Boys Will Be Boys

As the film clearly highlights, there is very little difference for a teacher if he is teaching in a prison or an all-boys school. Both venues require discipline and ingenuity, as well as a bit of patience. The movie is amusing despite some of the predictable pranks of the students. Add a star if you are a teacher.

During his career, Will Hay played a bunch of roles where he starred as an incompetent professor at a boys' school. Well, for you trivia folks, "Boys Will Be Boys" is his film film in which he plays this sort of role.

When the film begins, you see that Dr. Alec Smart (Hay) is teaching at a prison and daydreams about teaching at a boys school where the kids love and respect him. The problem is that the governor (we'd call him a 'warden' here in the States) thinks Dr. Smart is an incompetent and doesn't want to inflict him on the boys! But the letter from the governor is intercepted by one of the inmates and he then forges a much more favorable letter and sends it. Soon, Smart's been chosen for the job.

As soon as Smart arrives, he naturally screws up since he's a bit of an idiot and has a penchant for gambling. Naturally, there's a real rules-oriented guy at the school who takes a fast dislike of Smart and vows to get him fired. In the midst of all this, Smart's lady benefactor has her valuable necklace stolen and it becomes an integral part of the big rugby match.

In many ways, Hay is grabbing onto the big trend in American comedies of the early to mid-1930s--the big football game. But, since this is a British comedy, it's rugby. And, as far as Hays later films go, this one is very comparable though his character is a bit less stupid in this one. Still funny...but not quite the bumbler, as you'll see by the end of the film. Worth seeing...particularly if you like Hay films, though sadly I am in the minority here in the USA because most folks simply haven't heard of this fine comic.

Will Hay is Alexander Smart, who whilst teaching in prison, asks the Governor to write him a recommendation to aid his application for the position of Headmaster at Narkover School. Thinking the Governor has done him a favour, Smart is most perturbed to find that the Governor has written a less than flattering reference. Hope comes in illegal form when prisoner Faker Brown sends off a forged signature glowing reference, one that gets Smart the position. However, Smart's problems are just about to begin because Narkover is a hotbed of crime, and that's just the pupils!

Based on J.B. Morton's {AKA Beachcomber} humorous Dr Alec Smart character than ran in column form in Britain's Daily Express Newspaper from the mid 1920s, this was to be Will Hay's first film for Gainsborough Pictures. It was also to be his big break in cinema. Hay had made his name in British music hall productions in the 1920s, where as a bumbling buffoon schoolmaster, he served notice of a character that would make up a number of his big screen persona's. Boys Will Be Boys, directed by William Beaudine and co-written by Hay and Robert Edmunds, finds Hay honing the inept teacher role for better and far funnier productions that were still to come. But that in no way means this film isn't funny, because it certainly is.

A number of well executed comedy sequences light up the already jolly script. See an interesting line in carpet surfing, a how high is a Chinaman skit and a fabulous finale involving the school annual rugby match. Where missing diamonds and a whistle provide first class excuse for fun and frolics. There's also a fun thread involving Davy Burnaby's constantly exasperated Col. Crableigh, who had wanted his hapless nephew Theo P. Finch {Claude Dampier} in the headmasters position. If you can't find joy in a magic trick scene involving Crableigh's watch then there be no hope for you!. Filling out the cast is Norma Varden as Lady Dorking and Gordon Harker as the crooked Faker Brown who has come to the school to get rewarded for his forging favour to Alec. Oh and a whole ream of unruly pupils getting up to no end of mischief and crooked shenanigans.

Allegaza, Allegazi, Allegazam. 7/10

This was the Master Will Hay's 4th film and 1st for Gainsborough, for which he did his best work overall – although his last for Ealing was also a world-beater. He was playing his long established stage persona of seedy schoolmaster here even though it was also supposedly based on Beachcomber's (J.B. Morton) Narkover from the Daily Express - Morton later stated he had had no involvement in the production.

School and prison school teacher Dr. Alec Smart by criminal (and comic) means gets the job of Headmaster at Narkover School, a notorious training ground for the criminals of the future. When arriving he gets a boisterous welcome from the "boys", including being unceremoniously towed on a rug around the entrance by a taxi and then being hoisted aloft and blanketed. Next day he's caught playing cards by the chairman of the Board of Governors, who he tells to mind his own business not knowing how important a personage he is. The "boys" were out of control yet still wore impeccable school uniforms and caps - I say "boys" because half of them looked over 30. I think the film was given an "A" certificate by the UK censor so as not to set youth a bad example! Nowadays it's all they're set. It's all delightful stuff, one episode flowing into the next, and leading soon to the theft of a diamond necklace. Favourite bits: Gordon Harker as an ex-lag then dubious school porter and rather intense thief; playing banker with the "boys"; the singing of the rousing school song on Founders Day by the "boys"; the rugby match where the possession of the ball was the main thing. Hay certainly made an impression here!

The very best was still to come, but this is a joy to watch too and always a pleasant 80 minute time filler for me.

It was in this film that Will Hay brought to the screen the sketch that he had been touring the halls for years,the seedy master.He effectively played this in all of his subsequent films,with variations.He thus became a film star in the U.K..I am especially fond of this film as I first saw it at a film society at school 55 years ago.Not many of my classmates thought it funny but I did and still do. With regard to the rhyming slang you should bear in mind that one of the censors for the BBFC was a retired Colonel,and another a spinster,as they used to call elderly unmarried women,so I don't think that they would have had any idea of the real meaning of the words