Command Performance

Arthur Tracy has become a singing success. He can command a thousand pounds a week on the stage, and he's booked for a royal command performance in a month. But his nerves are giving way and ruining his voice. So he ignores the insistence of agent Finlay Currie, and takes off for a month's golfing holiday with eight shilling in his pocket. He takes the train as far as that will go, hen walks the remainder, picking up a friend in tramp Mark Daly and a caravan of gypsies: blonde ones, including Lilli Palmer.

Despite the supposed short-circuiting of his vocal chords, this movie is an opportunity for Tracy to sing a whole bunch of songs in between the bare threads of a plot. His voice is remarkable, and it's clear why we was a major singing talent in the 1930s, until musical tastes changed and he went into semi-retirement. There were a couple of revivals of interest in him, mostly because of his hit recording of "Pennies From Heaven." He died in 1997 at the age of 98.