A Yank in Ermine

Just a nice bit of Sunday afternoon film fun, as it's easy watching and listening with attractive leads and amusing co-stars. Nothing taxing on the brain so let it just wash over you!

The premise is just to get a supposedly 'box-office' American or two into a film to get the finance. An American in uniform inherits a village. Lots of raucous 'jazz' music drowns any sort of emotional empathy, along with a woman who 'dances' in gold lamé, wearing what appear to be a pair of marigold washing-up gloves. It deteriorates from then on, with the likes of Wattis, Pertwee and Beckwith playing English characters, Sid James playing the Afrikaaner version of a comic and a whole string of Ealing studio clichés. Puts bums on seats- in the pub next door! The polo game with the brightly coloured balls, the Rolls that would have been ancient even then and the chauffeur in a luminous scarlet uniform seem to be quintessentially English to the directors of this mash-up. The straight actors seem to be delivering the lame script with sincerity, but I'm guessing they didn't carry clips from this time waster in their casting portfolios.

I'm writing a review as I feel a bit sorry for this little film as it's probably been consigned to history. Made in 1955, it's mildly amusing if, like me, you love watching those old British character actors, long gone now, but who pop up consistently in this type of comedy from that period. I'm talking about actors like Reginald Beckwith, Richard Wattis, Edward Chapman, Guy Middleton and the legend that is Sid James. For the ladies, it has Noelle Middleton who I don't remember, and Diana Decker who I do remember vaguely. Diana Decker is very good, lively and personable and contributes quite a lot to the film. It tells the story of and American airman who inherits a British title of a Lord. He flies over here with two of his sidekicks and the inevitable occurs, he can't decide whether to stay or go back to the States until he falls in love with another landowners daughter. A series of comical encounters take place before the happy ending. Jon Pertwee with an atrocious American accent is one of the hero's (Peter Thompson) sidekicks. Quite fun as long as you know and love these great character actors I've mentioned above.

They used to call these British movies 'Mid-Atlantic' as they thought they might attract American film-goers if they included a few has-been American actors. This type of movie eventually brought the UK film industry to its knees. The premise is so dull: a Yank comes to little old England with its quaint customs and people . Yawn yawn of course he gets to like it and finds true love. One awful bit is when the hero is supposedly riding a winning horse and he is so obviously in a studio set on some kind of rocking bench.

A brief cameo from Sid James. The village used is Turville Buckinghamshire and for once they used the real name of the pub the 'Bull and Butcher'

Eastman Colour (sic) has been lavished on this tinny comedy with a noisy score by Stanley Black in which stereotypes abound as three American goodwill ambassadors hit a sleepy English village as wintry as the welcome they receive.

The colour process was new then, hence the strange makeup some of the cast wear.