It's a Grand Life

It's a Grand Life is a 1953 British comedy film starring Frank Randle and Diana Dors.[1] Music hall comedian Frank Randle who had previously starred in a film series of World War II army comedies (Somewhere in England (1940), Somewhere in Camp (1942), Somewhere on Leave (1942), Somewhere in Civvies (1943), Somewhere in Politics (1949)) stars as an accident-prone Private in his final film appearance. The film also features the professional wrestler Jack Pye and the popular pianist Winifred Atwell. The role of Pte Pendergast was played by Arthur White, who is the elder brother of the actor Sir David Jason.

It's a Grand Life
British theatrical poster
Directed byJohn E. Blakeley
Produced byJohn E. Blakeley
Written byH.F. Maltby
Frank Randle
StarringFrank Randle
Diana Dors
CinematographyErnest Palmer
Edited byDorothy Stimson
Distributed byMancunian Films
Release date
  • November 1953 (1953-11)
Running time
102 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Plot

The film is described in its opening titles as a comedy burlesque and is not meant to be derogatory to the army. Rather than having a tight plot, the film is a series of sketches set against army life in the Essex Regiment in the post World War II era mostly involving an old private (Frank Randle). One of the sub plots involves a glamorous Women's Royal Army Corps Corporal being pursued and sexually harassed by her Company Sergeant Major (Michael Brennan). Other set pieces include a wrestling match with Jack Pye and a drill sequence.

Cast
  • Frank Randle - Pte. Randle
  • Diana Dors - Cpl. Paula Clements
  • Dan Young - Pte. Young
  • Michael Brennan - Sgt. Maj. O'Reilly
  • Jennifer Jayne - Pte. Desmond
  • John Blythe - Pte. Philip Green
  • Anthony Hulme - Capt. Saunders
  • Charles Peters - Pte. Rubenstein
  • Arthur White - Pte. Prendergast
  • Leslie Gould
  • Kevin Peters
  • Ian Fleming - Mr. Clements
  • Ruth Taylor - Mrs. Clements
  • Jack Pye - Himself, Wrestler
  • Bill Gernon - Himself, Wrestler
  • Cab Cashford - Himself, Wrestler
  • Carl Van Wurden - Himself, Wrestler
  • Winifred Atwell - Herself, Guest Artiste
  • Peter Mullings - Dance Hall Manager (uncredited)
  • George Jackson - Jeep Driver (Uncredited)

Critical reception

In the Radio Times, Tony Sloman called it a "quaint and cheap army caper," and wrote of Randle, "If you've never seen him, give this a chance you might find he'll tickle your fancy. But if you have an aversion to music-hall stars on celluloid, give up, for Randle has neither the wit of George Formby nor the warmth of Gracie Fields, and by the time this movie was made he was looking tired and rather grubby."[2]

gollark: It also does have the whole "anything which implements the right functions implements an interface" thing, which seems very horrible to me as a random change somewhere could cause compile errors with no good explanation.
gollark: - `make`/`new` are basically magic- `range` is magic too - what it does depends on the number of return values you use, or something. Also, IIRC user-defined types can't implement it- Generics are available for all of, what, three builtin types? Maps, slices and channels, if I remember right.- `select` also only works with the built-in channels- Constants: they can only be something like four types, and what even is `iota` doing- The multiple return values can't be used as tuples or anything. You can, as far as I'm aware, only return two (or, well, more than one) things at once, or bind two returns to two variables, nothing else.- no operator overloading- it *kind of* has exceptions (panic/recover), presumably because they realized not having any would be very annoying, but they're not very usable- whether reading from a channel is blocking also depends how many return values you use because of course
gollark: What, you mean no it doesn't have weird special cases everywhere?
gollark: It pretends to be "simple", but it isn't because there are bizarre special cases everywhere to make stuff appear to work.
gollark: So of course, lol no generics.

References
  1. http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6ad5dbb3
  2. http://www.radiotimes.com/film/hvnx4/its-a-grand-life


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