A World War II farce that follows the antics of an ENSA (Entertainment National Service Association) group. Fresh from the music halls, they bumble their way from army camp to camp.
01-05-1959
1h 21m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Michael Relph
Key Crew
Producer:
Basil Dearden
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Alfred Marks
Alfred Edward Marks OBE (28 January 1921 - 1 July 1996) was a comic actor and comedian.
Marks was born as Ruchel Kutchinsky in Holborn, London. He left Bell Lane School at 14 and started in entertainment at the Windmill Theatre. He then served in the RAF as a Flight Sergeant in the Middle East where he arranged concerts for servicemen. He also worked as an auctioneer and engineer.
He started in variety at the Kilburn Empire in 1946, and his stage appearances included The Sunshine Boys and Fiddler On The Roof. He was also involved in comedy work with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe which later led to the formation (along with writer Spike Milligan) of The Goon Show, though Marks himself was not to become a member of that comedy group.
His films included The Frightened City and Scream and Scream Again. His television show, Alfred Marks Time, ran for 6 years on ITV. He compered Sunday Night at the London Palladium and appeared in numerous other television programmes including Albert and Victoria, The Good Old Days, Blankety Blank, The Marti Caine Show, The Two Ronnies, The Generation Game, Lovejoy, Minder (TV series), Parkinson, The All New Alexei Sayle Show and the Dramarama play The Comeuppance of Captain Katt (a satire on the current state of Doctor Who).
In 1967 Marks toured Australia for JC Williamson Theatres in Bill Naughton's Spring & Port Wine. In 1968 he played the lead in The Young Visiters a musical version of the turn of the 20th century Daisy Ashford novel, written when she was six and published as submitted by her with the spelling error, at the Vaudeville Theatre in London.
Marks also appeared in the role of Wilfred Shadbolt in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Yeomen of the Guard in 1982.
While on tour in Australia, Marks was appointed the second King of Moomba (1968) by the Melbourne Moomba festival committee; when asked what his qualifications were, he quipped (in full Cockney):
"When I was eleven there were rival gangs around a fruit market in the East End. And desperately, I always wanted to be a member of the bigger rival gang. One day when I was in my best Easter suit, someone from one of the other gangs said to me 'would you like to be King of the Golden Apples?' 'All right, just sit there on this box and call out Apples, Apples, give me the Golden Apples.' Which innocently I did and they cobbled me with every rotten apple in the market."
Description above from the Wikipedia article Alfred Marks, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Sid James (born Solomon Joel Cohen; 8 May 1913 – 26 April 1976) was a South African-born English-based actor and comedian. He made his name as Tony Hancock's co-star in Hancock's Half Hour and also starred in the popular Carry On films. He was known for his trademark "dirty laugh" and lascivious persona. Bruce Forsyth summed up his talent thus: "He was a natural at being natural."
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sid James, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Dora May Bryan OBE was an English actress of stage, film and television. Born Dora May Broadbent, her career began in pantomime as a child actor. In World War II she joined the ENSA in Italy to entertain British troops.
After having established herself as a versatile stage actress, covering everything from drama and comedy to musicals, she started to appear in film in the late 1940s, and in 1968 she even had her own TV series, "According to Dora". At one point in her career she was Britain's highest-paid star.
She was active on stage until the mid 1990s and continued to work in film and television until 2005, when she finally had to give up the acting profession as she could no longer remember her lines.
Her autobiography According To Dora was published in 1987. In 1996, she was awarded an OBE in recognition of her services to acting and the same year she was also awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for her role in the West End production of the Harold Pinter play "The Birthday Party".
She was married to British cricket player Bill Lawton from 1954 to his death in 2008. She lived in a nursing home in Hove, outside Brighton, until her death in 2014.
Elizabeth Joan Winch (14 August 1930 – 6 September 2018), known professionally as Liz Fraser, was an English actress, best known for her comedy roles as a provocative 'dumb blonde' in British films of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s including the Carry On films and the Confessions Of and Adventures Of movies.
Marius Re Goring CBE FRSL (23 May 1912 – 30 September 1998) was an English stage and screen actor. He is the son of Dr Charles Buckman Goring, a renowned physician and criminologist, and Kate Winifred (née MacDonald), a former suffragette and talented pianist. Marius Goring was educated at The Perse School, Cambridge, England and at universities in Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna and Paris (The Sorbonne) where he perfected his French and German - he became fluent in both languages. He studied for the stage under Harcourt Williams at the Old Vic dramatic school, London. His first stage appearance was a fairy at the ADC Theatre, Cambridge in 1925 at the age of twelve in "Crossings: A Fairy Play" the only play written by Walter De La Mare. His first London appearance was at the Rudolph Steiner Hall in December 1927 as Harlequin in one of Jean Sterling McKinlay’s Children’s Matinees. He performed regularly at the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells in the 1930s and later toured France and Germany. He played Macbeth, Romeo, Trip in School for Scandal and the Chorus in Henry V with Laurence Olivier amongst others. His first West End appearance was at the Shaftesbury Theatre in May 1934 in The Voysey Inheritance.
He joined the army in July 1940 but was seconded the following year to the BBC where he became supervisor of productions for its German Service. He made regular propaganda broadcasts to Germany. Most of his radio propaganda work was done under the alias Charles Richardson (using his father’s first name and his grandmother’s maiden name) as the name Goring wasn't too popular during the war (Hermann Göring was the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe).
In 1941 he was married for the second time to the renowned German Jewish actress Lucie Mannheim who had to flee Germany in 1934 after the Nazis came to power. They worked together on stage and in films and television many times over the following years.
He was a founder member of British Equity in 1929, being on its council for decades from 1949 and was elected its vice president three times. He had a contentious relationship with the union from the 1970s, taking them to court on a number of issues, the last of which he lost in the High Court and was nearly bankrupted by the court costs.
Marius was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1979 and appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1991. He died from stomach cancer in 1998 aged 86 at his home in Rushlake Green, East Sussex, survived by his third wife, Prudence FitzGerald, a television producer/director who had directed him in 18 episodes of The Expert and his only child, a daughter from his first marriage, Phyllida.
Anthony Arnatt Bushell was an English film actor and director, who appeared in 56 films between 1929 and 1961. He played Colonel Breen in the BBC serial Quatermass and the Pit (1958–59), and also appeared in and directed various British TV series such as Danger Man.
Harry Landis was a British actor with a long career in British television and film. He began acting with London's politically minded Unity Theatre and was elected as President of Equity, the British actors' union, in July 2002. He was best known for films such as A Hill in Korea, Dunkirk, Bitter Victory, and Edge of Tomorrow, and numerous TV credits including EastEnders and Friday Night Dinner. He died at the age of 90 on September 12th, 2022.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Le Mesurier (born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley, 5 April 1912 – 15 November 1983) was a BAFTA Award-winning English actor. He is most famous for his role as Sergeant Arthur Wilson in the popular 1970s BBC comedy Dad's Army.
Description above from the Wikipedia article John Le Mesurier, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Paul Eddington, CBE (18 June 1927 – 4 November 1995) was an English actor known for his appearances in the popular television sitcoms The Good Life and Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister.