Au service de Sa Majesté

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.

Jimmy Tracey (Wallace Ford) is a small-time gangster from New York who finds himself mixed up in a murder, becomes a suspect, and goes on the run with the victim's wallet which contains his passport and a ticket for a trip to England by ship. Assuming the identity of the deceased, Jimmy Dean from Winnipeg, Tracey ships to England where he's met at customs by Dean's long lost childhood buddies, Corporal Dawson (John Mills) and his sweetheart Miss Briggs (Anna Lee), daughter of a Sergeant who was close to Dean's father. They all take Tracey to be Dean and he's pushed into enlisting in the army. A rivalry for the girl soon develops between the two fellows, tempered by a growing sense of comradeship; and a variety of diversions arise, including a boxing match and the re-appearance of Tracey's nightclub singer girlfriend from New York (Grace Bradley). Then the boys ship out to China, along with Miss Briggs and her Sergeant daddy, and face rampaging 'bandits' in some substantial battle scenes.

British production company Gaumont Pictures hired Raoul Walsh to direct O.H.M.S ('On Her Majesty's Service', renamed You're in the Army for the US) and together they cooked up a workman-like picture which, though not a bad film, offers little sense of character development or real dramatic progression, but rather comes across as a sequence of slightly disjointed episodes, some of which are entertaining, and others a bit dull. The film begins and ends well, and has a lot going for it, but it loses its way in the middle, veering all over the place, and at only 87 minutes it feels too long. Among the excess matter is a series of drawn out military pageantry and training scenes which feel awkward, especially removed from the context of the film's pre-WWII release date (the film was cut to 71 minutes for US release and I'm guessing much of this material was trimmed then). Ford does OK as a sort of poor man's Cagney - tough, confident, ambitious, lusty, coarse, but a regular guy despite his failings, even getting in a little song and dance routine - but he's nowhere near Cagney for charm, and looks strangely tired and unhappy for much of the film. Mills wears a keen, boyish spirit; Lee plays it independent but a bit naive; Bradley is sassy, streetwise and fun (the more interesting of the two girls but sadly her part is small). But, like I say, all in all it's not really a bad film. I've been harder on it than I could have been in an attempt at objectivity. It'd make a good first half of a double bill with The Fighting 69th released a few years later and starring Cagney and Pat O'Brian, with Cagney playing a more charismatic, but similarly reluctant and undisciplined newly recruited soldier.

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.

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.

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.