Playtime for Workers

Playtime For Workers is a joking reference to the very popular Workers Playtime which was broadcast during the war years and well into the 50s.Popular artists used to broadcast from works canteens.the best example available is highlighted in the documentary "Listen To Britain"In this there is an extract of Flanagan and Allen playing a works canteen.It is wonderfully evocative.This film is basically a review ,a series of acts strung together by a rather feeble compere,carroll Levis.The version i have viewed is 42minutes long.The reduced length is probably an vast improvement on the longer version.One minute Levis introduces Scott saunders and the next he is thanking him,Saunders act having been removed by an editor who forgot to remove the introduction.The acts are all rather second rate.Most are photographed from just one angle with no editing at all.In some instances this can be tedious.Particularly the pianist Kay Cavendish whose smile turns to a rictus grin as if someone had told a joke behind the camera.This film is produced by Harold Baim who under the Global Queensway egis was to bore thousands of us poor cinema-goers to death at Odeons up and down the land with his banal travelouges in the 60s and 70s.ironically these shorts often earned more than the features as the qualified for Eady Levy.the end of Eady Levy in 1979 saw the unlamented demise of these shorts.