. She plays a trick on the other comedian, so that he'll have to miss a night and give her father his big break. Watch out for Belgrave as well - he steals every scene he's in!

The movie is fairly light on plot, most of the time being made up with the stage numbers, some of which get a bit long (the golf one...good at first but soon I was dying!), but over all it's a lot of fun. I'm sure I could have though of a better ending, though!

Over here in the UK, we frequently see scenes from this film on programmes like 'heroes of comedy' or 'Music Hall heroes' - that type of thing. The films star, Sid Field was a very popular (and funny) comedian at the tail end of the variety period before TV appeared and very little film of him was made. So the sketches and 'turns' from London Town are shown as an illustration of him in action. We recently bought the DVD of this film purely to see the snatches of Sid Field in action, as we both find him hilarious in a rather old-fashioned and unsophisticated way. What we weren't prepared for was the pure awfulness of the rest of it - the plot is almost non-existent, the writing and script are poor and the direction is all over the place. Happily, Sid Field in full flow makes up for all of this. OK, I admit that someone tripping up on stage is not the height of comedy class, but he does it so well, and the scene with the camera has me hooting with laughter. So three cheers for Sid, a resounding raspberry for the rest of it!