Cheer Boys Cheer

An enjoyable British film from 1939 is a forerunner to the Ealing comedies to follow post-war from Producer Michael Balcon.

The story concerns a trade dispute between two competing breweries in the London area. Ironside, an expanding brewery brewed with military precision in its metallic brewery and Greenleaf, a more traditional, smaller operation with a more family orientated approach that resists the approaches of the expanding Ironside empire.

What eventually brings the two competing breweries together is a love affair that develops between the daughter of Mr. Greenleaf and the son of Mr. Ironside and the film indeed ends with a merger and wedding.

This pre-war film sheds some light on the wartime footing that England was in. We see the military precision of the Ironside operation complete with the owner reading Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in one scene to the more family orientated Greenleaf operation (the U. K.?).

The film was actually produced and released by a company called Associated Talking Pictures Ltd. That later morphed into the more famous Ealing Studios operation.