Hal Gordon

When a soldier returns from the Far East after the war, he and his wife have to adjust to life at home.

4.8/10

A night watchman is being bludgeoned, as a safe is cracked open in the offices of the District Food Controller. A list of wartime foods to be rationed is stolen, and the police fear gangsters are planning to sell the foods on the black market. As the office charwoman, Old Mother Riley's fingerprints are all over the safe, and she becomes the police's number one suspect. To prove her innocence, Mother Riley turns detective, adopting various methods and disguises to track down the villains.

5.1/10

Millions Like Us is a 1943 British propaganda film, showing life in a wartime aircraft factory in documentary detail. It stars Patricia Roc, Eric Portman, Megs Jenkins, and Anne Crawford, was written by Sidney Gilliat, and directed by Gilliat and Frank Launder. It was filmed at Gainsborough Studios. When Celia Crowson (Roc) is called up for war service, she hopes for a glamorous job in one of the services, but as a single girl she is directed into a factory making aircraft parts. Here she meets other girls from all different walks of life, and begins a relationship with a young airman.

6.8/10

Wartime propaganda piece giving the warning "Be like Dad, Keep Mum". A gossipy housewife is overheard talking about what her son is doing by a Nazi spy.

6.7/10

In this film collaboration between the famous Ealing Film Studios and the Ministry of Food, we have a ‘ringside seat’ at a meeting of the ‘Hillside Road Food Club’, whose members are gathered around a table in a front parlour room. The leader of the group has some robust exchanges with a cantankerous ‘Grandma’ (known to the audience at the time as radio character ‘Grandma Buggins’ played by the comedienne Mabel Constanduros).

George (George Formby) is an inept reserve policeman working in wartime Liverpool, who is chosen by a gang of Nazi saboteurs as the stooge for their planned destruction of the British battleship HMS Hercules. Framed by the villains and forced to go on the run, George sets out to clear his name with the aid of new girlfriend, Jane (Dorothy Hyson).

6.3/10

Shortly after the start of World War II, a ukelele player (George) takes the wrong boat and finds himself in (still uninvaded) Norway. He is mistaken for a fellow British intelligence agent by a woman (Mary), and becomes involved in trying to defeat Nazi agents.

6.6/10

George Formby, who plays George, a stable boy. He also has the unique ability to soothe an anxious racing horse. Expectedly, George races the horse and wins

6.5/10

Ealing comedy starring music hall star George Formby. An eager newspaper reporter (Formby) goes undercover to expose a gang of counterfeiters. Posing as a wrestler and waiter in his investigative efforts, George proves a greater menace to public order than the criminals he is chasing.

6.7/10

George Brown (George Formby) is rejected as an Air Raid Warden and in doing so sees his potential to join the Royal Air Force. His dreams could soon come true as he realises that in fact his friend has left behind some very important papers, he dons a his Royal Air Force uniform and delivers the papers when he is mistaken for a dispatch driver from HQ. He soon becomes the butt of jokes from his sergeant which ends him staying indefinitely at the air base. George soon falls in love with the Sergeant Major's daughter and when he discovers his real identity he threatens to report him. On the day of an annual inspection George attempts to escape the base and ends up in a plane, while the inspecting officer watches on, George's plane display is mesmerising and the inspecting officer insists he should be commended, in order to save their skins George manages to land the plane and is accepted as a flyer by the RAF.

6.8/10

The film biography of Queen Victoria focussing initially on the early years of her reign with her marriage to Prince Albert and her subsequent rule after Albert's death in 1861.

6.4/10

A weak, cowardly barber gets fit to win over a beautiful woman. However, she prefers his muscle-bound rival until George challenges him to a boxing match.

6.2/10

A young couple attend a masked ball before their planned (but secret) elopement. Suddenly everything goes wrong when the young woman is attacked and held hostage by a crazed attacker.

6.3/10

A woman prevents a popular stage performer getting arrested for drunk driving, though has to pretend to be a rich benefactor when she next meets him.

6.5/10

Despite being on his uppers, George is still prepared to pawn his beloved banjo in order to help his girlfriend save her niece from the orphanage. Help seems to be at hand when George is left a fortune by his old auntie, but unfortunately his inheritance is hidden inside a chair which has already been auctioned off! Can George and his chums track down his rightful due before his grasping solicitor (Alastair Sim, in an early film appearance) snatches the lot? It's hard to say, but he still finds time to perform both the title song and the classic 'When I'm Cleaning Windows'.

