ALFREDTON TALKIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 December 1939, Page 7

ALFREDTON TALKIES

\ AN,. UPROARIOUS FARCE TOMORROW NIGHT. Will Hay mismanages a minor railway station in an uproarious farce entitled “Oh Mr Porter,” which will be shown at Alfredton tomorrow (Thursday) night. Even the railway engine is funny. A first-rate laughter show. Mr Hay plays a nitwit railway employee who cannot be sacked because he has relatives in high places. Sent out o harm’s way to an almost forgotten Irish station, he begins a terrific re-organisation with the assistance of fat youth .(Graham Moffatt) and a doddering old man (Moore Marriott). An excursion train —the first even promoted in those parts—gets lost, and the stationmaster goes in search of it, with his two “assistants,” aboard a decrepit engine, named “Gladstone” (an astonishing apparatus with a comic personality on its own account). In the midst of an heroic encounter with crooks, “Gladstone” runs away—then bursts! Mr Hay plays his funniest screen part as (he dunderhead station-master —a close spiritual relation of his famous bungling schoolmaster. Scarcely less amusing are Messrs Moffatt and Marriott. Of course, it’s all purely nonsensical farce in a traditional music hall vein, but it should delight everyone who is susceptible to hearty British humour. Excellent supports such as a Mickey Mouse colour cartoon. Terrytoon (cartoon), News and a Gaumont Mirror make up a real family holiday programme.