THE BABY AND THE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 924, 26 April 1957, Page 15

THE BABY AND THE

BATTLESHIP (Jay Lewis Productions) G Cert. WAS going to say that The Baby and the Battleship is not nearly as bad as it sounds, but since I’ve’ been dodging it for weeks I think I can

afford to be generous and says it’s much better. Though none of the obvious situations fails to turn up once the scene is set, it’s really quite amusing. "I couldn’t just leave the little basket sculling around on his own, could I?" asks Punchy Roberts (John Mills) when he finds himself with a baby aboard H.M.S. Gillingham, at sea for exercises after a night out in Naples. He has been left with this very likeable baby after a brawl in a café, and his mate (Richard Attenborough), whose girl was taking care of it, is still sculling around Naples looking for it after his ship has so unexpectedly: sailed. Of course, the story is in the efforts of the sailors to keep the baby hidden and take proper care of it. The officers’ table napkins, the tips of the surgeon’s rubber gloves, the cat’s saucer of milk disappear; a visitor (from East Europe?) who comes aboard finds the baby hidden in a food container in the galley and suspects the worst; the captain, who has been made out a fool in an exercise, uses the baby as an excuse to call it off-and so on, There’s a quite adequate performance from John Mills, though I was rather more taken with Michael Hordern as the self-satisfied captain-there are some scenes with his officers around him that I found very amusing. If you think that I sound a bit patronising about this piece you needn’t take my word for it-if its run means anything there must be few people about who haven't seen it.