Our Miss Fred

Using the almost standard plot device of "Madame Behave" with Julian Eltinge and Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot," this drag romp puts the he-man hero in a situation where he can only survive by posing as a female. Shakespearean actor La Rue is drafted into WWII and appearing in a camp show in France when the Nazis advance. He will be shot as a spy unless he continues in his female costume. Soon he is trying to escape in the company of randy English schoolgirls. La Rue's enormous charm and just plain likableness (which I have also observed on stage) keeps the endless double entendres good clean fun. For example, amorous Nazi general: "You're all woman and something more!" Danny: "You're right!"

Why is a man in a dress always funny - but a woman in a suit is not? Anyway, this effort by Danny LaRue is wonderful. I stumbled across it many years back, and I loved it. The film takes the "usual" cross-dressing comedy premise and gives it a new twist. How Fred ends up in a dress, and why he must maintain the role are both inventive and well executed. La Rue gives a wonderful performance, and is well supported by a fine cast. The British flavor runs rampant through the film, everything from broad slapstick to subtle wit - something you might not expect from a "bloke in a dress" comedy. And it's fun watching La Rue act uncomfortable in his frocks, when you know darn well he's loving every minute of it! The film is hard to find, but I would recommend searching for it, it's well worth the hunt.

Hmmm. Unfortunately, here, Danny La Rue just never convinces at the Shakespearian actor "Fred Wimbush" in the first place and so for me this quickly descends into an hybrid of "La Grande Vadrouille" (1966) and a "Carry On" film - and not a very funny one, either. He and his troupe are out entertaining the troops when they falls into Nazi hands. Thinking "Fred" is a woman, they let her go - only for her to focus her efforts on rescuing her squad and making it to safety. The stereotypes run rampant here - the stiff upper lip (and pretty brainless) airmen exemplified by Lance Percival's "Smallpiece" and Alfred Marks' incompetent "Gen Brincker" hardly portrays the enemy as a dangerous and lethal foe, either. Of course it's a comedy and there isn't meant to be any menace, but the joke recycles itself and the direction smacks more of a Norman Wisdom film - only without the fun. That said - it is not tacky or bawdy, La Rue takes a professional approach to this performance and had the writing delivered him a better, less puerile, script then it might have been more entertaining. It isn't really fair to judge this fifty years on - tastes have evolved and changed, and this is all now relatively old hat compared to what was being made at the time, but I still struggled with the concept. Watch and see for yourself...

Somebody must have paid a huge bribe to get this drivel onto cinemoid. Punchlines without jokes, a couple of well known actors with a tax bill to pay and Danny La Rue revealing that his talents don't go beyond a half-hour stand-up routines in bars, if this is a sample. It required 3, that is THREE writers to produce this collection of music hall nazi jokes- no tension, no sub-plots, no romantic storyline- just running on for over an hour because that's how much film they have in the cans!

There are 2 major problems with this film.Fitstly the story was written by Yed Willis,a dramatist.Secondly it is a one joke film La Rue is a man dressed up as a woman.The comedy comprises inane slapstick and weak double entendres.Incidentally the film is set in France in 1940,the photo of Churchill in a bar places it after May 1940.The film was sent out on release as an AA,equivalent to 15.So it is unlikely that the song would have been cut to lower the certificate