''Elstree Calling'' is a 1930 British

comedy Comedy is a genre of dramatic works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. Origins Comedy originated in ancient Greec ...

musical film Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the Character (arts), characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serv ...

directed by

Adrian Brunel Adrian Brunel (4 September 1892 – 18 February 1958) was an English film director and screenwriter. Brunel's directorial career started in the Silent film, silent era, and reached its peak in the latter half of the 1920s. His surviving work fr ...

and

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featu ...

at Elstree Studios.

Synopsis

The film, referred to as "A Cine-Radio Revue" in its original publicity, is a lavish musical film revue and was Britain's answer to the Hollywood revues which had been produced by the major studios in the United States, such as '' Paramount on Parade'' (1930) and '' The Hollywood Revue of 1929''. The revue has a slim plot about its being a television broadcast. The film consists of 19 comedy and music vignettes linked by

running jokes A running gag, or running joke, is a literary device that takes the form of an amusing joke or a comedy, comical reference and appears repeatedly throughout a work of literature or other form of storytelling. Though they are similar, catchphrases ...

of an aspiring

Shakespearean William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

actor and technical problems with a viewer's TV set.

Production background

Among Hitchcock's contributions were the comic linking segments about a man trying to "tune in" the revue on his television set, but always failing to get the picture for long because of his needless tinkering. In the UK,

John Logie Baird John Logie Baird (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first mechanical Mechanical television, television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the fi ...

's work in

mechanical television Mechanical television or mechanical scan television is an obsolete television system that relies on a mechanism (engineering), mechanical scanning device, such as a rotating disk with holes in it or a rotating mirror drum, to scan the scene and ...

in the 1920s made television a topical subject at the time. The film's ensemble numbers were staged by

André Charlot Eugène André Maurice Charlot (26 July 1882 – 20 May 1956) was a French-born impresario known primarily for the musical revues he staged in London between 1912 and 1937. He later worked as a character actor in numerous American films. Born in ...

, Paul Murray and Jack Hulbert. Imitating the lavish use of

Technicolor Technicolor is a family of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes. The first version, Process 1, was introduced in 1916, and improved versions followed over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black-and ...

by Hollywood studios at that time, four sequences in the film were coloured by the Pathécolor process, which used

stencil Stencilling produces an image or pattern on a surface by applying pigment to a surface through an intermediate object, with designed holes in the intermediate object. The holes allow the pigment to reach only some parts of the surface creatin ...

s to tint selected areas of the

black and white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

prints. In their book ''Film's musical moment'', Ian Conrich and Estella Tincknell write: :"The British equivalent of Hollywood's all-star revues was ''Elstree Calling'' (1930), produced by British International Pictures (BIP), which consisted mainly of musical and comedy items from stage shows of the day introduced by compère

Tommy Handley Thomas Reginald Handley (17 January 1892 – 9 January 1949) was an English comedian, best known for the BBC radio programme ''It's That Man Again'' ("''ITMA''") which ran between 1939 and 1949. Born in Liverpool, Lancashire, Handley went on th ...

. Lacking the lavish production values and visual spectacle of its Hollywood equivalents, ''Elstree Calling'' is now something of a curio item interesting chiefly for two reasons:

(then contracted to BIP) was... employed on the production; and the film is quite possibly the first ever to refer directly to television (the linking narrative concerns a television broadcast of the revue, some six years before the BBC began regular television transmissions)."

Cast

In credits order: * Will Fyffe * Cicely Courtneidge * Jack Hulbert *

* Lily Morris * Helen Burnell * The Berkoffs * Bobbie Comber * Lawrence Green * Ivor McLaren * Anna May Wong * Jameson Thomas *

John Longden John Longden (11 November 1900 – 26 May 1971) was a British film actor. He appeared in more than 80 films between 1926 and 1964, including six films directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Biography Longden was born in the West Indies, the son of ...

Donald Calthrop Donald Esme Clayton Calthrop (11 April 1888 – 15 July 1940) was an English stage and film actor. Born in London, Calthrop was educated at St Paul's School and made his first stage appearance at eighteen years of age at the Comedy Theat ...

Gordon Harker William Gordon Harker (7 August 1885 – 2 March 1967) was an English stage and film actor. Harker was one of the sons of Sarah Elizabeth Harker, née Hall, (1856–1927), and Joseph Harker (1855–1927), a much admired set painter for the ...

* Hannah Jones * Teddy Brown * Chocolate Kiddies trio, The Three Eddies: Shakey (Clarence) Beasley, Chick (Layburn) Horsey and Tiny (Earle) Ray * The Balalaika Choral Orchestra Supported by: * The Aldelphi Girls * The Charlot Girls Also with: *

Gordon Begg Gordon Begg (14 January 1868 – February 1954) was a Scottish stage actor, stage and film actor. During the silent film era he made several films in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood, before returning to Britain. He appeared as William Sha ...

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

* Nathan Shacknovsky * John Stuart

Copyright and home video status

Like Hitchcock's other British films, ''Elstree Calling'' has been heavily bootlegged on home video. As of early 2019, the officially licensed, preserved version has only appeared on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

from Network Distributing in the UK.

References

External links