OH, MR. PORTER! (1937) Will Hay, Moore Marriott & Graham Moffatt | Comedy | B&W

Oh, Mr Porter! is a 1937 British comedy film starring Will Hay with Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt and directed by Marcel Varnel. While not Hay's commercially most successful (although it grossed £500,000 at the box office – equal to about £34,000,000 at 2020 value), it is probably his best-known film to modern audiences. It is widely acclaimed as the best of Hay's work, and a classic of its genre. The film had its first public showing in November 1937 and went on general release on 3 January 1938. The plot of Oh, Mr Porter was loosely based on the Arnold Ridley play The Ghost Train. The title was taken from Oh! Mr Porter, a music hall song.

SYNOPSIS
With the help of a relative, a hopeless railway employee is made stationmaster of Buggleskelly. Determined to make his mark, he devises a number of schemes to put Buggleskelly on the railway map, but instead falls foul of a gang of gun runners.

Inept railway worker William Porter is, through family connections, given the job of station master at a remote and ramshackle Northern Irish railway station on the border with the then Irish Free State.

Porter's co-workers are the elderly deputy station master, Harbottle, and the insolent young porter, Albert, who make a living by stealing goods in transit and swapping railway tickets for food. They regale Porter with tales of the deaths and disappearances of previous station masters – each apparently the victim of the ghost of One-Eyed Joe the Miller.

On his first morning Porter is awoken by a cow sticking its head through the window of the old railway carriage in which he is sleeping. The cow has been stolen in transit and is being milked by Harbottle, and the team's breakfast consists of bacon made from a litter of piglets which they are supposed to be looking after for a local farmer.

Station master Porter tries to renovate the station by painting it, and decides to organise an excursion for the locals. A fight breaks out in the pub as the locals argue about where the excursion should go. Porter escapes to the landlord's rooms, where he meets a one-eyed man who introduces himself as Joe. Joe offers to buy all of the tickets for an away game that the village football team are playing the following day.

Porter has actually unknowingly agreed to transport a group of criminal gun runners to the Irish Free State. Although Porter questions some of the odd packages being loaded onto the train, he accepts Joe's claim that these are goalposts for the game.

The train disappears as the smugglers divert it down a disused branch line near the border. Porter decides to track down the errant engine.

The trio find the missing train in a derelict railway tunnel, underneath a supposedly haunted windmill. They are captured by the gun runners, and escape by climbing up the windmill then climbing down the sails. They couple the criminals' carriages to their own engine, Gladstone, and carry them away from the border at full speed, keeping up steam by burning everything from Harbottle's underwear to the level crossing gates they smash through. Albert climbs on top of the carriage and hits anyone who sticks their head out with a large shovel.

CAST & CREW
Will Hay as William Porter
Moore Marriott as Jeremiah Harbottle
Graham Moffatt as Albert Brown
Percy Walsh as Superintendent
Dave O'Toole as Postman
Sebastian Smith as Mr Trimbletow
Agnes Lauchlan as Mrs Trimbletow
Dennis Wyndham as Grogan/One-Eyed Joe
Frederick Piper as Ledbetter
Frederick Lloyd as Minister
Frank Atkinson as Irishman in bar
Betty Jardine as Secretary

Directed by Marcel Varnel
Written by J. O. C. Orton, Marriott Edgar, Val Guest
Based on story by Frank Launder, Arnold Ridley (play)
Produced by Edward Black
Cinematography Arthur Crabtree
Edited by R. E. Dearing, Alfred Roome
Music by Louis Levy, Jack Beaver
Distributed by Gainsborough Pictures
Release date October 5, 1937
Running time 85 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English

NOTES
The British Film Institute included the film in its 360 Classic Feature Films list; Variety magazine described the movie as "amusing, if over-long", noting that there was "[n]o love interest to mar the comedy"; and the cult website TV Cream listed it at number 41 in its list of cinema's Top 100 Films.

The film critic Barry Norman included it among his 100 best films of all time, and fellow critic Derek Malcolm also included the film in his Century of Films, describing it as "perfectly representing a certain type of bumbling British humour", despite being directed by a Parisian director.

The director Marcel Varnel considered the film as among his best work, and it was described in 2006, by The Times in its obituary for writer Val Guest, as "a comic masterpiece of the British cinema". Jimmy Perry, in his autobiography, wrote that the trio of Captain Mainwaring, Corporal Jones and Private Pike in Dad's Army was inspired by watching Oh, Mr Porter!