6.6/10

A forger returns to his family when he leaves jail vowing to go straight. Although approached by an international counterfeiting gang he keeps his word only to find his nephew is in the Swiss Alps helping the crooks. He sets off to try and put a stop to things, but with Scotland Yard also hot-footing it to the resort his problems are just beginning. Written by Jeremy Perkins {J-26}

6.3/10

In this comedy a pair of aspiring music hall entertainers attempt to live their dream while saving their landlady's daughter from ruin.

4.9/10

A bored millionaire wagers his doctor that he can support himself at a working class job for year without touching his inheritance.

6.3/10

A crime novelist stages an imaginative prank to prove that the perfect murder is possible but finds it has catastrophic consequences.

5.7/10

'Bachelor has his friend's wife pose as his own to fool rich uncle.' (British Film Catalogue)

The Very Reverend Richard Jedd has a problem: the church spire, now in a parlous state of repair, will cost nearly £1,000 to fix. When various money-raising schemes go awry, he is persuaded to waive his principles and bet what’s left of his savings on Dandy Dick, a 10-1 odds-on at the local races. A simple tonic to enhance the nag’s performance seems a good idea… but when the butler decides to intervene, the respectable clergyman finds himself in the middle of a doping scandal – and worse!

6.1/10

As the threat of Napoleonic invasion looms ever closer, a German duke and potential ally of England falls for a pretty ballerina.

6.1/10

A barge operator helps a schoolteacher tackle a gang of criminals.

4.7/10

A lion-tamer's partly innate and partly acquired attitude to other living beings - that they shall submit without question to his will - is applied with unseeing kindness to an orphan girl whom the lion tamer adopts.

7.8/10

Life gets complicated for bandleader Buddy when he falls for his greatest rival – the leader of an all-girl dance band!

6.8/10

A brass band goes to London to take part in a competition.

5.7/10

Posing as an aristocrat to crash a party, a composer stumbles upon a gang of jewel thieves working unnoticed upstairs.

6.3/10

Set in Venice, the touching and sometimes comic story of a diminutive tenor who falls in love whilst striving for success. Also filmed in German as Ein Lied geht um die Welt.

7.1/10

A north-country chimney sweep standing for Parliament is opposed by a local bigwig. His campaign is imperiled when his artist son, Tony, falls in love with a girl who has reason to hope that the bigwig will be elected.

5.7/10

Sir Douglas Rolls is a highly respected defence lawyer of many years experience. Now in rapidly failing health, he is advised to retreat from the courtroom and pursue more pleasurable activities. But it is just at this point in his life that his great lost love a woman his own strong sense of duty led him to give up twenty years ago, and whom he still loves deeply walks into his chambers to ask that he defend her adulterous husband, now to stand trial for murder. Reluctantly agreeing to take on the case, Sir Douglas soon finds there is more to the story than meets the eye.

6.1/10

A music-hall star and his best mate are conned out of their earnings (twice!) and left with nothing but a beloved greyhound.

5.2/10

Two ship's cooks get lost in the desert and unwittingly enroll in the Foreign Legion!

6.2/10

A young Spanish woman marries a lowly Englishman, rather than the aristocrat her father had intended, much to his displeasure.

7.3/10

Radio Parade (1933) is a variety film featuring such stars of the time as Clapham and Dwyer, Gert and Daisy, Reginald Gardiner, Florence Desmond, and Roy Fox.

6.9/10

This lively comedy of 1933 provided an early film role for Leslie Fuller, and sees the wildly popular, rubber-faced actor and entertainer – once touted as Elstree's own Clark Gable – playing identical twins with very different ambitions: one is a policeman who longs to join a circus, the other a farm hand who wants to be a policeman!

6.4/10

A butcher and a draper stand for election to the local council.

A joyful medley of farce, romance, song and slapstick starring Stanley Lupino as an impressionable youth whose pursuit of an opera singer’s niece lands him in trouble!

6.8/10

An evening of cocktails and frolicking lands a chap in hot water when he's suspected of masterminding a criminal gang!

6.8/10

A young musician invents an anti-theft device for cars, but works as a jazz conductor while waiting for his invention to be successful.

6/10

In this murder mystery, Vicar Casson looks into the poisoning of a wealthy man. He soon finds that the man they convicted, the fiance of the rich man's niece, was innocent.

6.8/10

This exuberant comedy about Jewish domestic life tells the story of an old man who is to inherit a legacy if he can prove he is in need, and who thus begins to gamble spectacularly with his savings.

