Maytime in Mayfair

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.

SPRING IN PARK LANE had been such a success that producer-director Herbert Wilcox and star/wife Anna Neagle reassembled the cast and crew for this similarly named effort. It begins much like IRENE -- Wilcox and Neagle had made the 1940 screen version. Michael Wilding has inherited a dress business and is ready to sell it, until he meets manager/designer Anna, falls in love instantly and decides to help run the business while he pursues her.

There's a lot more comedy in this movie than the previous year's smash success. Wilding mugs outrageously and competitor Peter Graves tries to sing on a couple of occasions. Two dance numbers show up and the whole movie is shot in Best British Technicolor, which is also used to offer a brief fantasy fashion show It also contains Tom Walls next to last screen performance, as an Irish bobby. In the 1930s he starred in several of the Aldwych farces, transferred from stage to screen. In the 1940s, he moved into major supporting roles. He died a few months after this was released.

Isn't anybody going to talk about the couturiers? I think I've read all of the user reviews and I find it peculiar that the one thing that this Roberta remake has that sets it apart from the others is that for some reason they have nine or 10 different dress designers including some of the most famous in Europe yet nobody mentions this. It seems to me there must have been a reason why that was done and I would love to know what that could possibly be. There are some very pretty clothes and some that show the worst excesses of the late 1940s but a comparable Hollywood movie such as the original Roberta in Hollywood seems to be able to manage with just Bernard Newman and his staff. And that movie features some beaded gowns that clearly involved hundreds of hours of work. I would just like to know why this movie has this embarrassment of riches because it doesn't seem to be unusually elaborate or excessive. Just saying.

I first saw this film over 25 years ago on British TV and have only just caught up with it again last week on a DVD copy bought off ebay. I had remembered the musical sequences, the colour and the gorgeous fashion plate poses and clothes but the plot is weaker than the earlier Anna Neagle/Michael Wilding film Spring in Park Lane and Maytime doesn't stand up so well to the passage of the years. But Michael Wilding is a joy in the film, charming, funny, debonair, appears to be having great fun and on top of his form. Worth watching for him alone. Anna Neagle appears a little matronly beside him, and a little too old for the part she plays but by the end of the 1940's their film partnership was well established with the cinema going public. Spring in Park Lane had been a top hit for 1947 and a big money maker. In his autobiography Wilding wrote at length of his great regard for Herbert Wilcox the director and instigator of this London series of films.

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.