The Good Companions

If you have seen the original 1933 version of the Good Companions then you will understand why I say that this is a vastly inferior remake.True it is in colour,but if anything it detracts rather than adds to the film.In any event by the time this film was$ made concert parties had virtually died out.The two leads are very poor.Jeanette Scott cannot sing or dance which makes her appearance rather pointless.John Fraser is an inadequate leading man.The film differs from the original in a number of ways,all to its own disadvantage.There is the tacked on show at the end which is truly dreadful and represents all that is worst in fifties British musicals.So not surprising that in the final credits it is the dancers who take the top credits.Definitely not one of Associated British Pictures better efforts

The 1957 color film is a disappointment (no real surprise), an attempt to produce a big Hollywood musical when the story didn't call for one. The re-do keeps the basic story but loses all the heart and soul of the original film.

Janette Scott (daughter of Thora Hird and a one-time wife of Mel Torme!) is a pallid replacement for the ethereal Jessie Matthews. John Fraser has the John Gielgud role. Celia Johnson has the Mary Glynne role, and Eric Portman the Edmund Gwenn. Others in the cast include Mona Washbourne, Bobby Howes, Rachel Roberts, Thora Hird, Anthony Newley, Hugh Griffith, Joyce Grenfell, Marjorie Rhodes, Fabia Drake, Shirley Anne Field, Beatrice Varley, Alec McCowan, John Le Mesurier and dancers Beryl Kaye, Paddy Stone, and Irving Davies.

Most notable changes in plot include Miss Trant (Celia Johnson) not having a reunion with her one-time flame. The flame here is Joyce Grenfell pursuing the dancer Jerry (Paddy Stone), thus depriving the Trant character of any kind of development. The big night for Susie Dean (Janette Scott) is turned into a comic free-for-all, thus depriving the Dean character of the astonishing sequence enjoyed by Jessie Matthews of singing amid the debris (the show must go on). The finale instead is an interminable sequence of musical numbers that show Scott as a combination Debbie Reynolds/Connie Stevens without the singing or dancing talent (she's dubbed, and her dancing is pretty much limited to being hauled around by Stone and Davies).

Eric Portman serves as a would-be love interest for Johnson, but of course he's married, so that's a dead end. John Fraser seems totally lost in the John Gielgud role of Inigo Jollifant (funny no one ever asks him to repeat his odd name). Most of the remainder have little to do.

Then there's the usually dour Rachel Roberts who explodes in a solo number "The Gentleman Is a Heel." Who knew she could sing? The ever lovable Joyce Grenfell has a great scene with a cake. Her final line there is something like "Take this away, it's of no use now." When this came out in 1957, the original film had likely been unseen since 1933 so comparisons were unlikely. Taking that into consideration this was probably seen as a serviceable musical for the times, and definitely a star vehicle for 19-year-old Scott.

Grenfell had hit stage show a few years earlier in London and New York. Cast members included the film's dancers: Irving Davies, Paddy Stone, and Beryl Kaye.

I considered "The Good Companions" simply made and entertaining, as was the novel. The actors were well cast and each played their part to perfection. It was unusual for a British studio to 'try' a musical at that period of time, and I think it came off pretty well. For me it is an unexpected, delightful offering such as "Curtain Up".

Remake of a charming 1933 Jessie Matthews vehicle, in turn adapted from J.B. Priestley's then-current novella, this trifle about a traveling music hall troupe is inflated beyond its natural proportions and turned into a vehicle for up-and-coming Janette Scott, as Susie, the ambitious, supposedly wildly talented young thing pursuing fame while fighting off the advances of John Fraser, an unprepossessing juvenile. Some friendly people turn up-Joyce Grenfell, Celia Johnson, Eric Portman, Hugh Griffith, Anthony Newley-and the big musical numbers attempt a Hollywood-type lavishness. But the sad fact is, Janette Scott is neither much of a singer nor a dancer, and when you see the audience going mad for her modest warbling and stepping, you wonder why. She's sweet, with a Debbie Reynolds sort of innocence and chipperness, and she probably melted some British schoolboys' hearts. But she's nothing to mount a big musical around, and J. Lee Thompson, soon to inflict himself on Hollywood, is not a natural musical director. A couple of good sequences, and lots of touring-the-hinterlands atmosphere, but not much else.

How this wretched outdated film was made is a total mystery. I have not read the Priestley book and have no desire to, but somehow it caught a great deal of attention. The film mystifies me that Celia Johnson, Eric Portman and Janette Scott wanted to be in this overblown, Cinemascope disaster. I cannot write more as I watched this film hoping to feel better after an illness, but it just made me want to throw something at the screen. That said a lot of talent was used to make it, and the beginning ( for about half an hour holds the attention but it completely falls apart after that. ) The more inflated the talentless group of travelling music hall became the more improbable the whole concept of the film became. !957 was a year of rapid change in culture and to have made this work someone of sense should have set it as a period piece. And even then I doubt if it could have worked. Really not worth watching if you come across it.