Maytime in Mayfair

Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding made 7 films together. At their best, they were paired in glossy, stylish musical comedies like MAYTIME IN MAYFAIR, which is a remake of ROBERTA.

Here, Wilding plays a penniless charmer who inherits a dress shop. The shop is managed by stylish but aloof Anna Neagle. He knows nothing about clothes but is instantly smitten. Along for the ride is his friend (Nicholas Phipps) who gets drunks and divulges details of the fall collection to a rival (Peter Graves) who insists on singing all the time.

After the papers break the news of the new fashions, Neagle takes off in a snit with Graves, leaving Wilding to fail and sell the business. Will things get straightened out? The film's highlights are two musical dream sequences. In one, Wilding imagines the beautiful Neagle as a famous model. In the other, Neagles imagines a slow-motion dance with Wilding. Bother are well done. There's also a big fashion show sequence with all the major London designers represented.

Neagle and Wilding are a perfect team. Neagle has a regal beauty, a good sense of humor and a decent singing and dancing talent. Wilding has a goofy charm that goes well with Neagle's icy demeanor and also dances well. They were hugely popular with British audiences in the 40s and 50s. Phipps is fun as the dopey friend but was also an accomplished director and writer (he wrote the script for this film).

Co-stars include Tom Walls as the inspector, Thora Hird as Janet, Mona Washbourne as Lady Levenson, and Colette Melville as Priscilla.

Fun film. Listen closely to Wilding's jokey asides. Funny!

Of the six films that Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding made as a team this is the only one in color. Good thing too because for some of the dream sequences and/or musical numbers it was surely necessary.

Maytime In Mayfair finds Wilding a charming but broke aristocrat (apparently Wilding specialized in those roles) who finds he's an inherited a posh dress shop which caters to the aristocracy of which he's one of the poorer members till recently. First instinct is to sell the place, but after meeting Anna Neagle the store manager who runs the places and does some of the designs. Soon enough Wilding has designs on her and that plays into him trying to make a go of the business.

Some nice sequences every bit as good as what was done on this side of the pond with the music, dance, and fashion sequences. Neagle and Wilding have more British charm than you'll see this side of David Niven.

Wilding's rival for the business and Neagle's affections is Peter Graves who is a real snake in the grass, not above a little espionage to steal Neagle's designs. In that he's aided and abetted by Wilding's friend Nicholas Phipps who gets riotously drunk and spills the beans without knowing it.

If you like your British cinema escapist and entertaining than Maytime In Mayfair is for you.

The plot of Roberta is an old chestnut by now...young man (comic, dancer, musician, goof ball, etc--depends on which version) finds he has inherited one half of a posh fashion salon. He and his buddy go to salon to check it out, with the intent of making money either from selling it or by a promotion of one kind or another. They meet the other half owner, a gorgeous young woman. This plot was done as movies and even a TV show starring Bob Hope. This version is one of my cherished British films, actually, because it stars Michael Wilding. Wilding was wildly popular in England, long before he met and married Liz Taylor. He was usually teamed with Anna Neagle and they made several of these entertaining and fun films with place titles: Spring in Park Lane, Maytime In Mayfair, The Courtneys of Curzon Street, Picadilly Incident (a friend and I used to enjoy making up new titles for these stars--A Cuddle in the Cotswalds, Manchester Meeting, Winter in Winchester, Kissing in Kensington, etc.)

Neagle's husband produced most of Neagle's films and by teaming her with Wilding, had a good thing going for some time in the 1940s. Here Wilding is a broke aristocrat, a bit of a playboy, who intends to collect money from this inheritance, but is distracted from this when he meets the lovely co-owner, Neagle. The plot is entirely predictable, but enjoyable, all the same. He sets out to help make the salon a success so they can all make money. He and Neagle dance and romance (Wilding was marvelous at provocative little asides and quick quips), and there is a big fashion show as climax.

I always felt this couple was sort of a heavy-footed version of Astaire-Rogers. They usually began with some sort of misunderstanding or she hates him immediately or identities were mistaken, or some such device, and then all that sexual tension until they dance and romance blooms. I recommend this--not because it is a particularly good movie (it isn't), but because of Wilding's charm and wit. I adored him in British movies, and was so disappointed in his American movie career. They hadn't a clue what to do with him in the US, and so his career declined and was basically over by the time Taylor divorced him. What a shame. He made one US film, directed by Hitchcock, which gave you a hint of the charmer he had been, Stage Fright, with Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich.

As for Neagle, well she went on in such froth as this, long past her prime, but producer-husband Herbert Wilcox looked after her well, and she was a British favorite. She reacted well with Wilding, but I often found her bland.

Anna Neagle may have been a bit old for this sort of thing by 1949, but it is certainly a fun movie, as her fashion house is inherited by the rather silly Mr Gore-Brown (Wilding) and in competition with the even sillier D'Arcy Davenport. The colours are vivid, the situations progressively dafter, and the film quietly grows on you. They certainly don't make 'em like this now!

No doubt Michael Wilding had his fans at the time (and even now) but for me he is trading on a charm doesn't in fact possess in this story. To be fair I am saying story rather than performance because the silliness really is at the story and script level, and Wilding is delivering what is required by both. By virtue of an unexpected inheritance he breaks in on the Neagle character's successful fashion business and he and his buddy set about spoiling it in small ways and then a large way. His behaviour is insensitive and irritating but clearly is intended to be accepted as whimsical and charming, and eventually irresistible to Neagle. A real person with self-respect would have socked him and walked off the job well before she does in this film. I was born the year after this film was made, and so I have had a good chance to observe how much attitudes to women have changed - or not changed as much as they should. I can see presented uncritically in this film some of the fundamental disrespect of women which is still so toxic to our culture today. In between repeatedly muttering "that ain't funny" I did enjoy some of the aspects of this film (eg the costumes). Neagle does a respectable job of her dancing although I take it the dancing in the major dance sequences is done by a lookalike double. In closeups she is heavily painted and clearly is no spring chicken. Yet her character is described as a "girl". She is a lovely, dignified and ladylike woman, and very credible as a successful businessperson, which many might think is better than being a girl.