The Happiest Days of Your Life
| The Happiest Days of Your Life | |
|---|---|
DVD Cover
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| Directed by | Frank Launder |
| Produced by |
Frank Launder Sidney Gilliat |
| Written by |
John Dighton Frank Launder |
| Starring |
Alastair Sim Margaret Rutherford |
| Music by | Mischa Spoliansky |
| Cinematography | Stanley Pavey |
| Edited by | Oswald Hafenrichter |
| Distributed by | British Lion Films |
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Release date
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8 March 1950 |
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Running time
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81 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Box office | £278,502 (UK) |
The Happiest Days of Your Life is a 1950 British comedy film directed by Frank Launder, based on the play by John Dighton. The two men also wrote the screenplay. It's one of a stable of classic British film comedies produced by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat for British Lion Film Corporation. The film was made on location and at Riverside Studios, London. In several respects, including some common casting, it was a precursor of the more anarchic St. Trinian's films of the 1950s.
Set during September 1949, confusion reigns when St Swithin's Girls' School is accidentally billeted at Nutbourne College: a boys' school. The two heads, Wetherby Pond (Alastair Sim) and Muriel Whitchurch (Margaret Rutherford), try to cope with the ensuing chaos, as the children and staff attempt to live in the newly cramped conditions (it being impossible to share dormitories or other facilities), and seek to prevent the children taking advantage of their new opportunities.
Additional humour is derived from the departure of the Nutbourne College domestic staff and their hurried (and not very effective) replacement with the St Swithin's School Home Economics class.
The main comedy is derived from the fact that the parents of the St Swithins girls would consider it improper for their daughters to be exposed to the rough mix of boys in Pond's school, and from the consequent need to conceal the fact that the girls are now sharing a school that's full of boys. Pond is offended at the suggestion that his boys are not suitable company for the young ladies of St Swithin's, but he needs to appease Miss Whitchurch to salvage his chances of an appointment to a prestigious all-boys school for which he is in the running, and which depends on his ability to prevent his current post presenting the appearance of a beer garden.
Matters come to a head when a group of school governors, from the prestigious establishment to which Pond has applied to become the next headmaster, pay a visit at the same time as the parents of some of the St Swithin's girls. Frantic classroom changes are made, and hockey, lacrosse and rugby posts and nets are swapped about, as students and staff try to hide the unusual arrangement.
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Wikipedia