Hey! Hey! USA (1938) - film review

During the long summer holidays, schoolmaster Dr Benjamin Twist finds work as a ship’s porter at Southampton docks.  He hopes to earn enough money to pay his fare to the United States, where he intends to open a school for uneducated Americans.  One of the passengers slips Dr Twist a Mickey Finn and when he wakes up the ship has set sail and is heading for America.  Mistaken for the eminent historian Professor Tavistock, Dr Twist falls in with a rich American couple, who hire him to discipline and teach their unruly young son, Bertie.  An American gangster, Bugs Leary, has stowed aboard the ship and intends to kidnap Bertie, not realising that a rival gang has the same idea.  In no time at all, Dr Twist finds himself embroiled in a gangster plot that could well be the death of him...

There’s a feeling of desperation about this film which suggests the screenwriters at Gainsborough Pictures were having difficulty thinking up original storylines for Will Hay’s schoolmaster character.  Having thwarted an attempt to steal the Mona Lisa in Good Morning, Boys (1937), served as a prison governor in Convict 99 (1938) and failed to civilise African natives in Old Bones of the River (1938), Will Hay’s tetchy schoolmaster  is now caught up in American gangsterism.  The convoluted and rambling plot provides little opportunity for Hay to show his comic skills, so Hey! Hey! USA! can only be considered one of his weaker offerings, even if it does pass as a respectable British pastiche of the Hollywood gangster film.

Although deprived of his two priceless stooges, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt, Will Hay still manages to deliver the comedy goods when called upon to do so.  Here Hay is partnered with Edgar Kennedy, a well-known American comic actor who was hired presumably to help boost Hay’s profile in the US (unsuccessfully as it turned out).  Many of the contrived comic situations fall flat but a few work surprisingly well. Of course, Hay is best when he is playing the irascible schoolmaster, belting and berating cheeky infants, and being belted and berated in return by his peers. 

The most amusing sequence is the one where Hay is called upon to give an impromptu speech on the radio, only to be interrupted every other breath by an over-zealous announcer extolling the virtues of a brand of breakfast cereal.  The film is not as consistently funny as Hay’s earlier offerings but it has its moments. Watch out for Roddy McDowall playing a dockside urchin, several years before he became the star of the Planet of the Apes films.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?