Under Your Hat

This was the last starring vehicle for Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge.After this with the exception of the odd solo role on the screen the rest of their careers was spent on the stage and in cabaret.It is hardly surprising when you view this film.The humour is forced and the musical numbers though entertaining are often photographed as if they were in a theatre.It also has to be said that a little of Cic and Jack goes a very long way.Jack always seemed to come across as an amiable buffer who won through despite his characters inadequacies.However Cic just overwhelms everyone else and every thing else on screen at the same time as her.She is totally overpowering,the problem is that she is just not funny,and neither is this film.

The film anticipates the hostilities of the second world war but still set before Britain declared war on Germany. Film star Jack Millett (Jack Hulbert) is tapped to spy for England by Sir Jeffrey Arlington (Cecil Parker.) He is tasked to recover a secret carburetor stolen by enemy agents.

His wife Kay Millett (Cicely Courtneidge) thinks that Jack is having an affair with his glamorous co-star in the movie they are making because of his suspicious behaviour. Kay decides to help him when she finds out what he really is up to for the British secret service.

Under Your Hat is a pacy musical-dance caper with plenty of silliness and a few nifty moves. It is just meant to be simple entertainment with two stars who were known for musical theatre.

The humour has rather aged, it does not come across as funny. It really is a British version of The Thin Man with lesser stars and budget. Hulbert is rather agile as a dancer and seems to be a natural at light comedy but Courtneidge makes the film heavy going.

In their final starring vehicle together, British film and stage stalwarts Cicely Courtneidge and husband Jack Hulbert give a grand tour of the kind of pre-war comedy played at break-neck pacing which permeated British film comedies and simply pleased the people before the sublime literacy of the Pascal Shaw films, Noel Coward and the Ealing comedies set a world standard for a more literate amusement.

With war clouds gathering in Europe (the film would not be released until a few months after Hitler marched into Poland), the free passage of British citizens to the south of France (here in the service of the kind of light espionage plot the U.S. Charlie Chan films had exploited in CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS a few years earlier) still must have seemed normal during the "phony war" before the Nazi invasion of France and Dunkirk.

That the "missing secret carburetor" should be found in a light training plane testifies to the slight budget of the comedy, but is more than contradicted by the lavish musical numbers which the film owes to its origin as a musical stage hit.

Cicely Courtneidge (later Dame Cicely) has little American equivalent, although a more refined Joan Davis might come close, and writer/husband Jack Hulbert may remind some as a cross between a funnier Ray Bolger and a less suave Fred Astaire. They played together as perfectly British a comedy couple (and musical to boot!) as Nick and Nora Charles were a distinctly American twosome with or without the mystery or music as underpinning to their comedy through a dozen successful if not quite classic pre-war comedies together and apart before their style comedy was relegated back to the stage from whence it came by the perception that wartime movie audiences wanted something more profound - and yet modern audiences will see some of their comic heritage in the "modern' work of John Cleese and the Monte Python generation. That their work is so seldom seen on this side of the Atlantic is our loss and makes a serious hole in any true understanding of our theatrical and comedic heritage.

UNDER YOUR HAT was enough of a hit to lend a semblance of its title to Hulbert & Courtneidge's postwar stage hit based on the black market, UNDER THE COUNTER, which played over a year in London and another in OZ (but barely held out a month on Broadway separated as it was by a profoundly different wartime experience and five years of OKLAHOMA's progeny). The pair soldiered on as the institutions they had become long after (I was lucky enough to see them two years before Hulbert's passing in a 1976 Guildford tryout of a biographical revue called ONCE MORE WITH MUSIC, and it was clear that they could still hold stage with the best of "modern" talents for any comedy, drama or musical demands).

Audiences expecting a MY FAIR LADY of musical construction and already well known songs are not looking for UNDER YOUR HAT, but as a historically interesting diversion that still holds the attention and sports music that is surprisingly fresh and tuneful will not be disappointed.

Well worth a look.

The final starring film for Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge, moving into Will Hay/George Formby territory as inept spies foiling the Nazi war effort.

If you don't like their style of humour, don't watch it; it was a little old-fashioned even when it was made. They are who they are, and moaning about how antiquated 80-year-old comedy is doesn't seem a sensible use of time. But each is near the top of their game.

Courtneidge's masquerade as Carole's maid is a highlight, as is Hulbert's double taking when he spots her. Hulbert's dance to steal back the carburettor is another high point set piece. Of the songs, the best is Cicely's The Empire Depends on You, while drilling a battalion of schoolgirls, and a tour around British accents with an adaptation of Tiger Rag.

A wonderful performance, with hardly any lines, from Glynis Johns, and a blink-and-you-miss-it sighting of Terry-Thomas at the party are welcome additions.