Madame Louise (1951) Online

This farce, previously a great success on the stage for Robertson Hare and Alfred Drayton, is tailored for Richard Hearne's good-natured, kindly character, Mr. Pastry, with Garry Marsh in Drayton's role as the bullying, blustering, bookie who takes over a high class dress salon (not that you would notice from this) when its owner, Madame Louise, defaults on her gambling debts.

Hearne, a trained acrobat, whose only rival in the art of falling over was Norman Wisdom, was a first class comedian with international appeal, who, had he been born fifteen or twenty years earlier, could have become one of the great stars of the silent era in the manner of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. As it was, his heyday was in the ephemeral world of live television and low budget films such as this, though he remains a fondly remembered figure. Pity that the cramped sets here hardly provide an adequate stage for his talents.

Quite funny in its madcap way, this also involves Marsh hiding from a trio of comic gangsters (including Charles Farrell and Vic Wise) and his fearsome battle-axe of a wife; an amusing performance from Doris Rogers, whom I've never seen in anything else. And there's also the Pastry designed three-in-one costume, modelled by sweet and charming co-star Petula Clark, leading to several unfortunate misunderstandings with her boyfriend.