Au service de Sa Majesté

Wallace Ford is a small-time crook in New York who has to flee to Great Britain. Once there, through a series of misunderstandings, he finds himself a recruit in the British Army, vying for the affection of Sergeant-Major Frank Cellier's daughter, Anna Lee, with John Mills. Mills was near the start of his long career in which he played many any army man, starting as a raw recruit in the previous year's REGAL CAVALCADE. He would be promoted out of the ranks during the Second World War and reach the rank of Field Marshall in 1969's OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR, amidst nearly three quarters of a century in which he was a bulwark of British film actors.

This service comedy is a fairly standard affair, although a good deal of pleasure is available. Ford sings and dances, as does gorgeous Grace Bradley as a show girl. There's an exciting battle sequence and editor Charles Saunders offers some fine montage work of British soldiers training and on parade. Director Raoul Walsh, on a working vacation from the U.S. knew how to mix comedy and savagery and, within the limits of late-1930s delicacy, he does so ably.

American director Raoul Walsh bringing Grace Bradley with him did this Gaumont British film as an American style buddy film. Also coming over was Wallace Ford, but in his case he was returning to the land of his birth.

In Ford's case he's over from the USA fleeing from a murder rap, a crime he didn't do. He's joined the British army and in their basic training buddies it up with young John Mills, then a rising name in the cinema across the pond. The two of them are rivals for Anna Lee. Bradley however comes across to Great Britain as well as part of an entertainment troop and she knows Ford from back in the states.

As the director of What Price Glory, Walsh was the guy who brought us the male buddy film and a lot of that camaraderie is in O.H.M.S. The action sequences in China where the British army saves a British enclave on the frontier is really well done. Ford and Mills have the proper chemistry to pull off a Captain Flagg/Sergeant Quirt of the lower ranks type act.

Nice action film, more of what you would see in the American cinema than the British, but is done well indeed.

Two years before he made ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, he made this. Starting in New York, a cocky but loveable small-time hoodlum is suspected of killing a man. He goes on the run from the cops pretending to be someone he isn't.

But hold on, that's not Cagney - it looks like him, he talks like him but it's American B-movie star Wallace Ford. He actually does a really impressive Cagney impersonation. This has to be one of the most Cagney films ever even though it doesn't have Cagney in it! It's also very much a typical Raoul Walsh picture - but surprisingly it's made by Gaumont-British in London.

Wallace Cagney finds that his disguise means has to join up into the British army. James Ford's cocky insubordinate nature isn't exactly suited to the discipline of army life but eventually he starts to fit in - primarily to get the girl. And there we get the love triangle. Although he had a devoted super-sexy girlfriend back in NYC, played by super-sexy Grace Bradley, for some bizarre reason he sets his sights on the girlfriend of his new pal John Mills played by Anna Lee. Mills and Lee are both deadly dull characters, perfectly suited for each other so why our Cagney wannabe chases after her whilst he has a super-sexy dame pursuing him is anyone's guess but it all flows along well.

As you'd expect from a good director, it's engaging, professional and compelling.....well upto about two thirds of the way in. When the action moves to China and gets all Raoul Washy, although that's meant to be the high octane, action packed finale, all the fun and the character driven drama drains away. It feels like Walsh realised his boat was leaving for The States in the morning so had to complete the filming in an afternoon before packing his suitcase. The rushed ending doesn't even seem like the same film and the ending of course is the memory any picture leaves you with. What really seemed like it could have been a great little Cagneyesque picture stays in your memory as something mediocre.

Despite the bolt-on last twenty minutes, you can tell this is a quality product. It was made during the time when Gaumont-British, because of the nefarious commercial politics of the industry in 1937, had to break into America. This was during England's mini recession so revenues were down but they had no choice but to borrow lots and lots of money to spend lots more money than they could get a return on - unless MGM's American theatres chose not to show their own MGM films but this instead....you can guess what happened!

Perhaps the rushed ending was elicited by a call from their bank manager? Best advice would be to switch off when they sail off to China -upto that point, it's a good film - especially if you like Cagney.

You'll either love it or hate it. John Mills probably hated it, playing a decidedly secondary role as British straight man to Wallace Ford's eccentrically comic Yankee soldier who has somehow found his way into the British army. Ford's wise-cracking character steals every scene and the only question is whether he'll also steal John Mills' girl.

From its outset the movie tries to achieve too much - it wants to be a comedy, a romance, a serious drama and a military propaganda piece. It's hard to strike the right balance between so many competing objectives and the inevitable result is that it does not achieve distinction in any ofthem.

Just one of the numerous imbalances in the movie is the inclusion of too many lengthy items of newsreel footage showing ranks of military horsemen and precision marching foot soldiers training in Britain in the late 1930s. These skills seem woefully unsuitable for the imminent mechanized blitzkrieg about to engulf Europe as the movie was being made. It's sad confirmation of the adage that every army is only prepared to fight its previous war.

GB under the command of Michael Balcon as production head decided to aim its productions at the American market.Unfortunately as this film shows it would have missed its mark by a mile.As Rachel Low in her estimable book on British Film Production in the 30s says,either they shows actors of insufficient stature or those who were of sufficient stature didn't come up to the mark.Wallace Ford is after all an amiable enough actor but by no stretch of the imagination was he a star.So there was little likelihood that he would draw the customers in the states.Even employing Raoul Walsh as director is nullified by the longueurs of the first half when clearly as a quid pro quo to the army we see drilling and marching and bands playing so that the film grinds to a halt.Ironically at the end the British Army are shown as all conquering in the Asian conflict whereas a few years later they were routed by the Japanese army.It is little surprise that shortly after this film was made Gaumont British closed down their production arm and Shepherds Bush studios and was eventually sold off t rank.A sad end to a misguided dream.