A Cup Of Kindness was the last Ben Travers Aldwych Theatre play filmed with the original team of Tom Walls, Ralph Lynn & Robertson Hare, the play was good enough to run for 291 performances from 1929. Although a pleasant time passer the trouble is his other efforts all had better lines and more farcical situations; maybe simply the setting of everyone's travails in a "middle class" instead of upper class environment made a huge difference.
Suburban neighbours the Tutt's and the Rambottom's are absurdly snobbish and/or reverse-snobbish and/or plain argumentative, but their respective offspring are in love with each other. Lynn gets involved in some dodgy enterprise which for a time makes it look like curtains for his romance with Dorothy Hyson but of course in accordance with most of the best films ever made a happy ending is guaranteed. That is my only problem with it – the cup of kindness overflowed so suddenly and swiftly with Auld Lang Syne sung by the cast to the camera I wondered if the climax of the original play had been as rushed too. The film lasted a mere 75 minutes, I could have happily sat through another 75; most people probably wouldn't last 75 seconds though. To me there were enough double-entendres, witticisms and nonsenses to make it all worthwhile, none of which could be successfully conveyed in print. Graham Moffat appeared briefly as a choirboy, the IMDb list this as his earliest film; Claude Hulbert played his usual part – therefore with Lynn making a brace of silly asses in here. Favourite bits: the group assembled for the wedding photo and the chaotic break up; Sly Veronica Rose telling departing bride Hyson (and us) she'd packed nothing in her suitcase because that's what she's need. Nice old farce, I assume the BBC's 1970 version was binned and lost decades ago so thanks go to Walls and Travers for committing it to film and preserving it.
Suburban neighbours the Tutt's and the Rambottom's are absurdly snobbish and/or reverse-snobbish and/or plain argumentative, but their respective offspring are in love with each other. Lynn gets involved in some dodgy enterprise which for a time makes it look like curtains for his romance with Dorothy Hyson but of course in accordance with most of the best films ever made a happy ending is guaranteed. That is my only problem with it – the cup of kindness overflowed so suddenly and swiftly with Auld Lang Syne sung by the cast to the camera I wondered if the climax of the original play had been as rushed too. The film lasted a mere 75 minutes, I could have happily sat through another 75; most people probably wouldn't last 75 seconds though. To me there were enough double-entendres, witticisms and nonsenses to make it all worthwhile, none of which could be successfully conveyed in print. Graham Moffat appeared briefly as a choirboy, the IMDb list this as his earliest film; Claude Hulbert played his usual part – therefore with Lynn making a brace of silly asses in here. Favourite bits: the group assembled for the wedding photo and the chaotic break up; Sly Veronica Rose telling departing bride Hyson (and us) she'd packed nothing in her suitcase because that's what she's need. Nice old farce, I assume the BBC's 1970 version was binned and lost decades ago so thanks go to Walls and Travers for committing it to film and preserving it.