The Show Goes On

Gracie Fields made no secret of the fact that she found many of her musical films rather tedious to work on, requiring very little of her in the way of acting and in general terms far less engaging than working with a live audience on stage or in films like 'Holy Matrimony'. That she manages to hide this well in so many of her films is testiment to her talent, where mediocre scripts and inconsequential songs still combine to produce something which if uninspired is generally still satisfying. This film seems to me to be one of the few that is underated and perhaps the most well-balanced of the whole bunch, avoiding mawkishness and with a story which, while fairly predictable, with it's autobiographical overtones manages to stay on the right side of credibility. Yes, the finale may be a little over the top for some, but 'You've got to smile when you say good-bye' sung to a troopship full of Lancashire lads from the deck of the Queen Mary seems to me to capture the very essence of what made Gracie Fields the shining star that she was.

This film is rather different from the earlier films made for ATP in Ealing.Most of the previous films concentrated on her Lancashire background and how the industries were badly affected by the Depression.Whilst we have that at the beginning of this film we then see an older man take control of her career to launch her on to greater heights and that more or less is what happened with Gracie and her first husband who managed her career.This film tries ,not too successfully to make Gracie into a sort of British Alice Faye.The finale number is an attempt to do a Busby Berkley type number.I would say that the songs are quite catchy even if none of them became classics