Boys Will Be Boys

This was the Master Will Hay's 4th film and 1st for Gainsborough, for which he did his best work overall – although his last for Ealing was also a world-beater. He was playing his long established stage persona of seedy schoolmaster here even though it was also supposedly based on Beachcomber's (J.B. Morton) Narkover from the Daily Express - Morton later stated he had had no involvement in the production.

School and prison school teacher Dr. Alec Smart by criminal (and comic) means gets the job of Headmaster at Narkover School, a notorious training ground for the criminals of the future. When arriving he gets a boisterous welcome from the "boys", including being unceremoniously towed on a rug around the entrance by a taxi and then being hoisted aloft and blanketed. Next day he's caught playing cards by the chairman of the Board of Governors, who he tells to mind his own business not knowing how important a personage he is. The "boys" were out of control yet still wore impeccable school uniforms and caps - I say "boys" because half of them looked over 30. I think the film was given an "A" certificate by the UK censor so as not to set youth a bad example! Nowadays it's all they're set. It's all delightful stuff, one episode flowing into the next, and leading soon to the theft of a diamond necklace. Favourite bits: Gordon Harker as an ex-lag then dubious school porter and rather intense thief; playing banker with the "boys"; the singing of the rousing school song on Founders Day by the "boys"; the rugby match where the possession of the ball was the main thing. Hay certainly made an impression here!

The very best was still to come, but this is a joy to watch too and always a pleasant 80 minute time filler for me.

If you're not a fan of the great Mr Hay, have never seen one of his films but are wondering what all the fuss was about don't watch this one first. Eventually you love this but only after you've become a fan. To do that watch OH MR PORTER first, then you'll be desperate to voraciously devour this and the rest of them.

This film basically showcased the music hall act Will Hay had been touring with since the 1920s, his performance is therefore honed to perfection. To some extent this is like the pilot episode of what was to follow - it's nearly there but even so however many times you watch it, it never gets stale or fails to make you laugh. His character and his story is extraordinarily silly but by setting it within an insular and isolated environment, without contextual reference to the outside world, such silliness seems fine. English public school system in the 1930s was hardly the exam-focussed institutions of today. They had improved since the bad old days when they were there to make money and in theory develop boys' character rather than educate him with the philosophy exemplified by the famous quotation of Thucydides: The strong do what they can and the weak suffer as they must but a lot of them were still atrocious places with completely unqualified teachers so Narkover School is probably a lot more representative of reality than you'd imagine. This is hardly a brutal and cutting satire of that system but nevertheless like Monty Python did years later (who'd also had first-hand experience of public schools) it laughs at the stupidity and incompetence of such institutions.

Will Hay was born for cinema. Although he had been a massive comedy star on the stage since starting off as 'the English W C Fields' in the 20s, because so much of his humour is derived from his facial expressions and his incoherent mumblings - things which couldn't be picked up on a stage fifty metres away, moving and talking pictures were the perfect medium for bringing his anarchic yet safe humour to the world. His first few films at BIP can be ignored but having moved studios to Gaumont-British, this was his first 'proper' picture. Some might say that all his subsequent ones at G-B were just remakes of this, indeed Will Hay himself thought that towards the end of his contract there but if it's such a good formula, why not repeat it! As time progressed his pictures got much better both funnier and better produced but this one, the original is the comedy equivalent to the source of the Amazon - perhaps not as wild and torrential as further downstream but pure and full of life.

Dr. Alexander Smart (Smart Alec to the boys) gets himself headmastership at a boys' school when he and another man forge a letter of recommendation from his previous boss (throwing out the original letter that says quite the opposite!) While there, he ends up tangled in an elaborate jewel robbery, and is caught between a rock and a hard place when the thief lets him know that he still has the original letter, which he will show to the heads if Alex should mess up their plans.

It was in this film that Will Hay brought to the screen the sketch that he had been touring the halls for years,the seedy master.He effectively played this in all of his subsequent films,with variations.He thus became a film star in the U.K..I am especially fond of this film as I first saw it at a film society at school 55 years ago.Not many of my classmates thought it funny but I did and still do. With regard to the rhyming slang you should bear in mind that one of the censors for the BBFC was a retired Colonel,and another a spinster,as they used to call elderly unmarried women,so I don't think that they would have had any idea of the real meaning of the words

As the film clearly highlights, there is very little difference for a teacher if he is teaching in a prison or an all-boys school. Both venues require discipline and ingenuity, as well as a bit of patience. The movie is amusing despite some of the predictable pranks of the students. Add a star if you are a teacher.