6/10

Stephan Gregorovitch, the unwilling king of a bankrupt Ruritanian country, along with his hucksterish chancellor and musically-inclined bodyguard, travel incognito to London for some fun. An invitation to a party held by Duke Hugo seems just the ticket, but the presence of jewel thieves in the vicinity soon puts paid to any ideas of a relaxing evening!

4.9/10

In this drama the owner of a flower shop falls in love with one of her patrons. Unfortunately, he is married to a shrewish actress and cannot get out of the marriage. The distraught woman then leaves her shop to become a nurse. Trouble ensues when the actress suddenly appears, accuses the nurse of fooling around with her husband and dies leaving the nurse and the husband to be charged with murder. Fortunately, they are found innocent and they are free to fall in love at last.

6.9/10

A henpecked husband is mistaken for a famous toreador while holidaying in Spain!

5.6/10

A newlywed has a trying time proving his innocence when his mother-in-law catches him kissing another girl!

3/10

With a title like Jack's the Boy, is it any surprise that the star of this breezy quota quickie is British music-hall favorite Jack Hulbert? The star plays the son of a celebrated Scotland Yard detective, who joins the force in hopes of following his father's footsteps. Unfortunately, Jack is something of a screw-up, and before long he has become the laughing stock of the force.

5.8/10

A British musical film directed by Bernard Mainwaring

A British drama film directed by F.W. Kraemer

Charting the military escapades of serial bungler Tommy Josser, Josser in the Army sees the hapless hero in France during wartime, where he masquerades as a German general, unmasks a spy, gets captured and then makes a spectacular airborne escape!

5.3/10

An aristocrat becomes a gigolo.

A specialist sunbathing camp is threatened by a campaign by the leader of the 'Wear More Clothes League'.

6/10

A British crime film directed by Norman Lee

A husband flirts with a pretty girl after a taxi smash, but a delicate situation ensues when he has to explain the presence of her necklace in his pocket!

6/10

A useless secretary and his private detective friend try to help an heiress from being swindled by her guardian.

5.9/10

A comedy film directed by J. O. C. Orton.

A frugal coal miner turns into a spendthrift when he wins £20,000 on the football pools!

5.8/10

Vaudevillian Gene Gerrard stars as George, a young man on a yacht moored off Monte Carlo who has a tiff with his fiancée, goes ashore on a glorious binge, then finds himself accused of assaulting a prince! When he attempts to extricate himself by pretending to be his non-existent twin brother, he finds he's really in trouble...

6.2/10

A British comedy film directed by Cecil Lewis

6/10

Going under cover, P.C. Mahoney passes for a gentleman to get into the notorious Moonstone Club. There he meets Clifford Tope, a ne'er do well who is love with cabaret star Cora Mellish. She in turn has run up steep gambling debts and has paid off the Club's blackmailing owner with a stolen necklace. As things heat up Cora seeks help from the easy-going Tope.

6.8/10

The screenplay concerns a peniless gambler who is mistaken for a very wealthy man in Monte Carlo.

A journalist is sent to the South of France to interview a reclusive millionaire..He offers his hotel bedroom to the millionaires daughter to use to avoid her boyfriend,who is actually a crook, His boss arrives unexpectedly and as there is no other room available expects to share the hotel room with him, he explains the situation by saying he had just married the girl.Obviously lots of comedic situations arise because of this.

6.7/10

A comedy film directed by Monty Banks.

A man sponges off an old comrade from the First World War who believes he has saved his life during the war, although this ultimately proves not to be true.

Impoverished aristocrat's daughter Tommy Tucker is in love with radio announcer Bill Coverdale, but he is engaged to her more glamorous sister Angela, who he does not love. Seeking escape from this hopeless situation, and her life of genteel poverty, Tommy flees abroad to Biarritz to become a nightclub singer.

6/10

A Yorkshireman comes to London to watch the FA Cup final and loses his money and tickets, leading to a frantic search to recover them...

Comedy in which slate club treasurer Bill Smithers is sent to prison for three years after being falsely accused of stealing funds.

Adapted from the book By Way of Cape Horn by A.J Villiers, Windjammer is a beautifully-filmed record of the last journey of the Grace Harwar, a full-rigged Windjammer sailing from Australia to England via Cape Horn.

6.5/10

An American on his honeymoon in Paris, organises the kidnapping of his interfering mother-in-law.

6.7/10